IN POLE POSITION
Racing into the competitive budget market, Zeppelin Games (now Eutechnyx) has stayed on track for the last 25 years. Andrew Fisher talks to founder Brian Jobling and the people who made the games to find out how the company has changed
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any stories of software houses from the Eighties include a teenager programmer buying a fast car, and this one is no exception. “At the age of 14 I wrote a ‘complete copier’ programme which allowed the user to copy any tape game,” recalls Brian Jobling of his start in the industry. “At the age of 14 I wrote a ‘complete copier’ programme which allowed the user to copy any tape game,” recalls Brian Jobling about his start in the industry. “One publisher realised the potential and suggested that I use my cracking knowledge to create a protection system. I started writing protection systems for the major gaming publishers at a royalty of two pence per cassette. By the time I was 17, I had made enough money to buy my first Porsche.” Brian left school and started working for Tynesoft as a programmer. “During this time I met Derek Brewster, a renowned games programmer who was responsible for Codename MAT.” Derek had left his previous position as adventure columnist for CRASH. The pair decided to form their own development studio, Zeppelin Games, in November 1987.
62 | RETRO GAMER
After working from home for years, the company opened for business at offices on Osborne Road in Newcastle. The first wave of software set a high standard. Draconus featured excellent graphics and a main character who switched from fire-breathing beast to swimming fish. Duncan Scott Kershaw, who would later write games for Zeppelin, recalls, “I remember buying that game to check out the competition and was massively impressed. It really was a great game. It doesn’t look much today but, at the time, it totally raised the quality bar for budget games.” Zybex earned a prestigious ZZAP! Silver Medal and wowed fans with its horizontally scrolling shoot-’em-up action. Key members of the inhouse team were programmer Kevin Franklin, graphic artist Michael Owens and musician Adam Gilmore. Brian himself continued to program for the Atari 8-bit machine. Brian admits that things were pretty tough to start with. “I started Zeppelin Games with the mindset of giving it two years, but 25 years later Eutechnyx is still here! In the early days of the industry it was an extremely cut-throat market. Every game was piggybacked by a different studio’s
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take on the same idea – if one studio had success with a game, it was inevitable that soon enough there would be multiple takes on the same idea or style of game. It was a great time though – with Mastertronic, Ocean, Imagine, Codemasters, Quicksilva, Hi-Tec, etc – great British innovators leading the world in game development.” After co-founders Derek Brewster and Martin O’Donnell left the company in 1989, Brian’s brother Darren would join full-time. The company moved to Houghton-le-Spring near Durham. Big name licenses including the hit TV show Neighbours required a bigger budget and were published on Impulze, a new fullprice label. There were also games for the 16-