1990 Virgin Games
Platform: Amstrad CPC
In 1990, it was announced that Virgin Games had obtained the licence to produce a game based on the popular 2000AD comic character Judge Dredd on all the major home formats and adverts showed screenshots from all six formats.
In the September 1990 issue of Amstrad Computer User, the game was featured as the cover feature – it wasn’t reviewed in the issue, but it was an extended preview. but it did feature what looked like CPC screenshots, but they were small images.
The game was also mentioned in Amstrad Action issue 67, with a brief news item and a detailed screenshot showing more of the game. The magazine stated they had only seen a static screenshot, and nothing of the game running. Looking at the ACU screens, they seem unfinished and are likely mock ups.
However, the game came out on the Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. Apparently the Spectrum version was delayed until 1991, but that version was considered a GTW until a Spectrum Plus 3 disc showed up on Ebay in 2014. The Amstrad version is the only version unaccounted for.
Even in 1991, Virgin was still releasing material for the CPC with Viz (why?) and games on the Mastertronic Plus / Tronix budget labels.
The Atari ST version states that the CPC version was coded by Andy Taylor with music by Tony (Tiny) Williams. Andy Taylor also coded the Speccy version so it’s possible both formats shared code. Can the CPC version be found? Will it be worth it?
ADDITIONS AND UPDATES FROM FRANK BELOW:
I got in touch with Rob Whitaker, who confirms that he was the graphic artist along with Ned Langman. He also confirms that it was indeed Andy Taylor who was doing both the ZX and CPC versions of the game, and the CPC edition was the very same codebase, but with full colour backgrounds and sprites.
Rob produced graphics on Amiga first, and then these were adapted for use on the other platforms. Ned ended up doing all the Amiga background graphics and some other bits and pieces. Rob recalls working extensively on the Spectrum graphics, but doesn’t remember much about the Amstrad. He isn’t saying that it didn’t happen, but the screenshots we’ve dug out don’t ring any bells.
Another possibility was that Tahir Rashid may have been involved too, and they were credited with doing some art for the game (but not necessarily the CPC edition). Tahir joined half way through development, and was drafted in to do some bits and pieces across the different versions, so he may have worked on it. Rob isn’t sure that the CPC screens are entirely his work, and thinks that Tahir may have contributed to that version.
However – Rob says that they don’t look like mock-ups, but certainly are not the finished game. He cannot recall being told that the CPC edition was cancelled or anything like that. Rob had assumed all versions were released, so was surprised to see the Spectrum version surface in 2014. He suggests that it may have been a copy that was once sent to the press.
Rob confirms that during his time at Sales Curve, the development of CPC games were the lowest priority of all the platforms, and were always a port of the Spectrum version. It wasn’t fun work on the platform due to the palette, and so could be why he doesn’t recall much, as it was work he wasn’t much engaged with.
We got in touch with Tahir, and he recalls starting with C64 assets and converting some of those over before leaving Sales Curve and Random Access. He confirmed he was doing Spectrum and CPC conversions at the time but couldn’t recall specifically about Judge Dredd – it seems very likely that Tahir was the artist. He feels the game was probably just ditched to the dying market.
When asked if he still had any of his disks, he sadly had no CPC disks – which he felt were probably formatted and used for SWIV on the 128K.
Unfortunately no-one knows where Andy Taylor is these days. The last we have managed to find is that he was working at 2015 Games back in 2004, but there’s no further trace. Andy was also one of those who was running a “Chaos Engine” online forum, populated by game developers – which is now long gone. Rob hasn’t spoken to Andy since around that time. The only thing he recalls is that he may have been related to Warren Mills. We might be able to track down Andy via Warren potentially.
The other person to check with is Simon Pick, who was manager of the project and contributed to the C64 edition. Hopefully he’ll be able to confirm the game’s fate as well. Just to add as well, the CPC version is mentioned in the final release manual, as well as having a screenshot for the CPC edition on the box.
With thanks to Archive.org and Stephen (Mort) Stuttard for the hi-res scans, Tahir Rashid for information about the graphics and to Rob Whitaker for the fantastic additional information.
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