In 1980, the British government set up the Microelectronics Education Programme, MEP, with an initial budget of £12 million for four years. It was aimed at schools, and had the dual intention of “enriching the study of familiar subjects and familiarising pupils with the use of the microcomputer itself”. It was later extended by two years alongside the government’s other computer programmes, including the one which offered schools a 50% subsidy towards the purchase of certain microcomputers. A report soon after the MEP’s completion in 1987 found that “the cooperative strategy adopted by MEP considerably strengthened the cadre of well-informed teachers and trainers.”

One such well-informed teacher was Tony Clements, a maths teacher at King Edward VI Five Ways Grammar School, a selective state school in Five Ways, Birmingham. One of his pupils, Mark Abrams, later described Clements’s approach to the Times Education Supplement. “He expected a very high level of discipline, and got it. The classes were well run, logical and organised, and he respected us as individuals.” Clements also ran a computer club, which Abrams joined alongside studying for his O-Levels. “It was as well run and organised as his classes.” 

Tony Clements saw a bigger opportunity in the drive for schools to use computers more, and in February 1982 he set up a company to make educational software. The start up for this commercial enterprise was largely funded by MEP money, which was in line with the intentions of the programme that the projects it sponsored would quickly become financially independent. Clements initially called the company Cinescan, but within two months changed the name to Five Ways Software. 

Many of Clements’s students at King Edward VI Five Ways became employees. Mark Abrams blamed the enticing prospect of a job at Five Ways Software, coupled with his own increasing obsession with computers, for the fact that he failed A-Level maths. Clements didn’t hold it against him, and made Abrams one of those employees. “I think I finished school on the Wednesday and was working there on the Friday.” 

Five Ways made a deal with the educational bit of book publisher Heinemann, and in 1982 and 1983 Heinemann Educational Books put out some of Five Ways’ early games, culminating in the launch of The Dudley Programs. This was a package of 24 games which Five Ways developed in association with primary schools in nearby Dudley, aimed at 8-12 year olds and covering Science, Maths and English. At the launch, they were joined by the government’s Minister for Information Technology, who spoke of the “electronic generation” they would reach. By the end of 1983, Five Ways had fifty employees and their own office near the Cadbury’s factory in Birmingham.

  • The Dudley Programs (Heinemann, 1984, BBC Micro)
  • The Dudley Programs (Heinemann, 1984, BBC Micro)
  • The Dudley Programs (Heinemann, 1984, BBC Micro)
  • The Dudley Programs (Heinemann, 1984, BBC Micro)
  • Punctuation Pete (Heinemann, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Punctuation Pete (Heinemann, 1984, ZX Spectrum)

Heinemann released the full Dudley Programs for BBC Micro, the better to reach the most schools, with a price of £185 for the lot. It also released elements of it for RM computers and for ZX Spectrum, the other two formats covered by government subsidies to schools. The Dudley Programs does quite a wide range of things, with simple keyboard-based controls. You can see it was an era when it might be impressive just to put up different graphs on screen, or indeed long lists of associated words. It has some ideas of what to do with interactivity, though, and Punctuation Pete wandering around changing punctuation is rather charming. 

Five Ways Software’s arrangement with Heinemann didn’t last long. Heinemann was ultimately owned by the Tilling Group, a conglomerate which started out as a bus company. In 1983, that group got bought out by BTR Ltd. (formerly the British Tyre & Rubber Company), which was even less interested in Heinemann’s business and prompted a staff exodus. Both the Chair of Heinemann Educational Books, Alan Hill, and its Managing Director, Hamish MacGibbon, were interested enough in the software bit of the business to decide to go into that full time. They set up Hill MacGibbon to publish educational games, and maintained their relationship with Five Ways Software, publishing many more of their games. 

Hamish MacGibbon set out his vision in an April 1985 episode of the BBC’s The Learning Machine, a series about educational software. The episode he appeared in was titled Why is so much educational software so lousy? and presented Hill MacGibbon’s software as a superior alternative to the likes of Granny’s Garden and Podd. MacGibbon said that “computers are pretty lousy teachers but pretty exciting things to use” and that while their software had to “have an educational purpose”, what came first was that it must entertain. “if it doesn’t entertain, they’re not going to be concentrating on it”.

  • Granny’s Garden (4Mation Educational Resources, 1983, BBC Micro)
  • Granny’s Garden (4Mation Educational Resources, 1983, BBC Micro)
  • Podd (Acornsoft, 1983, BBC Micro)
  • Podd (Acornsoft, 1983, BBC Micro)

MacGibbon also suggested on The Learning Machine that the company would be focusing less on schools and increasingly looking to the much larger home market, a process which they had already started. The Times Educational Supplement reported as much in September 1984, with an item saying that Hill MacGibbon would be releasing two adventure games “for training […] in imaginative decision making and mapping skills”, followed by four sports simulation programmes, stretching further still from education into entertainment. One of those games, World Cup Football, was mentioned in adverts but never made it to release. All five that did come out were the work of Five Ways Software.

The two adventure games Hill MacGibbon released at the end of 1984 were King Arthur’s Quest and Aztec: Quest for the Sun-God, which both lean heavily on their first person view to draw out not-very-interesting puzzles. The sports games largely had the same sense that any kind of 3D graphics would make up their appeal, with Rally Driver and Yacht Race similarly using a first person view within a section of the screen. 

  • Aztec: Hunt for the Sun-God (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Aztec: Hunt for the Sun-God (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • King Arthur’s Quest (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • King Arthur’s Quest (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Yacht Race (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Yacht Race (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Rally Driver (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Rally Driver (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)

Run for Gold was the odd one out in that while it’s also in 3D, it gives you a view of your athlete alongside their identical competitors. It’s a much more focused athletics simulator than the multi-sport ones that were beginning to dominate, covering just the men’s 400, 800 and 1500 metres. No joystick waggling here either, but instead a set of events accessed through text menu screens, and a task that involves strategically deciding when to use up your energy. That’s presented in a modular way with the graphs on the screen not a million miles away from some of The Dudley Programs. At higher levels, you also have to move left and right, which is very tough from the perspective provided. It definitely has a sense of worthy purpose roughly as large as its limited entertainment value.

  • Run for Gold (1984, Hill MacGibbon, ZX Spectrum)
  • Run for Gold (1984, Hill MacGibbon, Amstrad CPC)
  • Run for Gold (1984, Hill MacGibbon, Commodore 64)

A distinct lack of credits and Five Ways’s size make it hard to find the names of those who made any of those games. Various sites do, however, credit Tim Miller for programming the Spectrum Run for Gold. It’s not clear whether that was the original version, but it’s very possible given how much more Spectrum software Five Ways managed to release than Commodore 64. Miller would go on to programme the Amstrad and Spectrum conversations of Codemasters’ debut hit BMX Simulator.

Home Computing Weekly were keen on all of the sports games, highlighting them in the Best Graphics section of a retrospective on 1984’s Spectrum software. “Hill-Macgibbon must feature strongly with Rally Driver, Yacht Race and Run for Gold written by Fiveways”. The same writer was slightly less positive about Run for Gold specifically when reviewing it in January 1985. “While the execution of this concept is immaculate, I didn’t find playing it as intriguing as Yacht Race or Rally Driver”. They also mentioned issues with steering their runner – “this is very difficult, even with a joystick, and results in your colliding with other athletes or running off the track to instant disqualification”.

  • Run for Gold (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)
  • Run for Gold (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, Commodore 64)

That was a theme picked up in other reviews as well. “All my early attempts resulted in me crashing across the tracks and smashing into another runner” wrote Popular Computing Weekly. Your Computer’s reviewer presented that experience as a positive: “It’s so real I was even tripped up Zola Budd style”. They wrote that “you don’t have to drum the keyboard or turn your joystick to jelly”, not the only comparison in reviews to popular contemporary sports games. As Colette McDermott in Sinclair User put it, “if you want the finger aching action found in Daley Thompson’s Decathlon you will not find it here”. Crash called Run for Gold “decidedly unusual because it resembles none of the other similar Track and Field type games before”. 

Crash’s review also added a bit more about the graphics. “Some of the best animation and large graphics around […] because the graphics characters are so large and well-animated they move quite slowly”. In summary, they called Run for Gold “the most realistic running game ever for the Spectrum, and possibly for any computer yet.” “[It] does not require the ultimate destruction of either keyboard or joystick, and is much more a game of judgement and skill. It is rather steeply priced, though, which may not appeal to many who would otherwise love it.” Indeed, an athletics simulation that matched the edutainment background of its creators, released at £7.95, did not prove widely appealing, and did not reach the UK charts.

Run for Gold (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, Amstrad CPC)

None of those Five Ways games did that well, and Five Ways hit some struggles. “The general trends in the software market” were “not favourable to educational games at present” said Tony Clements, trying to justify laying off eight members of staff, mostly programmers. Five Ways were also facing the end of the government MEP funding. Somehow, though, the story of Run for Gold was not yet over. 

Much later in 1985, Roger Hulley set up a new company called Alternative Software. Hulley had come from the music business and was working in software distribution. He was approached by Mick Robinson and future Team 17 founder Martyn Brown, who were having trouble getting anyone to take on their game Henry’s Hoard. Hulley decided he had an opportunity, and Henry’s Hoard, a platformer built on a version of the Jet Set Willy engine, became Alternative’s first release.

  • Henry’s Hoard (Alternative, 1985, ZX Spectrum)
  • Henry’s Hoard (Alternative, 1985, ZX Spectrum)

Hulley explained his approach to MCV in 2015. “I used to love the idea of having a hit record – of course, I wasn’t going to get that myself – but I just liked the idea of being able to publish a game, seeing it go into the charts and so on. That’s what inspired me to get started.” As for how to achieve that kind of hit, “in the early days we were buying people’s back catalogue. I bought games off Creative Spark, Mikro-Gen and Activision. So we were going into the marketplace and acquiring titles that way, as well as actually going out and getting indie developers on board.”

One set of games that Alternative bought the rights to was Hill MacGibbon’s. They might not have had much popular appeal in their original guise, but they were well-made enough that with a different price and marketing, it could be a different matter. Alternative reissued Yacht Race under the more dynamic title of Ocean Racer. They made Rally Driver into a top 20 hit. They re-released Run for Gold in summer 1987, and it went straight into the top 10. It didn’t stop there. 

Run for Gold (Hill MacGibbon, 1984, ZX Spectrum)

The timing of Alternative’s Run for Gold reissue was perfect, setting it up for a sprint finish upon the running of the World Athletics Championships in Rome at the end of August 1987. Peter Elliott won a silver medal for Britain in the men’s 800 metres and, within a week of the championships finishing, Run for Gold climbed to #1 in the UK chart. Its success was a very similar story to the game it replaced at #1, Milk Race. Many people were happy to pay a couple of quid to play a sports game after watching a big event in that sport, and it didn’t really matter whether the game was actually based on that event. There is also an echo of Go for the Gold, another (similarly-named) game which was lost in the rush of 1984 Olympics games but saw budget success years later.

After Run for Gold, Hill MacGibbon didn’t release any other games which went on to top the chart. They got bought out by Collins Educational and brought back into the wider educational publishing world, where after many more buyouts and mergers a successor is theoretically still going today. Tony Clements handed over Five Ways to his old pupil Mark Abrams, who took full ownership in 1989, changed its name to Burra Burra and went into selling hardware and software in the business-to-business market. He later agreed to a merger with internet services company Myratech, and they launched on the stock market rather successfully during the dot com boom. 

Alternative Software started making their own games, and proved successful and long-lasting. They are still releasing games today, albeit ones whose AI-generated key art puts me off investigating any further. To end on a less depressing note, let’s go back slightly to the week ending 19 September 2015. New at #1 in the UK games chart was Destiny: The Taken King. And there at #9 was a new entry for Alternative Software, three decades after their formation. The hit was Rugby League Live 3, released just ahead of the conclusion to the Super League season. A lot changed over those decades, but the wide appeal of topical sports games remained.

Gallup combined formats chart for week ending 05 September 1987, Popular Computing Weekly

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