Jack The Nipper! Games Britannia 2014

As my friends and followers online know I'm a huge fan of old retro video games, especially stuff made in the 80s by Gremlin Graphics of Sheffield.

Jack the nipper cartoony mock-up screen I made for the Games Britannia 2014 schools challenge competition. Please visit Games Britannia Schools Competition 2014

For the past couple of years I've been involved with the Games Britannia game jams which has given me a fantastic opportunity to mingle with my heroes of the 8 bit era of British gaming who inspired me to get into working in gamedev. The thing I loved most about Gremlin Graphics games in particular were the brilliant cartoon characters such as Monty Mole, Zool, Potty Pigeon, Bounder etc. Amongst my favourite games of the time was Jack The Nipper, who was pretty much like the Beano character Sweeny Toddler and got into all kinds of mischief to fill up his "naughtyometer" whilst trying to avoid getting a spanking! (this was the 80s!)

Back in the late 90s, early 2000s when it looked like these games were never going to reappear from the archives I was involved with some groups of Retro Remakers. We we bedroom programmers, musicians and artists who worked together to try to recreate our favourite old games from scratch to run on modern PCs often playing around with the graphics but trying to match the original gameplay that we loved so much.

In 2003  I had a go at making a Jack The Nipper demo, I was using software called The Games Factory by Clickteam, which instead of using programming had an event editor and a drag and drop level builder. Until recently the files were stuck on a hard drive as unfortunately TGF wouldn't open the files in Windows 7. Luckily Multimedia Fusion was recently on sale in the Humble Bundle and I was able to get a copy of that to restore the files and re-compile the demo.

Here's the demo, It's only 1 screen as the movement in Jack The Nipper allows you to walk around the floor, jump up the shelves and grab the pea shooter to fire at the baddies. Although it doesn't sound much, to a non-programmer this was quite a challenge to get working.

I hope you enjoy it! Game Demo Exe file

My old 2003 demo screens.

Space = Start Game

Arrows = Move

Shift = Jump

Ctrl = Fire

1 or 2 = put object in pocket

ESC = QUIT

Original game is copyright Gremlin Graphics, this was made for educational purposes and must not be sold in any form.

Jack the Nipper

Over the weekend I revisited Jack The Nipper, a game I was really fond of growing up.

In 2003 I made a demo level of the first screen as a tribute to Gremlin Graphic's original.

10 years later here is a new updated version of the same screen...

2013 version - fan art by Ric

2003 version - fan art by Ric

Gremlin Graphics Original ZX Spectrum version

Zool fan art and Monty Mole artwork from the Games Britannia Game Jams

Don't think I posted these images before, but I was invited to help out at the Games Britannia 2013 Game Jam. Following the success of the 2012 one where I helped out with some Monty Mole games for the schools taking part in the competition. Being an avid fan and sometimes retro-remaker of the beloved Gremlin Graphics games I grew up playing in the 80s, I jumped at the chance to share my passion for the games with others and lent my skills as a graphic artist to help out the kids with their games.

A vectorised version of the old Gremlin Logo.

Monty Mole returns to help Monty Mole Jr in the apocalypse!

Monty Mole Jr sets off on his adventures.

For 2013 the theme was switched to another of Gremlins heroes... Zool. I worked on box art this time, the kids were even more enthusiastic this time and they had created some amazing artwork, so my part of the jam was mainly doing layout work for them which was great fun and gave them a lot of pride to see their work on the boxes.

Before the Jam I created a quick vector version of the Zool artwork from the original box for fun (like you do!) :D I didn't use this but thought I'd share it on my blog anyway...

The original box artwork.

My vector version Fan Art.

I was a huge fan of Gremlin Games and look forward to seeing what else they resurrect in the future and hopefully we will see new titles appear from their brilliant archive of games with character. I would especially love to see the return of Jack The Nipper! (Maybe next time?..)

Gremlin Graphics Reunited at Games Britannia

Gremlin Graphics Re-United - Monty Mole Games Jam

On Friday I headed down to Magna at Sheffield to mentor a group of school children and their teacher on a Monty Mole game jam, as part of Gremlin Reunited at the Games Britannia show.

The kids were really enthusiastic and came up with a brilliant storyline involving a post nuclear apocalypse Monty Jr, trying to get medicine to save the original Monty Mole from radiation sickness, whilst avoiding soldiers and military drones. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Jacob Habgood (SHU) who was overseeing the teams and made sure we knew where we needed to be and looked after us. One of his students Wesley Arthur was on hand to help the kids with the programming side of things and made good use of Game Maker to get Monty moving and help the kids design levels.

Team Utopia designing levels & testing gameplay.

The game jam was being filmed for Blue Peter with CBBC's Barney Harwood. I'm not sure when it will be shown but my own kids were very excited about that! (they really love "Bear Behaving Badly" with Barney)

Gremlin Graphics produced some of my favourite games when I was growing up, especially the Monty Mole series and games like Thing on a Spring, Potty Pigeon and Bounder. I was about 12 when the first Monty game was released in 1984 during the Miners Strikes and I remember seeing it on the local news, I didn't really understand the political side of things, but I really enjoyed the gameplay and the main character Monty.

Through Jacob I was introduced to my gaming heroes Peter Harrap and Tony Crowther, I also got to meet Ben Daglish and had a nice chat with Ian Stewart the original founder of Gremlin Graphics.

Tony Crowther, myself and Peter Harrap!

A massive thanks to the brilliant Mark Hardisty (Games Britannia) and fantastic Jacob Habgood (Sheffield Hallam University) for inviting me along to the jam and being such great hosts. I hope the kids got as much from the experience as I did, and go on to create their own games! It was a great opportunity for me to work on something I loved and I am very proud to have been part of!

http://www.gamesbritannia.com