The Mystery of the Birds and the Bees & its investigation

[MtM]

Hello All,

 

I read this interview recently with Matthew Smith from 1999

 

https://www.kevssite.com/matthew-smith-interview/

 

The interview is very short. At the end, MS says something that struck me as unusual -

that the Birds and the Bees was written by Derrick Rowson. Now that didn't seem right to

me, so I looked it up thus:-

 

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/536/ZX-Spectrum/The_Birds_and_the_Bees

 

The game is credited to Adrian Sherwin, not Derrick Rowson. We know that Derrick Rowson

wrote JSW II among other things:-

 

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/list?label_id=3737

 

Furthermore, if you look Adrian Sherwin up ...

 

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/list?label_id=417

 

then you see a list of his games. Among them is Monster Muncher, a game credited to MS on his wikipedia page ...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Smith_(games_programmer)

 

Monster Muncher was written on the Vic20 apparently by MS.

 

So, I just wonder - are there mistakes in the above? Was MS wrong about saying Birds and the Bees

was written by Derrick Rowson, it could easily be a genuine mistake? Was the person who did the interview wrong in some way, typed

it up wrong? Could Adrian Sherwin and Derrick Rowson be one and the same person, using a programming pen name?

Could Adrian Sherwin somehow be MS, given that he is credited with Monster Muncher on the Spectrum?

 

Not trying to start any kind of conspiracy here folks, just one or two of the above things struck

me as being perhaps more than coincidental, but I daresay there is a logical explanation for it all.

I thought it was interesting enough to share anyway, apologies if it is old news and has all been

covered before.

[Norman Sword]

 

The birds and the bees - Written by Adrian Sherwin - Graphics aided by Matthew Smith.

 

Edited March 22, 2021 by Norman Sword
Changed picture format

[MtM]

7 hours ago, Norman Sword said:

 

The birds and the bees - Written by Adrian Sherwin - Graphics aided by Matthew Smith.

 

Thank you for that Norman. That is the received wisdom, and I agree it is very likely the case that someone called

Adrian Sherwin wrote the Birds and the Bees, just very surprised that MS says it was Derrick Rowson in the interview.

It may well be a genuine mistake by MS as I say, or even the interviewer. MS also says that Steve Wetherill was involved

in the interview, again, this may be wrong, but I suppose given this is what MS says in the interview, it seems reasonable

to wonder if it is actually correct or there is anything in it at least. Given that Adrian Sherwin did write Monster Muncher

that is of note, and coincidence perhaps.

[Spider]

Its quite an interesting question, thank you @MtMfor posing it and to @Norman Swordfor your reply too.

The only thing I can really add is there -might- of been some slight confusion somewhere along the lines as Matt wrote a sprite tool, I've not looked if this was a 'released file' or an 'internal tool' ie: written by coders for coders (you should see the state of my screen splitter for instance!)

^ Typo fixed, there's a 'g' in 'alongside'

Source here :

Quote

... Styx was written the same year as Manic Miner, alongside a sprite editing utility - which was used by fellow coder Adrian Sherwin for The Birds And The Bees. ...

Having said that the screenshot itself indicates the game itself was also by the same. I suspect that the mention of the tool was intended to mean 'Matt wrote this'

[Spider]

I did at one time grab all Software Projects and Bug-Byte's games that were listed (and not denied) as its quite surprising how many other good titles they actually have.

I mean, when 'Software Projects' pops into my mind I think of JSW and to a lesser extent, MM. Similar with Bug-Byte I tend to immediately think of MM

🙂

There are a few erm 'not great' titles from both 'houses' though, but to be fair the same could be said for most others too. To a slightly lesser extent PSS do have some cracking titles inc FNS (bug fixed and slightly easier version available I modded)

Is a lot to be said about the smaller or less well known 'houses' too, Atlantis being another perhaps.

🙂

[MtM]

Well said Spider! Microsphere had a phenomenal strike rate considering it was just two people, sometimes

three. Skooldaze is perhaps the greatest Spectrum game ever in a way, never really been anything like

it since, other than Back to Skool. Just my opinion.

[Spider]

Ah yes. 🙂 Microsphere. David and Helen Reidy. There was a decentish article in one magazine back then. I think they had some extra help from another person with the graphics designing at one point or another. I've not dug out the article.

The first game I saw from them in late 84 or possibly early 85 was Wheelie, not actually quite my "cup of tea" but I did appreciate the good gameplay. This was something that was brought around to me by a relative, who lived nearby a video hire shop (ah the good old days of BetaMax and VHS tape hire!) , point being this place hired out original games for week iirc for a small sum. Off the top of my head here the first games I saw from said place (I did not se them all that were hired) were Wheelie, Frank-N-Stein, Pyramid, Kong, Chuckie Egg and likely a few others, memory fades!

Back to Microsphere itself, yes I did purchase SkoolDaze 'back then' , I actually still have it! First thing that struck me was the loader with its initial bright red screen with yellow ink and its high speed. I'll not go into the loader here as its off topic I guess. I do remember having a bit of paper with a list of battles on that I'd discovered during playing etc.

Back To Skool again was so impressed with the first game I managed to cobble enough to get this too.

You must not forget "Contact Sam Cruise" 😉 as that is a similar vein, slightly different gameplay, I do have this now (got it about 4 or 5 years ago I think in a small bundle of a dozen titles), it was not really a game I could get into too well. I think somewhere I did post about this, the fact that the 'game core' engine as such is likely not that far different between SD/BTS and CSC, I do wonder if any other games were planned using this 'engine' as such, if that makes sense. I could not find any evidence of this unfortunately. It would be interesting to ask even if it was only "ideas at the time on a bit of paper" if anything was actually planned or not.

SkoolKid released the excellent PiSkool and SkoolKit, so you can modify the game engines a bit too, I do recall messing about with this a few years back, great fun! But there's disassembly's of all three of these games available. 🙂

Microsphere did release a few other titles but they were iirc not that well known about perhaps, I don't recall seeing any 'in the plastic' so to speak , as in on a shop shelf back then but its quite possible I may of overlooked them.

EDIT.. Completely forgot about SkyRanger ( ! ) , I had this too when it appeared on Mastertronic re-release, iirc partly on the strength of it being a Microsphere game, however it was again not really my "cup of tea" , pretty sure there's a decent game in there trying to get out though. Perhaps I should of played it a bit more! 🙂

Edited March 24, 2021 by Spider

[MtM]

I had SkyRanger as well Spider, on original original! It was a good game but very difficult. However, the speed of the vector graphics

was very impressive and effective and thought, and they featured line removal, one of the earliest games to do that to good

effect I think. Definitely not built on the SD/BTS engine that one 😉 I am well aware of Contact Sam Cruise too, one I will

get around to playing one day. I suppose SD & BTS both have non-classical platform elements too, might of been fun as platform

games in a way. I wonder whatever happened to the Reidy's? As I say, their overall quality of output was tremendous, and varied

too, never released a bad game. Who remembers The Train Game by them, in 16k on the Speccy? That was great fun, like something you

would play on your phone these days. Possibly still a contender for the best 16k Spectrum game, not forgetting Sir Lancelot of course,

fab theme tune that.

[Spider]

One thing I did note about Skyranger that was similar to SD and BTS is the border colour cycle during the 'title tune' 🙂 That seems to be a Microsphere trait (its good) 🙂

CSC is quite different. Its hard to play with not being able to 'see in' too well, as the outer building wall is there. You can make a small change to the code to make it draw the moving graphics outside (on top) of the background , you can see what's going on when you do this but cosmetically it looks quite bad 😄

I'm not aware of what happened to them, I'd like to assume they are perhaps still involved in the software industry at some level though. I've not tried The Train Game, I do remember trying Evolution at one point in the past. Although quite basic it was perhaps a good candidate for a complete rewrite in assembly with a few more graphics rather than 8x8 blocks.