Arcade Colour, Illustration

& Attribute Clash 1979-89

David Surman
 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Abstract

British computer games of the 1980s have a distinctive graphic quality. This essay sets out

a critical-historical overview of the period, to examine the way in which the technological

limitations of personal computing, new magazine illustration and developer innovation

contribute to the Golden Age of British computer game development, 1979 1989.

Introduction

In this essay I want to talk about the visual qualities of classic computer games made in

the UK, during the 1980s. In order to do that, Ill explore how the limitations of of 8-bit

computing, evocative magazine illustration and the ambitions of creative developers

combined to create a distinct game aesthetic. The history of computer and videogames is

dominated by the story of American and Japanese manufacturers competing to dominate

hardware development (Kent, 2002). We are now getting to grips with the greater

plurality of voices involved in game development for the past forty years. Through new

museum exhibitions and scholarly research fresh light is being shed on game development

as something happening everywhere, bringing into view the historic importance of national

and regional practice in game development (Gazzard, 2013). Our understanding of games

has been enriched by a growing interest in games history, and we are much better placed

today to understand the games culture of particular times and places. Conversation is

shifting away from the grand narratives of corporate multinationals, and toward the

activity of communities in towns and cities around the world. As such I want to ask, what

makes British games of the 1980s so distinctive?

I will argue that the games of the ZXSpectrum [Fig.1] epitomise the aesthetic of the

1980s in computer games. This argument is made in three parts: first though the

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

peculiarities and constraints of the hardware; secondly the importance of magazine editors

and illustrators to games culture; thirdly the ambitions of developers. Ill show that rather

than standing apart from the broader culture of the 1980s in a cloistered subculture,

British developers and games magazines demonstrated a desire to use computer games in

the same counter-cultural fashion as the music, illustration and television of the period.

Games Culture

The technology of the novel has remained the same since it was first conceived; cinema

technology has likewise only recently changed in the switch to digital imaging before

that, film projection remained the same for almost 100 years. Computer games and

videogames refuse such stability theyre characterised by constant technological change

through upgrades to their computing power and changes to the physical form of interfaces.

Moores law beats at the heart of the industry, and consumers and developers expect a

steady stream of ever-improving technology on which to play games. Between companies

like Sinclair and Amstrad a characteristic arms race emerged, and developments in

computer graphics, memory, storage, sound, animation and control became the measure of

progress. At home, our televisions played host to these ever changing technologies, as

machines like the Magnavox Odyssey [Fig.2] games console and Tandy TRS-80 first

broke the domestic market.

Throughout the 1980s videogames migrated from the communal world of the arcade

into the domestic sphere, on consoles and personal computers. Piggy-backing on the surge

of interest in personal computing, which was driven in part by major TV series by ITV

and the BBC, computer games played an integral role the fortunes of British brands like

Sinclair and Amstrad. Games, rather than office software, drove substantial hardware

sales. For schoolchildren, raised on an increasingly Americanised pop culture diet, the rise

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

of computer games1 expressed homegrown visual ideas and experiences that resonated

with the comics, television, and music of the UK. Personal computers such as the BBC

Micro [Fig.3] and Acorn were made available in British schools, replete with a selection of

educational and not-so-educational games. The ZXSpectrum (1982), Amstrad CPC (1984)

and Commodore 64 (1982) achieved widespread success, and British developers created

games for all these platforms. In this brief window of energetic computer game

development a national game design sensibility was born.

It was a time of rapid change, and for many of the young developers it was an

opportunity to take the eccentric products of their hobby to market for the first time. The

popularity of computer gaming challenged the established utilitarian perception of

computers (Gazzard, 2013). Machines purchased with the intent to work and study would

instead become repurposed as portals to imaginary worlds.

Developers who were capable of releasing games of a persistently high quality were

able to build a reputation and get greater exposure in magazines, such as ZZAP!64 [Fig.4]

and CRASH. Later, many of those same companies would struggle and collapse under the

pressure; markets became saturated with generic, cloned and pirated products and the

requirement to remain abreast of an increasing broad range of technologies (Bogost and

Montfort, 2009). While those who had grown quickly now struggled to maintain

commercial momentum as the computer game bubble burst, amateur makers and small

studios continued to test the market with unproven and original concepts. In retrospect the

story of British computer game development is one of experiments that somehow found an

audience. While large mainstream companies like Codemasters emerged during this

period, it was also the breakout moment for Britains independent developers.

1
It is important here to clarify the difference between computer games and videogames. A
computer game is a digital game created and played on a personal computer, whereas a

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

From our present moment looking back, clouds of collective nostalgia surround the

appreciation of these computers and their games. The introduction of computers such as

the BBC and Acorn in British schools meant that almost every child in school throughout

the 1980s had some degree of contact with the technology, a fact that adds substantial

weight to the nostalgia. I want to comment here on the strangeness of many of the

computer games available during the 1980s, with their garish colour palettes, strange

themes and off-kilter humour. I want to make a small gesture toward explaining how we

arrived at this decade of creative computer game development in the UK, and set out some

of the context.

A Marriage of Television and Computer

To understand British computer game development of the 1980s we need to first talk

about television. The earliest personal computers created in the United States were

designed to connect to a television set. British-made machines such as the Spectrum series

were likewise connected to a television display. In the 1980s the BBC launched its

Computer Literacy Project a series of television programmes and teaching materials

aimed at introducing personal computing to school children. To accompany the project

British manufacturer Acorn would go on to design the BBC Microcomputer or Micro for

use by schools. In this way, the broadcaster played a crucial role in undergirding the

growth of computing in the UK, and Margaret Thatcher would proudly exclaim in a

speech in 1983, [d]id you know weve put a micro-computer in every school?2 Britains

principal broadcaster had boosted the presence of computers in the UK by a significant

margin. Television would continue to play host to computers in other more ordinary ways,

as the means of display.

videogame is a digital game created on a computer to be played on a games console, such

as an Atari 2600 or Sega Mega Drive (see Newman, 2012).

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Standing in the corner of the living room, television dominated the living rooms of the

British public throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The telly superseded radio as the

principal means through which people would get information, entertainment, and even

check the weather. Family life grew to accommodate the changing routines of television

programming. Emmerdale at 6pm, the News at 10pm. Television was a revolution in

reverse; in the words of Richard Serra, The product of television, commercial television,

is the Audience. Television delivers people to an advertiser. The box would now also

deliver gameplay to people in their homes, and juxtapose broadcast television images with

8-bit computer graphics with the switch of a cable and the turn of a tuner.

Physically speaking, televisions were styled to look in keeping with the other furniture

in the home consistent and harmonious. Early in the production of television

programmes, the structure of content would follow the familiar terms of radio production,

with a heavy emphasis on programming time slots. A family would have to be ready to

watch a show that commenced at a certain time. Prior to the invention of the VCR,

television was a medium that the audience would necessarily have to organise themselves

around.

Imagine the disruption then of the addition of a VCR, games console or personal

computer to the ecosystem of the late 1970s living room. Each establishes expectations of

use that clash wildly with the programming culture of television broadcast and

consumption. The physical addition of computer and videogames to the television from the

late 1970s onward radically broke away from the status quo of the living room. The sheer

visual fields and blocky pixel forms of computer and videogames proposed a wholly

different way of using the television, affording interaction and play and displaying new

abstract imagery. It is important to underscore how disruptive the use of computer and

2
Speech made at the Metropole Hotel, Birmingham, 1983.

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

videogames was in the context of television programming, causing parents and children to

clash over the use of the TV. The migration of computer and consoles into the bedroom

accompanied by secondary TV sets was no doubt exacerbated by tensions arising from

their use in the living room. In 1983 an internal video produced by American

manufacturer RCA entitled The Future is Now perfectly summarised the predicament in

the promotion of its new series of multiple input/output television video monitors. The

narrator declares that:

In this consumer revolution the battleground is the TV set. Consumers are not locked

into network programming anymore: they have or they want cable; there are videogames

demanding screen time too; not to mention VCRs, video discs, video cameras, and many

other new products. The bottom line is a television doesnt have to be a receiver anymore.

The Importance of Colour

Boxes were limited initially to receiving a monochromatic transmission, a field of

flickering greys forming the plump face of Richard Baker as he read the BBC News. By

1967 BBC2 had kicked off broadcasting regularly in colour, but a colour set receiver was

extremely expensive. However, as global consumer technology prices plummeted set costs

did too, and by the mid 1970s most people had upgraded from monochrome to colour

television. In something of a twist, as early colour television entered the mainstream, early

computer and videogames would frequently return to a monochromatic image as both a

creative choice and a technical constraint. In some homes, black and white television sets

that had been replaced by colour sets would be repurposed as displays for computer and

videogames.

Colour, shape and animation play a crucial role in the design of playable and effective

games. Colour and shape are the primary means with which we distinguish one form from

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

another in games. At a fundamental level, games are about managing and organising

complexity and creating distinction. For example, consider a chessboard and pieces: first,

black and white distinguish the players from one another. Secondly, shape distinguishes

the chess pieces from each other and also defines the board, and finally rules concerning

movement or animation determines how those pieces can be manipulated. In this way

formal qualities make the game legible to the players. Colours provide the player with

systemic information as well as representational information. While a colour might not

contribute to the realism or legibility of a scene, it can be used for its graphic quality,

making a menu or text item stand out, or reducing the complexity of an otherwise visually

dense interface or inventory.

As games have developed over the past forty years the function of colour has changed.

Since the early 1990s the advent of higher resolution displays, broader palettes and three-

dimensional graphics has meant the tools and products of game development have

converged to a great extent with those of graphic designers, animators and filmmakers.

This increased disciplinary overlap has meant that production knowledge and notions of

best practice have become more significant in game development. As such, the use of

colour in videogames is markedly less idiosyncratic in contemporary games when

compared to their earliest counterparts. Understanding what has happened to the colour

usage in games since the 1990s, we can look to the previous two decades with renewed

interest in the unique quality of the aesthetics, both in terms of form and content.

The Promise of Colour

Early videogame consoles like the American-made Magnavox Odyssey (1972)

outputted a monochrome image when plugged into a television. The machine was

packaged with a set of colour cellophane or mylar overlays [Fig.5]; illustrated

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

backgrounds that could be applied to the television set directly, in order to colourise the

game image. While there were many different sizes and shapes of television, Magnavox

released overlays in only two standard shapes and sizes, an early challenge to the

implementation of colour in games. While These gels added colour and were closely

tailored to each game, players would often mix and match overlays onto other games that

approximately suited them. The image of racing tracks, tennis courts, haunted houses and

mountain ranges sat superimposed onto the surface on the television screen with an

awkward impermanence. The white light of the videogame shone through the plastic

veneer of the overlays, making the illustration interactive. In addition, these overlays were

being used extensively in the arcades to colour tint the white-on-black graphics of various

raster and vector games, and were fitted to the cabinet. Elements of score keeping were

also recorded using physical tallies, visually connecting the Magnavox Odyssey to its

board-game and toy predecessors.

Cabinet art and overlay design in the arcades matched more closely, as seen in

machines like Cinematronics Star Castle (1980) [Fig.6] where colours and details from the

control panel align with those of the overlay illustration. At home, overlays didnt

adequately sate the desire for the kind of full colour display that was already promised by

television and cinema. From the outset the poverty of the game image was apparent,

because of the mediascape in which it was contrasted. Whether in terms of colour or

resolution, the simplicity of game graphics were reiterated each time the player switched

between the photographic image of the television and the pixel graphics of the console or

computer.

Like 19th century magic lantern slides that anticipated the development of film

animation, these colour overlays reflect a clear aspiration for games to advance visually

beyond rudimentary monochrome blocks to more sophisticated multicolour

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

representations. This manual application of colour overlays to the television undermined

the rhetorical ambitions of hardware manufacturers who sought to emphasise the digital

revolutionary nature of the technology. The development of game graphics has been

shaped by both market motives and a subtler horizon of expectation. Box art promised

colour and fidelity that couldnt be delivered by the technology, creating a desire that

would nonetheless shape the priorities and direction of computer and game development.

The underlying game image was felt to be lacking, and colour overlays were only a partial

compensation.

We might usefully compare the relationship between early videogames and

promotional artwork to books and their covers. The reader of a book takes some meaning

from the cover, but ultimately their imagination builds on the written word. But ultimately

written language functions differently to visual language in so far as the square pixel that

represents the ball in Pong is an attempt at the image of a ball. We dont have to wholly

imagine a tennis ball because there is something for us to look at, however imperfect a

representation. Overlays only highlighted that imperfection, and while you had to use your

imagination nonetheless immediate effort was made to develop the game image.

Gamer Magazines and Illustration

While the earliest game graphics plotted rudimentary black and white forms across the

screen, such games were often marketed as elaborate fantasies, involving sci-fi scenarios

and action plots. From the outset arcade cabinets (and their mechanical predecessors)

were richly decorated with imagery that expanded on the premise of the game. On every

visible surface of the cabinets large decals containing ornate text and images worked like a

call to action, attracting players and firing the imagination. This disparity between

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

abstract, simplified game graphics and sumptuous promotional illustration is a

characteristic of the aesthetic of videogames of the period in question, from 1979 to 1989.

Illustration for books and periodicals dates back to the golden age of Illustration

throughout the Nineteenth century. Illustration was the primary means of creating high

quality, images that would eventually be printed in colour. These images would be used in

all aspects of life to promote and communicate products and values. Toward the end of the

nineteenth century photography began to play an increasingly important role, usurping

illustration as the principal means of depicting products for the market (Male, 2007).

Throughout the 1970s there was a revival of interest in creative illustration driven by the

popularity of album artwork, book illustration and comics. Artists like Roger Dean would

become household names in the UK for their surreal imaginary worlds, exquisitely

rendered in airbrush, for bands like the progressive rock group Yes!

In 1977 weekly sci-fi comic 2000AD [Fig.7] launched, providing a platform for a huge

number of writers and artists. 2000AD channelled the tradition of satirical social critique in

British cartooning (dating back to Punch magazine, established in 1841), breathing new life

into science fiction and fantasy through strips such as Judge Dredd. By the late 1970s it

was clear that the UK had entered into a energetic and distinctive new period of

illustrative picture making, and throughout the 1980s artists often worked across a number

of fields, including games. The pressures of the Thatcher government energised the latent

satirical sentiments of artists across all fields. From The Beano, to Viz, to the puppet show

Spitting Image, illustrators and artists channelled a spirit of disobedience into their work.

In 1984 a Swiss-born illustrator named Oliver Frey teamed up with two brothers by

the name of Roger and Franco Kean to establish Newsfield Publications. Frey had been

illustrating comic strips for IPC Magazines, who owned and distributed 2000AD, while his

brother worked for a German importer trading in games for the ZXSpectrum. Newsfield

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would provide magazines for the burgeoning interest in computer games on the

ZXSpectrum, Commodore64 and Amstrad, as well as two multi-platform magazines, The

Games Machine and Fear. Frey would create illustrations [Fig.8], including ambitious

cover paintings, for many of the magazines. Later, as Newsfield diversified its business

interests and branched into game publishing, Frey would go on to create original artwork

for game packaging.

Freys cover images and posters for the Newsfield games magazines are interesting

representations. Many of the illustrations produced for CRASH, ZZAP!64, AMTIX!, and

The Games Machine directly interpret newly released games in highly detailed acrylic ink

and airbrush renderings. These images often exceeded the level of detail and complexity

seen in official imagery printed onto the inlays of game cassettes available for each

computer. In addition to representing games, large illustrations were produced by Frey

depicting the hardware itself dynamic and original ways. The appeal of gaming magazines

has always been in providing a surplus of information into which the readers can immerse

themselves, a convention established by the tabletop roleplaying publications of the 1970s.

In the case of Newsfields magazines, Freys high quality, full colour illustrations

accompanied the text. Image and text conspired together to create the necessary hype that

the industry relied on.

Freys artwork connected the world of British comics and game development. Through

his work at 2000AD and his fascination with the work of Frank Hampson (who created

Dan Dare for Eagle comics) [Fig.9], Frey enhanced the appreciation of games by bringing a

unique pedigree as an Illustrator to Newsfield. Working prolifically throughout the 1980s,

Frey and his colleagues saturated the imagination with images of games that were more

dramatic, more violent, more dynamic and more garish than the standard marketing fare.

Artists such as Gerald Scarfe and Simon Bisley had developed an experimental satirical

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

style throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and they motivated other British illustrators to

loosen up their styles and explore more expressive airbrushing and rendering effects.

Freys work becomes looser and more expressive over time, and dynamic picture-making

supersedes the accurate depiction of recognisable products.

Sinclair

By the end of the year 1972 Atari had produced Breakout for the arcades, conceived as

a single-player Pong, that used a similar system of cellophane overlays to contextualise

and colour an otherwise monochrome image. Young engineer Steve Wozniak was tasked

with the construction of the Breakout arcade machine, based on the concept of Nolan

Bushnell and Steve Bristow. Wozniak built the game in hardware, in a highly idiosyncratic

and economic way. Later Wozniak worked with Steve Jobs to begin development of the

Apple II computer, greatly inspired by his innovations made in the development of

Breakout and the Apple I. The Apple II (1977) would establish the standard for colour

displays (and many more features) in personal computing. The Apple II was the first

computer capable of outputting a colour signal to a TV set [Fig.10]. Jobs and Wozniak

recognised early on the need to develop colour displays as part of their computers, which

employed a graphical user interface with mouse control. The Apple II would introduce to

the world the 8-bit colour aesthetic (Murrell, 2013).

Three years later in 1980 Science of Cambridge Ltd the company of British Inventor

Clive Sinclair released a kit computer called the Sinclair ZX80 [Fig.11]. After renaming

the company Sinclair Research Ltd the group released their second computer, the Sinclair

ZX81. In 1982 the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released, into a market with many

competing personal computer systems. Clive Sinclair was committed to an affordable

home computer, and each of the machines retailed at more or less 100 pounds, depending

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

on the model and whether it was preassembled. This price point radically changed public

perception of personal computing, as it was available in high street stores, and was

released into a marketplace where systems like the Apple II were prohibitively expensive.

The Sinclair computers ran a variation of BASIC meaning that they could double as

machines used for both the consumption and production of gaming software. Sinclairs

ambition to see a computer in every home may not have been realised, but it certainly

seemed like the machines had achieved considerable success. At its peak Sinclair

controlled roughly 40 percent of the UK personal computer market.

It is important to note that the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC computer competed

with the Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum series in the British market, and many games that

were created for the Sinclair computers would be ported to the other machines, and vice

versa. However, in retrospect it is the ZX81 and Spectrum computer series that are most

symbolic of the period, for a number of reasons not least the radical pricing that

enabled the machine to be widely consumed.

All of the Sinclair computers in question had been industrially designed by Rick

Dickinson, with mechanical engineering by Chris Curry and the team at Sinclair Research

Ltd. Early machines such as the Tandy TRS-80 (1977) and Commodore PET (1977)

established the physical conventions for computer shape that the later IBM machines

would reiterate. Box-like, unemotional and utilitarian forms that provided the necessary

functional elements but lacked any finesse. Dickinsons work at Sinclair Research Ltd

created a significant sense buzz around the Sinclair products. The distinctive wedge shape

of the ZX80 was further elevated in the ZX81 by the use of injection moulding to create

the high quality case. The use of dark charcoal coloured plastic, with a red accent logotype

and grey keys created a palette that strongly resonated with the aesthetics of the 1980s;

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

sleek, modern and dangerous, but with a luxurious attention to detail and coherent overall

shape. The ZX81 would earn Rick Dickinson a Design Council Award.

Colour Clash

Brilliant industrial design and aggressively low pricing put Sinclair computers on the

map; so to did Sinclair himself, who was a conspicuous figure in 1980s Britain (he was

certainly more visible than most other inventors of the time.) But the Sinclair ZX

Spectrum systems had a technical issue that ultimately sticks in the memory of of the

machine more than either price or industrial design.

With its colour display and graphical user interface the Apple II had introduced 8-bit

aesthetics. Many of the machines of the period could display in a variety of different

modes: low res, hi res, greyscale and often through the flick of a physical switch. Colour

implementation was also highly variable from computer to computer. 8-bit graphics didnt

indicate a consistent standard colour palette, and as such consumers investing in a Sinclair,

Amstrad or Commodore computer would inadvertently be also choosing a certain palette.

Games that had been ported to run on several different systems drew attention to these

inconsistencies. Colours were also varied based on whether the signal was NTSC, PAL or

SECAM.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum employed 8 basic colours including black and white, and

based on an alternation in voltage a bright variation on the 8 colours could be achieved.

This extra brightness and garishness gives the graphics of the ZX Spectrum its distinctive

lurid aesthetic. While other systems including the Apple II displayed colours that included

some tertiary colours, the Spectrum delivered pure primary and secondary colour with a

brightness variation reminiscent of a television test card.

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

The most enduring part of the Sinclair aesthetic arose from a technical problem that

game developers struggled to overcome, leading them to discover novel ways of creating

game graphics. The problem was called attribute clash, but developers and players would

colloquially call it colour clash in reference to the peculiar cycled colour effect [Fig.12].

The graphics system for the ZX Spectrum was optimised for the display of text. Within an

8 by 8 pixel square, if more than three colours were present together parts of the image

would flash different colours. While a conventional text display would not encounter this

problem with any frequency, games were a different matter. Detailed coloured

backgrounds would glitch if the colour was too varied and dense. Characteristic flashing

blocks would appear in the image, and the movement of the player character and other

animated and interactive elements exacerbated the problem.

Colour clash could be avoided by deliberately creating games that where monochrome,

with only two colours occupying an 8 x 8 space at any one time. Games that required

speedy frame-rates and animation could necessarily opt for monochrome graphics, though

more complex colour would be judiciously used in the interface elements surrounding the

play space of many games. In games that attempted more complex multi-colour scenes the

movement of the character would draw attention to the ink and paper (figure and

ground) nature of game sprites. Blocks of underlying or foreground colour would become

more visible as objects moved in relation to one another, colour clashing readily visible.

The programmer and artist Don Priestley created very large sprites in several of his

games, including Popeye (1985) Trapdoor (1986) [Fig.13] and Flunky (1987). These super

sprites would suffer less from colour clash because of the large sprites with consistent

internal colour. In pushing against this perceived flaw in the display to find a workaround

Priestley created a new scale of sprite design that brought game graphics closer to the

illustration and cartooning with which it was promoted.

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

The aesthetic of colour clashing and the solution of monochromatic graphics are the

two sides of the same aesthetic: bright primary colours in large rectangular blocks,

juxtaposed with small square multi-coloured clashes; large variations in animation quality,

correlating to the poles of monochromatic and multi-coloured display. In a strange way,

the blocks of colour used to negotiate the problems of colour clash recall the cellophane

overlays of the arcades and the Magnavox Odyssey. Lurid blocks of sheer colour against

black, refusing any kind of naturalism, peppered with a unique visual glitch that seemed to

echo the throttled, clicking speaker sound this is the aesthetic of the ZX Spectrum.

Conclusion

The flickering, glitching aesthetic of colour clash soon became part of the aesthetic of

the ZX Spectrum, since it was ever present in almost all games. As other systems emerged

to compete with the computer, such as the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and

SEGA Master System, severe colour clashing became synonymous with Sinclair. As

games developers have conspired to clean up game graphics over the past 30 years, the

colour clash of the ZX Spectrum now stands out for its in-your-face graphic quality and

1980s British brashness. The ZX Spectrum is a key moment in the evolving aesthetic of

computer games, the leading platform in a British bubble stuck somewhere between the

landmark minimalism of the arcades and the global console wars of the 1990s.

However, when we take into account the broader context of the period, and see the

work of Newsfield and illustrators like Oliver Frey next to that of the game developers

working on the ZX Spectrum, it becomes clear that the British game design and culture of

the 1980s was a distinctive period in its own right, interacting closely with the other pillars

of UK popular culture. To understand British computer games of the 1980s we must

broaden our view to include the culture of games, particularly the work of magazine

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editors, illustrators, industrial designers and developers. At the same time it is important to

recognise that an idiosyncrasy like colour clash nestles in the memory of players. Like the

hard-boiled graphic art of 2000AD, or the pop commentaries of the The Smiths, the games

of the ZX Spectrum are metonymic of a larger zeitgeist, not because of any notion of

excellence that they embody, but for their obstinate desire to be different. This feeling

connects the machine and its games, and the magazines and illustration that embellished

the experience of play.

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Donovan, T. 2010. Replay: The History of Videogames. Lewes: Yellow Ant Media Ltd.

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Loguidice, B. Barton, M. 2009. Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft

Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. London: Focal Press.

Kent, S. L. 2002. The Ultimate History of Video Games. London: Prima Life.

Kyle, J. 2013. The A-Z of the Atari 2600. London: CreateSpace.

Male, A. 2007. Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective. London: AVA Publishing.

Murrell, K. 2013. Early Home Computers. London: Shire Publications Ltd.

Newman, J. 2012. Videogames (Second Edition). London: Routledge.

Whitehead, D. 2012. Speccy Nation: A Tribute to the Golden Age of British Gaming. London:

CreateSpace.

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. The Sinclair ZXSpectrum

Figure 2. The Magnavox Odyssey

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Figure 3. The BBC Micro

Figure 4. An example of Zzap!64 magazine

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Figure 5. a range of Magnavox Odyssey television overlays

Figure 6. Star Castle Arcade Cabinet

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Figure 7. An example of 2000AD magazine

Figure 8. Metro Force by Oliver Frey

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Figure 9. An example of Eagle comics and Dan Dare by Frank Hampson

Figure 10. Breakout running on the Apple II

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Figure 11. The Sinclair ZX80

Figure 12. Double Dragon demonstrating attribute clash colour bleed

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 Arcade Colour, Illustration & Attribute Clash 1979-89

Figure 13. Trap Door by Don Priestley, featuring characteristic large sprites to

mitigate attribute clash

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