Ultimate Play the Game

 Ultimate Play the Game was founded in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1982 by Tim and Chris Stamper,[8] their close friend John Lathbury, and Tim's girlfriend (later wife) Carole Ward. Other members of the Stamper family were involved in the initial administration and support of the business, which was initially located in a house that was located next to the family-owned newssagent. Chris and Tim were both involved in arcade games development, such as Konami's Gyruss. Chris claimed to have been the "most experienced arcade videogame design team in Britain". After exhaustion of working for other companies He decided to start his own company, Ashby Computers and Graphics. The company's first business was creating arcade conversion kit before ACG entered the market for home-based games under the Ultimate Play the Game trademark. Blue Print for Bally-Midway, Dingo, Grasspin and Saturn for Jaleco were the first arcade games launched by Ashby. The first Ultimate release, Jetpac, was May 1983 and was a 16K Spectrum. In an interview with the company in 1983 Tim Stamper said that they specifically targeted machines with 16K resolutions as their smaller size meant development times were much less, claiming they could produce two games with 16K resolution in one month and one game that was 48K. Jetpac was a commercial hit. The Spectrum version sold more than 300,000 copies, which provided the company with an impressive turnover of more than PS1 million. Jetpac, Pssst. Tranz Am. and Cookie were the only four games released on 16K ROMs for the ZX Interface 2. They were also republished on cassettes, featuring distinctive silver inlay cards, produced by Sinclair Research for inclusion in ZX Spectrum bundles.Ultimate's first 48K releases included Lunar Jetman - a sequel to Jetpac and Atic Atac both of which came out in the late summer of 1983. Both games were very well-liked by the gaming press. CRASH magazine praised Ultimate's use of the memory Lunar Jetman provided. The year 1984 saw Sabre Wulf, the first game in the Sabreman series, and the first release with a retail recommendation of PS9.95. The initial price for Ultimate titles was only PS5.50. It was the norm for Spectrum arcade-style games of the day. This was done in order to stop piracy. This was in conjunction with the introduction of Ultimate of the distinctive "big box" packaging. The packaging was made available for every Spectrum releases except Gunfright. This was a successful strategy because Sabre Wulf went on to sell more than 350,000 copies on the Spectrum all by itself. It was followed by release in the latter half of 1984 of the subsequent two installments in the Sabreman series. Underwurlde was and then Knight Lore. Knight Lore was a huge breakthrough in the home computer gaming market. It employed a forced perspective, isometric viewpoint called Filmation. This design would be replicated in many other games like Batman and Head Over Heels by Ocean Software. Knight Lore as well as certain of its Filmation sequels Alien 8, were actually completed prior to Sabre Wulf. Ultimate however thought it could be detrimental to Sabre Wulf's relatively primitive sales which is why it was put off until late 1984.