It’s said there’s no such thing as overnight success and that’s certainly true when it comes to Ultimate, the label which ACG launched to assail the home-computer market. Having released four standout titles for the 16K Sinclair Spectrum during the first half of the year – Jetpac, Pssst, Tranz Am and Cookie – Ultimate’s competitors were wondering just who these young upstarts were. As we’ve read, they were no newcomers, having spent the best part of three years developing coin-op games.
With the launch of Ultimate, three became four with Carole Ward joining Chris Stamper, Tim Stamper and John Lathbury as graphic designer and company secretary. In one of the team’s first press interviews to in August 1983, Carole revealed the rationale for moving from coin-ops to home computers, “Why spend 20p to play when you can pay £5.50 to have the game whenever you want it.” Such logic was dependent on the games being close to arcade quality, which happily they were thanks to, Ultimate’s debut release, that turned out to be more than 300,000 cassettes.
