From Cult to Game Developer: The Story of St. Brides & The Silver Sisterhood Documentary

[@Larry]

Fantastic video Sir!!! Kudos.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Thank you! I don't often dive into stuff like this (I leave that to you!) but I couldn't really find any videos detailing this in any way. It's frustrating, as there's no conclusive ending to the story - and the games themselves aren't quite as interesting as the story behind them.

[@Larry]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum Ha, yeah I wish I knew this story, I'd have done it too! But I know what you mean, I've been wanting to write a story on the history of the Spectrum game, Hareraiser, all the corruption and incompetence behind it, but that kinda peters out too in an unsatisifiying way. I suppose Hollywood had conditioned us all to expect these things need to end in a climatic, decisive way.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

@@Larry Yeah, I was hoping right at the end that one of the girls would have done some sort of Die Hard thing, and the final shot could have been Miss Martindale falling from the top floor in slow motion. Alas, it seems like she just wandered off to sell new age nonsense to America.

[@Larry]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum Well if you an American angle, Neo Pets is owned by The Church of Scientology now! (not a joke)

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

@@Larry I wondered why my virtual Dog kept measuring my Thetan Levels! And suing me.

[@Vokabre]

The town missed an opportunity of establishing a local tradition of annual screaming at giant lobsters on the walls. Would be good for tourism for sure.

[@catherineb9945]

Bbc sounds podcast of this story brought me here..definitely worth a listen 🎶

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Aha! I wondered where people were trundling in from!

[@AlessandroGrussu]

Until about 20 years ago, I only knew that St Bride's was a programming team which made some adventures for the Spectrum. I discovered the whole truth about their "school" by reading some articles on British magazines when they became available through the Web. Quite possibly one of the most bizarre stories of the 8-bit videogaming era!

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Or gaming development as a whole, quite honestly! I've heard nothing like it.

[@Luce-Kochav]

Well, I knew this was going to become a special interest for me from the first tiny bit of info i stumbled upon in passing in another video, and this video cemented it. Time to lose myself to this rabbithole for the rest of my life.

[@spartan.falbion2761]

They made the first adventure game with an anthropomorphic animal protagonist. Most people thought Lucasarts was first.

[@B3tanTyronne]

The St Brides games were certainly an enigma back in the day, and the scant info about them resulted in a developer shrouded in mystery that certainly added to the atmosphere for a text adventure back then. I am very glad to have lived through those early text adventure days as being a 12 yr old back in 1985 and the limitations of the speccy, the text adventure took place more in the mind than on the screen and the graphics of the imagination were certainly way better than anything the illustrator package could create. Also, the 18 certificate was more a marketing gimmick than anything else as the actual screens which caused it to get the 18 certificate were not that great in the first place, but the free PR sure helped sell it. I actually miss those days, as you could get some pretty solid text adventures with your pocket money from the likes of Mastertronic, Atlantis, and the like, and you really did not need to break the bank to go on adventures set all over the place.

[@nonautomaton6230]

Oh my! Quite the little rabbit hole of a mystery - Incredibly interesting!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Top work, absolutely fascinating stuff. I had no idea about any of this.

[@iananderson2777]

Splendid work. The array of Bach arrangements in the background music is equally as inspired. Scary dulcimers!

[@tanyaomrit1616]

To be fair, the time anachronisms here are "sorted out" not so much in material regarding St. Brides itself, but in material regarding Aristasia, the fictional world created by many of the same women engaged in St. Brides School, including Martindale. Aristasia as a setting explicitly draws elements from science fiction and early video games as much as it does the Victorian era and 1920s-50s. It gets so much more labyrinthine from there out.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Very interesting! I didn't manage to dig into the Aristasia stuff, even the surface level was flying off in various directions that I couldn't quite get a solid grip on because they kept dissolving into thin air.

[@tanyaomrit1616]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum That's almost what it's like digging into the Aristasia stuff? It's more cohesive but there are still a lot of "loose ends" due to the multiple names you mentioned, sites being lost or even being actively erased from archives, etc. But there are so many directions the story goes in and so many strange things it touches on. This has been a special interest of mine for around 7 years now and I'm still finding stuff out-this video being some of that stuff.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

@@tanyaomrit1616 They also, if I remember correctly, carried on the Sisterhood through the game Second Life. Although, as with all of this, most of that stuff has been lost to time as well. It's simply a story we'll never get to see fully told without the originators, sadly. Also, I believe one of the teachers had gender reassignment, moved to Japan, and became an English teacher? Again, details are sketchy, but they do have a YT channel (although I think they've sadly passed now)

[@tanyaomrit1616]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum Cure Dolly? I knew about her teaching and moving to Japan (and have read some excerpts from An Alien Doll in Japan), but not about her gender reassignment or passing away. Very sad to hear the latter.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

@@tanyaomrit1616 that's the one, and yeah, think they'd been ill for some time.

[@Yesterzine]

I came across this when I offhand mentioned one of their games (2011) in a running joke about years and offhandly used a phrase like "And a text adventure written by a school for some reason". I think it was pixels Ltd that DM'd me on Twitter and was entirely "Oh you do not know the half of it" :D

[@BinnisRetro]

Wow this is exceptionally interesting and weird 👏

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

It's just one of those stories that will almost certainly never crop up again.

[@20windfisch11]

Now I am intrigued to play the Secret of St. Bride’s…

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

I'd recommend emulating it just so you can take advantage of the ability to speed up the emulation (you'll want it for when it redraws a scene for the 90th time). Also, just noticed this comment is 6 months old and I completely missed it. Oops!

[@20windfisch11]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum I played a bit into the game, the story seems to be quite interesting actually, but it's always painful to find out what words you can use... I also liked the manga Harukana Machi-E, it's about a grown-up man who one day wakes up being a school boy again, but with all his grown-up brains. This game has some of the vibes.

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

That was fantastic. Nice seeing Gay Byrne of the Late Late Show as well!

[@arostwocents]

Its a shame that name is not one y'hear now.

[@arostwocents]

It would drive people crazy having Gay as a popular name for children. Especially if we could get Straight being used as a name too. So we had Gays who were straight and Straights who were gay. It would be brilliant 😂

[@retropirate1]

Where have all the small wacky cults gone these days...

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Colombia!

[@Blackhawk19892]

Facebook

[@Talentedtadpole]

Mainstream!

[@talideon]

"An Droichead Beo" would roughly be pronounced "on DRIH-hed byo". It means "the living bridge", not "the bridge of life", which would be "droichead na beatha" in Irish.

[@Necriptos]

Now if someone could clear up the link between Mary and Cure Dolly the vtuber, that would be awesome, also why was Mary living at Cure Dolly's beach house?

[@teaparty2136]

I've heard about about cure dolly's affiliation with the cult, but the only one I see talking about it is some person in a reddit post. However, they didn't really give any evidence. So is this theory even true ?

[@FredSmith110]

A fascinating documentary. Please could you make a similar documentary about Magnetic Scrolls, who created some of the best text adventures of the 1980s?

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

That'd certainly be an interesting one to look at!

[@makubianfantasy]

wait til you find out they taught japanese

[@primokarma9841]

I almost lost interest and then 2:03 hahahaha just wow, I wouldn't last a day in that house. Then you lost me again until I fast forward to this part 12:57 ! My school actually took me to a place like or maybe this place! I was piss scared and young, that I actually thought the teacher was going to hit me for doing my sums wrong!!

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

I think there's quite a few places that do dramatic re-enactments. This place seemed to be more focused on... Living it.

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum In the 1990s there was a restaurant called "School Dinners" in London. That was less empowering and more.... caning.

[@primokarma9841]

@@WhatHoSnorkers I never ate school dinners, I was a massive fussy eater. One time a dinner lady was trying to force feed me, couldn’t do that nowadays… then again this happened in 1996? 😂

[@arostwocents]

Have you thought about starting your own cult? I know Violet watches the channel - there must a few other 'maids' who can join with us. 😃 I think given time and money to motivate me i could write a lengthy treatise on the similarity of retro gaming and a cult. 🧐

[@RustyBanner]

Tbf the plastic abstinence makes sense these days

[@billybollockhead5628]

My understanding about the "school" was people were really just paying for some victorian style sexscapades and boarding school style single room orgies... etc etc

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Those seem to be the rumours, yeah. I know there was a BBC podcast about it all recently that I've not had chance to listen to yet, focusing more on the weird sauciness more than the games development side.

[@paulmarshall2007]

@@RoseTintedSpectrum “Assume Nothing. The Secrets of St Brides” Still available on BBC Sounds.

[@spartan.falbion2761]

Detective Spartan here, putting in a further tuppence worth. There is a further chapter - sort of - A certain KZbin Japanese tutor going by the name Cure Dolly was a member of this cult. She's famous for her unusual persona, an android with a strange voice and vtuber manga CGI puppet face. The normal reaction to this style of videos is "this is too weird, I will leave". Actually she was an unusually good tutor...until she announced, "needing immediate repairs" in reality, faking her own death because of doxxing. I say that this is a further chapter, as she's very much a figure of controversy. If it sounds like I'm making fun of a nutter, on the contrary. She's something of a heroine of mine. I've found her elsewhere, writing articles for the Chapel of Our Mother God, KawaJapa and similar Japanese learning sites (all of the members' names start with Cure, which is suggestive of a cult, albeit pedagogic). St Brides never really goes away... it's a changeling collective.

[@Talentedtadpole]

Thank You. Fascinating and very accomplished. I would love to know more.

[@smacksalad]

Dammit, I've always wanted blood and fire in my veins and tenderness in my heart but I opted for drugs instead. Looks like I had other options!

[@elmosexwhistle]

Why had I not seen this video before???

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

It's a seeeecreeeeet

[@arostwocents]

"drinking to the destruction of the partriarch" given its a singular was it all about being angry at their father and fantasising about a time their father would never have had any power over them? It gives that impression 🤔

[@arostwocents]

Great graphics- while they draw slowly, they actually manage to not use colours in giant solid blocks and take advantage of two colours to a block, unlike many games where there are only two colours and black but still the colours clash due to lazy programmers. The graphics are actually impressive here. One of the channels you recommended had a football game with clash despite white and single coloured players on a black background and no need for any clash at all. There's no movement here but there's plenty of old loading screens that use blocks where they could have coloured in correctly. Interesting game, interesting video. Enjoyed this ❤

[@consty715]

You mean you don’t want any comments that he didn’t last a year because he was fed up living with hippie women with unshaven armpits and massive bushes?

[@YukoValis]

So I first heard about this watching a KimJustice video (who then told me about this video). He just showed a picture of an advertisement for the speccy game. I did a little digging and wow what a rabbit hole I found. To put it plainly and as much as I can understand, this is an Amish style religion cult of women who shun technology, and made a school where they can gather. Yet they also not only made video games, but made a magical detective game about finding the deep dark secrets of their very own school. A week later even thinking about this still makes my head swim in curiosity. I tried the game. I want to finish it but sadly the game is HUGE and when I play it online it won't let me save.

[@Lollero200q]

Ok ... what the hell ... lol