The Making of 'Ant Attack!'

[@UndergroundHouseAndTechno]

The limitation and constraints of available technology are a catalyst for creativity.

[@angelasutherland5317]

Angela Sutherland was the co-auther of Ant Attack. She designed the map, drew the characters and came up with game ideas. She also helped program the binary arrey which had to be read out in binary and put in manually. Originally the graphics were meant to be spiders not ants. They just looked more like ants because of the pixel shape. Quicksilver's Marketing person Mark came up with the title Ant Attack. Original title had been Ant Terror.

[@johnny5805]

Why'd you talk about yourself in the 3rd person ? Wouldn't it have been better to say "I was the co-author...."

[@nickgodfrey1148]

Did you get credit for being Co-author?

[@gregmartin8996]

Nice addition to the story.

[@plummetplum]

Why aren't you on wiki? Did either of you make a living out of it?

[@MrDaveP75]

Classic game and Sandy White is a legend.

[@socratescharalambous5591]

Thank you for a beautiful game Mr White.

[@yakacm]

I worked in City Software, Lime Street in Liverpool from 1981 to 1988, and we were all blown away by this game, as Liverpool was such a centre for computer games at the time we used to get a lot of the programmers and artists who were friends of the shop and they all loved Ant Attack.

[@CenturionHDCCTV]

What a nice guy. I loved playing that game and was always curious about its creator

[@JamesT65]

it was a great game and very ahead of its time. 3d layout instead of a platform was revolutionary.

[@MR_THINQ]

I used to love playing this game when I was a kid - was my favourite game!

[@wattage2007]

Loved this game. Never realised its creator was a humble and likeable Scot!

[@davecorry7723]

Thank you so much for this! Wow, he hand-assembled it. God-tier.

[@ollywright]

I had such fun with this game. It was truly unique at the time, and very creepy.

[@britbox4517]

Very atmospheric game from memory. Used to play it on the rubber keyboard Speccy.

[@weemoxy2]

seems like a really nice, humble bloke

[@BramStolk]

His game inspired me so much in my game development carreer.

[@Psycandy]

Ant Attack was a legend of a game, and it was cool because it was fun. One of the best ever.

[@nialltracey2599]

I've got a bit of a background in Unity, and recently bought a Quest, so am now learning about coding VR interactions and experiences. I built myself a little playground for my experiments... in the city of Antescher. Grabbed the data from a fan site and generated a scrappy world out of cubes. Even at this early stage, it's just awesome moving through a retro world like that.

[@julesd]

First ever horror survival game. I remember it well!

[@shmahatma]

I hate neil buchanan

[@cnfuzz]

I always loved in the early days how one's imagination filled in the gaps that rudimentary software displayed , the minute games became more photorealistic they lost me

[@middle-agedclimber]

Same. I tried modern games and after initial shock at how realistic graphics is, I get bored immediately and go back to ZX emulator 😊

[@Pincer88]

I remember that time and the game fondly. The first computer to enter our lives and it was magical to see these little pixel figures react to commands on the keyboard. Nowadays the games are stunningly beautiful, but the magic of that era I haven't come across anymore.

[@DaveEnsor]

A fabulous game.

[@KaitainCPS]

Ah, good to hear him pronounce "John Menzies" the proper Scottish way at 5'31.

[@klaxoncow]

Mate, it didn't just fall into the "survival horror" genre, you DEFINED it.

[@gamevidsnstuff5805]

This game was a key game from my childhood. So nice to see the creator. Ty.

[@stephenwilson5043]

I used to do the ‘shelf promotion’ thing too with Microprose games (which I loved) in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh though :)

[@Zakalwe-01]

Back in the early 80s, I treated Ant Attack as a sandbox environment. I totally got that concept at the age of 13, and I loved it! Playing Kenshi recently, the first analogy that leapt out was ‘oh…Ant Attack!’ Mr White’s is a genius.

[@Jabberwoc]

Legend.

[@marekward6202]

Played that. Loved it, and it was genuinely scary at the time 😄 Born 1973

[@SJHFoto]

I had this game on my Commodore 64! Loved it!

[@britsinsf]

Fantastic game. So ahead of it's time. You could choose to be a boy rescuing a girl or the other way around. You could change the angle of view to allow you to see the other side of the blocks, there was even an Easter Egg in there - if you walked far enough from the city you came across a dice which you could spin by throwing grenades onto it. It had letters instead of numbers ;-) Beautiful coding in a tiny 48KB package - talk about compact!

[@lootinggoblin]

This game is why I now play DayZ - Survival games are where its always been for me.

[@chopschoppsta7197]

What a Legend !!

[@patriciamitchell5156]

I was a huge fan but never made it to gold medal! And I too loved you could choose he gender of the hero. "Take me away from all this!" I'd forgotten that.

[@fluffymatthew]

I did, but only if I played as a girl. It seemed to make it easier? Sexism?

[@surfer7283]

loved the game, great to see/hear Sandy White, Very cool!

[@xboxpalcollector]

The first non sexist game where you can choose to play a male or female character plus I think it was the first isometric perspective 3d game... I played the hell out of this back in the day. This man should be hailed as a hero in the gaming world

[@thepumpkingking8339]

Sandy my Second Specy Hero after M Smith.

[@datasilouk1995]

Thank you. It was a brilliant game and I loved it.

[@Aalborg42]

Had a lot of fun playing this on my C64. I will never forget when I (by accident) discovered that you could rotate the map... YES.. I bought the game.. but don't remember reading about the rotating in the manual 🤣

[@RRRRRaa]

Legend. Hope he knows the impact he had on people's imaginations and lives.

[@DrTeeth66]

Survival Horror Sandy! It was... Oh, he can't hear me. (He's in the past.)

[@EGC316]

Wow Sandy, you make what you achieved sound like it was very easy and ordinary. It certainly wasn’t. A very impressive achievement and a great game. It’s up there with the classics from the time.

[@DJ_Hadez]

This makes me incredibly proud to be British. Go Sandy!

[@marcjdt5796]

One of the best game on the speccy so far...

[@EEWW2006]

top bloke, knows his stuff. jacquards loom ☺ fantastic history lesson ☺

[@DingKong]

Great developer! Ant Attack was a superb game.

[@bentobarreirinhas5702]

I would say your game scared the hell out of me when I was a little boy, I had nightmares from it, now it sounds funny hahaha

[@KGMDMusic]

What a game! Great memories.

[@ian_b]

What a nice bloke!

[@marksims5730]

I might be wrong, but was this game that had a competition. you had to find out the four (?) locaions of the final damsel in distress ( as I remember all the locations had names ) then ring through to a number at a certain date and time... (I think it was a Friday lunch time) to win a prize... so you had to play the games several times as the last location was a random pick of four locations.... My brother was an enginner at BT ( post office) then and he told me that the competition had knocked the local exchange out as it was so overwelmed with traffic.

[@ChrisWalshZX]

The locations were given names at the request of a magazine (Sinclair user?). A lot of the names had suggestive names (Sandy White gold me this himself only a few days ago)

[@CosmicXanadu]

Great vid, and truly great game!

[@middle-agedclimber]

Genius.

[@Urko2005]

Ground breaking game in its day.

[@stevelawrence1041]

Great game - giant ants !! still gives me nightmares :)

[@herrfriberger5]

I didn't quite understand this (parly due to the cuts). Did he really hand assemble the whole Ant Attack? Including all the updates, code insertions, debugging, etc.? (Or was that perhaps only for his "first attempt at something graphical"?)

[@BertGrink]

That's how i understood it as well.

[@ChrisWalshZX]

Yep! Hard Core mode!

[@StarsManny]

Sandy, you spelled "irresistible" wrong on the intro screen. 😡!!!!!!!!

[@Urko2005]

This game was the biz early 80s.

[@RetroGamesCollector]

An amazing game and a really nice guy. But 3D Monster Maze was the first survival horror game ;)

[@2100Warzone]

I don't think Monster Maze was 3d. I could be wrong but I think that was made with images and not a 3d space. It just looked like 3d.

[@desiv1170]

First survival horror game... 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81: Am I a joke to you?

[@siriusmicromaniac]

You beat me to it, that was exactly the title which jumped into my head as soon as I heard that claim. 3DMM still makes me **** myself even now. AA was undeniably a great game though.

[@mikeymcmikeface5599]

Umm... Okay. I got tired of assembling by hand after writing a few dozen lines of very simple code. He claims to have made an entire commercial title like that... Not sure if believe.

[@snooks5607]

oh sweet summer child.. try programming altair 8800 using nothing but the switches. or heck even programming C using a teletype. people get spoiled by modern convenience.

[@barbaradavies1171]

Believe it - he is a true genius - developed the first ever spontaneous computerised "bounce" (probably not the correct term), in the mid 90's. The most interesting bloke.

[@JackSmith-wg4mf]

The first "Horror Survival" genre. i.e. now also termed "Post Apopalytic" genre. HTH !!

[@pokerfreerolldonkey5189]

Brilliant interview but I think Sandy's point is that he was all about developing the software and taking the hardware apart. Bill Gates understood the need for the software and Mark Zuckerberg understood how to market it. I bought a ZX81 and my Dad said I was mad. I just wish I had the foresight...