Saboteur (1985)

In eighties Britain, people enjoyed two things – Wimpy restaurants and home computers designed to work with TV sets. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, and the Amstrad CPC dominated the living rooms of almost every household in the land. Dream machines like the Amiga 500 were a dream purchase for any home computer enthusiast, and magazines like Crash and Computer Gamer dominated the newsstands, giving every avid gamer teases of games to come and the latest hot tips from the world of computer games.

Forget the Console Wars that would follow in the nineties, these were the original combatants of eighties Britain – each one competing for a slice of the home entertainment computer games market, and as crazy as it sounds, a game on one home computer could be a completely different game when loaded up on a rival machine. This was the era of bedroom coders, software houses on every street corner, and if you had a team bigger than three working on a game it was considered a AAA title.

This was British computer games in the eighties!

The name Clive Townsend probably doesn’t mean much to most people outside of the eighties home computer scene, when people think of the ZX Spectrum and someone called Clive, they usually arrive at Clive Sinclair. And why wouldn’t they? The father of the Spectrum can perhaps claim to be in the top ten of famous Clives, and was awarded a knighthood in 1983 for his services to Clives, and some say also to British Industry. But this story isn’t about Clive Sinclair, neither is it about his wondrous computer that was shoved in the living rooms of over five-million homes, this is about a teenage developer in the eighties who loved action, ninjas, and spies – these were the ingredients that went into making his Saboteur!

Back in the day, the 'day' being any point in time when nostalgic haze makes everything look less crap than it actually was, the bedroom coding scene was big business. This was a lawless time, much like the Wild West of the American frontier, when every man and his dog could code a game, and mostly on their own. In fact, it’s only recently that we’ve seen a resurgence in the indie games scene, thanks in large to the internet and PCs. Most games credits contained only two or three names, and most of those would only be known today by only the most hardened of gaming historians. Clive Townsend is one of the exceptions.

Durell Software is a software company based on Taunton, Somerset, a beautiful part of the world where you can find some of the finest homely foods imaginable. The company these days is known for developing financial software packages, but back in the eighties they were one of the biggest games publishers around. One of their collaborators was working on a little game called Death Pit, a game about a tomb raider traversing into an abandoned mine to steal lots of goodies. Although the game would never see release, many of its elements would find their way into a side-scrolling game Clive was experimenting at home with, starring an unnamed ninja. Following some sagely advice from Robert White, founder of Durell, who suggested making it flip-screen, and then offered that Clive should be working on this new game full time. So, Saboteur sprang from the shadows.

Coming in at a whopping £8.95 in 1987, that’s around £22 in today’s money, the game followed the adventures of a solo ninja hired to steal a computer disk held within a high security facility disguised as a warehouse. This disk contains the names of rebel leaders, and it’s only a matter of time, unless you can intervene, before these names are distributed over the network and all is revealed. That is unless you can retrieve the disk before the bomb placed in the facility goes off and escape using the helicopter squirrelled away on the roof. Not only do you have to contend with this pesky maze, there’s also a small army of security, armed with guns, attack dogs, and laser defence systems that will track and shoot as you make your way through the complex.

However, cunningly coded into this game is the ability to improvise. Whilst our black-clad ninja arrives with just a throwing-star (a staple of any sensible eighties ninja’s arsenal) he can improvise! And that means any weapons he finds; be they brick or knife. Although you are only limited to carrying one item at a time, it’s our martial arts master of a protagonist’s sweet moves that allow him to disable any gun-wielding payrolling henchman with disparate ease, be it a well-placed punch, or high-flying kick to put an early end to their night shift. Whilst he’s at it, our saboteur can easily glide over even the most beastly of dog or wide chasm with a powerful jump – very handy for putting a pacifistic end to any encounters with our four-legged friends. With each action completed you are treated to the best kind of reward any mercenary would get out of bed for – cold, hard cash. The better you play, and within the better time limits, then the higher the bounty you will be taking home. Hurray for capitalism and work-for-hire.

Delving into the sheer amount of detail put into this game is really where Saboteur separates itself from the rivals of its time. Considering it as one of the best Spectrum games of the 1980s would be a vast injustice, it doesn’t deserve that, instead, Saboteur deserves a place as one of the best games for the system overall. The animation on the main protagonist alone is enough to make you still stop and look at this game in some kind of impressed awe with the sheer level of nuance Clive has put into coding just how he runs, jumps, ducks, and throws out those impressive martial arts moves of his. Don’t be fooled by today’s standards, this is an absolute masterpiece of its time, and shows the full abilities, in the right hands, with what someone could do with imagination, a computer, and little else at the time. Topped off by the limited colour palette of the ZX Spectrum, and you are playing lightning in a bottle, except it’s on a small computer rigged up to a tape deck.

Saboteur would also allow keys to be redefined or controls hooked up to a joystick, at the time the Kempston was all the rage, having produced a joystick interface to allow Atari controllers to be used on the Spectrum, but that’s a story for another time, and another place. Saboteur was best played with keys, the only way to play the game and experience the full thrill of 1980s ninja action. One of the most-memorable parts of Saboteur was the music that accompanied the game. It pulsed and pounded and even thirty-five years after the game’s initial release, it can still be hummed from memory by most gamers who experienced it in that era.

So how well was the game received when it was originally released? Crash magazine awarded it a stunning 93% in its review, whilst it would see re-release after re-release on many compilation cassettes throughout the years. The game would do so well that a sequel, Saboteur II: Avenging Angel, would go on to continue the legacy of the original saboteur protagonist, by his sister, Nina, named after Clive’s girlfriend at the time, picking up the baton left behind by her brother. On World of Spectrum, an illustrious archive of games and hardware from yesteryear, both carry a healthy score around the 8.4 mark, remarkable considering that this game is still being played to this day and has a cult following.

The Saboteur legacy doesn’t end there though, although we never got an official Saboteur 3, Clive is busy at work on a brand-new game in the saga dubbed Saboteur: SiO, the third instalment in the series due to be released on all formats at some point in 2020. This sidequel tells the story of another ninja on a mission the same as Nina is conducting her own mission in Saboteur II. This time it looks like our protagonist has learnt a few new moves, including the ability to throw shuriken at will and slide beneath the legs of his enemies, all this topped off with a funky electro soundtrack befitting of any game carrying on the legacy of one of the Spectrum’s mightiest games.

And the Saboteur journey doesn’t end there, Saboteur Zero, a prequel currently in planning and development by Clive could slink out from the dark, along with a modern 3D version that would continue the story as Saboteur 4.

On replay how well does the game hold up by today’s standards? Well, it would be a lie to say its graphically stunning, but just as special effects in the eighties can’t possibly be compared to what can be achieved today, the effort and imagination that has gone into making this game stands the test of time and is still fun, playable, and addictive, just like a fine wine or classic work of art, Saboteur stands tall and proud and will last another thirty years. For a ninja, this guy still gets a lot of attention, and rightly so. Long live Saboteur and all good ninjas everywhere!