An early game by David Spicer, who went on to work with Nick Taylor on a host of C64 games.
This was one of David’s first commercial projects for Martech, and it involved pizza deliveries and navigating around on escalators.Sadly, not much was ever done on the game as David was made redundant after about a week into the game.
The game essentially was about delivering pizza’s if you hadn’t already guessed, but was strangely based in a kind of shopping centre, with a mass of escalators and moving walkways hindering the player. Not much else is recalled about the game design…
Hopefully one of the main designers will come across this and be able to shed more light about this game. All else we know is that the game was originally known as an Atari ST demo which Dave Spicer was shown as he started out at the company. This was a small window with a series of escalators which were animating. Dave was told to simply copy it.
Now thanks to Dave Spicer, you can check out what was Pizza Delivery on the C64. Luckily Dave found most of his work disks where this demo survived from the downfall of Martech. This is a weeks worth of work before the company got into a bit of trouble
and Dave was made redundant. Although nothing is playable, it is great to see what the game looked like at the death, and to maybe try to imagine what the final game would have been like… though at a very early stage that might be quite hard.
Check out what Dave has to say about the game, but this is another GTW title which we can close the door on.. Or is it?… What exactly were the plans for this game, what would it really have been like?.. Next stop is to track down the designers of the game to find out their thoughts. Onwards then we go… :).
A small title which had a small living period…
Contributions: David Spicer
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_pizza.zip (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
David Spicer speaks about work on Pizza Delivery Game...
"A game for Martech involving escalators and pizza delivery, circa 1989.
Can't remember much else about it and I only did 1 week's work for the company before being made redundant (last in, first out). What a great way to start in the games industry! After this, I hooked up with a couple of friends and started on unpublished game no. 2.
Well, yeah, I certainly still have the disc for it. I've no idea if it works and, to be honest, doubt whether 1 week's work would be especially interesting. :-)"
A later discussion about the game...
"Attached is a d64 image containing all that exists of the Martech pizza delivery game. I can assure you it wasn't worth the (mammoth) wait!
As I've mentioned before, I worked at Martech for a grand total of 1 week before being made redundant when the money men came knocking at the company's doors.
My first project was to be a game about delivering pizzas. For reasons best known to the designers, the whole thing was to take place in some sort of shopping centre, with a mass of escalators and moving walkways hindering the player's progress. Beyond that, I've no memory of the game design.
When I arrived at Martech, an initial tech demo existed for the Atari ST. This consisted of a little scrolling window with lots of animated escalators. My first task was basically, "copy that", so I knocked up a quick scroller with animated characters for the escalators and walkways. I was also introduced to the wonders of remote development systems during my short stay, via the then ubiquitous PDS.
So there you have it. Graphics were temp, music was temp, most of the code was temp and game play had never entered the building, let alone left it."
David Spicer.
