THE MAKING OF WORLD RALLY Championship

CRAFTED BY A SMALL TEAM IN SPAIN WITH A BACKGROUND IN 8-BIT PROGRAMMING, WORLD RALLY WAS AN INTERNATIONAL ARCADE SUCCESS. BUCKLE UP FOR THE RIDE AS CARLOS GRANADOS RECALLS THE HAIRPIN TWISTS AND TURNS THAT LED TO THE DEVELOPMENT FINISH LINE

- GRAHAM PEMBREY

Carlos Granados was visiting the US on a school exchange trip when he saw a computer for the very first time. On returning to Spain, he knew more about computing than his teachers. “Sometimes they said, ‘Carlos, go ahead and teach the class,’ and they would just listen in!” he laughs. After gaining access to a Sinclair ZX81, he began creating simple games in BASIC with some friends. Those creations then became more advanced when the group began to use a ZX Spectrum. “In the beginning it was just a hobby,” Carlos tells us. “Then at some point we got hired by Indescomp, the main company importing games into Spain.”

Initially the friends simply translated games for Indescomp. “After school we would spend two or three hours working for them,” Carlos recalls. “Then one summer, in 1983, we wrote our first game which was Fred. We released it and it went well. Then we released our second game which was Sir Fred,” In the UK at least, Fred is possibly better known as Roland On The Ropes, the Amstrad CPC 464 launch title it was converted to in 1984.

As this was happening, Carlos had started studying physics. But he also began to realise another career was beckoning. “What started as a hobby became a business,” he reflects. “We were making a living without ever having planned to. That’s when we decided to start Zigurat so we could release our own games.”