Apex Computer Productions

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Apex were the brothers John and Steve Rowlands, British based game designers and programmers of the late '80s and early '90s on the C64.

They programmed in pure assembly language and their earliest commercial release was the rather mediocre Cyberdyne Warrior, a platform shooter. Thalamus the game publishimg arm of Zzap 64! (which was, incidentally, known for giving Thalamus games very high ratings where other publications would give more objective ratings) publshed Creatures, but also signed up Apex in a "Diary of a game" feature, where month-by-month the creation of Creatures was featured. This proved extremely popular among Zzap's readership. When released, all major publications gave the game a very high rating and it proved a major commercial success for Thalamus, as far as Thalamus' inept marketing allowed it.

After Creatures, Apex began work on Creatures 2 and again on the Commodore 64 when it would have probably made more commercial sense to develop for the more popular Amiga computers. In a startling coup, Commodore Format (Future Publishing) had secured the rights to serialise the development of the game which again proved very popular. Creatures 2 was released to a fanfare of fantastic reviews but again sales were stunted by Thalamus' inability to sell games. Creatures 2 focussed more on the popular torture screens than on the side-scrolling platforming of Creatures.

Thalamus collapsed shortly after the publication of Creatures 2, as the C64 was in the twilight of its success and Thalamus was proving unable to sell water to a stranded desert traveller. Apex then decided to publish for themselves after seeing their previous creations stunted by Thalamus.

Mayhem in Monsterland was their swan song. It did not re-create the seminal Creatures but was a game in the same design. Platformers had become very popular, with Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers on the consoles, Mayhem was a game fashioned after Sonic, though mostly a direct descendant of Creatures. Most consider Maygem In Monsterland to be the last great game for the C64, though to contemporary gamers, its similarity to Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog is obvious, even if most consider Mayhem to be the superior game.

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