Apex Computer Productions

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Apex Computer Productions were the brothers John and Steve Rowlands, British based game designers and programmers of the late '80s and early '90s on the Commodore 64.

They programmed in pure assembly language and their earliest commercial release was Cyberdyne Warrior, a platform shooter, for Hewson in 1989. Soon after, they entered a relationship with Thalamus the game publishing arm of Zzap!64, who published their next game, Retrograde.

1 Thalamus relationship
2 Solo
3 Games
4 External links

[edit] Thalamus relationship

During the development of their next game, Creatures, Apex signed up for a "Diary of a game" feature in Zzap!64, 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^{[citation needed]}.

After Creatures, Apex began work on the sequel Creatures II: Torture Trouble, still developing on the Commodore 64. In a startling coup^{[citation needed]}, Commodore Format (Future Publishing) had secured the rights to serialise the development of the game which again proved very popular. Creatures II was received favorably by the critics but ultimately did not sell well^{[citation needed]}. Creatures II focused more on the popular torture screens than on the side-scrolling platforming of Creatures.

Thalamus collapsed shortly after the publication of Creatures II, as the Commodore 64 had started to wane in popularity. Apex then decided to publish for themselves.

[edit] Solo

Mayhem in Monsterland was their swan song. 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. Some consider Maygem In Monsterland to be the last great game for the Commodore 64, though others consider it too similar to Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog^{[citation needed]}.

John and Steve are currently working for Infinite Lives.