Deactivators

It was released for the Amstrad CPC 464, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum platforms in October 1986. Deactivators received positive reviews from video game critics for its originality and graphics, and was later ranked by Your Sinclair as one of the best games for the ZX Spectrum. Despite the positive reception, it was not commercially successful and Tigress Marketing closed shortly after its release.

• Title — Deactivators • Developer — Tigress Marketing System Software • Publisher — Ariolasoft • Designer — David Bishop Chris Palmer • Release — 6 October 1986 • Genre — Puzzle • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Amstrad CPC 464, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum

• Illustration — Screenshot with the rooms shown at the top and the map of the level below them. Deactivators is an action puzzle video game. The player controls bomb disposal robots known as deactivators to remove bombs placed in five scientific research complexes by terrorists. Each building constitutes a level that must be completed to progress. A time limit based on fuses of the bombs is set; a burning fuse is displayed when the player picks up a bomb. To dispose of the bombs, the player must make the deactivators throw them from adjacent rooms until they can be tossed out of the exit. Security droids reprogrammed by the terrorists act as obstacles that can destroy the deactivators. If a bomb explodes in a room, everything inside it is destroyed, making it impossible to finish the level. The player can get new deactivators after completing a building. Four commands can be used in the game: selecting deactivator droids to control, moving the droids, commanding the droids to throw, and scanning the rooms in the building. Each room has different gravity operating from varying directions; some rooms feature the robots moving on the side of the rooms or the ceiling. There are circuit boards that appear in different rooms which must be inserted into a computer in the computer room. The computers are used to activate functions such as opening doors and windows, deactivating force fields that block robots from going to adjacent rooms, and turning on teleporters to warp to different rooms. The game includes a level editor, allowing the player to create rooms.

Deactivators was designed by David Bishop and Chris Palmer. Bishop was the co-founder of Tigress Marketing, the developers of the game; Palmer joined Tigress after leaving Argus Specialist Publications. The concept of the game arose from a brainstorming session between Bishop and Palmer for game ideas. The game was designed by hand using paper to work out the tasks in each building and the timing and routes required to complete them. The design process took a month to complete and development took four or five months. The programming for the game was done by System Software; it was published by Ariolasoft under its Reaktor imprint, which was created to focus on arcade and action games. The original audio, 'Robot Tango', was composed by Simon PC Frost. Deactivators was the first game to be released under the imprint. It was released on 6 October 1986 for the Amstrad CPC 464, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. Shortly after Deactivatorss release, developer Tigress Marketing closed after Ariolasoft, the majority publisher for Tigress, left software publishing. David Bishop continued designing games, later working for Virgin Interactive, Mindscape, and PopCap Games. Palmer left the video games industry to work in information technology.