{"id":220,"date":"2020-10-31T20:12:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-31T19:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/?page_id=220"},"modified":"2021-01-09T19:10:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T18:10:14","slug":"jon-ritman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/jon-ritman\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Ritman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Ritman\u2019s first contact with computers was at the age of 13, in a trip to Brussels. His eldest brother worked at the Belgium city as an IBM System\/370 programmer. To be precise, at the Computer Department of the well-known sewing machines company, \u2018Singer\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, Jon began to work at \u2018Radio Rentals\u2019, an electronic equipment rental company, where he repaired TV\u2019s. In 1981, \u2018Radio Rentals\u2019 decided to include in his product offering some Atari computers. Being conscious that specialized personnel would be needed, Ritman decided to purchase a Sinclair ZX81, to familiarize with computers. Soon, he\u2019d discover his outstanding talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just three months after purchasing the ZX81, Jon developed his first game, the one whose title begins with the author\u2019s surname backwards: \u2018Namtir Raiders\u2019 <\/strong>. When he started to program, he didn\u2019t even know the assemblers existence. The book he was using to learn machine code didn\u2019t mention them, so he had to assemble all the machine code by hand, it is to say, he had to convert the Z80 microprocessor instructions into their hexadecimal operation codes and, afterwards, place them in the memory. A hard task, and no satisfying at all. When he eventually discovered them, he decided to re-write all the game code. Jon sent his work to several companies that had published press advertisements, surely with the aim of catching whiz guys or, at least, some good products In the end, it was Artic Computing Limited<\/strong> who got the prize and published the game in 1982 for \u00a33.95. It seems that \u2018Namtir Raiders\u2019 had low selling rates, because Jon himself said in an interview for Gamasutra that he doesn\u2019t remember having seen the game in any shop. However, it was an excellent starting point in his career as a programmer. Most of us have liked to have a start like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Artic Computing Ltd.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The following year, 1983, he published not one, two or three, but four more games. While improving his programming techniques and, at the same time, getting accustomed to the ZX Spectrum, he created in another three months period \u2018Cosmic Debris\u2019<\/strong>, a clone of the famous \u2018Asteroids\u2019. Artic sold it at a \u00a34.95, selling the not at all tiny amount of five thousand copies. Jon used the company assembler write the code, a tool with great improvements if compared with the Bug Byte assembler for the ZX81 he worked with in his first game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, his first color game (and the first one that crossed the Britain borders) was released: \u20183D Combat Zone\u2019<\/strong>. Apart from the United Kingdom, it was released both in the Netherlands and Spain, where it was distributed under the Microbyte label as \u2018Combat 3D\u2019. \u20183D Combat Zone\u2019 is an astonishing game because it takes place in a real 3-D scenario. Of course it was not the first one (mainly because it was clearly inspired by the Atari arcade machine, \u2018Battlezone\u2019), but it was truly great watching it running in the Spectrum in 1983. Jon had to re-study trigonometry \u2013he had already done it at school\u2013 to create it. About six thousand copies were sold, at \u00a35.95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ritman finished that year with two games that were completely different: \u2018Dimension Destructors\u2019<\/strong> and \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019<\/strong>. The first one is a 3-D game \u2013as \u20183D Combat Zone\u2019- and was his first attempt to create an original game (the three previous games were inspired in arcade machines). It was his bigger selling success up to then, because it sold seven thousand copies between United Kingdom and the Netherlands. With \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019 he was able, at last, to quit his job at Radio Rentals. Although it seems unbelievable, he had been working at full time; he programmed the games in his leisure time, at the cost of, as he said once, his social life. \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019 is a nice platform game that was again released in the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Its selling figures tied the \u2018Dimension Destructors\u2019 ones, although it was sold at a higher price; to be precise, \u00a36.95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019 releasing date, Jon attended with his friend Chris Clarke to a videogame fair in London, with the aim of finding out which kind of game the companies were looking for. The answer was clear and unanimous: they wanted a football game for the Spectrum, like Andrew Spencer\u2019s \u2018International Soccer\u2019 that had been created for the Commodore 64 several months earlier and that was getting a great success. With so clear ideas, Jon started to work immediately. However, before the fair he had been doing tests, transforming his \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019 graphics into football players. This was due to the fact that, at a previous fair, while watching the Artic \u2018World Cup Football\u2019 with David Ward -one of the Ocean Software Limited<\/strong> founders-, this one asked Jon about his opinion. Ritman answered his game would be a thousand times better than that one. Nine months later, and about finishing the game, Ward phoned Ritman asking him about the point the game was. After seeing it, Ward offered a nasty amount of money and Jon signed for ocean. His relationship with Artic didn\u2019t finish then: they have split time before because of the different opinions about the way \u2018Bear Bovver\u2019 had been promoted and distributed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"David
David Ward<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, that football game was \u2018Match Day\u2019<\/strong>. \u2018Match Day\u2019, above any other thing, was a funny game, very funny, that has an outstanding virtue: the possibility of playing against another player. One with the keyboard, the other one with the joystick\u2026 and to spend hours and hours dribbling, kicking, and enjoying the goals. Certainly, it was possible to play against the computer, but after a little practice it was easy to discover the weak aspects. In fact, there were some movements that finished always with a goal. \u2018Match Day\u2019 was, for Ritman, the big step in his career as a programmer: it received excellent reviews, and sold more that fifty thousand copies; an spectacular amount in any case, but even more if you take into account that we\u2019re talking about a 1984 game. It is pretty clear that Ocean knew the game was going to be a real success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day Ritman went to the Ocean offices to give the final version of the game, Ward gave him a copy of a game that would be released a few days after, suggesting him to take a look at it. Ritman did it the same night and he was impressed with such a marvelous thing. The aforesaid game was the one and only \u2018Knight Lore\u2019, from Ultimate, that extraordinary masterpiece that turned upside down the videogame industry and stablished the foundations of a whole genre: the isometric perspective video adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon put himself to work in his own isometric game. He contacted with his friend Bernie Drummond<\/strong>, knowing he was a great drawer, and he proposed him to create the graphics for the new game. But to know how to draw on the paper is one thing, and something very different is to design graphics for a computer like the Spectrum. It was a bit difficult for Bernie to adapt, but after some time he began to design excellent sprites. Once the team was assembled, they put themselves to thing about which the main game character could be. In the end, they chose Batman. When Ward knew about the project, he began to negotiate an agreement about the character\u2019s rights with DC Comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jon
Jon Ritman y Bernie Drummond<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1986 Ocean released \u2018Batman\u2019<\/strong> \u2014the videogame\u2014 with an extraordinary selling success and excellent reviews. Your Sinclair gave him a nine, Crash a 93%, Sinclair User the five stars and Microhobby gave him ten out of ten in graphics and nine out of ten in addictiveness. In this case, the fame of a popular fictitional character was joined with a game technically outstanding. Not only Ritman succeeded in create an isometric engine that was better than the Ultimate one, but Drummond did a graphics that were full of imagination and quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Ritman and Drummond hadn\u2019t said their last word. A year later, they released \u2018Head over Heels\u2019<\/strong>. \u2018Head over Heels\u2019 is the summit of the \u2018Filmation\u2019 technique, developed by Ashby Computers & Graphics (Ultimate). Although in 1986 the comparison with \u2018Batman\u2019 was unavoidable, the game has an aspect that makes it clearly different: the symbiotic characters concept. The geniality of this idea is, not to manage several characters \u2013in fact, in \u2018Everyone's a Wally\u2019 (Mikro-Gen, 1985) the player could control up to five- but to join them for creating a new one with the abilities of both of them. Added to this, Bernie Drummond\u2019s colossal work \u2013he designed nine different scenarios and more than forty elements-, the carefully traced plot and the well balanced difficulty level, make \u2018Head over Heels\u2019 a true masterpiece. Don\u2019t be surprised, dear reader. The one who\u2019s writing this doesn\u2019t create a whole website devoted to this game just for the love of it. The specialized press brought it to the covers and wrote rave reviews: Your Sinclair ranked it nine out of ten; for Crash it was very close to perfection, because they gave it a 97%; Sinclair User gave it the five stars, and Microhobby gave it four pages of the magazine. \u2018Head over Heels\u2019 was a superselling game, and Ritman himself became one of the most prestigious programmers of the eighties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jon
Jon con Head y Heels<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That same year Jon has time enough for re-writing \u2013again with Bernie Drummond\u2019s collaboration\u2014 his first big success. \u2018Match Day II\u2019<\/strong> is quite similar in many aspects to the previous game, although it improves them technically, and it includes an innovation that would be very influential in the football videogames from that point: the so called kick-o-meter. The point is to control the strength of the kick with just a button; the longer you press it, the higher the strength is. This game would be Ritman\u2019s farewell to the 8 bits computer world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Rare \u2014the company founded by the Stamper brothers, the same brothers that had founded Ultimate\u2014 decided to increase his personnel, Jon talked with them and started to work as a freelance employee. He collaborated in the creation of the GLAM tool, which would be basic for the creation of the company games in those years. It wouldn\u2019t be until the first nineties \u2013to be precise, in 1994- that Ritman and Drummond created a new title, this time for the Game Boy console. \u2018Monster Max\u2019<\/strong> evocated the best of Ritman\u2019s games, because it was another isometric perspective videoadventure, with colossal dimmensions: the map contained six hundred rooms. \u2018Monster Max\u2019 is an excellent game \u2013it reached a 98% qualification in a specialized magazine, and probably it\u2019s one of the best games created for the portable console- but it has an awful commercial distribution that originated low sales figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after \u2018Monster Max\u2019 releasing, Ritman left Rare to create his own company: Cranberry Source. The most outstanding title of the company was \u2018Super Match Soccer\u2019. Together with \u2018Quintessential Art of Destruction\u2019, they are the only titles of the company. Obviously, it was another football game that, at first, was going to be named \u2018Match Day III\u2019. It was released in 1998 for the IBM PC and the Playstation console. It crossed the hits lists with neither glory nor pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cranberry was brought and, since then, Jon has been working for several labels, doing conversions to different platforms and creating games for cellular phones and other portable devices, and other kind of works, but always in the videogames world. We\u2019re looking forward seeing Jon commanding some new title design, but I assume that, taking into account the way the industry works today, that good old days of \u2018Batman\u2019 and \u2018Head over Heels\u2019 will never return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least, Ritman keeps still working in what he does best. Things have gone far worse to Bernie Drummond. The last news Jon listened about him were that he was working in a warehouse. Sometimes, life is so cruel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related Links<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

1. Jon Ritman's biography at \u2018Gamasutra\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Jon Ritman's personal website<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Interview with Jon Ritman at \u2018El PixeBlog de Pedja\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Ritman's Softography<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Namtir Raiders (1982)<\/strong>
Artic Computing Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX 81 (16 KB)<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Cosmic Debris (1983)<\/strong>
Artic Computing Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Dimension Destructors (1983)<\/strong>
Artic Computing Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Bear Bovver (1983)<\/strong>
Artic Computing Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Match Day (1984)<\/strong>
Ocean Software Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Amstrad CPC
Commodore 64
BBC Micro<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Batman (1986)<\/strong>
Ocean Software Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Amstrad CPC
MSX<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Head over Heels (1987)<\/strong>
Ocean Software Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Amstrad CPC
Amstrad PCW
Commodore 64
Commodore 16
MSX
Atari 800 \/ XT \/ XE
Commodore Amiga
Atari ST<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Match Day II (1987)<\/strong>
Ocean Software Ltd.<\/em>
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Amstrad CPC
Commodore 64
MSX<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr>
Monster Max (1994)<\/strong>
Rare Ltd. \/ Titus Software<\/em>
Game Boy<\/td>		\"\"<\/td>\"\"
\"\"<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El primer contacto de Jon Ritman con los ordenadores se produjo cuando ten\u00eda la edad de trece a\u00f1os durante un viaje a Bruselas. En la capital belga trabajaba su hermano mayor como programador del IBM […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-220","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/220\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoh.helmantika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}