What this decision did was devalue the piles of the old Spectrums sitting on the shelves of shops around the country. Whereas before, the rubber-keyed model at least held a price advantage over the new Spectrum, now it had nothing in its favour. The apparent stagnation that had developed, coupled with the modest success of the QL and the costs of the C5 electric car project, conspired to plunge Sinclair into a financial crisis.

By the summer, Sir Clive had tried and failed to persuade Robert Maxwell to bail-out the company. Now Sinclair put plan B into action. This was to sell £10m of Spectrum Pluses to electrical retailer Dixons. This deal turned out to be a double-edged sword however. Included in it was an agreement that Sinclair would not release a new computer in Britain for another six months. This thwarted plans to introduce the Spectrum 128, already developed at the expense of Spanish distributor Investronica.

The trend in the games market was for dramatic commercialisation. Following the pattern of the previous year, many smaller companies disappeared, while the larger software houses bought their way to success with a vast number of TV/film tie-ins. The emphasis was shifting away from an inventive, experimental mentality and more to a safe, winning formula that guaranteed financial success. The pioneering, amateurish spirit in which the home computer was born was coming to an end, as a more corporate approach pervaded the industry.

Knight Lore

That said, the quality of programming continued to improve and 1985 saw some of the most visually stunning games yet. Ultimate's dual release of Underwurlde and Knight Lore at the end of 1984 did not find its way into most shops until the beginning of the New Year. Ultimate built on the success of the latter title, with the wonderful Alien 8.

As was often the case, Ultimate danced to their own tune and paid little heed to the market trends. If anything, others followed their lead and 1985 spawned a succession of isometric 3D games. In fact, the art of self-copying within the games world was really beginning to take off. A prime example was the beat 'em up. Towards the end of the year Melbourne House launched Way of the Exploding Fist after a strong advertising campaign. Within months we also had Yie Ar Kung Fu by Imagine, Bruce Lee from US Gold and gruelling succession of other, weaker releases, all trading off the back of WOTEF's original success.

Starting off the year of tie-ins was Activision's Ghostbusters. Although it was disliked by just about everyone, it sold hugely and by the end of the year, Activision were claiming that it was the best selling game of all time. This was never actually the case, but more than ever before, it proved that a game could generate enormous sales through association alone.

Frank Bruno's Boxing

Elite and Ocean were establishing themselves as the undisputed masters of the spin-off. Ocean came up with The Never Ending Story, Roland's Rat Race, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Rambo and V. These games ranged in quality from strikingly original (Frankie) to utterly wretched (Roland). Then there was Matchday which became the benchmark for all football games and was only really bettered by its sequel. Ocean also began to release titles under the newly-acquired Imagine name, such as the acclaimed World Series Baseball. Elite on the other hand worked on sports tie-ins of some quality, like Frank Bruno's Boxing and Grand National, but still found time to produce the execrable Dukes of Hazzard.

It was the year too, in which the budget scene started to produce some games worth buying. The idea of cheap games had always appealed, but the expression about paying peanuts and getting monkeys had never applied more than to some of the heinous titles that had appeared in the preceding years. The price of most games had always hovered around the £4-6 mark, which sounds incredibly cheap by today's standards, but still represented a sizeable slice of the average teenager's pocket money. Many companies had believed that by offering games for around £2, they would make a killing. This rather underestimated the discerning tastes of the young buyers and the amount of time and money needed to produce a decent program. Mastertronic's Knight Tyme was probably the pick of the budget bunch.

Nodes of Yesod

The quick-fix action of the shoot 'em up found popularity again, with the likes of Incentive's excellent Moon Cresta, Commando by Elite and the awesome Highway Encounter from Vortex. A few platform games still found a market, although the genre itself was not as popular as in previous years. Chuckie Egg 2 and the cripplingly difficult Technician Ted stood out from the crowd. Larger, more elaborate platformers, that were effectively arcade adventures, were proving more popular, such as the dazzling Nodes of Yesod by Odin and Ultimate's Underwurlde. Other arcade adventures to find favour were Mikrogen's quirky Wally Week series and Dun Darach by Gargoyle.

Elite

The futuristic shooter Tau Ceti was slick and playable, as was Melbourne House's Starion, which helped to fill the gap before the inevitable conversion of the BBC classic Elite, which finally found its way onto the Spectrum late in the year. On the more cerebral side of the games world, CCS came up with the superb Arnhem and Desert Rats, while Doomdark's Revenge proved even better than its prequel, The Lords of Midnight.

Quicksilva and Bug Byte, who had failed to make an impact in the past year were bought up by publishing giant Argus Press, while other old names such as Fantasy and Micromania went bust. The computer press was finding it difficult too, with magazines Big K and Personal Computer Games going under. Your Spectrum chose to adapt rather than die and relaunched itself in December as Your Sinclair, becoming a far more games-based publication and winning itself a new following.

All the tie-ins, spin-offs and rip-offs aside, 1985 was a great year for well made software. Admittedly, things were being run more professionally now and there was perhaps too much idea-copying, but the result was some games of the very highest quality.