RIP Bernie Drummond: Celebrated ZX Spectrum artist and programmer on Batman, Head Over Heels, Match Day II Celebrated video game artist Bernie Drummond has died. His designs were among some of the most loved on the ZX Spectrum, and some of his signature titles are among the computer's top-rated games of all time: Batman in 1986, and Head Over Heels and Match Day II in 1987. The Batman franchise is huge now, but it wasn't when work …
The 80s was a great time for video game experimentation, and Bernie's surreal isometric artwork paved the way for a lot of the games which followed (e.g. Sweevo's Whirled). And Head over Heels is a classic by any standards.
Thanks for the games and the memories. Even if I never actually figured out how to play HoH, back in the day ;)
I had an Amstrad CPC 464 (the one green screen tube) when I was a nipper and would take this to my Grans and play HoH for hours sitting in her comfy chair.
I could get Head & Heels to meet up but couldn't get much further than that. A brilliant, absorbing game that, I think, would be the last adventure game I played on any computer.
Thankyou sir. Truly nice to learn about you and rekindle those happy memories.
So complex, so beautiful - a true masterpiece. Do yourselves a favour and check out Retrospec's excellent, and 100% faithful, full colour reworking of this astonishing example of assembler wizardry and pixel art, still available from archive.org. I think it's Windows, MacOS and BeOS(!) only, though there may be a Linux version floating about elsewhere in the Intertubes... RIP Mr Drummond - thanks to you every time I see a toaster I imagine jumping over it.
I must have played Batman, Head over Heals, and Match Day II for years, they were that good. Batman and HoH were much more playable than than the Ultimate isometric games and Match Day II was only finally beaten by Sensible Soccer.
I think most of the people playing the games he worked on just didn't appreciate the technical prowess and innovation needed to produce games looking like nothing before.
At the time I certainly didn't. I was constantly trying to get further and further through Head over Heels, ignorance of how hard the game must've been to write and instead my focus was on how hard I found it to play.
These days it'd be tagged 'pixel art' and 'roguelike'. Back then it was just fun, and difficult, and ultimately discarded because you had to keep replaying the same bits of the game every time you failed. I failed a lot.
It's scary to think that a lot of people entering the industry these days don't know who Carmack is, or why he's special, let alone the trailblazers that preceded him like Bernie Drummond.
West & Ward Batman shows were fun (and the actors lived life to the fun filled max out of costume too) - I found the old TV shows a lot more enjoyable than the movie versions, which took themselves far too (drearily) seriously. Worth bearing in mind that for many years (when Robin added) the comics were quite light and the "dark" Batman a relatively recent thing (though TBF, some early (pre Robin / sidekick era) Batman were a bit darker but that phase did not last long)
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