You know, I was digging through some old computer
magazines the other day from around 1987. Oh,
yeah. And it is just wild how we used to define
futuristic back then. I can imagine. A lot of,
like, neon grids and shiny chrome robots. Exactly.
But in gaming, if a game said it was 3D, it usually
meant, you know, a black background with some
green wireframe lines. Right. The Battlezone
era. Yeah. Your brain was basically doing half
the rendering work. You had to pretend those
triangles were spaceships. Totally. But then
I hit this review that just, it stopped me cold.
It was for a game from 1987 that looked like
it fell out of a time machine from, I don't know,
mid -90s. Okay. No wireframes. It was solid.
It had rolling hills, actual lighting, shadows,
a physics engine. It was like seeing a color
photo in a newspaper from 1850 or something.
That is the perfect way to describe the arrival
of Zark. It wasn't just a step forward. It was
a completely different species of software. And
that's exactly what we're unpacking today. We're
talking about Zark, or as you might know it from
the ports, Virus. We're going to look at why
this game was a technical miracle, why the controls
made grown adults cry, and just the sheer genius
of the engineering that made it all possible.
And we have to talk about the hardware, too.
Because you can't really talk about Zark without
talking about the machine it was born on. The
Acorn Archimedes. The Acorn Archimedes. This
is a piece of hardware history that I feel like
a lot of people in the States probably missed.
But in the UK, this thing was legendary. It absolutely
was. The Archimedes was the first home computer
built on the ARM architecture. And if that sounds
familiar to you. It should. It should. Yeah.
It's because ARM chips are powering pretty much
every smartphone on the planet right now. This
computer was like the great grandfather of the
iPhone in your pocket. So this machine was a
beast. An absolute beast for 1987. And Acorn
needed a way to show it off. They needed a killer
app that would make people look at their Commodore
64s and just weep. So they called David Braben.
Who was already gaming royalty at this point
because Elite. Right. Exactly. Braben is a legend.
And he created Zark specifically to show off
it was a flex. The whole point was to say, look
at this processing power. So let's set the scene
visually. You boot this thing up. What are you
seeing that just blew everyone's mind? Okay,
so you're seeing a landscape. but not a flat
scrolling background. You're seeing this checkerboard
grid of like green and brown that actually undulates.
It has hills and valleys and coastlines. Wow.
And you're flying this little ship over it that
casts a real shadow on the ground that moves
with you. And this is what they called solid
3D. That was the buzzword. Solid -filled polygons.
Before this, everything was sprites, just flat
images moving around. This is a world you could
actually, you know, fly into. The reception must
have been insane. I saw a note here about ACE
magazine, Advanced Computer Entertainment. They
gave it a score that seems, well, it seems mathematically
impossible. 979 out of 1 ,000. It was the highest
rating they had ever given a game at that point.
That's incredible. The headline was literally...
solid 3D the future of games. And, you know,
they weren't wrong. It took the rest of the industry
about five or six years to really catch up to
what Braben did in 87. Now, Zark was the original
title on the Archimedes, but most people, like
you said, probably played it as Virus. Was that
just a marketing name change? Mostly, yeah. It
was ported to the Atari ST, the Amiga, the PC,
and even the ZX Spectrum in 1988 under the name
Virus. Did it look the same? It looked... Similar,
but there were trade -offs. The Archimedes was
just so powerful it could handle really complex
lighting effects, depth shading. Right. The Atari
and Amiga were great machines, but they couldn't
quite handle that light sourcing. So Virus looks
a bit flatter lighting -wise, but the speed and
the gameplay were pretty much identical. And
weirdly enough, the Atari ST version of Virus
actually scored higher in ACE magazine than the
original 981. I think by that point, reviewers
were just so in love with the gameplay loop that
the lack of, you know, fancy lighting didn't
really matter. It was still light years ahead
of anything else out there. Okay, so we've established
it's gorgeous. But once you get over that initial
wow factor, what are you actually doing? Is there
a story or are we just looking at pretty hills?
Oh, there's a plot, but it's very much an old
school arcade setup. You're the pilot of this
lone craft called a lander, and you are the only
thing standing between a peaceful landscape and
an alien invasion. Classic 80s setup. One ship
against the armada. Exactly. But the way the
invasion happens is really unique. The enemies
are these cedar ships. They don't just shoot
at you. They fly over the landscape and scatter
these red particles, the virus. Ah, and this
is where the visuals become the UI, right? You
don't have, like, a Planet Health bar. in the
corner of the screen. No, you watch it happen.
The landscape starts out all green. When the
virus hits, it turns brown, then red. It spreads
like a blight. You can literally look down and
see the infection moving across the map in real
time. That sounds incredibly stressful. It is.
It's visceral. Even the trees mutate. If the
virus hits a tree, it turns red. And later on,
if you or an enemy shoots a mutated tree. Let
me guess. The tree itself becomes aggressive
and starts attacking you. The trees attack you.
That just feels personal. It feels like the whole
world is turning against you. It's very similar
in a way to the arcade game Defender. You're
not just trying to survive. You're trying to
protect a finite amount of territory from being
erased. And the scoring system ties into that,
doesn't it? You don't just get points for kills.
Right. You get bonus points at the end of each
wave based on how much uninfected green landscape
is left. So if you save the world, you get a
high score. If you let it burn, you get nothing.
And then just to tune the screws. The game changes
the map on you. Every four waves, you get a new
landscape. But as you progress, the ratio of
land to water shifts. You get less land and more
ocean. Which sounds like it would be easier,
right? Less land to protect. You'd think so,
but it actually concentrates the infection. The
enemies have a smaller target, so the virus spreads
much, much faster. It forces you into this tighter
and tighter kill box. Okay, premise is stressful.
Visuals are great. But we have to talk about
the elephant in the room. The controls. Ah, yes.
The controls. I have heard Zark described as
unplayable. sadistic and my personal favorite,
a physics lesson gone wrong. Why is flying this
ship so hard? Because it simulates real thrust
physics with absolutely zero handholding. I mean,
think about a modern flight sim or even a space
game. You push the stick forward, the ship goes
forward. The computer is firing little retro
rockets to stabilize you. Zark gives you a single
thruster and is mounted on the bottom of your
ship. Pointing straight down. That's it. No forward
thrusters. No forward thrusters. No brakes. Just
go up. So how do you go forward? You have to
tilt the nose of your ship. down like you're
basically aiming at the ground and then fire
the thruster this pushes you up relative to the
ship which propels you forward and down but you're
accelerating toward the ground exactly so you
have to thrust to get speed and then immediately
pull the nose back up to level out before you
crash it's this constant rhythmic battle of tilt
thrust level tilt thrust level that sounds like
trying to balance a broom on your palm while
you're riding a unicycle That is a startlingly
accurate analogy. And remember, there's no auto
level button. You have full 360 degree pitch
and yaw. If you tilt too far, you flip completely
upside down. And if you hit the thruster while
you're upside down. You rocket yourself straight
into the earth at Mach 2. Game over. I can just
picture the panic. You see an alien, you jerk
the mouse, you flip over, and you just pile drive
yourself into the scenery. That is the essential
Zark experience. In fact, it was even worse during
development. There's a funny story about the
prototype, which was just called Lander. Oh.
The mouse sensitivity was so high that if you
were just sitting on the launch pad, having even
taken off, and you so much as bumped the mouse.
Oh, no. The ship would register the tilt, flip
over, and explode. Instantly. You died while
parked. You died while parked, yes. They dialed
that back for the commercial release of Iris,
so you only explode if you try to land while
tilted. But it shows you the level of precision
Braben was working with. And you have to land,
right? You can't just stay in the air forever.
Nope. You have fuel. So imagine this. You're
fighting off three Cedars. The ground is turning
red. Trees are shooting at you, and your fuel
alarm goes off. You have to disengage, fly back
to your base, hover perfectly level. and gently
set it down. While being shot at. While being
shot at. You are a complete sitting duck. It
creates this incredible tension where the simple
act of parking your car becomes the boss fight.
That sounds absolutely punishing. And speaking
of punishment, I read about the weapon system.
The game actually penalizes you for shooting.
It does. It's another layer of what I'd call
Braben difficulty. You have a rapid fire autocannon.
It's fun to use. But every single bullet you
fire subtracts one point from your score. So
you can't just spray and pray? You can, but you'll
end up with a terrible rank. It is mathematically
possible to finish a game of Zark with a negative
score. That is just humiliating. And the game
rubs it in. If you finish with a bad score, the
high score table doesn't just say game over.
It displays a message saying that slugs and dried
up bits of lichen have been known to achieve
better scores than you? Wow. That is peak 1980s
British developer snark. I love it. It really
is. It frames the whole game not as a power fantasy,
but as like a test of competence. The game thinks
it's better than you and it wants you to prove
it wrong. So we have gravity fighting us, the
score fighting us. Let's talk about the actual
enemies. What else is out there besides the Cedars?
Well, once you get good at flying, the game throws
the bomber at you. This is a high altitude aircraft
that just moves incredibly fast across the top
of the map, dropping massive amounts of virus.
And why is that one so hard to deal with? It's
a geometry problem caused by the physics. To
catch a fast enemy, you have to fly fast. To
fly fast, you have to tilt your nose down. But
your guns are on the nose. Exactly. You can't
fly fast and aim forward at the same time. If
you're chasing the bomber at high speed, your
guns are pointed at the ground. You have to do
this sort of swoop maneuver where you gain speed,
dive under it, and then pull up violently to
take a shot as you drift past. That sounds like
it requires a PhD in orbital mechanics. It separates
the casual players from the masters, for sure.
Okay, on the flip side of the scary bomber, there's
something weird in the water. Tell me about the
fish. Ah, the fish, yes. This is a classic Easter
egg. In some levels, and some superfans swear
it's in every level if you look hard enough,
there is a fish -like enemy just swimming around
in the ocean. Does it attack you? No, it doesn't
shoot. It doesn't even appear on your radar.
It just swims. But... If you manage to find it
and shoot it, it explodes and releases a cloud
of virus particles. Wait, so killing it is bad.
It spreads the infection. It spreads the infection,
yes. But it also gives you a massive point bonus.
So it's this weird risk -reward secret. Do you
want the points bad enough to pollute your own
map? That is so strange. It just feels like the
developer put it in there purely to mess with
people. I think that's a very safe assumption.
You mentioned the radar. That seems pretty critical
since you can't see the whole island at once.
Oh, it's essential. You have a little scanner
in the top left showing red and green areas.
But Braben being Braben, he didn't just make
it a UI element. The radar data is provided by
physical scanning towers located on the landscape.
Let me guess. They're destructible. Completely.
If you accidentally shoot a radar tower. or an
alien destroys it, that whole sector of your
radar screen just goes black, you're flying blind
in that area. It feels like every single mechanic,
the fuel, the ammo, the radar, is designed to
say, be careful or you will break something.
Exactly. It simulates the fragility of your machine.
You aren't driving a tank, you're piloting a
delicate instrument. I want to shift gears and
look under the hood again. We talked about how
advanced this was for 1987. How long did it take
David Braben to write this thing? This is the
part that makes other programmers want to quit
their jobs. Braben wrote the original demo, Lander,
in less than three months. Three months to build
a 3D physics engine from scratch. Less than three
months. He apparently only had access to a development
machine for the Archimedes for about two weeks
in January of 87. He wrote it all in ARM assembly
code. Wow. He'd been experimenting with 3D algorithms
on the BBC Micro, but the Archimedes finally
gave him the horsepower to make it real. But
even with all that power, He must have used some
serious shortcuts. I mean, generating a 3D landscape
in real time in 1987, how do you even do that?
It's all math. He didn't have an artist draw
the hills. He used pseudo -random sequence sine
waves. Okay. English, please. Basically, he used
a mathematical formula to generate waves, like
sound waves or ocean waves, and then just phrase
them in place to create the hills and valleys.
It uses almost no memory because you're just
storing the formula, not the whole map. That's
brilliant. And then there's the sorting issue.
This is really clever. In 3D games, the computer
has to decide which object is in front of which
other object. Right, so you don't have a tree
that's behind a hill appearing. on top of the
hill. Exactly. The standard way to do this is
called bubble sort or quick sort. Basically,
you compare every object to every other object
to put them in perfect order. Is tree A in front
of tree B? Is tree B in front of rock C? That
sounds slow. It's incredibly slow. It eats processor
cycles. So Braben realized he didn't need perfect
order. He just needed good enough. He used something
called bin sorting. Okay, what's the analogy
for that? Imagine you have a messy pile of books.
Bubble sort is looking at every single book and
alphabetizing them perfectly. Bin sorting is
like taking three laundry baskets and saying,
okay, A through M goes in this basket, N through
Z goes in that one. So you're grouping them roughly
by distance instead of perfectly ordering them
one by one. Exactly. He just divided the world
into these depth bins. He didn't care if Tree
A was one inch behind Tree B as long as they
were both in the far away bin. It uses a bit
more memory, but it is lightning fast. That's
a fascinating trade -off. It's prioritizing speed
over absolute perfection. And speed was everything.
The game ran at a frame rate that made other
games look like slideshows. What about the shadows?
You mentioned they were solid, but were they
like... real, dynamically cast shadows? They
were a cheat, but a really useful one. The shadows
are just projected vertically, straight down.
They don't distort perfectly over the curved
hills or anything. If you look closely, they
kind of look like stickers on the ground. But
they worked. They worked beautifully for gameplay.
Because of that vertical projection, you could
see the shadow of an enemy ship on the ground
before the ship itself flew onto your screen.
So the graphical hack became a tactical radar
system. Precisely. I also saw a note about display
modes. Apparently, the computer could do a higher
resolution, but Braben actually turned it down.
Yeah, this is a great little detail. The game
runs in what's called Mode 13, which is 256 colors.
The Archimedes had a higher resolution Mode 15,
but Braben skipped it. Why would you do that?
Better graphics are always better. Not if it
kills your bandwidth. Mode 15 required moving
so much data around that it actually clogged
up the memory controller and slowed down the
main CPU. Braben knew that for a game like Zark,
fluidity was king. He sacrificed resolution to
keep that buttery smooth frame rate. It seems
like every single decision was laser focused
on the feel of the flight. It really was. So
Zark lands in 1987. It blows minds, gets ported
as virus. How is it remembered today? Did it
spawn a massive franchise? Not exactly a franchise,
no, but it has a very respectable legacy. In
1991, Amiga Power Magazine voted it the fifth
best game of all time. That's high praise. Very
high praise. Did we get any sequels? We did.
There was a game called Conqueror, which used
the same landscape engine, but instead of flying
a lander, you drove a tank. That sounds a lot
easier. Tanks generally don't flip upside down
and explode if you tap the mouse. It was definitely
more accessible. And then much later, in 1998,
Braben's company, Frontier Developments, released
Virus 2000 for the PC and PlayStation. And 98
is a long gap. That's the PlayStation era. Did
they keep the brutal controls? They tried to
modernize it. They added more forgiving physics,
better mission structures. But honestly, it didn't
quite capture the magic of the original. Why
do you think that is? I think because the brutality
was the magic. When you play Zark, you feel like
you are wrestling a machine. When you succeed,
when you land that ship perfectly after a huge
dogfight, you feel like a god. Because you earned
it. You absolutely earned it. Modern games. They
love us. They want us to win. They have auto
-aim, auto -leveling checkpoints every five seconds.
Zark did not care if you won. It's the difference
between riding a roller coaster and flying a
helicopter. One is thrilling but safe. The other
requires you to actually know what you're doing
or you die. That's it. And Zark comes from that
era where the challenge wasn't just beat the
level. The challenge was master the interface.
Read the manual or suffer. Read the manual, practice
for 10 hours, and then maybe you won't explode
on the launch pad. But that feeling of mastery
is something very special. And I think very few
games today are brave enough to demand that from
the player. Well, next time I crash my ship in
a modern game, I will try to remember that at
least I didn't get a message telling me I played
worse than a piece of dried lichen. Always a
silver lining. Huge thanks to everyone for listening
to this deep dive into Zark. Go check out a video
of it if you can. The movement is still mesmerizing
to watch. It really is. Thanks for listening.
See you on the next deep dive.