Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror

01 · The adventure

The Doctor, a robot cat, and a mine full of heatonite

The Master has stolen the Doctor's plans for a TIRU, a Time Instant Replay Unit that would let its owner interfere with the history of the universe.⁸ A TIRU runs on heatonite, so the Master has taken over a heatonite mine on the second moon of the planet Rijar.¹ The Time Lords send the Doctor to recover the plans, stop the mine, and get away.³

He will not have the mine to himself. Rijans live there, along with madrags and the Master's guard robots.²⁸ The robots look like Daleks without being Daleks, because the Daleks' creator, Terry Nation, part-owned the rights to them.³ The game calls them controllers, and touching one ends with A SHOCK FROM A CONTROLLER (controller_touch, $CE08).

The Doctor explores one huge mine that scrolls in every direction, with four pockets for what he finds and five regenerations to spend. He does not go alone. Splinx, a robot cat, can be programmed to fetch what he cannot reach, and the aliens cannot detect it.¹

02 · The release

A BBC Micro game too big for the BBC Micro

Gary Partis wrote the game for the BBC Micro. Micro Power asked him, shortly after he turned 18, to write a game like Tony Sothcott's Castle Quest, "a sideways scrolling platform game", but based on Doctor Who. He wrote it during sixth form and his first months at Newcastle Polytechnic.⁴ The BBC version came out in 1985 with a ROM chip to fit inside the computer, because the game was too big for the machine's memory.³ It was the first video game to feature the Sixth Doctor.¹⁶ "The memory requirement was such that constant tape access (disks were not that common then) was impractical," Partis said.⁴

The Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC versions followed in 1986.³ The Commodore version's title screen gives its programming to Tony Sothcott, the author of Castle Quest, and its design to Micro Power and Sothcott.¹⁰ The Commodore game cost £11.95 on cassette and £14.95 on disk.¹ A ZX Spectrum version was announced and never released: in April 1986 Micro Power's Bob Simpson put the delay down to its programmer being pulled off to work on the other versions.⁶

Bob Simpson, a former accountant, had set up Micro Power in Leeds in the early 1980s. Its other Commodore 64 games included Bumble Bee, Cybertron Mission, Felix in the Factory, Frenzy, Ghouls, Jet Power Jack, Killer Gorilla, Stock Car, and Swoop.⁵ Micro Power promoted Mines of Terror heavily, and in 2013 The Register wrote that "the huge cost of its development did for Micro Power".⁷ Partis was more careful: "Certainly, it caused a financial problem with Micro Power; partially due to the advertising."⁴

Frank Gasking, who records unreleased games, long thought the Commodore version had never come out, because Commodore Force magazine had listed it by mistake in a feature on unreleased games. He later found an original copy.⁶

03 · Reception

Four reviews, and a box that promised more than the game

Every C64 review remarked on the lavish package, and the reviewers split over whether the game lived up to it. In Commodore User 29, February 1986, Ken McMahon described the £14.95 package: a box "about four times the size required" to hold a cassette, loading instructions for four computers in six languages, a map, and "a piece of coloured card in a plastic holder", the card the code lock needs. The game itself he found "something of a disappointment", and "basically a straightforward platform game". His Splinx "steadfastly refused to carry out my instructions", and when the Doctor was killed "the game just freezes for an interminable fifteen seconds or so".¹²

Zzap!64 was far warmer. Its thirteenth issue, dated May 1986, listed the game at £11.95 on cassette and £14.95 on disk, and gave it 86 %. Presentation scored highest, at 92 %, for its "great giant size packaging with loads of interesting bumph", and sound lowest.¹⁴³ Its three reviewers liked the depth of play far more than the graphics and sound. GP found it "very similar to Castle Quest on the BBC", and GL wrote that once a player gets into it, "it proves enthralling and enjoyable to play", and that it is "one of the best arcade adventures to appear on the 64". The music was the complaint. JR called it "the big niggle", "the horrible music which burbles away throughout the game, although it does get better when the Doctor enters another section of the map", and GP called it "the ubiquitous tune that migrainly rattles away while you play". The sound rating asked, "Where's the famous tune?"¹⁴

Computer and Video Games 55, the same month, sided with Commodore User. Its review noted the box "the size of a videocassette" and "a decent amount of documentation", but "no amount of flash can cover up a lacklustre game", and called it "this ordinary adventure". The one big plus was "its sheer scale": about 130 screens in ten areas, of which the review said "Map maniacs will find it a delight". It gave the game 7 out of 10 for graphics, sound, value, and playability alike.¹⁵

Your Commodore 21, June 1986, sided with Zzap!64. Its reviewer, J.G., found the challenges "difficult but logical", singled out "the casual lope of the Doctor", and praised the documentation, which included "a sealed solution to the Madrag problem". The music fared no better. The pre-publicity had promised the familiar Doctor Who theme, and the review answered: "if this is true then I'm a toreador." J.G. advised playing "with the volume turned off", yet still ended: "apart from the nagging music, I wholeheartedly recommend this game."¹³ The Music tab plays the tunes.

04 · Inside the game

Explore how Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror works

Each tab takes one part of the game apart, from the game's own code.

• Gameplay: what the Doctor must do, every object and what it is for, programming Splinx, the lift and the car, the nine ways to lose a regeneration, and how the Time Lords score the escape ($9102).
• Controls: the joystick and keys ($8F24), and how far the Doctor can jump and fall.
• Maps: the whole mine drawn from the map the game keeps under its operating system ($E000), with every object, danger, and restart point on it.
• Solution: what to carry out, how to stop the heatonite machine, the two ways home, and the code lock and its card ($BD6F).
• Graphics: every sprite in the game, the Doctor's walking frames, the TARDIS landing, and how one frame is built from two screens ($8010).
• Music: the five tunes, playable through the game's own music player ($74EA), and which part of the mine plays each.
• Discoveries: a time bonus that barely moves, a save that ends the game, tests that want one exact pixel, and leftovers.
• Source code: the whole game disassembled and annotated.