In the 1990s, Alternative Software were to UK children's TV licenced games what Ocean were to the Hollywood blockbuster. Alternative also released several games based on the popular primetime TV programmes of the day; Bully's Sporting Darts, Dalek Attack, 'Allo 'Allo! Cartoon Fun!
At Alternative programmer Steve Metcalf and artist David Tolley developed the 'Allo 'Allo game and managed to capture the often bizarre essence of the programme, which was a sitcom based in a French café during the Nazi occupation! The graphics are suitably comic in style and David brilliantly represented the characters as 16-bit computer game characters.
The Beano and The Dandy were two hugely popular UK children’s comics that were published by DC Thomson. One of The Beano’s famous strips, Dennis the Menace, was actually the subject of an unreleased Alternative game called Dennis & Gnasher. Alternative also acquired the licence to make a game based on another well-known Beano strip, the Bash Street Kids.
Steve worked on a design for the game but he left Alternative before development started. The game used some of the code from ‘Allo ‘Allo and the Bash Street Kids game can probably be imagined as something similar. However, the programming phase doesn’t appear to have progressed very far.
David produced various graphics for the game and enough to allow a DC Thomson agent to give their approval. Amiga Games That Weren’t speaks to David and about process he used to turn familiar characters into computer game sprites.
