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Thrust was a brilliant budget title from the mind of the late Jeremy Smith back in 1986, developed first for the BBC Micro (released via Superior Software), then converted to a large number of platforms by Firebird Software to great acclaim from all magazines. Oddly (as a side note), according to Richard Hewison who worked at TelecomSoft, the Firebird C64 version got released before the BBC version by a matter of months. Although it looked very simple, the game was an extremely playable gravity-based title, and still holds up very well today. The game even later saw an unofficial conversion to the Atari 2600 in later years. However, PC users were lacking a conversion for their platform... but there was a PC DOS version of Thrust in development around 1988/1989. It was written by Lee Smithies, who had done a number of other PC conversions around that time. The company was put up for sale before the completed game was released. In September 2023, Lee finally found the disk and thankfully it was still reading. It’s not quite as smooth as the C64 edition in some places, lacks Rob Hubbard’s famous tune and doesn’t have the same variety of colour schemes – but it plays perfectly well and Lee has done a great job with the conversion overall. PC owners would have been happy with the title for sure, which makes it a shame that it didn’t quite sneak out the doors before the sale of TelecomSoft. But now finally after around 35 years, you can play the game as intended, and show that Lee’s efforts were not all for nothing. |
