Durell's story begins in the early eighties, when Robert James Durell White first formed Durell Software Ltd. Robert had originally trained as a teacher, then as a quantity surveyor. In February 1983, after working for Oxford Health Authority as a CAD specialist for three years, Robert decided to write programs of his own. His first projects were for the then new Oric computer and included an assembler/disassembler and Moonlander and Asteroids games, all written in BASIC. The games were heavily commented and designed to be educational, teaching how to program a game in BASIC. Robert was advertising his cassette tapes in magazines and selling by mail-order and realised it would be much more cost effective to do this if he had more products to offer. He advertised for programmers in the local paper and soon gathered a small group of enthusiasts, including Ron Jeffs and Mike Richardson and later Clive Townsend and Nick Wilson among others.
The group went on to write many classic titles during the eighties for Oric, Spectrum, Amstrad, BBC, Commodore 64, Atari ST and PC computers including:
- Harrier Attack
- Jungle Trouble
- Starfighter
- Scuba Dive
- Chain Reaction
- Deep Strike
- Combat Lynx
- Fat Worm Blows A Sparky
- Critical Mass
- Turbo Esprit
- Thanatos
- Saboteur
- Saboteur 2 - Avenging Angel
- Sigma 7
- Operation Hormuz
In 1987, due to the volatile nature of the games market, Robert decided to sell Durell's catalogue to Elite Systems and Durell's game development halted. Durell Software Ltd is still a going concern and develops administration and accounts packages for the insurance industry under the name of Durell Solutions.
Many of the game programmers left Durell at this point, but Ron and Mike both stayed with Durell to develop the insurance business. After a few years however Mike parted from Durell to work in the games industry once more, and has been developing games ever since.
Since that time Mike has worked on various titles for several publishers including:
- Games Workshops 'Space Hulk - Vengeance of the Blood Angels' (with Nick Wilson's KeyGame studio) published by Electronic Arts. For 3DO and PC.
- 'Plunder' and 'Saboteur' (also with Nick Wilson, rebranded as Tigon) two games funded by Eidos but sadly never published, for Playstation I, Saturn and PC
- 'Barbie Explorer' (Runecraft Ltd) published by Vivendi Universal. For Playstation I.
- 'Pajama Sam III, You are what you eat, from your head to your feet' (Runecraft Ltd) published by Infogrames. For Playstation I
- 'Butt Ugly Martians - Zoom or Doom' (Runecraft Ltd) published by Vivendi Universal. For Playstation II and Nintendo Gamecube.
- 'Fightbox' (BBC Gamezlab Studio) BBC TV series and game for Playstation II, PC and Game Boy Advance.
Shortly after the BBC's Fightbox project was finished the Gamezlab studio was closed and Mike was in a quandry as to what to do next.
"The Fightbox project should have been really exciting, but I never really felt part of it as I was located so far away from the main studio ( the studio being located in Yorkshire and me being in Somerset). I really felt the need to be more involved in my own projects, like back in the old Durell days.
"So I rang Rob...
"'Hi Rob, it's Mike. I'm stuck for a job again and wondered if you would mind if I resurrected the Durell name in gaming?'
"'Hi Mike, no problem. You could even write Harrier Attack 2 if you wanted...'"
Brilliant idea!
