Steve ‘Bit’ Boxer continues our semi-regular feature on legends of the gaming industry. Following the wizard that was Matthew Smith, we now bring you those Codemaster brothers, Richard and David Darling.

The Darling brothers, who built up and recently sold leading UK publisher Codemasters, must have been exactly the sort of kids you used to take pleasure in hating at school. In common with many British games industry luminaries, they were siblings and had a distinctly transatlantic upbringing. At school in Vancouver in 1981, they acquired a Commodore Pet, followed by a Vic-20, and set about writing games while their schoolmates sneaked fags behind the bike-sheds.

Then they were sent back to the UK to live with their grandparents, in order to get a proper British education. However, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. Reputedly, a visit from their dad led to major family ructions when it was discovered they had been consistently bunking off school. Not, it transpired, to get hammered on snakebite and dabble with unmentionables though: they had been furiously making games, duplicating them on tape and selling them through an ad in Popular Computing Weekly which read: “Great games from America”. Dad Jim was somewhat placated by the fistfuls of cash they produced (more than he could dream of making in the same period), and started working for the two angelic-looking teens. They set up a company in 1982, which was snapped up by pioneering publisher Mastertronic in 1983, the first company to sell games in the UK in the shops, rather than via mail-order.

So prolific were the pair that they ended up owning 50 per cent of Mastertronic, which they cashed out in 1986 to form Codemasters with their dad as chairman. Before long, the press was writing them up as the ultimate whiz-kids, and accompanying their features with cheesy poses of the geeky teenagers with their Ferraris.

But compared to some of the more roguish denizens of the games industry, the Darlings were squeaky-clean and focused, and they achieved a massive coup by taking on the giant Nintendo, with a cheat cartridge for the NES called the Game Genie, and winning a mighty court battle to be allowed to sell it. Franchises like Micro Machines and Colin McRae Rally propelled Codemasters into the big league - in 2000, David Darling was officially proclaimed UK Entrepreneur of the Year. Then, earlier this year, they sold their share in Codemasters. Presumably, they’ve now decamped to exotic climes in which they can recreate the misspent youths they never had, and can indulge in all those vices they ignored in favour of obsessive pounding of Spectrum and Commodore 64 keyboards. At least, let’s hope so.

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