movie player. It looked at a series of computer pictures, found and stored the differences and stored them as compressed blocks. Cybertech hired an assembly whiz to write the de-compressor. Russell wrote everything else from scratch. The team used some of Zoid's ideas, but none of his code made it into the final game. Music was created by two of Russell's friends, Mark McGough and Peter Grisdale, who were also musicians as well as computer programmers. They already had MIDI equipment and did the music for a copy of the game and a credit listing. Final phase Programmer Alex Russell recalls: "We sent game builds down to SSI using a state of the art 9600 baud modem and Zmodem. It took about 3 hours to send down 2 megs of updates, and involved calling voice first, arranging for who would auto-answer (SSI so they could pay the phone bill!), and crossing your fingers". Development took a little over a year. The first six months of work was done in Escudero's kitchen. Then SSI called up and said they were coming up to visit. Since Escudero didn't want to look like a low budget outfit he quickly rented a small office, where development was finished. After Spelljammer was finished, Escudero was instrumental in developing a multi-line BBS called Ice Online that ran a custom coded MUD. This turned out to be a quite successful enterprise that would eventually take up the whole floor of the building the original small office was in. EA eventually bought out Ice Online, took all the key employees and closed down the BBS. Reception Computer Gaming World liked the boarding combat but criticized the bugs and long load times, concluding that the game "is a product with a good deal of promise, thwarted by an unfortunate number of defects". It recommended the game to "AD&D role-playing stalwarts who can look past the problems, but as to the rest of the gaming public, SJammer is still a few updates away from being a product worth playing". The magazine warned that the "grandiose claims" SSI made about the game and Legends of Valour threatened the company's "long-standing reputation for quality". According to GameSpy, it was a "nice try, but a so-called "Gold Box" game everyone can easily miss". References External links Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace at Beyond the Moons (the official Spelljammer website) Review in PC World 1992