Level 9 Computing
company
Level 9 was a British developer of computer software, active between 1981 and 1991. Founded by Mike, Nicholas and Pete Austin, the company produced software for the BBC Micro, Nascom, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Oric, Atari 8-bit computers, Camputers Lynx, RML 380Z, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga, Apple II, Memotech MTX and Enterprise platforms, and is best known for its successful text adventure games until a general decline in the text adventure market forced their closure in June 1991.
Level 9's first release was an extension to Nascom BASIC called Extension Basic. The first game, also for the Nascom, was called Fantasy and was similar to Valhalla, but with no graphics. Other products from that era were Missile Defence, Bomber and Space Invasion — all for the Nascom. The tapes were duplicated and sent out by mail order by the brothers based on orders generated by the classified advertisements they ran in the Computing Today magazine. They were originally based in High Wycombe, Bucks before moving to the West Country.
A-code
Level 9 devised their own interpreted language, A-code, around 1979. It was very memory efficient, mainly due to the advanced text compression routines which could compress texts to about 50%. The game data, which was identical for all platforms, was incorporated into the executable file for specific machines, together with the interpreter part.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q940646. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1991 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Level 9 Computing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.