_{From left to right: Cela, Granados, Menéndez and Rada. Input Sinclair, February 1986.}

Fred is an action video game developed by Carlos Granados (Charlie), Fernando Rada and Paco Menéndez for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1983, and published by Indescomp, SA in Spain and by Quicksilva, Ltd in the UK, with cover art by David Rowe. Versions for Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC 464 were released throughout 1984.

Fred incorporates elements—such as procedural generation maze and a single-life structure—that align with features later associated with Rogue-like games.

It is considered one of the earliest video games developed in Spain for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, along with its contemporary Bugaboo (The Flea). Although an agreement was reached with Quicksilva to market both titles in the United Kingdom in the autumn of 1983, they were released a few weeks apart: at the end of that year and the beginning of 1984, respectively. Both were major commercial successes in Spain (distributed by Investrónica, SA) and the UK (distributed by Quicksilva, Ltd).

A conversion for the Amstrad CPC, written by the same team including Camilo Cela, was launched by Amsoft as Roland on the Ropes in 1984, as part of the Roland video game series. Interestingly, Alan Sugar (Amstrad’s CEO) named the character after Roland Perry (engineer in charge of the development of the CPC 464) while playing a demo of Fred. The Commodore 64 version was developed by Pedro Ruiz, a member of Indescomp’s programming team.

The history of Fred starts when Granados played the game Pengo at an arcade during the summer of 1983. In Pengo the player controls a penguin that must move or destroy ice blocks in a maze to kill enemies and find the exit. At the beginning of each level the maze is generated randomly in front of the user. Charlie, who had just graduated high school and was about to start his Physics degree, was fascinated by the maze generation, and challenged himself to write a similar algorithm in his Spectrum computer. He quickly completed it, and had the idea that the random maze could be used for a video-game.

After his summer vacation Charlie got together with his friends, Fernando and Paco, and they set the basis for the game: the goal would be to exit the maze; the main character would be an adventurer, like Indiana Jones, with a gun to fight the enemies; and the setting, a pyramid. They completed the game in just a few weeks. In the spring of 1984 they ported the game for Amstrad CPC, which was released under the name Roland on the Ropes.

Fred received very positive reviews by the specialized press. Crash Magazine (issue 3, p84) gave it a score of 83%, noting “The game has great animation, especially that of Fred himself, and the graphics are generally excellent. Even Fred’s revolver recoils when it is fired”. Your Computer (April 1984 issue) gave it 4 out of 5 stars, and described it as a “feast of Disneyesque graphics”. Your Spectrum (issue 3, p70) scored it 8 out of 10. And it got a 100% score on Home Computing Weekly (issue 52, p22).

After Fred, its authors founded the game studio Made in Spain and the distributor Zigurat. They produced a long list of games for 8 and 16 bit platforms, and even a few arcade titles.