530: Inside Gargoyle Games: Stuart Cox on Light Force, Scooby-Doo and ThunderCats - The Retro Hour EP530
The Retro Hour (Retro Gaming Podcast)
The Retro Hour
4.9 • 558 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we’re joined by Stuart Cox, artist at the legendary Midland studio Gargoyle Games, for a brilliant trip through the golden age of British 8-bit development. Stuart shares how he went from the Dragon 32 and early arcade obsessions to working on Scooby-Doo, Light Force, Shockway Rider, Hydrofool, ThunderCats and more, with stories of rapid-fire development, clever tricks to push the ZX Spectrum, digitised graphics, Rob Hubbard’s incredible turnaround times, the truth behind the “Wolf” and “Samurai Dawn” confusion, and even the lost ThunderCats NES port. A proper behind-the-scenes look at one of the UK’s most fascinating 1980s game studios.
Stuart's current project: https://www.wireadmin.com
Contents:
00:00 – The Week’s Retro News Stories
50:41 – Gargoyle Games Interview
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Show notes
A1200 Delayed: https://tinyurl.com/yfzd3wdd
Tomb Raider Side-Scroller: https://tinyurl.com/msn72sab
Tomb Raider On N64: https://tinyurl.com/bdfz8zds
C64 And Spectrum Handhelds: https://tinyurl.com/mwv2bj88
Zapped To The Past: https://tinyurl.com/2rvzth58
Cancelled Simpsons Game Revealed: https://tinyurl.com/4444m3aa
Ask.com Shuts Down: https://tinyurl.com/mr467yby
Resident Evil Teaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJPu1spHqfk
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Coming up on this week's show, delays for the A-1200. |
| 0:03.7 | A new Tune Raider Side-Sroller. |
| 0:05.4 | And we get the inside story of Gargoyle Games. |
| 0:19.9 | And the Retro Hour podcast is brought to you every week with our sponsor and our good friends of Bitmap Books. |
| 0:25.3 | Now, if you're a fan of fighting game history, look out for this landing in the next few weeks. |
| 0:30.1 | The definitive guide to Fatal Fury, also known as Garo Densetsu in Japan, A massive 460 page volume featuring rare concept art from |
| 0:41.1 | SNK's archives, exclusive interviews of the original developers covering the entire series |
| 0:45.7 | from the Neo Geo Classics right up until the upcoming City of the Wolves. Pre-orders available |
| 0:50.3 | right now at bitmapbooks.com ahead of release on May 20th. |
| 0:55.5 | Hello and welcome to the Retro Hour podcast episode number 530, your weekly dose of retro gaming |
| 1:01.3 | and technology news with me, Dan Wood, me Ravi Abbott and me Joe Fox. |
| 1:06.7 | And a very warm welcome to this week's show, the podcast every Friday, brings you up to speed |
| 1:10.7 | on all the big developments in the world of retro gaming and technology. |
| 1:14.3 | A bit of a roundtable first half of the show when we geek out about the big stories that have been making the headlines over the last week. |
| 1:19.9 | And then second half of the podcast, that's when we welcome on a veteran from the video games industry to tell us their story. |
| 1:27.1 | And actually, this week we're staying rather close to home because we do record the show |
| 1:32.5 | in the Midlands of England, in the East Midlands in Nottingham. |
| 1:37.2 | And this company we were talking about this week was actually based not too far away from us |
| 1:40.7 | over in the West Midlands in... |
| 1:43.0 | I was going to let you do the accent ratherly. Have you got a Dudley accent up your sleeve? Well, first I was going to over in the West Midlands in, I was going to let you do the accent |
| 1:44.2 | ratherly. Have you got a Dudley accent up your sleeve? Well, first I was going to say in the |
| 1:48.1 | west side, but that's just awful. But not Dudley, Birmingham. Yeah, I've been there. But all |
... |
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