When people think about The Beatles in relation to the world of games, the 2009 rhythm title The Beatles: Rock Band is usually the first thing to spring to mind — and for pretty understandable reasons.
Not only was it the most successful game to ever be released based on the history of the band, but it was also the only Beatles game to be produced with the input of all the surviving members (Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney), as well as the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.
Because of this, many have since come to view it as the definitive Beatles video game, with outlets like The New York Times and Eurogamer describing it at the time as “nothing less than a cultural watershed” and "the new standard by which all band-specific game experiences will be judged" respectively. Something you might not know, though, is that it technically wasn't the first-ever Beatles game to hit the market, with the earliest known video game based on the band’s works instead being Beat the Beatles — a fan-made quiz game for the Atari 8-bit machines that was created by a roughly 25-year-old Beatles-obsessed developer named Rich Levin.
Beat the Beatles first came to my attention in 2022, after stumbling across its entry on Atarimania while compiling a history of Beatles video games for the now-defunct magazine Wireframe. Though not exactly the most visually impressive game ever made (its graphics essentially amount to nothing more than black text against a plain green background) or even the best quiz (more on that later), it proved to be a pretty fascinating piece of Beatles fan history, and one that has mostly seemed to be overlooked.
As a result, I set out to interview its creator, Levin, that very same year, with the former games programmer sharing the story with me of how he first became obsessed with the band, and why, at 25 years of age, he decided to launch what could very well be the first ever Beatles game. With Disney releasing The Beatles Anthology on Disney+ today (November 26th), I've had The Beatles on the brain lately, so it made sense to reshare the story here, just in case you missed it the first time around.
According to Rich Levin, his love of the Fab Four dates back to February 9th, 1964, which is when he would first encounter The Beatles’ music on the floor of his aunt’s house in Philadelphia. Lounging in front of a black and white TV, aged five, he, along with the rest of his family, was watching The Ed Sullivan Show on TV, when suddenly his two teenage cousins "started flipping out" as four "mop-topped" musicians in suits took the stage to perform.
Being young and not yet having been exposed to the thrills of Beatlemania, he didn’t quite know what to make of this reaction. But after the band’s fifteen-minute segment was up, he knew he wanted to find out everything he could about this mysterious new group that was seemingly taking America's youth by storm.
Over the next decade, like countless others, he listened to every record, watched every film, and read everything he could about the group, even following the careers of each member after the band went their separate ways in 1970. Then, in 1982, nineteen years after his first introduction to the group, he decided to combine his love of the group with his other great love at the time: the Atari 800 computer.
“I wanted a personal computer, because I was very into Pac-Man and the arcades,” said Levin. “And I wanted the Atari 800 specifically because it had the best renditions of the arcade games.
"Pac-Man looked like Pac-Man. Defender looked like Defender. I didn’t want an Atari 2600 in my house — that’s not computer games to me. So I said to my dad’s boss, who owned a mall kiosk at the time, ‘If you buy me a computer, I’ll program you some software.’
“I didn’t mention to him I had no idea how to program, or that I flunked general math and geometry and everything, except for my computer algebra class. But I wanted that computer, and he was a wealthy man, so he gave me his Amex card.”
With his dad's boss's Amex card in hand, Levin travelled to Sam Goody, a music shop that also sold computers, and spent $2500 on an Atari 800, with 48k of RAM and a cassette drive. He then threw himself immediately into learning BASIC, using a book called Your Atari Computer by Lon Poole, Steven Cook, and Martin McNiff. He knew what he wanted to make was a video game, but he wasn’t quite ready for player-missile graphics yet, so what he came up with was a compromise, a quiz game that would draw on his love of the Liverpool band.
Levin filled his game with questions and answers he thought only hardcore Beatles fans would know, covering topics such as former band members, lyrics, and even locations from the group's history. But he also implemented a hint system to try and keep things fair. If players got stuck, they could simply type and enter "C" into their computer to get an additional clue, with the game giving struggling fans an additional lifeline in the form of a hint.
After a few months of work, he finally finished the game in early 1983 and decided to release it commercially later that year, selling the game for $24.95 under a new company he created called "Interactive Software".
"Believe it or not, I was still working as a bill collector at the time when I made Beat the Beatles," Levin said. "It was for a window company. Your window broke, we'll replace it. You didn't pay, Rich would call you up. While I was working, I designed the game's ads, daydreaming all day about this game I was making on yellow legal pads.
"It was really expensive to do all this shit in those days. Back then, when you bought a game, everything was in Ziploc bags with holes punched in them. That's how early it was in the industry. But I wanted Beat the Beatles to have proper packaging. So what you see in the ad for the game is actually the packaging for Beat the Beatles. And then there would be a manual put in there that was hand-typed on a typewriter because I didn't have a printer, with a 5¼ inch floppy. Once all that was done, I started to advertise in A.N.A.L.O.G Magazine, because I thought it was better than Antic Magazine. I'd go to the post office box once a week and see if there were any checks. And if we got one, we'd send them back the game."
For promotion, Levin ran a competition to see who could beat the game first (Sadly, though, given the passage of time, he can't remember precisely what this prize was). He even visited popular Beatles fan conventions like Beatles Fest (now known as Fest for Beatles fans), buying a booth to display the game. The reaction at this event was extremely positive, with most people being excited to check out an early example of Beatles software. However, with John Lennon's murder fresh in people's minds, at least one person took exception to the title.
“We had the game running, and I remember one guy came up to me, and he didn’t quite understand what the game was," said Levin. "He thought it was an action game, and of course, everything back then was shooters. He thought it was like a ‘Kill the Beatles’ kind of game. He brought over a German version of a Beatles album that said Die Beatles, and he was yelling. I was like, ‘Dude, no. That’s not what it’s about at all.’”
The promotional push for Beat the Beatles lasted roughly for a year, during which time, the game became a successful money-maker for the young developer.
He thought it was like a ‘Kill the Beatles’ kind of game. He brought over a German version of a Beatles album that said Die Beatles, and he was yelling. I was like, ‘Dude, no. That’s not what it’s about at all.’
Buyers, for the most part, seemed satisfied with the product, but it should be said that playing it today, it clearly isn't without its flaws. Not only does it contain some spelling errors and some frustratingly worded and open-ended questions — such as who was "truly the fifth Beatle?" — but it also has a linear structure that takes away slightly from its replay value. Nevertheless, in 1983, it was something new and interesting that most people hadn't seen before, with the next major Beatles fangame we know about, Garry Marsh's Beatle Quest, not being released until two years after the Beat the Beatles launched.
As far as we're aware, Levin never made another video game, but instead took what he learned developing and marketing Beat the Beatles, and moved into creating his own business software, including an early antivirus software called Checkup, which he developed after the emergence of the Brain computer virus in 1986. Since then, he has also carved out a successful career writing about computer software, occasionally developing different apps and utilities whenever he finds the time. Back in 2022, he was amazed that Beat the Beatles was still around, all these years later, never having imagined it would still be playable over four decades removed from its original release
“A couple of years ago, I was like ‘I wonder if there’s any like internet memory of Beat the Beatles’” said Levin. “I did some googling around, and I actually found some guys have put it into emulators, so you can still play it.
"It may be the first Beatles video game, but it wasn’t officially licensed. I mean, I didn’t even think to do that. I was always worried I was going to be shut down with a copyright claim. But it never happened; I think it probably never got big enough or made enough money for anybody to care.”