But what exactly is the game? It’s a question that has been asked before, and today Croucher dismisses it as “irrelevant”. Looked at in blunt terms, Deus Ex Machina sees you nurturing a human organism from the cradle to the grave through minigames inspired by the seven ages of man speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Try pitching that to a publisher nowadays.

Of particular interest is the audio cassette tape that was packaged alongside the game. Designed to be played perfectly in sync with the stages, it contained the vocal talents of Jon Pertwee, Frankie Howerd and Ian Dury, along with Croucher’s own distinctly discordant and eerie musical meanderings.

“It was simply a series of mechanisms to get you immersed in the audiovisuals,” recalls Croucher. “I used a sequence of progressive gameplay, nothing very original, but that wasn’t the point. Books, movies and theatre are also a series of unoriginal sequences. It’s the recombination and original presentation that creates a classic. I wanted to take the player along for the ride, but allow them to control the way they reached their inevitable destination. From the fertilization of the egg by the sperm, through your own birth, and then the entire process from cradle to grave, it pretty much wrote itself.

“I think my favourite sequence is the end sequence, where you have grown old and become a decrepit old husk, trying to stay alive with blood-clot busters, and then the whole notion that it’s too late to learn from your mistakes – except it isn’t, because imagine if this was nothing more than a computer game, and you can start all over again. I haven’t reached that stage yet, but it’s close.”

If all this sounds high-concept, demanding and ahead of its time, then, yes, it was all those things and more. Deus Ex Machina could also be annoying and not a little repulsive – one of Croucher’s main aims seemed to be to provoke as much as entertain. The game was designed so you could submit to it and let it roll over you, or you could try to get the highest score possible. Not so much multiple endings as multiple mutations.

Synchronising the audio accompaniment to the peculiar onscreen action was a thrilling notion to computer gamers accustomed to Haunted Hedges and Horace & The Spiders. Jon Pertwee would even count down each sequence in his trademark Dr Who tones, ensuring players remained on the same page. “Jon Pertwee was a joy to work with,” recalles Croucher. “He arrived two hours late, and I thought he was an arrogant sod for keeping us all waiting as I was hiring the studio by the hour. When he eventually arrived, he was dressed in brown leather and wearing a crash helmet, limping badly. He said he’d fallen off his Harley-Davidson while racing Sir Ralph Richardson on their way to the studios. He was no spring chicken, but he did it in a single take, and it was absolutely perfect. No cuts, no dubs, no edits. Brilliant.”