Gizmondo Europe

The story of the Gizmondo handheld console and it's parent company Tiger Telematics Inc is massively entertaining. A steamy mixture of crime, car crashes, Sting, million dollar salaries, and a racehorse. Obviously most of that falls outside of the remit of this blog but I do have pictures of office buildings. Imagine the story of Gizmondo is the most amazing party in the world. Well this blog is in the flat next door trying to sleep with a pillow over its ears.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Copyright Infringement

A couple of things combined to give me the idea for this post. The major one being Fantasy Software. I knew they'd had a brush with solicitors acting for Douglas Adams over their game Backpackers Guide To The Universe but I originally thought they had been unlucky and just chosen a bad time to release a game with a title parodying The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy. That is, sort of, the case but it's also the end point of a trend of Fantasy passing off Hitchhikers ideas in the scenarios of their games. After I noticed that, I seemed to keep falling over examples of other companies doing the same. 

Fantasy

The way in which companies go bust is often telling, There are, of course, very strict legal rules covering the matter, but they are often easy to get around. Bug-Byte's receivers informed all creditors (including CRASH) of the situation Micromania's Dominic Wood wrote a letter to the effect that he was bankrupt — at least you know where you stand. Fantasy's demise was less ethical.

Nintendo

Having looked at Atari, and Sony, and SEGA, and 3DO, there's only one possible choice to do next. Nintendo. A company about whom I know very little indeed. I hope this is easier than writing about SEGA. Fortunately for me, much of the initial hard work has been done by some kind soul who created this page. Thank you. I'll try to build on your work and not just copy it.

Mikro-Gen

Not to sound dismissive but I've gone backwards and forwards several times on whether to cover Mikro-Gen. They are an old company and similar in many ways to others I've already written about; like Bug-Byte, Quicksilva, dk'tronics,Automata, Hewson Consultants, Artic, J.K. Greye and so on, and so on. I have two main questions. One, what can I say that makes this article different? Two, is it wise to reveal these doubts in the introduction when I should be using it to lure people in?

Intelligent Software

Excelsior! I've finally done it! A post that combines my twin obsessions of old software house offices and Blake's 7. This is clearly the apogee of this blog. Even more exciting than that time I got emails from Charles Cecil and Richard Turner about Artic. It can only be downhill from here.

The (Mystery) Machine

December 1991. THE ONE magazine published an article by Dave Gruisin about a Los Angeles conference with the grim name of InterTainment 91 (was there ever an InterTainment 92?). The hot news at this industry shindig concerned something called "The Machine". The Machine was protected behind a wall of non-disclosure agreements and yet somehow everyone knew all about it even though no one was talking. According to Dave Gruisin: "The Machine is quite simply going to revolutionise home-computer entertainment." So what was it?