Ariolasoft

Carl-Bertelsmann-Str 161, 4830 Gütersloh

In 1983 Ariola Records, the music division of German conglomerate Bertelsmann, set up a software company. This company was named, unsurprisingly, Ariolasoft and went to become the German distributor for Activision, Electronic Arts, and the Sega Master System. The company also published original games including Vermeer, Kaiser, and Ooze: Als die Geister mürbe wurden. Ariolasoft renamed itself United Software in 1990 and was taken over by the German division of MicroProse in 1993. Which is all very interesting but this blog is about the UK software industry and Britain hasn't been a part of Germany since Doggerland was submerged by the rising North Sea.

Suite 105/106 Asphalte House, Palace Street, London, SW1

August 2022

Obviously the answer is that Ariolasoft opened a UK subsidiary called Ariolasoft UK Ltd; registered with Companies House on 11th October 1984. It's a very early example of a games company moving in from overseas and setting up a label. I thought for a while it might be the first such example but, unless anyone knows differently, the first company to do so was probably Atari who set up Atari Games International (UK) Inc on 14th May 1982, followed by Atari Corp (UK) Ltd on 29th June 1984. This is confusing but bear with me because Atari Corp is actually a different company to Atari Games; I think Atari Corp is the arcade machine division of the original Atari company, which was sold off by parent company Warner Communications in 1984. But this isn't the history of Atari so let's move on. Ariolasoft wasn't third either. That was Activision (all these companies beginning with the letter A, was the competition to come first in the phonebook that fierce? Aardvark Software say, yes.) whose UK arm, Activision Software Ltd was set up on 1st September 1983 to focus on Atari VCS games, before moving on to the Commodore 64. 

Given this blog is about home computers and UK software houses rather than arcade machines, let's discount Atari Corp (and Konami Ltd, 1st June 1984) and award Ariolasoft the bronze medal for being third. At first their business model was the same as their German parent; import games from America for release. However the UK was a more crowded field than Germany. Software Projects converted Lode Runner for the C64, ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro, State Soft acquired several titles by First Star, and of course the big dog was US Gold. Fortunately Ariolasoft had established relationships with Electronic Arts and Brøderbund Software, who sound like they should be a German company but are actually American. 

POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY introduced Arioloasoft with the slightly world weary headline, "US games invasion continues;" 4-10 October 1984 page 1. "At first we will be working on repacking the titles and putting them on cassette, so they will be first available for the Commodore 64," said head Ashley Grey. "Where feasible we will later be converting to the Spectrum, and eventually looking at the MSX machines." The one exception to this would be Brøderbund's Lode Runner, as POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY pointed out, "Software Projects is set to release Broderbund's Lode Runner on Commodore 64 next week, at £9.95," quoting Colin Stokes of Software Projects: "As far as I am aware, our contract with Broderbund is non-exclusive, and we are currently negotiating with them to market the top US title Raid On Bungling Bay in Britain as our next release." This never happened. Ariolasoft released Raid On Bungling Bay, the first game by Will Wright who would go on to create Sim City and The Sims. The problem with releasing other companies games is, there will come a point where they do the maths to see if it's more effective to release the games themselves and keep all the money. This happened eventually with both Electronic Arts and Brøderbund, and so Ariolasoft quickly began working with UK developers like The Ramjam Corporation and Tigress Design. 

The Asphalte House Mystery

Asphalte House doesn't sound glamorous, especially not when magazines like CRASH anglicised the name from its French spelling to asphalt; as John Minson managed to do following one Bloody Mary too many in issue 28, page 14. Asphalt House sounds like a crummy sixties flat-roofed block, so obviously Palace Street should be towards Crystal Palace, maybe at the seedier end of Streatham near the football ground, but it's not. It's actually a stones throw from Buckingham Palace (please do not throw stones at Buckingham Palace, I can't stress this enough). It's actually one of the boundary streets of the Birdcage Walk conservation area. It's obviously not the kind of area where buildings are knocked down willy-nilly, so why can't I find it? I could email a selection of photos to Bertlesmann in Hamburg and ask, «Verzeihung, mein Herr, aber welche von diese Gebäude is Asphalte House?» but I think Britain's already in enough difficulty with the EU. Incidentally, if anyone's interested in becoming this blog's German correspondent send a photo of the old Ariolsoft GmbH office to shoutingintoawell@yahoo.com

The City of Westminster archives has a 1946 record which lists Asphalte House at 14 Palace Street, SW1. So far so good. Today 14 Palace Street is the address for the Pheonix Pub. I've also found a 2008 audit of the Birdcage Walk conservation area which describes Asphalte House as: "On the east corner of Stafford Place is Asphalte House, a five storey plus basement and mansard brick-faced block dating from the turn of the century. No. 15 Palace Street adjacent, is a new four-storey block incorporating a large ventilation shaft for the Underground. " Which is nice and clear, except that this describes a block called Audley House which is 13 Palace Street. Conclusions? Not many. Palace Street has probably been renumbered, which is how the pub became 14, and Asphalte House was renamed Audley House by an owner who was fed up with people thinking it sounded really awful. The Westminster archives are looking into the mystery for me, which is nice of them, so stand by for future updates. [STOP PRESS: Westminster archives confirm Audley House is Asphalte House. Hooray]

68 Long Acre, London, WC2E

July 2022

Ariolasoft moved from next door to Buckingham Palace around May 1986. Their new address was in Covent Garden, just around the corner from the Royal Opera House, and as John Minson noted in his article made them neighbours to The Edge (the software company, not the guitar player from U2). Covent Garden is a historic (ie, expensive) part of London with lots of narrow streets. This is why I've gone portrait orientation for the picture I couldn't stand far enough back to get the whole building in frame. 

Ariolasoft continued largely as before. They licenced Camelot Warriors, from Spanish software company Dinamic, and Tujad from Orpheus, around the same Electronic Arts slipped from their grasp towards the end of 1986. They also, as was the trend at the time, started setting up multiple spin-off labels. What was the point? It seems as if the company was taking steps to protect itself in the event of losing more of it's regular supply of American games. Reading between the lines of this COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL report (November 1986 page 8) it looks as if Ariolasoft would continue to be the label for games licenced from other companies while the new labels would publish home grown titles. Mirrorsoft did a similar thing with its Imageworks label. Reaktor came first, for arcade games. Maybe their most notable game was Starfox (no relation to the Nintendo game), by Realtime Software. It was a sneaky name which gave the impression the game was a sequel to Electronic Arts' Skyfox, which Ariolasoft had released under licence, but apart from the similarity of the name there was no connection between the two. After Reaktor came 39 Steps, for adventure games, which released a game called They Stole A Million. There was also a third label Viz Design, who failed to release Werewolves of London. 

Why didn't Werewolves of London get released? Well in March 1988 the German parent company suddenly pulled out of the UK market and closed down operations. ACE magazine quoted UK head man Willi Karmincke who said the firm had: "failed to make enough of an impression on the market;" May 1988 page 9. However Arioloasoft GmbH must have kept one eye on the UK market because although CRASH (March 1988 page 8) gave March as the winding up date, the company was kept on ice for over a decade, and Companies House records Ariolasoft UK as finally being dissolved on 23rd October 2001.