Lookback at 2022

I update this blog once every two weeks, and this year the second update of December falls right on Christmas Day itself. I didn't want to break the two week cycle but the idea of doing a standard post didn't feel quite right. After trying and failing to come up with a suitably seasonal idea I've decided to take inspiration from CRASH's annual Lookbacks and simply take stock of the blog itself.

The first posts went up on 2nd November 2021, as close to a year ago as makes no real difference. Since then I've written about thirty three software houses in varying amounts of detail; 14 based in London and 19 across the rest of England. But, and this is the important bit, although the subtitle of this blog is "Seeking out Britain's pioneering video games houses" I've not ventured into Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland, yet. Mind you, that's not necessarily all my fault. If Platinum Productions hadn't been so secretive about their Ayrshire address I might have taken a trip north of Hadrian's Wall. And of course there's St Brides School to tempt me across the Irish Sea, although that's all starting to look more peculiar and sinister these days and it looked pretty strange in the eighties. 

The current Top 10 of posts looks like this:

1. Ultimate Play The Game/ACG/Rare
2. Software Projects
3. Mirrorsoft/Imageworks
4. Durell
5. Design Design/Crystal
6. Elite
7. Melbourne House
8. Micropower/Program Power
9. Silversoft
10. Denton Designs

It's no real surprise that Ultimate take the Number 1 spot. Most of the Top 10 is the names I'd expect Software Projects, Elite, Durell, and so on but it's nice to see a few more obscure names like Micropower and Silversoft. And well done to Design Design getting to number 5 in two weeks.

What is surprising are the names lurking right down the bottom of the charts; Martech, I guess no one likes Zoids as much as I did; Ariolasoft, a company I genuinely thought would be popular with nostalgic Commodore 64 owners; Virgin Games, whose unpopularity with readers hasn't justified my decision to break their history into three parts (and there's still one more part to come); and right down at the bottom poor Front Runner/K-tel. Come on guys. That's the publisher of Boulder Dash (on the Spectrum). Give Rockford some love.