Vortex Software

Vortex House, 24 Kansas Avenue, Salford, M5

I've written before that the foundation of this blog was a list of companies I wanted to cover for different reasons; some were big names, some had an interesting story, some were of niche interest, and some hit my nostalgia button. This is the latter. I've got a huge soft spot for Vortex Software. I spent hours playing T.L.L. and even more playing Highway Encounter. I love Highway Encounter. I think it's brilliant. It's a real neglected gem of a game as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough when the ZX Spectrum is mentioned. It's a Top 10 title. It looks great. It plays great. Its got some really clever gameplay elements. And that ending! We'll get to the ending later.

Enterprise / Entersoft

31-37 Hoxton Street, London, N1 

Once upon a time there was a company called Samurai Computers Ltd. Unfortunately for boring business reasons it had to change its name to Elan. This name also didn't stick and the company briefly toyed with the name Flan but everybody laughed. So the company changed its name again, to Enterprise. And then it finally released the computer it had been developing for nearly three years.