1 Saturn House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7
Front Office, 1st Floor, Advance Works, 44 Wallace Road, N1
The shops and big distributors didn't really want to know unless a company could guarantee a suite of regular releases with a big marketing budget attached. Newsfield couldn't offer that but 1986 was perhaps their peak year. CRASH and ZZAP!64 were both huge successes, AMTIX was doing okay, and LM was on the cusp of being launched and carried with it the hopes of revolutionising the youth/teen market. Starting up Thalamus was a marker of Newsfields' supreme confidence.
Lloyd Mangram remembered Thalamus' origins for the CRASH History in December 1988:
Thalamus really started at the July Commodore Show when a young man from Finland introduced himself in halting English as Stavros Fasoulas and showed Roger Kean Commodore 64 game called Rainbow Warrior. Roger was so impressed with it that he persuaded the other directors to start a label and market the game. Stavros, Gary Liddon was moved from Newsfield's other magazines to look after programming technicalities, and Andrew Wright of Activision was appointed to head Thalamus (a name which he and Liddon devised). Rainbow Warrior changed name to Sanxion and the rest, as they say, would be history.
The August 1986 issue of YOUR COMPUTER had a slightly different version of the story:
The people behind Thalamus are Andrew Wright, the managing director, and Gary Liddon, the technical executive...
Thalamus began with a heated discussion about the state of the software industry. Wright and Liddon argued that there was no software house which produced consistently good software or that if they produced good software, they failed to market it successfully.
When, at the Commodore Show in May, Wright saw so much high-quality software which had not yet been snapped-up by any software house, he went to Roger Kean and Oliver Frey at Newsfield and started the ball rolling.
Having made the decision, Thalamus started work in earnest in June. It was decided that, so as not to become bogged down, Thalamus would concentrate on the programs and leave the distribution to someone else, although who that will be is as yet undecided.
It was the Commodore Show which provided Thalamus with its first game. While on the Zzap stand, a young Norwegian student loaded a prototype of a game he was writing for the Commodore 64/128. The untitled game impressed Thalamus so much that it was immediately snapped-up. Now provisionally titled Finnblast, it promises to be the ultimate in shoot-’em-ups, with a twin-view, horizontally scrolling screen and excellent graphics.
"A young Norwegian student?" Why would a game by a Norwegian be called Finnblast? For shame, YOUR COMPUTER. For a third version of the story, here's what Sanxion programmer Stavros Fasoulas told Spanish magazine Microhobby in 1987 (issue 141 page 4, and badly translated from Spanish):
The truth is that I already wrote «Sanxion» with the idea of the British market in mind. Then I came to England to have «Zzap 64» -the Commodore computer magazine- review the game. I was hoping they would give it a good review and that interested companies would contact me, but coincidentally at that time Newsfield, the owners of «Zzap 64», were thinking about creating their own software section; so, they made me an offer and that was the beginning of Thalamus.
Andrew Wright had previously worked for Activision and Gary Liddon was a writer on ZZAP, via Domark, Rainbow Warrior became Finnblast became Sanxion. US Gold would distribute Thalamus games into the shops.
Newsfield was in a tricky ethical position, they were running a software house plus three magazines which would review the company's games. Newsfield's solution was to promote the new software house in CRASH, AMTIX, and ZZAP; with the majority of the coverage in ZZAP because the first Thalamus game would be for the Commodore 64. Not an unreasonable idea, COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES did something similar for Beyond. A more solid way to establish independence was to base the new company in London away from the Newsfield directors in Ludlow. Beyond and Argus Press Software were both based in the same building as their respective magazines. Newsfield 's solution, away from the day to day work of the computer magazines but still somewhere that directors could easily visit, provided a sort of semi-detached independence.
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| February 2024 |
1Thalamus set up shop at 44 Wallace Road, the same building where Newsfield's short-lived magazine LM was based from the autumn of 1986 to the spring of 1987. 44 Wallace Road was the location of Scan Studios who also handled the colour laser scanning for Newsfield magazines. I said in the Newsfield article that I had emailed Islington Local History Centre to ask them about the mysterious lack of visibility of 44 Wallace Road1. I lied. Accidentally. I mean, I certainly meant to email them but I didn't. I have now.
[UPDATE 20/03/2024] Islington Local History Centre were very helpful but in the end I found the answer to the mystery on the Layers of London website. Looking at Wallace Road using the overlay OS Maps (1940s-1960s) revealed this:
Advance Works was a large building which faced on to the railway line. The OS map shows a driveway which leads down into the gap between 43 and 45 Wallace Road, so that was its street number although the building itself wasn't anywhere near the road. The Advance Works site is long gone, replaced by new build and joined to Wallace Road by a street called Heaven Tree Close which runs along the side of the railway line.
COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL was a magazine that would never be satisfied with whatever steps Newsfield took to ensure the independence of Thalamus. CCI, for reasons known only to their editorial team, hated ZZAP with all the fury of a thousand exploding suns. And, by extension, CCI hated Thalamus.
It started with an editorial written by CCI publisher Antony Jacobson for COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY. "There is always an audience for simple-minded pap," he wrote, along with "a certain kind of magazine should only be handled with rubber gloves and antiseptic fire tongs. No one forces them to publish contagious rubbish but magazines that do so are not simply to be described as boring, but debasing the values of their readership... and polluting the social and commercial environment in which we live and work." Roger Kean, always up for an airing of dirty laundry, replied in the June 1986 issue of ZZAP. It was a shame, he pointed out, that Antony Jacobson didn't have the courage to make these points in his own magazine and took issue with Jacobson's claim that CCI's circulation had risen every month since August 1985 by pointing out CCI had failed to return an Audit Bureau of Circulations figure since 1982. Ouch. Discussing ABC figures is the publishing version of a Mortal Kombat fatality so naturally CCI went crazy-eight-bonkers. I travelled down a rabbit hole looking through archived copies of CCI to see how often they mentioned Newsfield and ZZAP. The short answer is, several times each month. While it might be fun for me to neurotically catalogue CCI's neurotic obsession with ZZAP, I'll save it for another day.
To keep it short, CCI managed monthly negative mentions of Thalamus in the September, October, and November issues. Disappointingly the December issue isn't archived. All through this period the magazine keeps calling the company Thanatos which could be an extended joke but doesn't read like one. CCI doesn't give funny nicknames to other companies and the magazine keeps pointing out that Thanatos is Greek for Death, as if it's patting itself on the back for it's own cleverness. It actually reads as if the writer responsible has misheard the name of the company. Then, in the middle of all this, CCI prints an October preview of Sanixion which feels like it's dropped in from a different publication. It's positive and it contains three colour in-game photos; which may not seem like much but CCI frequently struggled to print any screenshots alongside reviews of games from companies it didn't hate. It's really odd. The point I'm tapdancing around is, I could believe this was paid editorial supplied by Thalamus.
ZZAP!64 reviewed Sanxion in November; 93% overall and a Sizzler rating. It must have been a relief for the editorial staff when it was clear other magazine reviews also liked Sanxion; 9/10 in C&VG; 8/10 in YOUR COMMODORE; and a lower 7/10 from COMMODORE USER. CCI never got round to reviewing Sanxion. Under different circumstances this would be disappointing but a review would deny me the wonderful Top 10 printed in the January 1987 issue which gives CCI's rating of Sanxion as T.B.A; To Be Advised, presumably. Six games in the Top 10 are T.B.A. Boasting that you have reviewed fewer than half the best-selling games in the UK could be seen as incompetence but CCI frequently seems less like a magazine and more a situationist prank against its readers.
Delta, the second game by Stavros Fasoulas, followed in spring 1987 and then Andrew Wright and Gary Liddon left. Gary Liddon gave an interview to Mamemeister in 2015 where he explained what happened:
We were effectively running the company. The way it worked was Newsfield had put in some seed capital... and then all the stuff's come back to us and then all the money went back to Newsfield. And I remember both of us going 'well you know could we get a slice, you know a portion of this, that seems fair to me,' and, er, 'nah,' 'oh right, we're off then."
CCI weren't totally obsessed with Newsfield. It was just a coincidence that this provided them with material for yet another piece about the company, in June 1987:
Thalamus was originally called Thanatos but they found out through these humble columns that it meant 'Death Wish' and they realised they already had enough of that. The software company has clearly been a raving success — the other founding boss, one Gary Pencil, has also departed and the whole mega-operation is now taking shelter somewhat sheepishly in the offices of Incentive Software. The name Thalamus, as I'm sure you all realised, referred to the Greek tragedy (or was it comedy?) play acted by idiotic workmen in Shakespeare's "Mid Summernight's Dream'. His Excellency Andy Pandy is not telling how close a similarity his recent Thalamusian experience bore to that part of Shakespeare's play, or whether his employers were a tragedy or a comedy — at least not to anybody who will listen
2 Minerva House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7
Astonishingly, the comment about Thalamus taking shelter in the offices of Incentive Software is correct. I knew Thalamus made the leap from London to Aldermaston but I thought they went straight to a place called Saturn House. I didn't know about this intermediate step. Then I saw this advert for Quedex, the third game in a row from Stavros Fasoulas. The same issue of ZZAP (October 1987) has an advert for Incentive Software on page 31; with the same address. So when did Thalamus move?
CRASH reported the departure of Andrew Wright and Gary Liddon from Thalamus in their April 1987 issue.
Newsfield's software house, Thalamus, have undergone a few changes recently. Andy (Flathead) Wright and Gary (The corpulent one] Liddon have deserted us for Pastures New but Paul Cooper has stepped into to run it. 'So far, " says Paul, "Thalamus have been a very Commodore orientated company. However, I don't want to see the Spectrum neglected so I'm currently hunting around for programmers in the hope of bringing a Spectrum release for the summer." We are waiting with bated breath Paul.
That issue of CRASH was on sale from 25th March, so it's fair to assume the pair departed and Paul Cooper arrived in early March 1987. LM folded around May 1987 after which Newsfield didn't need (or possibly, given the financial loss from the failure of LM, couldn't afford) a London office. It makes sense for Thalamus to bounce somewhere cheaper but I'm not sure I can join the dots to explain how they ended up sharing office space with Incentive Software. New boy Paul Cooper had previously worked for Quicksilva, who published Mined-Out by Incentive founder Ian Andrew, so maybe there's a vague connection there. Sadly Paul Cooper died in 2021. Thalamus must have found sharing an office agreeable because they are still sharing 2 Minvera House until the launch of Hunter's Moon at the
start of 1988.
Discovering I've overlooked an address would normally make me a bit gloomy, however in this case I'm not too bothered because the next time Thalamus moved they would travel slightly less than 500 feet.
1 Saturn House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7
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| September 2023 |
The second problem only became apparent when I arrived. When I'd gone to Milton Park, home of Hewson Consultants, the place was huge and had a visitor's centre, and the streets were wide and I felt like I could walk around without being too obvious. Calleva Park was the opposite. The only parking bays were next to the industrial units and they were all full. The buildings were packed in and crowded right up alongside the narrow roads. There weren't any pavements. You aren't welcome on the Calleva Park estate if you can't drive to your destination. Despite all the cars there was no one in sight. Everyone was apparently indoors working. My car seemed to be the only one moving along empty, narrow, roads which made me feel all the more conspicuous as I drove slowly round looking for somewhere to stop. I ended up doing a loop around what a sign described as Zone 5 as I wondered what to do. In the end I parked next to the Zone 5 sign (did that security camera twitch in my direction?). Pretended to study the Zone 5 sign (it's just paranoia, I told myself). Walked round the sign to stand opposite the Saturn House sign (feeling as if a million unfriendly eyes were watching my every move). Took a picture ("he's committing an offence under section 17(2) of the Military Lands Act 1892, Sarge"). And then got the heck out of there ("tail him and task Blue Squad to rendition him to RAF Machrihanish"). It was fine.
Thalamus stayed at Saturn House from late 1988 until at least the end of 1991. THE ONE magazine included them in their Software Landmarks of the UK article (October 1991 page 51) where they were described as:
Small (but no doubt perfectly formed) publisher still shaking off its Commodore 64-specialist tag.
It's ironic that map appeared in the October 1991 issue because it means the text was being written in September 1991. The month Newsfield Ltd went into voluntary liquidation.
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| C&VG November 1991 page 16 |
Unit 29 Riverside Business Centre, Victoria Street, High Wycombe, Bucks HP11 2LT
Despite the recent demise of publishing house Newsfield, its games arm. Thalamus, is still very much alive, but now as an independent software publisher.
That's how ZERO describes the liquidation of Newsfield in the May 1992 issue. How did Thalamus survive? This is guesswork but I think it's because in early 1985 the directors set up Newsfield Publications Ltd, which acted as a holding company for for Newsfield Ltd, the bit that produced the magazines. Thalamus was an independent subsidiary of Newsfield Publications and could carry on trading, rather as Commodore UK did when the US parent went bankrupt. Alternatively there was a management buyout. Things get quite vague at this point.
I'm left knowing Thalamus moved from Aldermaston to High Wycome but when, and why? The why I can't answer beyond assuming it must be to do with becoming an independent company. The when I can have a better stab at. Thanks to the Hall of Light Amiga games archive. Thalamus was still in Aldermaston for the release of ARMALYTE: The Final Run. (COMMODORE USER AMIGA, August 1991 page 159) which was being reviewed and advertised as Newsfield was slipping under the waves. The March 1992 issue of COMMODORE POWER has a short article about the Thalamus fan club which still lists the Saturn House address and the manual for the Atari ST version of Creatures (which I think was released in May or June of 1992) carries the new address.
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| COMMODORE POWER March 1992 page 6 |
I said before this is where things get vague. How vague? No one seems to know exactly when Thalamus closed down. This is what Wikipedia has to say:
Thalamus managed to survive the liquidation of Newsfield, but funds were running low. With 8-bit gaming being superseded by 16-bit gaming, production costs were rising, forcing hundreds of independent publishers, such as Thalamus, to either close down or allow themselves to be consumed by a publishing giant. Thalamus released their final C64 game, Nobby the Aardvark in 1993. With their various Amiga projects spiraling out of budget and no further income, Thalamus had no choice but to close down their operations.
Nobby the Aardvark was the last game awarded a ZZAP Gold Medal rating, October 1992, before the magazine relaunched as COMMODORE FORCE. The last Thalamus game on the Wikipedia list S.U.B. was being reviewed around Christmas 1993 which potentially pushes the demise of Thalamus back to 1994. Checking Companies House does reveal Thalamus Ltd (Company number 01985273), founded 03 Feb 1986 and dissolved 03 Jun 1994; was this them?
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| AKTUELLER SOFTWARE MARKT December 1989 page 152 |
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| December 2023 |
High Wycombe didn't seem to be showing me its best face when I drove in, in early December. I think the direct route from the M40 to the Riverside Business Centre skips the picturesque bit of the market town. The area around the Riverside Business Centre seemed to be a rat-run of narrow streets with no obvious parking. In the end I nipped down a side road, parked without paying or displaying (yeah- come at me Buckinghamshire Council) and dashed round the corner to nab a hasty photo. You can see the disappointing result above. If I'd been less worried about being ticketed I might have explored a little but as it was I just regarded the long frontage of the business centre. Unit 29 is in there somewhere.
Facts. Do you have facts? Are you Andrew Wright or David Birch, or (at a pinch) Gary Liddon? You don't need to be to leave a comment or email whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Other methods of communication include Instagram, shammountebank,and Bluesky @shammountebank.bsky.social.
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