Computer Games Ltd

Computer Games Ltd, CGL House, Goldings Hill, Loughton, Essex, IG10

Computer Games Ltd (CGL) were electronics importers in the early eighties; in the days when the UK market seemed to small for the big international companies to bother doing it themselves. They imported everything from Nintendo Game and Watch to chess computers to the Sord M5 computer. If you had an electronic handheld game in the early eighties there is a good chance it came from CGL.

  

[The worst thing in the world for a blog dedicated to tracking down the offices of old software houses is an address which cannot be located because it is incomplete or non-existent. I first wrote about CGL in 2022, for a page called The Untraceables which was supposed to be my Room 101. The place to which developers and publishers were exiled for the crimes of either never making their address public or for thoughtlessly allowing their offices to be erased by 35+ years of urban redevelopment. Unfortunately I rapidly fell out of love with The Untraceables page. It messed up my website stats. It stopped Labels working properly. It got too big too quickly, and yet often didn't allow me to go into as much detail as I wanted because the page just kept getting longer and longer. My 2025 New Year's resolution was to dispose of it and in the process of getting rid of it, take a second look at some of the companies I decreed untraceable. Do they deserve a little more coverage? Can I find any interesting news stories about them? And, more importantly, can I actually track them down?]

THE SUNDAY PEOPLE
14 November 1982 page 22

CGL got started in 1979; that's if I've found the right Companies House record. Company number 01409388 was incorporated on 16 Jan 1979 and dissolved on 08 Feb 1995. Their business was to import and rebrand electronic games. One of the first records I've been able to find is a 1980 review of two Chess computers imported by CGL; the Sensory 8 Challenger and the Sensory Voice Challenger, both originally released by Florida based company Fidelity Electronics[1].

They then moved on to the booming electronic games craze. From Japan, CGL rebranded Gakken's Invader as Galaxy Invader 1000. They gave Gakken's Puck Monster a UK release. And, most importantly as far as I'm concerned they imported Nintendo's Game and Watch series, adding their own logo on the right hand side. Game and Watch was a real craze at my school, and I remember being deeply frustrated that I was never able to persuade my parents to buy me one. That advert at the top of the page is from the second issue of C&VG, and shows how quickly CGL embraced the new magazine, and went on to be a regular advertiser.

In 1982 the company got embroiled in a made up scandal about the "sick video game" Fire. On 28 November 1982 THE SUNDAY MIRROR breathlessly reported:

 A sick video game which shows babies plunging to the ground from a blazing building has been banned. 

THE SUNDAY MIRROR
28 November 1982 page 13

 
In finest Fleet Street tradition this was 100% accurate except for the bits which were wrong or made up. MP Oonagh McDonald got involved after a constituent complained to her about Fire, this complaint seems to have stemmed from the way the game was advertised in a 1982 KAYS catalogue [2]. Barely a month later Oonagh McDonald would be calling for a government enquiry after THE SUNDAY PEOPLE (a stablemate of THE MIRROR) contacted her for a quote about Automata's "sexy home TV games." Oonagh McDonald told THE SUNDAY PEOPLE:

"I'll be pressing that basic standards of decency are maintained"

You can judge the sickness of Fire for yourself, by seeing the game played on Youtube.

CGL also imported Sord's M5 computer in 1983. (Star Trek fans will know why M5 is an unfortunate name for a computer system). This machine got a largely positive review from POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (24-30 November page 46) along with a note that the technical documentation supplied by CGL was poor and the computer was unlikely to make an impression in the then ferociously competitive under £200 computer market. It didn't. Despite the best efforts of CGL's marketing team.

EVENING STANDARD
23/06/1983 page 27

Side Heyde, writer of this advertising feature, was the Marketing Director of CGL and he is quoted in that SUNDAY MIRROR article defending Fire:

"It is in no worse taste than many other video games available."

C&VG
November 1982 page 46

 

CGL also distributed Activision's cartridges for the Atari VCS and ran the Activision Fun Club, until Activision took over in 1983 and run their UK operation directly.

 

The company disappears some time in the mid-eighties. There's an oblique, and often repeated, reference to their fate as "a company called Amstrad took them over and shut the whole thing down." (such as here on handheldmuseum.com). The Handheld Museum page notes CGL were a subsidiary of Dennis Baylin Trading Ltd, and a quick Google search for Dennis Baylin and Alan Sugar brings up several references which suggest the pair were close friends.

CGL were clearly an interesting company, and notable to anyone who like me has fond memories of that first explosion of hand held computer games in the early eighties. Unfortunately their business address never carried a building number, it was only ever given as CGL House, Goldings Hill. And without any more detailed street identification the company's old headquarters can not be located.

 

VERDICT: UNTRACEABLE! 

[1] 8800 NW 23rd Street, Miami, Florida, 33172, if any Miami residents would like to send a photo to whereweretheynow@gmail.com
[2] You know the email to contact, if you have a copy of the relevant bit of the 1982 Kays catalogue.

Do you know where CGL House was? Please drop an email to whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Follow me on Bluesky @shammountebank.bsky.social