[If you want all the scandal (why would you?) then I recommend this article from WIRED or, for another take which includes an interview with Carl Freer, have a look at Eurogamer.net.]
The idea that would become the Gizmondo arose out of a terrible tragedy. The murder of two 10-year-old girls in Soham in 2002. Carl Freer the founder of an American company, Tiger Telematics Inc, started looking into a device which could track children using GPS. Civilian use of GPS was relatively new in 2002. Bill Clinton had signed a policy in May 2000 to turn off something called Selective Availability, a deliberate signal degradation that stopped civilian use of GPS being as accurate as that available to the military. Turning Selective Availability off made GPS ten times more accurate. How do you get kids to keep a GPS tracker with them at all times? Install it in a handheld games console.
Tiger Telematics Europe Ltd
QA Registrars Ltd, The Studio, St Nicholas Close, Elstree, Herts, WD6 3EW
QA Registrars Ltd, The Studio, St Nicholas Close, Elstree, Herts, WD6 3EW
Tiger Telematics Inc established its European subsidiary on 18 December 2002. This was about six months after the merger which created Tiger [1]. The Studio was home to a company called QA Registrars who don't seem to be active any more. I'm pretty sure their job was just to register companies because Tiger Telematics was only there from 18 to 30 December before their address moved closer to central London.
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| July 2026 |
It was a long way to go to take a single photo. A lengthy Thameslink train ride to Elstree & Borehamwood station followed by a mile walk in the 27 degree heat of an English summer. I thought it was going to be like one of the forced route marches in Beau Geste without the romance but actually it was surprisingly nice. It got rural very quickly and I saw another low flying Red Kite which I failed to photograph. Anyway, I arrived after a 25 minute walk, took my photo, looked for somewhere to buy a drink, couldn't find anywhere, so turned round and walked 25 minutes back. What I lemon I am.
Klaco House, 28-30 St Johns Square, London, EC1M 4DN
Tiger Telematics's corporate records are still browsable on Companies House because despite being wound up in 2006, the company wasn't dissolved until 2021.That gives you some idea of how complicated things got. The records show Tiger moved to Klaco House and stayed there until March 2004. It's another holding address. Klaco House was home to KLSA Chartered Accountants. Their name crops up on the form appointing Steve Carroll as director in February 2003. Steve Carroll would go on to be chief technology officer for the Gizmondo.
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| July 2026 |
This St John's Gate. It's a part of London which never fails to take me by surprise. A flat square opening straight off Clerkenwell Road. It is in fact half a square. The other half is on the other side of Clerkenwell Road which was driven right through the middle of the square in 1870. The old stone gate is the south entrance to what was once the inner precinct of Clerkenwell Priory. Number 28 is virtually next to the gate itself. Last time I was here was to check out an office for Beyond Software; which was, more or less on the opposite side of the square.
Tiger Telematics spent about a year at Klaco House. This must have been while the specification for the console was worked out and a partner found to design and build the thing. Tiger would handle only marketing and sales. Everything must have been ticking away nicely until August 2003 when Nokia started consumer testing a combined mobile phone and handheld gaming console called the N-Gage. This was a serious blow. The N-Gage was due to launch in October 2003. Way before Tiger's own machine was ready. The N-Gage had been designed as competition for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance but what it actually did was trample right into an area Tiger must have assumed they had to themselves. Tiger's response was to take their European subsidiary out of corporate statis and begin running it properly.
Gametrac Europe Ltd
Step one, in August 2003, was to change the name of the European company from Tiger Telematics Europe to Gametrac. The name of the console. A good choice, it described exactly what the device would do. Steve Carroll stepped down as director to be replaced by Tiger's founder Carl Freer. He was joined by Stefan Eriksson and Peter Uf. Then at the end of September, Gametrac Europe, as it was now called, issued a press release giving details of the console and naming their design and production partner as Plextek.
Plextek are a long established engineering and consulting company based in Great Chesterford, near Saffron Waldon. They do a lot of work in the defence field which is why there's no photo here. Think again, if you expect me to pull out my camera and rock up to the headquarters of a company who list radar systems as one of their areas of expertise. They'd literally see me coming. Plextek also released their own press release and gave a sketch of the capabilities of the new system:
Gametrac is a trendy pocket-sized mobile console which brings together highly desirable content including three-dimensional gaming, SMS texting (with predictive text), MP3 music, video playback (MPEG4) and an in-built digital camera. The handset will also be Bluetooth enabled (allowing multi-player gaming) with accessories such as SD flash cards and stereo headsets available too.
The GPS module on board is highly accurate and can even provide in-building coverage (unlike most commonly-known GPS modules). Parents can keep track of the device at most times. This, combined with all the other 'cool image' features, makes the product a 'must have' for children...
Delivery of the initial batch of 25,000 units is due within the second quarter of 2004. Advanced orders are already in place.
The specifications for the N-Gage and Gametrac are very similar. Both were, kind of, smartphones in a pre-smartphone world. The key differences: The N-Gage didn't do GPS and the Gametrac didn't make calls. It used GPRS (a data standard sometimes referred to as 2.5G) to send text and multimedia messages. Both consoles were ahead of the curve compared to the handheld gaming devices of the time and PDAs but the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP were just around the corner. Tiger Telematics must have been relieved when the response to the N-Gage was lukewarm. Sales were less than Nokia hoped but still good. Nokia sold 1 million units around the world in the first year which suggested there was an eager market out there for the Gametrac.
Gizmondo Europe Ltd
1 Meadow Gate Avenue, Farnborough Business Park, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 6FG
1 Meadow Gate Avenue, Farnborough Business Park, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 6FG
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| June 2026 |
I was nervous about going to Meadow Gate Avenue. I mean, I'm always worried some obscure tragedy is going to befall me, but I had special reason to be concerned about this address. It's inside an airport. It wasn't in March 2004 but the boundaries have since expanded. I'd checked out the area on Streetview and been depressed by a dire trio of signs warning me the area was monitored by CCTV and Trespassers were "liable to arrest without warrant." Great. I planned to stay on the public side of the fence, where I'm well in my rights to take a picture, but I didn't really want to have to explain this to some red-faced official. I got there as late as possible, 5pm on a June Sunday afternoon, and parked outside a convenient Costa Coffee right round the corner from my goal. It was a hot afternoon. The beginning of the heatwave that gripped most of Europe in the last week of June. Inevitably what happened next was an anti-climax. I walked round the corner and snapped a photo. The sky didn't fall in so I walked a bit closer and snapped another. The gate was closed so this was the best angle I was going to get. I wasn't cocky enough to walk right up to the gate and take a photo through it.
Gametrac Europe changed their name with in a month of arriving at Farnborough. They and the console were now called Gizmondo. The Gametrac name didn't stick because there seems to have been a conflict with a pre-existing trademark although I can't find any solid details. Development continued and Gizmondo was revealed at the 2004 E3 in May. THE GUARDIAN was sceptical:
The show's unique machine, however, was UK company Gametrac's Gizmondo, which is due to reach the shops in September, initially in Toys "R" Us stores, priced at a rather hefty £199. Not only does the Windows CE machine run games, video and MP3s, it also has a camera and, bizarrely, GPS satellite tracking built in. You can also use it to send short messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS), and it has Bluetooth.
Unfortunately, Gizmondo fails to convince. The company claims to be working on a game that employs GPS, but its presence seems pointless. And despite its Windows CE compatibility, the games lack sophistication.
Two days later, in a letter to THE GUARDIAN, William Moore replied in the system's defence:
Steve Boxer wrote (To have and to hold, May 20): "Unfortunately, Gizmondo fails to convince. The company claims to be working on a game that employs GPS, but its presence seems pointless. And despite its Windows CE compatibility, the games lack sophistication. Gizmondo is not the only obscure handheld gaming machine due to reach the UK soon."
Shame on you guys! It's not like Gizmondo is a mega-company like Sony. Stop slamming them. Also, it is a UK company. A few ill words will destroy it, and that would be a shame because these guys deserve some respect and recognition for their hard work. Everybody already knows they are the underdog - no need to repeat it and be negative. Gizmondo puts together a great product and needs all the help it can get to win the support of developers.
Jensen Button pitched in to help. He signed up in July 2004 to endorse a game called Chicane which was being developed by Handheld Games and would include a soundtrack by Will.I.Am. Everything was coming up Gizmondo,
Everything stayed coming up Gizmondo for the rest of the year but very slowly things started to go wrong. First, the proposed Q4 release slipped back to 2005. EDGE summed things up in the January 2005 issue, which also covered the Nintendo DS launch in Japan and the first public sightings of Sony's PSP:
Gizmondo limps to launch
UK-designed handheld sneaks out boasting a new graphics chip, but suffering stock shortages and no gaming software
Tiger Telematics’ press statements have called it 'the softest of soft launches', but compared to the razzmatazz of the Sony and Nintendo roadshows, Gizmondo's debut bordered on the flaccid. After signing a last-minute deal with Nvidia to equip the device with a more powerful GoForce 3D graphics part, manufacture and testing of the console had to begin afresh. As a result, the company was unable to supply any units to retail at launch, instead distributing the small number of units it had ready to some of the 560,000 customers it claims have made internet pre-orders. Another casualty of the GoForce switch has been the machine's gaming launch line-up, with the first three titles, SuperDrop Mania, StuntCar Extreme and Angel Fish, delayed until after Christmas. Other titles are being reworked and optimised to take advantage of the machine's newly increased power.
It's an embarrassing start for the Gizmondo, whose aggressive television and internet advertising had been timed for the launch, but the machine's range of capabilities mean it is not nonsensical as a standalone purchase. Running Windows Media Player 9, and allowing music and video files to be copied direct to the device's SD-card storage via USB 2.0, it is a more immediately credible multimedia device than any other gaming hybrid yet announced. Current owners will also be able to distract themselves with the machine's GPS functions while they wait for the games to arrive. Qut of the box, the device is capable of sending an update to any mobile phone number, allowing the recipient to see a map displaying the Gizmondo's (and the Gizmondo owners) current location,
EDGE was complimentary about the power of the hardware and the report went on to end on a more hopeful note:
After such a disastrous launch, there is a temptation to write off the Gizmondo, but as its developer reveals more of its future plans, there are more and more indications that to do so might be unwise. The intention now is to have stock ready for a full retail rollout, supported by optimised game software, by early February
The launch actually came a little later than February. Something that did happen that month, the Formula One team Jordan started legal proceedings against Gizmondo who had agreed to sponsor the team for most of the 2003 season and all of the 2004 season. Jordan claimed the trademark problem which forced Gizmondo to rebrand was behind the breaking of the agreement.
Saturday March 19 2005 finally saw the Gizmondo go on sale at the company's brand new Regent Street shop which opened the same day. The Apple store at the top of Regent Street had been open since Saturday 20 November 2004. The Gizmondo press release noted:
Over 2000 fans swarmed the store to see Pharrell Williams, Dannii Minogue, Verne Troyer, Busta Rhymes and Lennox Lewis pop by the shop on it's opening day, and to get their hands on the first Gizmondos. The store's allocation of units was completely gone before the doors were finally shut again at 6pm to prepare for the evening event.
The Gizmondo launch party later that evening at Piccadilly's Park Lane Hotel was one of the most star-studded events of the year. With performances from Sting, Jamiroquai, Pharrell Williams, Clipse and Busta Rhymes, the VIP guest list was overwhelmed with an A-list line up hosted by US comedian, Tom Green, and Aussie babe favourite, Dannii Minogue. In addition to over 2000 Gizmondo fans, the who's who of London's trend-setting fashion, music and film scenes converged and carried the party into the small hours of the morning.
The press release is hazy about the precise number of Gizmondo units sold. A website called 3rddrawerdown.com says the stores allocation was 1000. If you couldn't make it to the Park Lane hotel, you could watch the party on MTV.
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| CLACTON EVENING GAZETTE 21 March 2009 page 9 |
The PR blitz continued. Customers who didn't want to pay £229 for the console could buy a version which cost £100 less. The price drop was subsidised by adverts which would be sent to the console three times a day.
A series of 10 single day cycling races scheduled through 2005 were sponsored, becoming the Sigma Sport / Gizmondo Series. Gizmondo the racehorse started competing in August 2005 and won at least one race. Stefan Eriksson raced a Gizmondo-sponsored Ferrari 360 Modena GTC in the 2005 24 hour race at Le Mans.
But not all the news was good. In June, Handheld games filed lawsuits against Gizmondo Europe and Tiger Telematics Inc for breach of contract:
Handheld Games claims that it had a contract with Gizmondo Europe to develop a racing title called Chicane: Jenson Button Racing, based on the Jenson Button license which was acquired by Gizmondo with much fanfare some months ago.
However, according to Handheld, Gizmondo subsequently failed to provide development kits and license information required to create the game, and the firm claims that it has now started work on the game with another developer.
May 2005 saw the European launch date pass without anything much happening. Then in July, Tiger Telematics settled the legal dispute with the Jordan Formula One team. At the same time THE REGISTER was reporting rumours that Gizmondo were planning to move jobs from Farnborough to Los Angeles:
The company announced last week that it will open an LA-based office to lead the charge for the upcoming US release of its gaming/communications device. At the same time, it said it will “streamline” its UK operation.
It has now emerged that this will involve laying off most of Gizmondo’s UK-based team and shipping everything to the states in order to cut costs and increase profit margins in what it hopes will be a far more lucrative market. Pre-streamlining, the firm’s head office in Farnborough had 49 staff, with another 70 at its Manchester design studio.
Many of the British staff are apparently fresh out of university and in their first job.
The US launch was due in August but postponed. It finally took place on October 22 2005, after being undermined by the announcement of a better, revamped widescreen model. Then in November 2005, Gizmondo filed its latest accounts with Companies House. The records up to December 2004 make grim reading. A loss after tax of £5,342,262. in 2003. A loss after tax of £49,010,589 in 2004. Wages and salaries for the 37 staff totalled £5,731,729. An average salary of £154,911 which seems generous for a company staffed by people in their first job fresh out of university. Was it possible the average was driven up by some people being paid a lot more. The directors' emoluments (the total compensation received by directors for their services, including salary, bonuses, pension contributions, and other benefits) was £6,191,551 and the chairman's emoluments were £2,260,202. Under the Going Concern section the accounts note:
As at 31 December 2004, the Group's balance sheet reflected a net liability position of £54,350,251 (2003: net liabilities of £5,342,260) and for the year ended on that date the company recorded a loss from ordinary activities of £49,010,589 (2003: £5,342,262). Therefore there is significant uncertainty concerning whether the Company will continue as a going concern.
The auditor thought there was significant doubt Gizmondo would carry on trading for the next 12 months. That's not good. That's really not good at all. In fact, it's bad. Another line in the accounts which suggested an uncertain future was this one:
On 18 October 2005 Carl Freer, Peter Uf and Stefan Eriksson Carl Freer, Peter Uf and Stefan Eriksson resigned as directors of the company.
Six days after the trio resigned, AFTONBLADET, one of Sweden's biggest daily newspapers, published a story on 24 October 2005 based on the most recent Tiger Telematics Inc report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in America. If the UK accounts were bad, the SEC report was worse. The AFTONBLADET report starts:
1.6 billion in losses and multi-million dollar compensation to the three Swedish leaders in Gizmondo. The question is - where does the money come from?
Aftonbladet has mapped the money flow in Gizmondo.
The story included an entertaining sidebar:
Executives have received long prison sentences
They were called the Uppsala Mafia.
In the early 1990s, they were involved in a number of high-profile crimes.
In the early 1990s, they were involved in a number of high-profile crimes.
Among other things, they tried to defraud Bankgirocentralen of 22 million kronor...
Stefan "Fat-Steffe" Eriksson, 43.
1993: Sentenced to five years and six months in prison for preparation for the aggravated extortion of counterfeit banknotes, unlawful threats, etc.
1994: Another five years in prison for fraud against Bankgirocentralen.
Peter Uf, 42.
1993: Sentenced to two years and six months in prison for preparing to commit a serious offence of counterfeiting.
1994: Sentenced to a further six years in prison for aggravated receiving, aggravated fraud and assault in court proceedings.
Peter Uf and Stefan Eriksson resigned in advance of publication of the story. Carl Freer went as well. He hadn't been accused of any wrongdoing but it called into question a lot of the decisions he was involved with as managing director.
And that was pretty much it for Gizmondo Europe. The company went into administration in January 2006 and was wound up in February. MTV Networks Limited and Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited were listed as creditors.
How many units did the Gizmondo sell? Plextek's original press release noted there was a commitment for them to manufacture 25,000 units. They would have delivered that batch but there is no indication Plextek was asked to make any more. So, 25,000. The worst selling console ever.
Pearl Assurance House, 319 Ballards Lane, North Finchley, London, N12 8LY
The liquidation process began a 15 year saga. Begbies Traynor was one of two companies appointed to handle the process, and one of their senior partners, Paul Davis spoke to the LOS ANGELES TIMES in May 2006:
“They’ve lost a hell of a lot of money, more money than most people see in a lifetime,” said Paul Davis, a British liquidator investigating company records. He said between January and September 2005, Gizmondo took in about $2.6 million but lost more than $263 million. “They are staggering numbers by anybody’s standards. It’s clear the directors lived lavish lifestyles with fast cars, planes, boats and travel. But certainly that wouldn’t account for all of it.”
The same month, Paul Davis also gave a quote to THE SUNDAY TIMES:
“No matter how much you spend on cars, watches and directors’ perks, you just can’t get through a sum as big as this quite as quickly as Gizmondo did.”
WIRED also talked to Paul Davis for their October 2006 article:
To untangle the company’s finances on behalf of creditors, the High Court in London appointed the formidable firm Begbies Traynor. But even with almost 100 boxes of records that Gizmondo’s UK accountants have provided, Begbies investigators have struggled to get a fix on the company’s accounts. "There are a variety of different names under which funds were allocated, transferred, and spent," says Paul Davis, senior partner at Begbies. "They used layers and layers of companies that were involved in very complex dealings. It takes a lot of sorting out." Davis is particularly interested in "certain details that suggest money was transferred to offshore accounts."
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| June 2026 |
When a company goes into liquidation the corporate address is moved to the office of the liquidator. Two liquidators were appointed and Pearl Assurance house was the address of David Rubin & Partners. The second, as mentioned above was Begbies Traynor.
According to the official statement from the liquidators, David Rubin and Asher Miller from David Rubin and Partners are responsible for liaising with the creditors and for realising the value of Gizmondo's assets, while Paul Davis and Tim Dolder, liquidators at Begbies Traynor, will be conducting an investigation into the causes of the company's collapse and extent of the losses.
gamesindustry.biz February 22 2006
For reasons I don't understand Begbies Traynor were reappointed as liquidator in 2009 and the address of Gizmondo moved again.
32 Cornhill, London, EC3V 3BТ
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| July 2026 |
40 Bank Street, 31 Floor London, E14 5NR
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| July 2026 |
This is where the story of Gizmondo Europe ends in October 2021, somewhere up there on the 31st floor. The liquidation process lasted three times as long as the company and had the same number of address changes. The 26 page notice of final account prior to dissolution makes for entertaining reading and gives a sense of the long drawn out process:
The main concern surrounding a sale of the Company's assets was the value attributable to the intellectual property rights ("IPR") that vested with the Company... the majority of trademarks and community designs for the "Gizmondo" were registered in the name of the Company. However, the patents over the device were registered in the name of the Company's US based parent, Tiger Telematics Inc. ("Tiger").
Whilst negotiating the terms of a sale to Tiger, the assets of the Company were also offered to a number of other parties, including the Company's competitors. We received significant initial interest, but due to the Company being unable to pass title to the patents and its lack of tangible assets, we were unable to obtain any offer that approached the amount being negotiated with Tiger.
Despite the continued assurances of Tiger, and the drafting and agreeing of contracts, the finance being sourced from the Swiss-based capital fund did not materialise and the sale to Tiger did not complete. Another interested party, Fortnox Security Services Limited ("FSS") was identified after the sale to Tiger fell through.... FSS had negotiated the licence of the IPR, not owned by the Company, from Tiger.
Protracted negotiations were undertaken... the sale did not complete.
The word protracted appears four times in the report. Protracted negotiations, protracted correspondence (twice), and protracted sales negotiations. There's also an account of a debt totalling £1,350,816.33 owed by another company, Game Factory Publishing Limited who entered into a deal to develop ideas for Gizmondo:
On 4 August 2005, the Company CHAPS transferred £1,500,000 to the account of Gamefactory and on 9 August 2005 a further £560,000 was also CHAPS transferred to that account. The Company's directors advised that despite the above payments the development provisions of the GCL Agreement were not complied with and the Company terminated the GCL Agreement in December 2005. Accordingly,
upon the appointment of the Joint Liquidators, the Company's debtor's ledger recorded a balance payable by Gamefactory of £1,350,816.33.
Our investigations revealed that Gamefactory was a dormant entity in the process of being struck of the Register of Companies... The Company's balance sheet identified a single asset, an outstanding debt of £1,350,816, coincidentally the same amount owed to the Company. Our further investigations revealed that the funds advanced to Gamefactory by the Company totalling £2,060,000 had been transferred, immediately on receipt, to another entity, Northern Lights Limited ("Northern Lights"), and this company was the debtor of Gamefactory.
You can still download the basic report for Gamefactory from Companies House where will learn Martin Stein was a director of Gamefactory. He was was also director of a company called Northern Lights Software Ltd along with Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson. Northern Lights is a relatively common business name in the records of Companies house and Northern Lights Software Ltd and Northern Lights Ltd, mentioned above, could very well be two different companies.
In case you were worried, the report also wraps up the story of Gizmondo the horse:
The Company purchased a 50% holding in a thoroughbred racehorse named "Gizmondo" in October 2004. At the date of appointment, the trainer, M.L.W. Bell Racing Limited ("MLW") had not been paid training and stabling fees since September 2005, which amounted to in excess of £5,000. As such, MLW had written to the Company, prior to the Joint Liquidators appointment, advising that they intended to sell the horse at the Ascot auctions in an attempt recover their outstanding fees. We concurred with offering the horse for sale and "Gizmondo" was sold on 21 February 2006 for £15,080 and the Company share was £7,450.00.
Gizmondo Store, 175 Regent Street, London W1
The Gizmondo shop opened Saturday 19 March 2005 and closed the day the company went into liquidation. Not only is the store long gone, the retail unit itself has been absorbed into what is now the Regent Street branch of Lululemon.
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| June 2026 |
UK: RESISTANCE visited in April 2005. They found the place tremendously amusing and described the place as:
As stupid an idea as an undersea supermarket. Or a shop that only sells pre-chewed pen lids. Or a shop you go in to catch flu.
Behold its unwelcoming and forboding facade!
Wow. It's all new and clean. Just like the Apple store, only not selling anything you aspire to own. It'll still be new and clean when they board it up in a couple of months, too! And look! There's a person actually inside it!
French website pockett.net also visited around June 2005 while they were in London to cover something called MEM05, the Mobile Entertainment Market. They were also underwhelmed but less funny with it:
Our first visit was brief and left us with very mixed feelings. The understated storefront didn't really catch the eye; the display window was practically empty! That sense of emptiness was confirmed once we stepped inside: with only seven titles in its catalog, the Gizmondo struggled to fill the two floors of the flagship store, which was decked out in the console's signature black and white. A few salespeople and two hostesses stood chatting in the middle of the store, barely acknowledging our presence. There wasn't a single customer or curious passerby in sight. In fact, over the course of our two-hour visit (spread across two days), we saw only one person actually buy the console—a Frenchman!
The UK: Resistance raid had clearly left some emotional scars which had an effect on the atmosphere of the second visit:
And—amusingly enough—there were three "bouncers," presumably hired to handle the throngs of fans flocking to the shop every day. The next day, they even tried—repeatedly and despite their instructions—to stop us from taking a few photos.
But there was something even worse: the consoles lining the walls had mostly crashed.
Pockett.net seems to be a dead website, so I'm not too fussed about nicking one of their photos which shows the outside of the shop. It is unwelcoming and forbidding.
10 Eden Place, Cheadle, Cheshire, SK8 1AT
Warthog Games was founded in 1996. They were taken over by Gizmondo in 2004 when they were being described as a "troubled UK games maker". The sale was completed by Tiger Telematics Inc and worth $8.1 million, consisting of $1.13 million in cash and 500,000 Tiger shares. The renamed Gizmondo Manchester studio seems to have been responsible for four games on the doomed console; Richard Burns Rally, POD: Point of Destruction, Sticky Balls, and Trailblazer.
The last was a remake of Sean Southern's 1986 game for Gremlin Graphics. Gizmondo was able to publish this because Sean Southern was working for Warthog at the time of the takeover:
In my spare time, I tried getting a Trailblazer track going, and it grew from there,” he explains. With the demo shown to bosses “desperate to get games ready for the launch”, a few late nights saw Shaun complete a dazzling version of his game, which boasted Tron-like visuals and undulating tracks. “Unfortunately, it ran so fast it overheated the chip inside the Gizmondo, and the game would freeze, so they had to make hardware changes,” laughs Shaun.
RETRO GAMER issue 76 page 89
RETRO GAMER issue 76 page 89
Gizmondo Studios Helsingborg
Gasverksgatan 9, 252 25 Helsingborg, Sweden
Gasverksgatan 9, 252 25 Helsingborg, Sweden
Gizmondo Texas
7000 West William Cannon, Suite 2150 Austin, Texas 78735
Austin
Warthog owned two other studios, one in Sweden and one in Texas. What became Gizmondo Studios Helsingborg started out in 1987 as a company called CrossTechnics. They had renamed themselves 42-Bit AB by the time Warthog took them over in 2003. Their Wikipedia page notes they were later taken over by troubled UK games maker Eidos in 2006, so I wonder if they were one of the assets sold by the liquidator to recover money to pay off Gizmondo's debts.
It's tricky for me to drive to Helsingborg so don't expect a photo but you can see Gasverkgaten 9 [3] on Streetview.
Gizmondo Texas started out as a studio called Fever Pitch and they were acquired in 2003. This is where they were based.
Warthog also owned a team called Sourcery Development Ltd and Zed Two, the latter a company brought from veteran developers John and Ste Pickford. I have very little information about either but presumably the two businesses were folded into Gizmondo somehow.
Gizmondo Stockholm?
The Wayback Machine also holds an archive of a contact page from the Warthog website; dated 29 December 2004. This includes an address for a Stockholm office at Kungsgatan 50, 111 35 Stockholm,
Sweden. I'm not aware of anything Gizmondo/Warthog related in Stockholm so if you know please let me know.
Please leave a comment or send an email to whereweretheynow@gmail.com. I am also on Bluesky @shammountebank.bsky.social
[1] This is going to take a bit of explaining. Tiger Telematics Inc was formed out of a merger between Floor Décor an American carpet retailer based in Jacksonville, Florida, and Carl Freer's Swedish company Eagle Eye Scandinavian, established in 1999 and for all I know named after the singer Eagle-Eye Cherry. Apparently this made sound business sense because Floor Décor shares were traded under the American pink-sheets [2] system. The takeover allowed Carl Freer to raise money for Tiger Telematics by issuing shares. Does this seem weird? Yes. The problem is because everyone knows the end of the Gizmondo story, it's easy to look at everything they did with a sceptical eye. Psygnosis was born out of a 1972 company called Robert Smith & Sons (Engineers Birkenhead) Ltd. That's pretty weird as well but no one questions it because Psygnosis was a massive success.
[2] Look, my understanding of all this is hazy at best and if you keep asking questions we're going to be here all day. From investing.com:
"Pink Sheet stocks are equities that are traded OTC (Over The Counter) instead of through a major exchange. Unlike the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the Nasdaq, Pink Sheets don’t have a physical trading floor or a central location where stocks are bought and sold. Instead, Pink Sheets refer to a decentralized over-the-counter (OTC) market for trading stocks. The name “Pink Sheets” originates from the days when stock prices were printed on pink paper and distributed physically. Today, it’s all digital, but the name has stuck...
Pink Sheets offer a distinct platform for companies, especially smaller ones, to list their shares and raise capital without the stringent requirements and costs associated with major exchanges. This creates an intriguing space where a diverse range of companies, from startups to more established entities, can find a place for their stocks to trade."
[3] It means Gas Work Street apparently. How glamourous.
[3] It means Gas Work Street apparently. How glamourous.
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