Ubisoft Ltd

Spaces - Guildford Units A-J, Austen House, Station View, Guildford GU1

Look at that. A 2025 game, Assassin's Creed: Shadows. I never expected that to happen when I started this blog. The most up to date I've previously been was using the 1998 cover of Starship Titanic for The Digital Village. I had plenty of choice when I was looking for an Ubisoft cover. The company has been going since 1989. Yes, I know. I know Ubisoft is a French company and they've actually been running since 1986 but this blog is called Where Were They Now? not Où Étaient-Ils Maintenant? If you want coverage of those first three years and a picture of 14, Rue Erlanger, 75016, Paris then start your own blog or send a photo to me at whereweretheynow@gmail.com

Mythos Games

19 The Rows, The High, Harlow, Essex, CM2

Julian Gollop quite rightly casts a long shadow over this blog. He created Rebelstar Raiders for Redshift, Chaos for Games Workshop, and, while I worked at Virgin Interactive Entertainment, I was lucky enough to be peripherally involved in the production of Magic & Mayhem. And then there's UFO: Enemy Unknown. Oh, UFO: Enemy Unknown. If there's one game that can eclipse my love for Highway Encounter, it's UFO: Enemy Unknown. It may be my favourite games ever. And it will be forever called UFO: Enemy Unknown, none of this X-COM nonsense.

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.

 

Eidos Interactive

Wimbledon Bridge House, Hartfield Road, SW19

"Later, we IPOed the company by reversing into a shell called Eidos (hence the name change from Domark) on the London Stock Exchange." That's Dominic Wheatley, one of the two founders of Domark, describing on Reddit the baffling financial procedure which lead Domark to become Eidos. A common theme on this blog is the failure of any of the big players of the UK software industry to survive as independent entities; Gremlin, Ocean, Psygnosis, they all fell one-by-one. Would Eidos Interactive be the company to break that curse?

Dalali Software

29-33 Church Street, Croydon, CRO

You've never heard of Dalali Software? Join the club. I hadn't and it turned out I'd played a couple of their games. I stumbled across the name while writing about Micromega. I had visited lemon64.com to try and learn something about Jinn Genie, Micromega's sole Commodore 64 release, and learned it was written by Dalali Software. The name cropped up again a few weeks later when I was writing about Mirrorsoft. Then I learned they were also responsible for Front Runner's version of Boulderdash. This was my cue to leap into action and do nothing for a couple of years. I like obscure but apparently this was a level of obscure too deep for me. And so Dalali hung around on my to-do list without ever rising to the top.

Quicksilva

Palmerstone Park House, 13 Palmerstone Road, Southampton

I didn't realise how interconnected the British software scene could be. The story of Mastertronic blurs into the story of Virgin Games. The Liverpool software houses give the impression of all living in each other's pockets. You can't write about Software Projects without writing about Bug-Byte and you can't write about Bug-Byte without writing about Imagine and you can't write about Imagine without writing about Denton Designs. The same is true of Quicksilva. Its story is part of the story of Argus Press Games. And also part of the story of Electric Dreams. And part of the story of Activision. Oh, and part of the story of Bug-Byte. I feel I should make one of those complicated maps with pins stuck in it and string joining the pins together.

Atari Corp (UK) Ltd

Atari House, Railway Terrace, Slough, SL2

Atari was founded in 1972, and it took 10 years for them to cross the Atlantic and set up their UK subsidiary. This was well after Commodore, who arrived in 1969 in their guise as a manufacturer of typewriters, and just before Activision, who set up their UK branch in the autumn of 1983. At least, that's the simple answer. I thought the story of Atari UK was going to be an easy one to write. I was wrong.   

Infogrames

Mitre House, Abbey Road, Enfield, EN1

Infogrames, the company whose bloody fingerprints are all over the dagger in the back of the corpse of the UK software industry.

Commodore Computing International vs ZZAP!64

Some time in April 1986, Anthony Jacobson, the publisher of COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL sat down and wrote a blistering editorial for COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY which tore into rival Commodore 64 magazine ZZAP!64. The article presumably did what was intended, which was to generate some interest in CCI and provoke a response from ZZAP editor Roger Kean.

Thalamus

 1 Saturn House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7

I'm pretty sure only four magazine publishers set up software houses; EMAP with Beyond, Argus Press with Argus Press Software, Mirror Group Newspapers with Mirrorsoft and, of course, Newsfield with Thalamus. The surprise is not so much that other publishers didn't dip their toe into the water, it's that Newsfield were so late to the party. Thalamus was founded in 1986, when smaller software houses were being squeezed out of the market and either making the decision to become developers rather than publishers, see Design Design and Realtime, or stepping back from the market completely like Durell and Microsphere.

Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd

675 Ajax Avenue, Slough, SL1

I'm paddling in my ignorance here. I don't know much about Commodore and my usual sources aren't helping. Much of the information online is about the history of the US parent company, Commodore International, rather than their UK arm and the sheer popularity of the Commodore 64 tends to swamp any list of results I generate. Even the normally reliable Companies House is letting me down. Their register tells me this about Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd; company number 00956774. 

Company name COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES (U.K.) LIMITED
Company number 00956774
Incorporated on 24 Jun 1969
Dissolved on 05 Dec 2000
Registered office address at dissolution Not available
Download Report Not available

Six facts and two of those are "Not available". This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Argus Press Software

KNOWLEDGE CHECK! Which magazine publisher was the first to open a software house? If you said Thalamus, the label from Newsfield Ltd, then sit down because they weren't founded until 1986. Mirrorsoft is not right but it's a better guess than Thalamus, as is Beyond Software, owned by East Midlands Allied Press (or EMAP to their friends), both companies were founded around the same time in late 1983. Obviously the correct answer is Argus Press Software because that's who this update is about.

Electronic Arts

"American Invaders on the Way," was how COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES announced the existence of Electronic Arts to British computer owners. "Electronic Arts is the name of a new American software house set up by a group of independent games designers." (January 1984 page 16 ). The news was a little out of date. The company had been founded two years previously by ex-Apple Director Trip Hawkins. Now, for the first time, its games would be available in the UK, distributed by Centresoft, who would go on to launch US Gold later in 1984. "If US are Gold then we must be Platinum!" Trip Hawkins later told C&VG*

Activision / Mediagenic / Activision Blizzard

15 Harley House, Marylebone Road, London, NW1

Good grief. No other company has sent me trekking so far around and about London and the outer reaches of the M25. I've occasionally thought I could organise these articles into nice walks. I could do you a trip around Liverpool, or Manchester, or along the line of Domark's southwest London offices. I couldn't do that for Activision. Just the addresses inside the M25 produce a walk 22 miles long. I didn't know true existential despair until I'd compiled all 13* addresses Activision UK used -and continue to use- in their long history. Even now I'm worried I've missed one**. If Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through that could mean another move for the company. Oh god, no. No updates. No updates.

*Wrong. It's actually 16.
** I did.

Domark

Ferry House, 51-57 Lacy Road, Putney, SW15

When I started this blog I diligently wrote out a list of companies I wanted to cover. Some companies went on the list because they hit my nostalgia buttons, some went on the list because they were big names and it would be odd if they were missing, some went on the list because I thought they might be of specific niche interest to some people, some went on the list because I had a story about them I wanted to tell, and -let's not beat around the bush here- some went on the list because I knew they would be easy. Domark didn't make that first list. Or the second one. Or a couple of the subsequent follow up lists. They didn't even make my backup in-case-of-unforeseen-emergencies list. It's clear I really like lists. What is less clear is, why is there a Domark-shaped hole in my nostalgia? 

Cascade

 Suite 4, 1-3 Haywra Crescent, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG1

"It is impossible to tell you everything about the 50 games on CASSETTE 50 but they include many types such as maze, arcade, missile, tactical, and logic games to suit most tastes in computer game playing. CASSETTE 50 will appeal to people of all ages and the games will provide many hours of entertainment for all the family at a fraction of the cost of other computer games." I remember seeing the advert for Cassette 50 and crunching the numbers in my head. Alien 8 was lots of fun at £9.95 and that was just one game. Logically Cassette 50 had to be fifty times better than Alien 8. It's just mathematics. And it comes with a free calculator watch. Neat! 

Ariolasoft

Carl-Bertelsmann-Str 161, 4830 Gütersloh

In 1983 Ariola Records, the music division of German conglomerate Bertelsmann, set up a software company. This company was named, unsurprisingly, Ariolasoft and went to become the German distributor for Activision, Electronic Arts, and the Sega Master System. The company also published original games including Vermeer, Kaiser, and Ooze: Als die Geister mürbe wurden. Ariolasoft renamed itself United Software in 1990 and was taken over by the German division of MicroProse in 1993. Which is all very interesting but this blog is about the UK software industry and Britain hasn't been a part of Germany since Doggerland was submerged by the rising North Sea.

System 3

Blenheim House, Ash Hill Drive, Pinner, HA5

It's lunchtime on a grey Sunday in November. I'm walking up Elm Park Road, in Pinner, towards Ash Hill Drive. When I arrive I will take a picture of a Tesco superstore. I don't need to take a picture of Tesco superstore but it's built on the site of an old System 3 office and thus must be done for completeness (Gollum-like whisper, completeneessss, my precious). My walk takes me along Marsh Lane, past Elm Park Court, along Pinner Green, with a final turn left just before Cuckoo Hill. It gives this slice of Metroland a rural feel; lovely. I hope the toilets are open.