Power Computing

Power Computing look like a pretty obscure company. How obscure? As far as I can tell, they only released three games Breathless (1995), The Big Red Adventure (1997), and Red Mars (1999). All three were released for the Amiga after Commodore had declared bankruptcy. Unless you know differently, there's not even a cover online for the Power Computing version of Red Mars That's all pretty darn obscure. Here's the Rod Serling-type twist, the company is still trading successfully today.

Core Design

Speaking in the House of Commons in 2010, Chris Williamson, MP for Derby North, described the city as "the birthplace of Lara Croft". His fellow MP Mike Weatherley disagreed and said the following year: "Lara Croft was born in Wimbledon". Technically they are both right. Eidos, the publisher of the Tomb Raider games was based in Wimbledon but Chris Williamson is more correct because Lara Croft's creators, Core Design, were based in Derby.

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?

Questions in the House

It's there in black and white on page 15 of THE GUARDIAN (29 August 1985). "Questions were asked in Parliament." The questions were about US Gold's game Raid Over Moscow -tag line, "Play it like there's no tomorrow." Except THE GUARDIAN is wrong. The game was controversial in the UK, just ask Monsignor Bruce Kent of CND, but no questions were asked in the UK Parliament. It was in Finland where a communist MP questioned distribution of the game. This was disappointing to learn but I found myself wondering whether any of our MPs did ever talk about games or home computers. There's only one way to find out.

Virgin Mastertronic

16 Portland Road, London, W11

 It's a brave person who types the name Virgin into the Companies House register; 6984 matches found. Even the more specific Virgin Mastertronic brings up several pages of results but there's obviously only one of real interest. The company now known as Sega Europe Limited. The story so far: Building work on a London Underground extension unearths some unusual prehistoric remains and a strange rocket-like object that a bomb disposal expert deduces to be an unknown Nazi weapon.... The early days of Virgin are here and, for the completists, this is where you can read about Mastertronic.
NOW READ ON.