Penguin, Puffin, Collins, Heinemann, Hodder & Stoughton, Century, Arrow, Hutchinson, and Hill MacGibbon

The success of The Hobbit must have left book publishers wondering if they were also sitting on a fortune. The game cost £14.95, expensive at the time (less so today; it works out to just over £50) but the price didn't impact its success. Sales were being estimated at north of 100,000 copies by November 1983 [1]. What if everyone sat down and started singing about gold?

Mosaic Publishing

187 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ

"What's the oldest computer game based on a book? This is obviously a trick question because I expect people to say The Hobbit (Melbourne House 1982) or if they are feeling clever Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Supersoft, 1981) which was released with the permission of Pan Books. The actual boring correct answer is probably Space War which was inspired by science fiction stories including the Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. This game was playable on a PDP-1 mainframe and written in 1961; I said it was a trick question [1].

The Digital Village

11 Maiden Lane, London, WC2E

The game with the magic words Douglas Adams on the cover. I remember Starship Titanic coming out. It was during that short period from 1996 to 1999 when I was gainfully employed by Virgin Interactive Entertainment and trying to work out if there was any way I could convert my job in Technical Support into some sort of meaningful career in the games industry. I had a friend who worked for a game magazine and I talked to them about Starship Titanic during the bubble of publicity which preceded release. What surprised me at the time was their response, they were already disappointed with it.