Mizar Computing

104 Bradwell Road, Bradville, Milton Keynes, MK13 7DH

There's an Peanuts comic strip where Lucy very reluctantly reads a story to her brother Linus. "A man was born... he lived and he died! The end!" That's the story of Mizar Computing. I feel bad for being glib but that's pretty much all we know. Mizar were founded in 1984 by Robert Waller and Richard Woodward. The company released one game and closed. The end. They failed. As did so many companies. It's the circumstances of their failure I find interesting because the short story of Mizar and their game Out of the Shadows is also the story of CRASH magazine, one year old and newly confident, and thinking they could make a game a hit by sheer force of will. And learning they couldn't.

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.