3DO

Here come some absolutely gross assumptions guaranteed to make experts wince. The Mega Drive and SNES are commonly referred to as part of the fourth generation of consoles, but in the UK it was the second generation at best. The eighties were dominated by 8-bit computers, not consoles. It was only really as the eighties ended that Virgin Mastertronic began to have some success selling the SEGA Master System. Around the same time, home grown companies had a go at cracking the console marker. Konix really tried to be a contender with the Multisystem in 1989. Amstrad had a go with the GX4000 console in 1990. But nobody cracked it because consoles didn't break into the wider public consciousness until the period kickstarted by the release of Tetris for the Game Boy, in September 1990, and consolidated by the June 1991 release of Sonic the Hedgehog. That's when the UK market became ripe for plucking.

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.

Sportscene Specialist Press/Dennis Publishing

14 Rathbone Place, London, W1P

CRASH, YOUR SINCLAIR, and SINCLAIR USER which was your favourite?* I was a CRASH kid but around 1988 it was clear the crown was slipping from CRASH's head and YOUR SINCLAIR picked up that crown and wore it proudly for the next few years. ZERO, Dennis' 16-bit magazine, carried the YOUR SINCLAIR crown on to the next generation, and then PC FORMAT made it a hat trick. Newsfield never really succeeded in producing another magazine that matched the love/nostalgia for CRASH and ZZAP. I'm not familiar enough with EMAP's titles to say whether they passed the success of COMPUTER AND VIDEOGAMES forwards; although I know a lot of people have a soft spot for the MEAN MACHINES titles. And Future. Well, their titles were frequently wildly successful but they always seem stamped from a template; magazines like AMIGA POWER were the exception. I think the point I'm groping vaguely towards is that Sportscene/Dennis was unique in producing a trilogy of beloved magazines.
(*No one ever says SINCLAIR USER.)

Konix

35 Rassau Industrial Estate, Ebbw Vale, Gwent, NP3

British hardware never had the same international profile as British software. The Enterprise had a degree of success in Hungary. The Dragon likewise in Spain. Acorn, Sinclair, and Amstrad all had a greater impact but you'd be hard pushed to describe any of them as globally famous. The Sinclair Spectrum sold five million units in total, a figure dwarfed by the 17 million Commodore 64s sold around the world. Then in 1989, one company came up with a device that could change everything. A console that could take on the world. 

Newsfield Ltd

1/2 King Street, Ludlow, Shropshire

So we're doing magazines now are we? Well yes, obviously. The tagline of this blog is "seeking out Britain's pioneering software houses," but I've covered Argus Specialist Press and assorted computer manufacturers under the fig leaf justification that those companies did occasionally chuck out a few games. I could have done the same for Newsfield because they spun off a software house called Thalamus but it seems unnecessary. Newsfield were an essential part of the UK software scene in their own right, as were other publishers like Future (AMSTRAD ACTION) or Sportscene/Dennis (YOUR SINCLAIR and YOUR 64), or hardware companies like Romantic Robot (the various Multiface machines) and joystick kings Konix. A whole support industry grew up around software companies like the ecology of a coral reef and to not talk about it is to not tell the whole story.