J.K. Greye Software

 16 Park Street, Bath, Avon, BA1

I don't think I believed my friend when he said he had a computer at home. In fact, I don't think I really knew what a computer was at the time. We're taking late 1982, early 1983 at the most, and my friend was telling me about this scary game he played which was "not suitable for those of a nervous disposition." It had a dinosaur in it and you had to escape a maze, and that was pretty much all I knew. It sounded terrifying. By the time I actually sat down to play the game I was all wound up. Not suitable for those of a nervous disposition. They wouldn't be able to say that if it wasn't true. And how did you know if you were of a nervous disposition, anyway?

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.

Amstrad / Amsoft

Brentwood House, 169 King's Road, Brentwood, CM14

Brentwood not Brentford. Brentwood not Brentford. Brentwood. Brentwood. I've got a blind spot on the location of the Amstrad HQ which must be a result of reading too many Robert Rankin books.  I'd normally weed out mistakes before publishing but in this case I'm going to allow rogue Brentfords* to remain; to see how many there are. Let's call it a science experiment. Amstrad moved to Brentwood in 1984, 16 years after the company was founded and the same year the CPC 464 was launched.

Imagine

5 Sir Thomas Street, Liverpool, L1

The 1984 collapse of Imagine Software was a seismic event for the UK software industry. Imagine had become one of the biggest and best known software houses in just over 18 months of existence. Its professionalism, marketing, and overall corporate image seemed to point the way for the rest of the fledgling software industry. There is also the irony that a company as obsessed by image and marketing as Imagine should have its collapse documented in real time by a BBC film crew making a documentary for a series called Commercial Breaks, "A series that follows the fortunes of entrepreneurs around the world as their stories unfold."