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?

Platinum Productions

Ayrshire

I'm slowly transferring residents of the Untraceables gulag to pages of their own (see the CGL article for a full explanation why). I was originally planning to move New Generation Software this week but they've unexpected turned out to be more complicated than expected, so they'll have to wait. We're off on a trip to Ayreshire instead. Can I learn anything new about Ocean and US Gold's preferred development house for converting games to the ZX Spectrum?

The Edge/ Softek

12/13 Henrietta Street, London, WC2E

It seems silly to sit here and worry about whether I should write about Softek and their better known label The Edge, but that's exactly what I'm doing. I know it's silly. I don't have to write about anyone if I don't want to. I'm not a journalist. I have no obligation to history. I will suffer no consequences if I don't write about Softek, it's not like someone's going to drop an anvil on my head. Plus, I'd quite like to write about Softek. They were one of the first companies I thought of when I started planning this blog. They wrote some notable games. So why am I so worried? Because Softek's founder was Tim Langdell.

Virgin Games

I briefly worked for Virgin Games during its Virgin Interactive Entertainment regeneration. This was the second of my three grazes along the side of the UK games industry (for graze number one, see Graftgold). I never met Richard Branson because the company split from the Virgin mothership in 1993, before I joined, and used the brand name under licence. However, my time there was exactly the glamourous never-ending parade of celebrities you'd expect. Dave Prowse once passed through the office and signed a copy of Tie Fighter. The company receptionist was Simone Hyames, Cally from Grange Hill. I saw Feargal Sharkey a couple of times. And, I was once nearly in the same room as Chaos and X-Com designer Julian Gollop. That's right, look impressed.

The Untracables

The worst thing in the world for a blog dedicated to tracking down the offices of old software houses is an incomplete or non-existent postal address. This then is my own personal Room 101; developers and publishers who cannot be located because they never made their address public or because 35+ years of urban redevelopment have been unkind to the history of UK software houses. These are the Untraceables. Presented in alphabetical order because there must be structure even in an Orwellian nightmare.