Microdeal

 "We were somewhere around Exeter on the edge of the Dartmoor National Park when the Ramipril began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I need to go to the toilet; I'll stop at the Moto services..." For several years I'd wanted to visit Cornwall so I could stick a pin in the map for Microdeal. Clearly, the solution was an epic road trip that would surely mark me out as the successor to Hunter S. Thompson.

Fantasy

The way in which companies go bust is often telling, There are, of course, very strict legal rules covering the matter, but they are often easy to get around. Bug-Byte's receivers informed all creditors (including CRASH) of the situation Micromania's Dominic Wood wrote a letter to the effect that he was bankrupt — at least you know where you stand. Fantasy's demise was less ethical.

Mikro-Gen

Not to sound dismissive but I've gone backwards and forwards several times on whether to cover Mikro-Gen. They are an old company and similar in many ways to others I've already written about; like Bug-Byte, Quicksilva, dk'tronics,Automata, Hewson Consultants, Artic, J.K. Greye and so on, and so on. I have two main questions. One, what can I say that makes this article different? Two, is it wise to reveal these doubts in the introduction when I should be using it to lure people in?

Electric Dreams

31 Carlton Crescent, Southampton, SO1

No, I haven't gone nuts and you are not seeing double. Electric Dreams really did release two different games called Aliens. One in the winter of 1986 and the other in the spring of 1987. Yes, it was confusing when it happened in the eighties as well. Electric Dreams is the story of what Rod Cousens did after Quicksilva, so lets catch up on the back story first. 

New Generation Software

Freepost Oldland Common Bristol, BS15 5BR
(really, 16 Brendon Close, Oldland Common, Bristol BS15 6QE)

It took me a while to understand that J.K. Greye Software and New Generation Software were two completely different companies. One appeared to take their name from an advertising slogan used by the other. Malcolm Evans wrote ZX81 games for one and ZX Spectrum games for the other. One sold old ZX81 games originally written for the other. One started in Bath and moved to Bristol. The other started in Bristol and moved to Bath. You can see why I was confused.

Artic

396 James Reckitt Avenue, Hull, HU8 0JA

Artic Computing is a classic success story. It was founded in 1981 with £20 of pocket money by an 18-year-old schoolboy called Richard Turner. Since then it has developed into a software company with an annual turnover of around £750,000, and plans for worldwide expansion.

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.

Automata UK

65(a) Osbourne Road, Portsmouth, PO5

Most of the pages of this blog exist because they give me a warm hug of nostalgia. "I loved Highway Encounter," etc, etc, etc. But occasionally things get more complicated. Newsfield, for example, was supposed to be my lovely stroll down memory lane but instead forced me to consider the difference between the job of my dreams and the realities of working with actual fallible humans. Automata is also less straightforward. Positioned deliberately outside the mainstream of UK software, they were, and remain, a contradiction. A counterculture business. Simultaneously obscure and well known. Lionised, today, and yet my memory is of not liking them much. Was I a stuffy teen conformist, unable to cope with anything which didn't fit into my plastic-fantastic routine of Top of the Pops on Thursday and Howard's Way on Sunday? Am I, as Star Trek once put it, Herbert?

Quicksilva

Palmerstone Park House, 13 Palmerstone Road, Southampton

I didn't realise how interconnected the British software scene could be. The story of Mastertronic blurs into the story of Virgin Games. The Liverpool software houses give the impression of all living in each other's pockets. You can't write about Software Projects without writing about Bug-Byte and you can't write about Bug-Byte without writing about Imagine and you can't write about Imagine without writing about Denton Designs. The same is true of Quicksilva. Its story is part of the story of Argus Press Games. And also part of the story of Electric Dreams. And part of the story of Activision. Oh, and part of the story of Bug-Byte. I feel I should make one of those complicated maps with pins stuck in it and string joining the pins together.

Grandslam Entertainment

Grandslam House, 56 Leslie Park Road, Croydon, CR0

Grandslam Entertainment was born in 1987, renamed from Argus Press Software, which had been spun off from Argus Specialist Publications, which was itself the hobby magazine division of Argus Press, which was itself a publishing company owned by BET PLC. Until 1985, BET PLC had been known as British Electric Traction and they were an absolutely enormous conglomerate who owned absolutely everything from Wembley Stadium to waste disposal specialists Biffa. They were big. And big was out of fashion in 1985. So BET PLC began divesting itself of its share of laundry companies and television companies and crane companies, and slimmed itself down. Until, in 1996, BET PLC was taken over by Rentokill and that's the end of their story.

Atarisoft

I'd like to go back to the Atari well one more time to talk about the short-lived Atarisoft UK range. I originally planned to make this part of the Atari article but it was just too long. In America, the label was a success, at least at first. Whatever plans Atari UK had for the range were disrupted at the end of July 1984 when Warner Communications sold the consumer division of Atari to Jack Tramiel. Atarisoft UK rapidly stalled and although a few games slip out across the remainder of 1984, its surprisingly difficult to make sense of what happens or why.

Atari Corp (UK) Ltd

Atari House, Railway Terrace, Slough, SL2

Atari was founded in 1972, and it took 10 years for them to cross the Atlantic and set up their UK subsidiary. This was well after Commodore, who arrived in 1969 in their guise as a manufacturer of typewriters, and just before Activision, who set up their UK branch in the autumn of 1983. At least, that's the simple answer. I thought the story of Atari UK was going to be an easy one to write. I was wrong.   

Thalamus

 1 Saturn House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7

I'm pretty sure only four magazine publishers set up software houses; EMAP with Beyond, Argus Press with Argus Press Software, Mirror Group Newspapers with Mirrorsoft and, of course, Newsfield with Thalamus. The surprise is not so much that other publishers didn't dip their toe into the water, it's that Newsfield were so late to the party. Thalamus was founded in 1986, when smaller software houses were being squeezed out of the market and either making the decision to become developers rather than publishers, see Design Design and Realtime, or stepping back from the market completely like Durell and Microsphere.

Vortex Software

Vortex House, 24 Kansas Avenue, Salford, M5

I've written before that the foundation of this blog was a list of companies I wanted to cover for different reasons; some were big names, some had an interesting story, some were of niche interest, and some hit my nostalgia button. This is the latter. I've got a huge soft spot for Vortex Software. I spent hours playing T.L.L. and even more playing Highway Encounter. I love Highway Encounter. I think it's brilliant. It's a real neglected gem of a game as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough when the ZX Spectrum is mentioned. It's a Top 10 title. It looks great. It plays great. Its got some really clever gameplay elements. And that ending! We'll get to the ending later.

Enterprise / Entersoft

31-37 Hoxton Street, London, N1 

Once upon a time there was a company called Samurai Computers Ltd. Unfortunately for boring business reasons it had to change its name to Elan. This name also didn't stick and the company briefly toyed with the name Flan but everybody laughed. So the company changed its name again, to Enterprise. And then it finally released the computer it had been developing for nearly three years.

A&F Software

Unit 8, Canal Side Industrial Estate, Woodbine Street East, Rochdale, OL16

A was Doug Anderson and F was Mike Fitzgerald and when they got together it was murder to establish a software house in Manchester. A&F Software is now mainly remembered for a single game, Chuckie Egg, but the company was more than a one-hit-wonder. It shares some similarities with Silversoft. Both companies were pioneers of the early computer games industry and struggled as the market became more established and professional in the mid-eighties, and finally sold out to a bigger brand. The first question, of course is, is the company called A&F or AF or A+F or A'n'F? The answer, it was known as all four at various times across its history. I'll try to use the correct version as we go on because I find that's the kind of perverse pedantry I find funny.

Activision / Mediagenic / Activision Blizzard

15 Harley House, Marylebone Road, London, NW1

Good grief. No other company has sent me trekking so far around and about London and the outer reaches of the M25. I've occasionally thought I could organise these articles into nice walks. I could do you a trip around Liverpool, or Manchester, or along the line of Domark's southwest London offices. I couldn't do that for Activision. Just the addresses inside the M25 produce a walk 22 miles long. I didn't know true existential despair until I'd compiled all 13* addresses Activision UK used -and continue to use- in their long history. Even now I'm worried I've missed one**. If Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through that could mean another move for the company. Oh god, no. No updates. No updates.

*Wrong. It's actually 16.
** I did.

Realtime Games Ltd

Prospect House, 32 Sovereign Street, Leeds, LS1

"Why would you order a taxi from where I don't know where it is? Why didn't you order it from the station?" The person on the phone outside Leeds station was having a bad day. Don't drive to Leeds I was told but public transport apparently carried its own frustrations. I left him to it, and headed towards Prospect House which I was delighted to discover was barely five minutes walk from the station. If only they could all be this easy.

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.

Bug-Byte

Mulberry House, Canning Place, Liverpool, L1

Last year, on an intermittently showery day in December, I went for a walk round Liverpool. My route was carefully plotted and I managed to take in the ex-offices of Software Projects, Imagine, Odin, Thor, Denton Designs, and Bug-Byte. What I hadn't taken into account, because it was the early days of the blog, was this material effectively represented five months of updates and once it was spread out I'd be writing about my grand day out almost a year later. Still, here we are, ending with the company that began it all. This then is the final movement of my Liverpool Oratorio.