Mosaic Publishing

187 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ

"What's the oldest computer game based on a book? This is obviously a trick question because I expect people to say The Hobbit (Melbourne House 1982) or if they are feeling clever Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Supersoft, 1981) which was released with the permission of Pan Books. The actual boring correct answer is probably Space War which was inspired by science fiction stories including the Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. This game was playable on a PDP-1 mainframe and written in 1961; I said it was a trick question [1].

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.

Molimerx

1 Buckhurst Road, Town Hall Square, Bexhill

I was browsing the first issue of COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES when I bumped into an advert for a company called Molimerx. I'd never heard of them. I would love to claim my spider-sense tingled and I realised this was something worth writing up, but I didn't. I just moved on to the next page. A few months later I was trying to dig up some information on Program Power and there on page 158 of the August 1980 issue of PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD was another advert in the same style. A full page advert with eye-catching black and white art, and the slogan "INNOVATIVE TRS-80 SOFTWARE FROM THE PROFESSIONALS." This was odd. Molimerx were old. They were a big professional software house at a time when, my understand was, big professional software houses didn't exist.