Adventure International (UK)/ Calisto Software/ Adventure Soft UK / Horror Soft / Adventure Soft Publishing / Headfirst Productions

119 John Bright Street, Birmingham

I really blundered in to this one. This company, sorry, group of companies, turned out to be way more complicated than I expected, I mean, just look at that title. What a nightmare! To increase the potential jeopardy, I'm writing this introduction before I've got the whole of the article sorted out. Can I complete it? Can I make any sense of the whole thing? Let's find out, shall we?

Tynesoft

≠Unit 3 Addison Industrial Estate, Blaydon, Tyne & Wear, NE21

Tynesoft is my story of failure, hope, failure, more hope, more failure, a bit more hope, and a disappointing final near miss. The company was always on my would-be-nice-to-do list but I just couldn't justify a trip to Newcastle upon Tyne. The city is just too far out of my normal orbit to be practical. So I set the company aside, which was a shame because it's definitely one I wanted to cover. (Failure).

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.

Zeppelin Games/Merit Studios Europe/Eutechnyx/Zerolight

25 Osbourne Road, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2

"The north-east is a bit of a remote outpost for UK software now that Tynesoft has bitten the dust. This last bastion of Geordie publishing specialises in budget software." That's how THE ONE described Zeppelin Games, entry number one in their Software Landmarks of the UK article in October 1991. It's a short entry for a company which ended up being a big player in the UK games industry although I'm not 100% sure the company is still running today. I'll get to that later.

Micromega

230-236 Lavender Hill, London, SW11

Pop quiz hotshot. It's 1983. You've been given £7500 to promote a new-ish software house. What do you do? If you were Neil Hooper, newly appointed sales manager at Micromega you'd spend £4000 of it on television advertising. HOME COMPUTER WEEKLY (7 June 1983 page 37) went into more detail. "Though TV ads for videogames are nothing new, Micromega is the first home computer software company to advertise its wares on television." Sadly this historic advert hasn't survived or, if it is lurking out there on a videotape (go and check now!), it hasn't made the leap onto Youtube. Micromega were understandably proud of their small step into a new medium and for the next few months their print adverts carry the strapline "AS SEEN ON T.V.!!"

State Soft

Business & Technology Centre, Bessemer Drive, Stevenage, SG1

This is where I rectify a mistake made in the planning stages of this blog. I wanted an early entry to cover a company responsible for a notable Commodore 64 game, and Boulder Dash was always an unmistakably C64 title for me; probably because of trips to a friend's house where the game was always on the menu. However because my background is the C64's bitter rival the ZX Spectrum I defaulted to the World of Spectrum entry for my research and concluded Front Runner was solely responsible for all UK versions of Boulder Dash. It wasn't. It turns out Boulder Dash in the UK has the most convoluted licencing history possible with every version released by a different company; C64 (State Soft), Spectrum (Front Runner), Amstrad (Mirrorsoft), BBC (Tynesoft), MSX (Orpheus). It's tempting to wonder what First Star (the original USA publishers) were thinking but I suspect they were thinking, "cor, aren't we making a lot of money licencing this game."