Bitmap Brothers

C1, Metropolitan Wharf, Wapping Wall, London, E1

What's cooler than being cool? Ice cold! Obviously. What did it take to be cool in the 1990s? Shades. Check. A leather jacket. Check. White shirt. Check. Jeans. Check. Helicopter (optional). Check. No one was cooler than the Bitmap Brothers.

Software Creations

2/4 Oxford Road, Manchester, M1

"I can't believe I walked past the Ocean offices for years without realising the significance of the building, likewise Software Creations." This sentence, posted at the Spectrum Computing forum by user Daveysloan sent me into a bit of a tailspin. I'd prepared a trip to Manchester in August 2022, taking in Ocean (obviously), Design Design (also, obviously), Vortex (hopefully), A 'n' F (maybe, if I could make the train to Rochdale work). However the trip was cancelled at the last minute because of the chaos caused by Avanti West Coast's new and improved timetable. The day I should have been in Manchester I read a thread on the Spectrum Computing forum which spun off into a discussion about the addresses of software houses. This was obviously right up my street, until Daveysloan mentioned Software Creations. I could add them to the Manchester list. That wasn't a problem. The problem I'd got was, who the heck were Software Creations?

Domark

Ferry House, 51-57 Lacy Road, Putney, SW15

When I started this blog I diligently wrote out a list of companies I wanted to cover. Some companies went on the list because they hit my nostalgia buttons, some went on the list because they were big names and it would be odd if they were missing, some went on the list because I thought they might be of specific niche interest to some people, some went on the list because I had a story about them I wanted to tell, and -let's not beat around the bush here- some went on the list because I knew they would be easy. Domark didn't make that first list. Or the second one. Or a couple of the subsequent follow up lists. They didn't even make my backup in-case-of-unforeseen-emergencies list. It's clear I really like lists. What is less clear is, why is there a Domark-shaped hole in my nostalgia? 

POWER PLAY magazine: Realtime Games interview

 Fast-paced reality

Where the programmers of »Realtime Games« are at work, the processors smoke. Fast 3D graphics and thrilling games keep home computers busy and players in suspense

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.

Cascade

 Suite 4, 1-3 Haywra Crescent, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG1

"It is impossible to tell you everything about the 50 games on CASSETTE 50 but they include many types such as maze, arcade, missile, tactical, and logic games to suit most tastes in computer game playing. CASSETTE 50 will appeal to people of all ages and the games will provide many hours of entertainment for all the family at a fraction of the cost of other computer games." I remember seeing the advert for Cassette 50 and crunching the numbers in my head. Alien 8 was lots of fun at £9.95 and that was just one game. Logically Cassette 50 had to be fifty times better than Alien 8. It's just mathematics. And it comes with a free calculator watch. Neat! 

Virgin Interactive Entertainment

@338a Ladbroke Grove, London, W10

This post should have been easy to write. I worked for Virgin Interactive Entertainment for several years but the words seemed to drip onto my keyboard and lacked any real impact. That's wrong for this incarnation of Virgin Games (parts one and two of the story are here) because the company was all about buzz and sensation (or hype and cheap shock tactics, if you are more cynical). Then I found a link to a Kickstarter for Sex, Drugs & Video Games! The 90s Virgin story- London & LA by Tim Chaney, Managing Director. The "warts and all" story of the company's rise to fame "or more correctly infamy," It sounds like an amazing work of gonzo journalism. Hyperbolic. Bombastic. Pyroclastic. It doesn't match my memory of working there but I was in the basement.

Hewson Consultants / 21st Century Entertainment

56b Milton Trading Estate, Milton, Abingdon, OX14 4RX 

I like RETRO GAMER magazine a lot but sometimes they make life difficult for me. I was in the very early stages of thinking about this update when I settled down to read issue 241, and what did I find on page 38? An article called A Tribute to Hewson by Graeme Mason. A full page on the history of the company plus another seven pages of game highlights, along with Andrew Hewson's memories of each title. [Public service announcement -Most UK libraries subscribe to a free service called PressReader which includes RETRO GAMER. If you log on via the PressReader app you should be able to see a couple of years worth of back issues. End of public service bit]. With RETRO GAMER covering the history of Hewson Consultants this is, I guess, the story of how I recently drove to an industrial estate near Oxford. I'll try not to be too passive aggressive. 

Piranha / Macmillan Software

 4 Little Essex Street, London, WC2R

"It's a lovely pub isn't it?" The question was directed at me as I started to line up my camera. It was one of the two men who had been standing at the side of Milford Lane discussing the Cheshire Cheese pub and a point of maintenance. "Yes," I agreed, because it is a nice pub. The pair were, I learned in the subsequent conversational back and forth, investigating alternative ways of lighting the sign because the current lack of access is a pain whenever the bulb blows. "Good luck with the sign," I said cheerily as I took my picture and walked away. I didn't have the heart to tell the bloke I was actually more interested in the blandly modern office on the opposite side of Little Essex Street.

Roger Kean

Roger Kean, the co-founder of Newsfield magazines and editor of CRASH and ZZAP!64 died on 3rd January this year, barely five months after the death of his partner Oliver Frey.  This isn't an obituary as such, it's more a way to try and get down my thoughts on someone who I never met but who had a huge impact on my life. I wouldn't be sitting here in front of my computer on a sunny January morning if I hadn't picked up issue 13 of CRASH from the Hempstead Valley WH Smith's*. What's surprising about that issue of CRASH is how opaque it is to the first time reader. The first page of the magazine talks about the failure of a Great Space Race, what? Then references "a piece of PR from Hutchinson Computer Publishing", what's PR? Oh, and someone called Angus Ryall has upset John Merry of Scorpio Gamesworld; is that bad?

Ocean

6 Central Street, Manchester, M2

There's a running joke in the Mary Whitehouse Experience Encylopedia where Rob Newman gets increasingly frustrated at having to define simple words. I feel this entry for Ocean should read a bit like his definition of Tree. Ocean: "Don't be stupid you know who Ocean are. You know, Ocean. OCEAN! OCEAN! It's Ocean. Jesus..." The company is already well documented. There's a history of Ocean by Chris Wilkins and Roger Kean. Mark R Jones wrote Load Dij Dij which covers his experience working there and captures the excitement of going from an external observer of a company, to an insider. RETRO GAMER has half a dozen articles, there are umpty-hundred videos on Youtube about Ocean's best games and their worst and their history and their rise and fall. The BBC covered Ocean at least twice, in their notorious 1984 Commerical Breaks documentary, and they sent Keith Chegwin there to check it out in 1988. This blog entry might be redundant before its even begun.

Lookback at 2022

I update this blog once every two weeks, and this year the second update of December falls right on Christmas Day itself. I didn't want to break the two week cycle but the idea of doing a standard post didn't feel quite right. After trying and failing to come up with a suitably seasonal idea I've decided to take inspiration from CRASH's annual Lookbacks and simply take stock of the blog itself.

Design Design / Crystal

125 Smedley Road, Manchester, M8
 

 "I look upon Design-Design as a viable commune," S. Brattel. 

There was always something different about Design Design (née Crystal). The games were great but the twiddly bits round the edges seemed more important; obscure references on high score tables, the password to SPECTACLE, was/is Big Simon taller than Kevin Toms, and so on. Design Design built a loyal fanbase on these details and through a good relationship with CRASH magazine cultivated a reputation as a subversive company who were seriously irreverent about games. I'm tap dancing around the word cult here, because that's a term normally associated with niche interests and Design Design were never niche.

Virgin Mastertronic

16 Portland Road, London, W11

 It's a brave person who types the name Virgin into the Companies House register; 6984 matches found. Even the more specific Virgin Mastertronic brings up several pages of results but there's obviously only one of real interest. The company now known as Sega Europe Limited. The story so far: Building work on a London Underground extension unearths some unusual prehistoric remains and a strange rocket-like object that a bomb disposal expert deduces to be an unknown Nazi weapon.... The early days of Virgin are here and, for the completists, this is where you can read about Mastertronic.
NOW READ ON.