Dave Lawson

What struck me while watching the BBC documentary The Battle for Santa's Software was the absence of Dave Lawson. He's only seen in the background of the segment about the Bandersnatch packaging. Where he is also the only person in the room who doesn't speak. I wanted to track down more information about him because Dave Lawson is the line of continuity through the founding of Imagine and into Psygnosis. He joins Bug-Byte and leaves with Mark Butler to set up Imagine. He's present through the chaos of the liquidation and Finchspeed and Fireiron and the fight over the rights to Bandersnatch. He sets up Psygnosis with fellow ex-Imagine director Ian Hetherington, and then abruptly leaves in 1988. Dave Lawson died aged 62 in August 2021. There are plenty tributes to him online but they all follow the lead of Martyn Carroll who wrote about him for Eurogamer. All the tributes hit the same basic beats of Imagine, bankruptcy, Psygnosis. I haven't done anything very much different so what I wanted to do was track down interviews with him and give him the chance to be heard in his own words.

Psygnosis

Regular readers of this blog might have worked out the area of my cone of ignorance. I have a very sharp and narrow knowledge of eighties games and software houses which gets wider and hazier into the nineties and fades out almost entirely post-millennium. What company released Rockstar Ate My Hamster? Codemasters! Who released any game in the Call Of Duty series? EA? Activision?

Sony Electronic Publishing / Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

This was supposed to be Pysgnosis but that will have to wait for another two weeks. I'd planned a quick look at Sony's UK presence as a follow up but events [1] have conspired to make me swap them round. This is a more bare bones article than normal. It's Sony. You know. Sony. The PlayStation. The console that sold 100 million units. You probably owned one or knew someone who did. If you don't remember the PlayStation then you probably remember the PlayStation 2 which sold 160 million units or the PlayStation 4 (117 million). It's only really the PlayStation 3 and 5 [2] which let the brand down, and they both managed sales of around 85 million so I imagine Sony is not to distressed. Anyway, that's why this is a less detailed write up than normal. Consider it an apéritif for Psygnosis. (Secretly, it's because this is being written to a very short turnaround and because I know bugger all about Sony in the UK. I hope to get out of here quickly before my ignorance shows too much.)

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?

Lookback at 2025

Happy Christmas and a merry New Year. Once again it's time to take a break from the two-week update schedule and cast an eye over the blog itself and answer the big questions like what are the Top 10 most popular articles? And will Softek/The Edge be number one again? Right now, I don't know. It's time to use all available fingers and toes to do some counting.

Penguin, Puffin, Collins, Heinemann, Hodder & Stoughton, Century, Arrow, Hutchinson, and Hill MacGibbon

The success of The Hobbit must have left book publishers wondering if they were also sitting on a fortune. The game cost £14.95, expensive at the time (less so today; it works out to just over £50) but the price didn't impact its success. Sales were being estimated at north of 100,000 copies by November 1983 [1]. What if everyone sat down and started singing about gold?

Orpheus

The Smithy, Unit 1, Church Farm, Hatley St. George, Nr. Sandy, Beds, SG19

Orpheus were a relatively short-lived software house who were notable for a couple of games. First, an MSX version of Boulder Dash when they joined the increasingly long line of companies who licenced First Star's game. Secondly for The Young Ones. The looks-like-but-wasn't-officially-licenced game of the BBC comedy series.

dk'tronics

23 Sussex Road, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth

Since the 48K Spectrum was launched the opportunities it offered has attracted peripheral manufacturers throughout the world.

One of these manufacturers was bound to emerge as the "brand leader" and in the case of the Spectrum this turned out to be DK'tronics. The company is based in Saffron Walden in Essex and proudly boasts a history dating back to the ZX80. All the company's products are manufactured in England at their own factory and they have now established themselves as world leaders, exporting to over 30 countries!

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).

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. 

Load Runner: The Galaxy's First Computer Comic

Ever heard of LOAD RUNNER? I certainly hadn't. It's a real curiosity. A computer-themed comic aimed at 9-16 year olds and featuring a mix of stories told with artwork, photographs, and text. LOAD RUNNER was published fortnightly by ECC Publications who also made WHICH COMPUTER PRACTICAL COMPUTING, IBM USER, and SINCLAIR PROGRAMS and SINCLAIR USER; until they sold the last two to EMAP in September 1984. LOAD RUNNER arrived on 23rd June 1983 and ran for 13 issues, with the last issue dated December 8th 1983.

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].

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.

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?

FREEZE-ZX: a premier gaming zine for ZX Spectrum enthusiasts

People are still making physical objects and you should support them.