Former Commodore 64 users... what were your favorite software houses?

Cafe Society
1

Since we’re revisiting our 8-bit computing days, I found an old tape of a BBC documentary following the Christmas season for Imagine, a software house in the UK. They eventually went under but were brought back by Ocean. They did really good “arcons” (arcade conversions) like Yie-Ar Kung Fu.

I thought Firebird was a great house. Firebird was a BT-owned budget house and sold their games for £1.99. Most of it was really good as well. Mastertronic was probably the first house to sell for £1.99, but it was a mixed bag - some good stuff, but a lot of crap.

I thought Epyx did great sports sims, like Summer Games, Winter Games, etc. Also the Impossible Mission series, which was fantastic.

Ultimate Play The Game were mostly Speccy early on, but then they did some good action adventure games. I thought they did a wonderful job packaging the games. They had that cool box instead of a crummy cassette box.

Commodore themselves had some good games - namely International Soccer and International Basketball. Crap graphics but very playable.

Accolade had so many great games, all expertly done, playable, and very good looking. Ace of Aces, Hardball!, Test Drive, First and Ten.

U.S. Gold licenced a lot of American games in the UK, so they were always a good bet.

As far as those that disappointed me, probably Activision. I remember being bored out of my mind with Ghostbusters and Pitfall II.

What were your faves/most hated houses?

2

Electronic Arts – Mail Order Monsters, Archon (both with the same goblin sprite!), Adventure Construction Set, Bard’s Tale, Racing Destruction Set… and some of the more entertaining software ads to be in Compute! Gazette

3

I’d love to see an updated version of most of EA’s classic 80s games.

I liked Earth Orbit Stations, another decent game that should be updated.

4

Don’t forget that the Buntings worked for them early on, putting out masterpieces like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Heart of Africa, and Murder on the Zinderneuf.

Yeah, the square-circle-triangle logo was usually a sign of a great game.

5

It’s Bunten, and I’m pretty sure that Dan/Dani Bunten was the only Bunten on staff.

I liked, Origin, and Microprose.

6

Like me, you are correct and wrong! Ozark Softscape, the design house that put out M.U.L.E. and others included Dani Bunten and her brother Bill Bunten.

Still, not bad for off the top of our heads twenty years later.

7

SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.) for all of the D&D and RPG games.

8

And they gave us the venerable Elite.

Mastertronic started out as a publisher for independent programmers, as did Electronic Arts if I’m not mistaken.

9

Hands down, Electronic Arts. Beyond that, I enjoyed Microprose the most. Plus Firebird gave us one of the most original computer games of all time, The Sentry aka The Sentinel. (Interestingly enough, it seems most online sources, including Wikipedia, list the game as The Sentinel. The C64 version I had, also manufactured by Firebird, was called The Sentry.)

10

I always enjoyed Llamasoft games. Attack of the Mutant Camels, Hovver Bovver…

11

I have to play it old school and nominate Infocom for some great text adventures. I was 10 years old when I solved Zork III and the HHGTTG. That was some great and satisifying fun.

12

Infocom for me, too. I just loved those text adventure games. The puzzles were clever, the parser was amazing, and when you completed the game you felt as if you’d accomplished something meaningful.

13

Man, all of these were great!

I mean it sincerely when I say that a well-designed game is a well-designed game; fancy graphics, cinematics, and interfaces make up only about 5% of what makes a game great or enduring.

14

Back then it was Ozark Electronic Arts (with the EOA logo). They had some decent titles. But my favorite was the original MicroProse titles. Their flight sims are what got me into programming.

15

I third Infocom. Far and away my favorite games of the era.

I have the entire text adventure collection on this computer and play them more often than I am willing to admit.

16

I thought Jeff Minter was great. Like a real-life Neil Pye, only with computer skills. Wonder what he is up to now?

Ocean’s stuff was always well-packaged.