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Graftgold
Graftgold was an independent computer game developer that came to prominence in the 1980s, producing numerous computer games on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms. History The Hewson Era The studio Graftgold was formed in 1983, when Steve Turner quit his day job as a commercial programmer to concentrate on producing computer games. When the work became too much for him to do alone, he hired a close friend, Andrew Braybrook, to work for him. After a small period of time developing games for the Dragon home computer, Graftgold soon turned their attention to the more lucrative Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum markets. Much of Graftgold's early success came about through their association with Hewson Consultants. Formed by Andrew Hewson in the early 1980s, Hewson Consultants became one of the UK's most successful computer game publishers. Whereas many publishers at the time relied on larger parent companies to handle the manufacturing of their products, Andrew Hewson owned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quazatron
''Quazatron'' is an action game developed by Graftgold, and released in 1986 by Hewson Consultants. It was designed by Steve Turner for the ZX Spectrum. Plot In ''Quazatron'', the player-controlled droid (KLP-2 "Klepto", from the Classical Greek κλεπτω, ''steal'') attempts to destroy all the other robots in the underground citadel of Quazatron and subsequent locations on the planet Quartech. The droid has been sent to deactivate the hostile alien droids there which can be done by shooting them, pushing them off their programmed routes to destruction, ramming them, or taking control of them via the sub-game. Gameplay Klepto is maneuvered across individual levels of Quazatron, which can be navigated between via a system of lifts. Levels may include floors at different heights, ramps, information points, recharge points and patrolling robots. It is Klepto's aim to destroy all the other robots, whereupon the lighting on that level is deactivated. This can be done by damaging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ranarama
''Ranarama'' (also ''Rana Rama'') is a top-down '' Gauntlet''-like action game developed by Graftgold and published by Hewson Consultants in 1987. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers. The title appears to be a pun on ''rana'', a genus of frogs. The game concept is similar to a previous game by Steve Turner for the ZX Spectrum called '' Quazatron'', which was itself inspired by ''Paradroid'', created by Turner's Graftgold colleague Andrew Braybrook. In 2004 it was featured as one of the games on the C64 Direct-to-TV. Plot The main character is Mervyn, a sorcerer's apprentice whose botched spell turns him into a frog just in time to save him from an invasion of evil magic-users who slay his mentors. Mervyn's arcane capabilities are intact, and the game's aim is to hunt down the attackers. Gameplay Mervyn has four types of magic and eight increasingly potent and power-consuming spells for each: ''Offensive'' spells serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Realms (video Game)
''Realms'' is a 1991 real-time strategy game produced by Graftgold Ltd. for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. It was published by Virgin Games. In ''Realms'', the player has to build cities, collect taxes, create troops and fight enemy cities and troops in order to defeat their opponents. Introduction ''Realms'' shows an intro as the game loads. During this intro, it tells the story of a prince watching his late father, the king being immolated at sea. Mourning, he sheds a tear, and his mourning is rewarded by the gods. He is struck by lightning, which forms and serpent in hands, an emblem of his right to rule the world. A tagline appears afterwards, stating "There can only be one... just make sure it's yours." After inserting and loading the second disk, the game can start. Gameplay First, the player must choose a race to control. Each of the six races is based on a fantasy race ala Tolkien. Each race has their own attributes, including some strengths and weaknesses. For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Turner (game Programmer)
Steve Turner is a former computer game musician and designer. His development team, Graftgold, mostly wrote for games published by Hewson Consultants during the 1980s. The first computer he bought was a ZX80 which had to be assembled by hand. At school he was a member of a computing club where he learnt the Algol 60 programming language. During the 1970s he added Cobol to his repertoire from a government funded training course. He went on to a programming job in the Civil Service. Turner was 30 when he decided to move into games development. His first game was written whilst he was still employed as a programmer and he handed his notice in when he received his first royalty cheque. He also wrote a series of articles for '' ZX Computing'' between August 1986 and January 1987, called ''The Professional Touch''.http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=Programming%3a+The+Professional+Touch&loadpics=on Andrew Hewson had previously written for the magazine but got too ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradroid
''Paradroid'' is a Commodore 64 computer game written by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1985. It is a shoot 'em up with puzzle elements and was critically praised at release. The objective is to clear a fleet of spaceships of hostile robots by destroying them or taking them over via a mini-game. It was later remade as ''Paradroid 90'' for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST home computers and as Paradroid 2000 for the Acorn Archimedes. There exist several fan-made remakes for modern PCs. In 2004 the Commodore 64 version was re-released as a built-in game on the C64 Direct-to-TV, and in 2008 for the Wii Virtual Console in Europe. Gameplay Enemy forces have hijacked a space fleet by turning its robot consignment against the crew; the job is to neutralize all the robots, thereby rescuing the humans. The players control a prototype influence device that allows them to control the hostile robots. The game is set on a spaceship viewed from a top-down perspective. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super Off Road
''Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road'' is an arcade video game released in 1989 by Leland Corporation. The game was designed and managed by John Morgan who was also lead programmer, and endorsed by professional off-road racer Ivan Stewart. Virgin Games produced several home versions in 1990. In 1991, a home console version for the Nintendo Entertainment System was later released by Leland's Tradewest subsidiary, followed by versions for most major home formats including the Master System, Genesis, Super NES, Amiga, and MS-DOS. A port for the Atari Jaguar was announced but never released. Some of the ports removed Ivan Stewart's name from the title due to licensing issues and are known simply as ''Super Off Road''. Gameplay In the game, up to three players (four in the NES version through use of either the NES Satellite or NES Four Score) compete against each other or the computer in racing around several top-view indoor off-road truck tracks of increasing difficulty. There ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Braybrook
Andrew Braybrook (born 1960) is a software engineer and former game programmer. He created video games such as ''Paradroid'', ''Gribbly's Day Out'', '' Fire and Ice'', ''Uridium'' and ''Morpheus''. He also programmed the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST conversion of the arcade game ''Rainbow Islands''. In 1986 Braybrook was voted Best Programmer of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards. Career Braybrook started out writing accounting programs for GEC Marconi using COBOL in 1979. In his spare time he wrote games in BASIC for the ZX80, ZX81 and Dragon 32. His first foray into professional games came while he was playing bass guitar in a rock band with Steve Turner. Turner was writing games for the ZX Spectrum in his spare time and decided to make his break into full-time games production by starting the company which went on to become Graftgold. A few months after its inception, Turner asked Braybrook to join him in September 1983. Braybrook was commissioned by the magazine ''Zzap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uridium
''Uridium'' (released on the NES as ''The Last Starfighter'') is a science fiction side-scrolling shoot 'em up originally designed by Andrew Braybrook for the Commodore 64, and later ported to other 8-bit machines. It consists of fifteen levels, each named after a metal element, with the last level being called ''Uridium'' (a fictional metallic element, not to be confused with the real metallic element iridium). The manual quotes Robert Orchard, who invented the name as saying "I really thought it existed". ''Uridium'' was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. Mindscape purchased a license to release a game based on the film ''The Last Starfighter''. Rather than program a new game, however, Mindscape decided to take an easier route by recycling an older, relatively obscure game. The title screen, sprites, and soundtrack were modified, but the levels and gameplay were identical. In 2003, it was re-released on the C64 Direct-to-TV. In 2008, the C64 versi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Company
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , video games generated annually in global sales. In the US, it earned about in 2007, in 2008, and 2010, according to the ESA annual report. Research from Ampere Analysis indicated three points: the sector has consistently grown since at least 2015 and expanded 26% from 2019 to 2021, to a record ; the global games and services market is forecast to shrink 1.2% annually to in 2022; the industry is not recession-proof. The industry has influenced the advance of personal computers with sound cards, graphics cards and 3D graphic accelerators, CPUs, and co-processors like PhysX. Sound cards, for example, were originally developed for games and then improved for the music industry. Industry overview Size In 2017 in the United State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979 in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the expertise of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive Entertainment (later renamed Avalon Interactive) was the video game publishing division of British conglomerate the Virgin Group. It developed and published games for major platforms and employed developers, including Westwood Studios co-founder Brett Sperry and ''Earthworm Jim'' creators David Perry and Doug TenNapel. Others include video game composer Tommy Tallarico and animators Bill Kroyer and Andy Luckey. Formed as Virgin Games in 1983, and built around a small development team called the Gang of Five, the company grew significantly after purchasing budget label Mastertronic in 1987. As Virgin's video game division grew into a multimedia powerhouse, it crossed over to other industries from toys to film to education. To highlight its focus beyond video games and on multimedia, the publisher was renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment in 1993. As result of a growing trend throughout the 1990s of media companies, movie studios and telecom firms invest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TurboGrafx-16
The TurboGrafx-16, known as the outside North America, is a home video game console designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC, NEC Home Electronics. It was the first console marketed in the fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation, commonly known as the 16-bit era, though the console has an 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) coupled with a 16-bit graphics processor. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. In Europe, the console is known as the PC Engine, after the Japanese model was imported and distributed in the United Kingdom and France from 1988. In Japan, the system was launched as a competitor to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom, but the delayed United States release meant that it ended up competing with the Sega Genesis and later the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES. The console has an 8-bit CPU and a dual 16-bit graphics processing unit (GPU) chipset consisting of a video display controller (VDC) and video ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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