Beyond Software was a

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...

in the UK in the 1980s. It was set up by the EMAP publishing group in 1983 and published numerous titles on the Commodore 64,

Dragon 32 The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before mo ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

and

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Si ...

, but met with very little success until the release of Mike Singleton's '' The Lords of Midnight'' in 1984. The

Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawl ...

-esque strategy game became an instant success and allowed Beyond to establish a distribution deal with American developers First Star, as well as a publishing deal with developer

Denton Designs Denton Designs was a British video game developer based in Liverpool. The company was founded in 1984 and initially specialised in developing software for the ZX Spectrum home computer. Amongst the founders were developers who had worked on the ...

. After being acquired by

Telecomsoft Telecomsoft was a British video game publisher and a division of British Telecom. The company was founded by Dr. Ederyn Williams in 1984 and operated three separate labels: Firebird, Rainbird, and Silverbird. The first employee was James Leav ...

in late 1985Richard Hewison
Beyond.
'' from: ''The Bird Sanctuary.'' Accessed on 2009-12-10 for a six-figure sum, Beyond continued to operate as a unique label, mostly releasing games that had already been in development for some time, as well as a number of conversions of existing titles. Telecomsoft did very little with the Beyond label beyond these releases. A number of high-profile titles, such as '' Star Trek: The Rebel Universe'' ended up on the Firebird label, while a highly anticipated Mike Singleton project, ''Eye of the Moon'', failed to materialise.

Games

References

External links

*{{MobyGames company, company=beyond Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Video game companies established in 1983 Video game publishers