Emerald Software
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Emerald 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 ( ...
founded in 1988 by two UK entertainment executives – David Martin of
Martech Martech Games was an early video game publisher based in Pevensey Bay between 1982 and 1989. It published a number of successful video games for the emerging home computer games marketplace, including BBC Model B, Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum ...
, and Mike Dixon who previously worked with
EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...
and worked as the company CEO. The company was headquartered in a three-story Georgian house ("Washington Lodge") in Wilkin Street,
Waterford "Waterford remains the untaken city" , mapsize = 220px , pushpin_map = Ireland#Europe , pushpin_map_caption = Location within Ireland##Location within Europe , pushpin_relief = 1 , coordinates ...
, Ireland. The ambitious company made a very promising start, but a number of critical delays in the development program eventually led to its closure in 1991.


People

The company was mostly populated by graduates or placement students from the then-named Waterford Regional Technical College – with some from
University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 33,284 student ...
and others with no formal computer training. At its peak, Emerald Software employed 17 programmers and 5 graphic artists. These people were spread across 5 departments, loosely split to cover each of the supported development platforms and graphic art – with two additional personnel in Administration and Human Resources.


Development

The company authored games for the
Commodore Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
, IBM PC, Atari ST, Commodore 64,
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 ...
systems. Development for Amiga and Atari ST games was carried out using Manx C, and Motorola 68000 Assembly language. As both Amiga and ST were 68000-based machines, games were typically authored on the Amiga and then ported using an in-house authored porting / remote-debug / development environment; this allowed the code to be edited on the more capable Amiga, then transmitted to the ST and remotely executed/debugged from the Amiga. The development system was written by Brian Kelly and was based on Lattice C. Graphics and sound routines required re-authoring, but in many cases this was straightforward. The Amiga games did not run on top of Workbench/AmigaOS – but on a custom-written tiny OS (KOS) with a proprietary disk format which offered higher data capacity per diskette, as well as helping to impede casual copying. This was written by Brian Kelly (the K in KOS). Development for Spectrum and CPC games took place on a commercially available cross-assembler development environment (PDS) hosted on an IBM PC clone which was connected to a Spectrum. This allowed the game to be authored on the stable PC environment (complete with disk backup), then "blasted" directly into the Spectrum memory to allow for immediate testing. Developing in this manner allowed for significantly higher development speeds than could be achieved by native development on the Spectrum. As both ZX Spectrum and CPC 464 were
Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
-based machines, CPC versions were usually ported versions of the Spectrum games, with the graphics display on the more-capable CPC reconfigured to be close to that of the more primitive Spectrum. Z80 development was primarily run by Damian Scattergood. The team developed a graphics display system for the CPC 464 that emulated the Spectrum screen layout which meant graphics routines could be ported quickly. Damian also developed his own macro programming language that meant that code could be compiled and shared instantly across both platforms. Z80 development was actually done on a PC where the code could be edited and compiled quickly, and then was ported via RS232 direct onto the Spectrum and CPC machines for testing.


List of games

The company produced a number of games during its brief existence, to somewhat mixed reviews. These were largely ports of existing arcade games (''Vigilante'' for example) or original movie tie-ins ('' The Running Man'') but there were also some original game concepts (e.g. Phantom Fighter): *'' The Deep'' (1988) *'' If It Moves, Shoot It!'' (1988) *''Phantom Fighter'' (198

*'' The Running Man (video game), The Running Man'' (1989) *''
Vigilante Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. A vigilante (from Spanish, Italian and Portuguese “vigilante”, which means "sentinel" or "watcher") is a person who ...
'' (1989) *''
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker ''Michael Jackson's Moonwalker'' is the name of several video games based on the 1988 Michael Jackson film ''Moonwalker''. Sega developed two beat 'em ups, released in 1990; one released in arcades and another released for the Sega Genesis and ...
'' (1989) *''
Fallen Angel In the Abrahamic religions, fallen angels are angels who were expelled from heaven. The literal term "fallen angel" never appears in any Abrahamic religious texts, but is used to describe angels cast out of heaven"Mehdi Azaiez, Gabriel Said ...
'' (1989) *''
Treasure Trap Treasure Trap was a live action role-playing game established at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire in April 1982. Various splinter groups broke from the original system, some retaining the Treasure Trap name, and helped to shape the later British L ...
'' (1990)


The Running Man

* The intro sequence for the Amiga version of 'The Running Man' occupied practically one full 800k diskette of the two diskette set. Running in a continuous loop till interrupted, it featured digitised voice, music and video sequences from the film, and so was often left running in computer stores as an Amiga feature demonstrator.


References


External links


Article about Emerald on GameDevelopers.ie
{{Authority control Defunct video game companies of Ireland Video game companies established in 1988 Video game companies disestablished in 1991 Irish companies established in 1988 1991 disestablishments in Ireland