U.S. Gold Limited was a British

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 ( ...

based in

Witton, Birmingham Witton is an inner city area in Birmingham, England, in the metropolitan county of the West Midlands. It was within the ancient parish of Aston in the Hemlingford hundred of the historic county of Warwickshire. It is known as the home of Asto ...

, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their

distributor A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plug ...

firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Holdings (later renamed CentreGold). The company primarily aimed at publishing games imported from the United States with a lower price tag in Europe and especially the United Kingdom.

History

By 1985, U.S. Gold projected a turnover of for their first fiscal year, and expected to release further 150 games in the year to come. In 1988, U.S. Gold received the

Golden Joystick Award The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be voted ...

for "Software House of the Year". The company also operated the budget range label Kixx. In 1988, the company struck a deal with Japanese company Capcom to port their

arcade video game An arcade video game takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. Most arcade video games are coin-operated, housed in an arc ...

s for home computers in Europe. They paid or for a ten-game deal with Capcom. The first four games they announced as part of the deal were ports of the 1987 arcade games ''

Street Fighter , commonly abbreviated as ''SF'' or スト (''Suto''), is a Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting video and arcade games developed and published by Capcom. The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by six ...

'', '' Tiger Road'', '' 1943: The Battle of Midway'' and ''

Black Tiger A black tiger is a rare colour variant of the tiger, and is not a distinct species or geographic subspecies. Description There are reports and one painting (now lost) of pure black non-striped tigers (true melanistic tigers). Most black mammal ...

'' for the 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 ...

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 ...

, Atari ST and Amiga platforms. Their first five Capcom releases sold over 250,000 copies in the UK by 1989, with their best-selling Capcom release up until then being ''

Bionic Commando ''Bionic Commando'' is a video game franchise consisting of an original arcade game released in 1987 and several later versions and sequels. Background The original Japanese arcade game and its Famicom counterpart (''Hitler's Resurrection'' ...

'' with over 70,000 UK sales. Their next Capcom release was ''

Forgotten Worlds ''Forgotten Worlds'', titled in Japan, is a side-scrolling shooter video game by Capcom, originally released as a coin-operated arcade game in 1988. It is notable for being the first title released by Capcom for their CP System arcade game h ...

'' in 1989. In April 1996, Eidos Interactive acquired the entire CentreGold umbrella (including U.S. Gold) for , as a result of which U.S. Gold and CentreSoft ceased all operations.

Games published

References

{{Authority control Defunct companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Eidos Golden Joystick Award winners Square Enix Video game companies established in 1984 Video game companies disestablished in 1996 Video game publishers