Microdeal was a British software company which operated during the 1980s and early 1990s from its base at Truro Road in the town of
St Austell
St Austell (; kw, Sans Austel) is a town in Cornwall, England, south of Bodmin and west of the border with Devon.
St Austell is one of the largest towns in Cornwall; at the 2011 census it had a population of 19,958.
History
St Austell wa ...
,
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
. The company, founded by John Symes was one of the major producers of games and other software for the 8-bit home computers of the time, in particular the
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 mov ...
and the similar
Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer
The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Co ...
("CoCo").
The 8-bit software market dwindled toward the end of the 1980s and Symes officially announced that Microdeal would no longer publish for the Dragon and Tandy machines on 1 January 1988; from this point they would concentrate on the newer generation of 16-bit computers, the
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 ...
and
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
, with their remaining stock of Dragon and Tandy software to be sold off by a company called ''Computape''. Many of Microdeal's 16-bit titles were updated versions of successful 8-bit games such as ''
Time Bandit'' and ''
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the T ...
'', but proved less successful the second time around. This was followed by ''
The Karate Kid Part II: The Computer Game'', based on
the 1986 film. The company was quick to recognise the music capabilities of the Atari ST and Amiga and went in production of Music Samplers such as "MasterSound" and "Amas", the latter of which was featured on a
Paula Abdul
Paula Julie Abdul (born June 19, 1962) is an American singer, dancer, choreographer, actress, and television personality. She began her career as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers at the age of 18 and later became the head choreograph ...
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
, which won
MTV's Music Video of the year award. The companies publishing licences were sold to "Hi-Soft" and it ceased trading in the early 1990s.
Activities
Some of Microdeal's software was produced in-house by the company's own programmers (including Steve Bak, Rita Jay and Ed Scio) but they also licensed software from foreign sources, such as the American Tom Mix Software and
Spectral Associates
Spectral Associates was an American maker of computer games for the TRS-80 Color Computer. It was founded in 1980 and went defunct sometime in the late 1980s. Spectral Associates sold their software through Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly Rad ...
, and published the works of independent programmers (notably
Ken Kalish Kenneth Kalish is a game programmer who wrote TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32/64 home computers in the 1980s. In the United Kingdom, most of Kalish's games were published by Microdeal
Microdeal was a British software company which operated ...
, who was responsible for some of their most successful titles). Frequently the digital artist
Pete Lyon
Peter Michael Lyon is a UK-based visual artist who has worked in a wide range of 2D and 3D media spanning from traditional oil painting to computer graphics, for the science fiction and fantasy genres. According to his personal website, he has b ...
was responsible for the graphics as well as having some design input. Pete worked on MicroDeal games such as ''
Goldrunner
''Goldrunner'' is a vertically scrolling shooter published developed by Steve Bak and Pete Lyon for the Atari ST and published by Microdeal in 1987. Rob Hubbard composed the music. An Amiga version followed, as well as a sequel, 1988's ''Goldr ...
'', ''Airball'', ''Tanglewood'', ''Leatherneck'' and ''Fright Night''.
Much of the software brought to the United Kingdom from the United States was originally written for the Tandy CoCo (which was the more popular machine there) and converted to work with the Dragon. These conversions were contracted out to a company called Northern Software Consultants where they were handled by lead programmer Chas Robertson. Robertson also designed the
dongle
A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality.
In computing, the term was initially synonym ...
device that was experimentally used for
copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
of a single Microdeal title, ''Buzzard Bait''. Some of Microdeal's licensed games were renamed for the British market. For example, they released a series of games based around the company mascot ''Cuthbert'' (''
Cuthbert Goes Digging
''Cuthbert Goes Digging'' is a 1983 video game for the Dragon 32 home computer. Written by Steve Bak at Microdeal, the game features the hero Cuthbert, who also appears in ''Cuthbert Goes Walkabout'' and ''Cuthbert in the Mines''. In the game, t ...
'', ''Cuthbert in the Jungle'', etc.). The original members of this series were written in-house by Steve Bak, but later additions were completely unrelated. Rather, they were renamed titles from several different sources – the graphical limitations of computers at that time meant that a character was unrecognisable and could be given any convenient name. Microdeal also had a brand called ''Pocket Money Software'', which published simpler games submitted by users at a lower price than the main titles. While some Pocket Money games were arguably of poor quality, others were among the company's most popular titles.
Microdeal also sold Cuthbert-branded blank media (tapes, disks, etc.), re-boxed and sometimes adapted hardware (such as joysticks) made by other companies and published an occasional semi-informative, semi-promotional magazine called ''The Cuthbert Chronicle''. They also accounted for most of the advertising space and reviews of ''
Dragon User
''Dragon User'' was a British magazine for users of the Dragon 32/64 computers published from 1982 by Sunshine Publications. Production of the computers themselves had ceased by 1985 but the user community remained sufficiently active to justify t ...
'' magazine.
List of Microdeal software
References
{{reflist
Companies based in Cornwall
Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom
Video game publishers
St Austell