Alternative Software is a British software developer and publisher founded in 1985. From the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, the company published well over a hundred games, primarily for the 8-bit computer formats in the budget (£1.99 to £3.99) market. These included both original titles (e.g. MC Lothlorien's ''Pro Mountain Bike Simulator'') as well as reissues of other developers' and publishers' software such as '' River Rescue'' which it acquired from the liquidation of Creative Sparks Distribution. In 1988, the company's catalogue expanded rapidly when it obtained the rights to re-release games from

Piranha Software Piranha Software was a short-lived video game publishing label created by Macmillan Publishers in 1986 and closed eighteen months later. In that time it gained a reputation for its unusual output from well known developers such as Don Priestley ...

, Audiogenic,

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and

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. By late 1988,

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were noting Alternative's success, observing that they had topped Gallup's market share charts almost every week since June of that year, been the number one software house in 7 out of 8 Gallup charts and averaged a market share of 11.2% versus their nearest rival

Mastertronic Mastertronic was originally a publisher and distributor of low-cost computer game software founded in 1983. Their first games were distributed in mid-1984. At its peak the label was one of the largest software publishers in the UK, achieved by ...

with 10.5%. In 1989, the company began to produce titles centred around popular children's television characters. Beginning with

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, which the company claimed was the first time a licence had been acquired by a budget software house, later games would feature

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Fireman Sam ''Fireman Sam'' ( Welsh: ') is a Welsh animated children's television series about a fireman named Sam, his fellow firefighters, and other residents in the fictional Welsh rural village of Pontypandy (a portmanteau of two real towns, Pontypridd ...

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and

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among many others. In a 2015 interview, founder Roger Hulley claimed that by 1990 the company had a 17 percent share of the budget games sector. During the late 1990s, the company diversified into development of "paint studio", "print studio" and similar-type software. , the company is still active, with publication

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noting in their 30-year retrospective of Alternative that they had "constantly evolved in order to stay afloat in an increasingly tough industry".

References

* http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/alternative-history-three-decades-of-the-publisher/0158343 Video game companies of the United Kingdom British companies established in 1985 {{UK-videogame-company-stub