Small Rockets was a British computer game developer located in Guildford, England. The company was founded in October 2000 and created and sold PC games online.

History

Small Rockets was born from the ashes of

Fiendish Games ''Fiendish'' is the first album (previous album ''Friction (Phideaux Xavier album), Friction'' isn't considered official by the band) released by composer Phideaux Xavier. In 2002, Phideaux began to work with Gabriel Moffat, on a series of new d ...

, a department of

Criterion Games Criterion Games is a British video game developer based in Guildford. Founded in January 1996 as a division of Criterion Software, it was owned by Canon Inc. until Criterion Software was sold to Electronic Arts in October 2004. Many of Crite ...

(also known as Criterion Software), that was started to test the waters for delivering games online rather than through traditional retail channels. When Fiendish Games was shut down, the then head of department Jonathan Small set up Small Rockets to continue where Fiendish Games had left off. The company licensed the games created by Fiendish Games from Criterion, and most of the Fiendish Games employees moved with Jonathan to the new company. (Note, Fiendish Games has no connection with the board game company of the same name; the board game company changed its name t
Fiendish Board Games
after coming to an agreement with Criterion Games). In addition to its commercial games Small Rockets also produced a bespoke 'one off' game called 'HP Spy Academy' for a HP exhibition at 'Stuff Live' in 2002. Work continued on several more PC titles and a Game Boy Advance title until most of the employees had to be let go, largely for financial reasons, in 2003. Due to the increasing costs of running a UK-registered limited-liability company from the US, the decision was made in 2012 to shut the company down. The Small Rockets website displayed a formal notice of the shutdown from early July 2012, at which point the site's shop was also disabled. Full shutdown of the Small Rockets servers (including the website itself) occurred in late August 2012. Jonathan has stated that he hopes to continue Small Rockets' ''Red Ace'' franchise.

Small Rockets Games

Games originally written as part of Fiendish Games

* Natural Fawn Killers (abbreviated NFK) * Tower of the Ancients * Master of the Skies: The Red Ace (previously known as Hunt for the Red Baron) * Art is Dead * Hot Chix 'n' Gear Stix * Hot Chix 'n' Gear Stix 2 * Small Rockets Poker *

Small Rockets Mah Jongg Small may refer to: Science and technology * SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language * Small (anatomy), the lumbar region of the back * ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication * <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text ...

Small Rockets Backgammon Small may refer to: Science and technology * SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language * Small (anatomy), the lumbar region of the back * ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication * <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text ...

Games released wholly by Small Rockets

* NFK: Santa's Gone Postal *

Star Monkey Star Monkey is a 3D vertical scrolling shooter (with 2D gameplay), developer and published by Small Rockets in 2001 in a shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or ...

Ultra Assault adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...

Red Ace Squadron ''Red Ace Squadron'' is a computer vehicle simulation game developed and published by Small Rockets in 2001. There is also an enhanced version named Red Ace Squadron Pro, which is an update to the game based on complaints and feedback from players ...

Assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture *Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs **Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...

* Sean Murray Wakeboarding (GBA) * Sinbad (PC)

References

External links

The Small Rockets website
on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music ...

Small Rockets
entry at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Video game development companies Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom {{UK-videogame-company-stub mad:Global Thermonuclear Warfare