Facebook Google+ Twitter I had known Gremlin and Ian Stewart for a while of course, and Jenny Richard’s who had been the buyer for Centresoft. We had also had some meetings about [...] using Ian’s in-house developed Nintendo dev kit. When things started falling around my ears in 1990, Ian and James North-Hearn were actually visiting to discuss development. Ian was a good egg and wanted to help, and being a canny businessman he saw an opportunity too. There was something in it for both of us really, always the best deal, so I moved to Sheffield as a consultant with a fairly open brief to look for opportunities to help build Gremlin. David Martin, ex-Martech on joining Gremlin Graphics in 1990 0 02.06.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter British companies have never been able to [...] leverage enough debt to compete. We are still told, are we not, not to live beyond our means? Don’t borrow more than you can pay back. The Americans are always in debt. Remember the British companies didn’t fail, they were always acquired by someone else. Andy Payne, ex-Mastertrontic, UKIE, BAFTA, Creative Industries Council, on the demise of British games publishers. 0 28.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter I was a big fan. One of the things I’ve always liked was knowing who made the games. I was always interested in the names, like Jeff Minter and of course Tony. There were a few other names and you used to dig those out and try and find out more about them: Who wrote this thing, who made this thing, how did they make it, and all that stuff I’ve always been interested in it - I’m still interested in that now – who really did what. ZZap!64 and Games Industry legend Gary Penn on fellow legend Tony Crowther 0 27.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter The first game we [published] was Corporation, which was a joint venture [with Bill Allen and Kevin Bulmer’s Birmingham-based Dimension Creative Designs]. You could scan your own photograph and put it in the game. It was awesome. We sold an absolute bucket load and made a ton of money. That then put us on the path to publish our own software. Jeremy Heath-Smith, founder of Core Design on starting the studio 0 26.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter It was not just to compete with EA, it was the reality of the market that only big companies would have access to major licences, to wide distribution and to the best developers. At the end of the day you had no choice. You either were growing, and organically it would take a long time, or you’d try and merge and buy or combine companies to be stronger. Bruno Bonnell, Infogrames Founder on acquisitions and licences 0 25.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter Derby had the tools in the team to make platformers. I can’t remember whether it fell in around the time of Rick Dangerous – it was a case of utilising their toolset, their platform game toolset, let’s make use of it. We [used] some of the iPs to reintroduce [Monty] as something else. We came up with Impossamole which I think is a great name. Ian Stewart, Gremlin Graphics Founder on Impossamole 0 24.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter US Gold, CentreSoft, CentreGold, Gremlin, all of the companies were intertwined. The biggest factor that pulled them all together was CentreSoft, because it was the first company I started and also it was everyone's biggest customer. Indirectly, It’s weird really, I knew what everyone else was selling or was going to develop because they had to come and tell CentreSoft, but by the same token I was one of their biggest rivals. Geoff Brown, Founder, U.S. Gold 0 24.05.16
Facebook Google+ Twitter Loaded was a launch-window title [but] it was late. We worked on what was going to be the original Playstation which was a collaboration between SONY and Nintendo before they fell out. We had development systems and everything. We were actually creating a version of Litil Divil for the platform before that product disappeared. The original PlayStation was going to be a plug-in for a 16-bit Nintendo. It was a 3D platform, launched with a CD drive. James North-Hearn on Loaded 0 23.05.16
