US gold
| US gold | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Centersoft subsidiary |
| founding | 1984 |
| resolution | April 1996 |
| Reason for dissolution | Takeover by Eidos Interactive |
| Seat |
Birmingham , UK
|
| Branch | Software development |
US Gold was a British video game publishing house and developer of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s in the games market for 8-bit - 16-bit - and 32-bit - computer worked.
history
US Gold was founded in Birmingham in 1984 by Geoff Brown as the publishing division of Centersoft , a computer game distribution company. The main goal of US Gold was to bring popular American Amiga , Atari and Commodore 64 games to the UK and Europe. This proved to be a milestone for the UK games publishing scene, where few American games had been published up to that point.
Brown decided not only to raise the price of the US Gold games to £ 9.99, but also to promote the games with full color advertisements in the then popular computer magazines. After the ZX Spectrum and later the Amstrad CPC were among the most popular home computers in Great Britain , Brown had to have the games reprogrammed for the British television format , as there was no corresponding adaptation for these computers, i.e. he had to set up a development department for US Gold in England .
Brown teamed up with the British publisher Ocean Software from Manchester , who were responsible for the conversion of the first US gold games. This collaboration became more difficult over time as Ocean became more and more involved in developing their own games. Brown therefore decided to set up his company as an independent British developer with its own development studios. US Gold had two development studios working for the company: Silicon Dreams and Core Design . Silicon Dreams was founded by US Gold, while Core Design had been bought. This plan worked, whereupon US Gold became a very successful sales company by hiring further smaller developers and purchasing other licenses. At the same time, Centersoft became the largest games distributor in Great Britain. Various popular video games have been ported to the IBM PC from US Gold , such as: B. Street Fighter II , Beach Head , Zaxxon , Impossible Mission , and many sports games like World Cup Italia '90 and World Cup USA '94 .
The last commercially released game to bear the US Gold logo was Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996 , which was released in June 1996 for Sega Saturn , PlayStation , PC and 3DO .
In April 1996, US Gold was acquired by Eidos Interactive .
Labels
US Gold used numerous labels for the distribution of the games in Europe. The best known of these is Synsoft, which today is often incorrectly equated with Synapse software . However, only games of Synapse Software in Europe were under the label Synsoft sold .
Well-known US gold labels include:
- Synsoft
- Go!
- All American Adventures
- Americana software
- Kixx!
Capcom
US Gold released ports of various arcade games from the Japanese company Capcom , such as Street Fighter , Final Fight , Street Fighter II , Ghouls' n Ghosts , Mercs, Forgotten Worlds and the game gear version of the game Mega Man .
After porting the Capcom game Strider , US Gold developed the sequel Strider II on their own.
literature
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean: The Story of US Gold. Fusion Retro Books, 2015, ISBN 978-0993131530
Web links
- US Gold at MobyGames (English)
- US gold at Lemon64
- Interview with the founders in Commodore Horizons 1985
- Introduction of All American Adventures in Commodore Horizons 1985
- US Gold licensed from Accolade
