| Mastertronic 1983-91 |
Martin Alper, Frank Herman and Alan Sherman, who had previous experience in the video industry, set up the company that pioneered budget releases in 1983. In the infancy of the games industry, retailers had poor experience of stocking budget releases, finding that they were stuck with games that didn't sell, so were reluctant to stock any from new companies. However, Mastertronic convinced retailers such as newsagents, toyshops and service stations to take their releases on condition that the company would regularly swap stock and provide good merchandising.
The early releases were fairly simplistic, such as Vegas Jackpot, Bionic Granny, Skyjet and Duck Shoot. Yet they were inexpensive at £1.99 and were cheerful. Rather than employing a team of programmers, Mastertronic sourced games from submissions, and gave a helping hand to the likes of the Darling Brothers, who would later go on to set up Code Masters, one of the enduring software publishers of the last fifteen years.
Mastertronic were one of the first software houses to use colour coding to distinguish formats on their packaging - For example the C64 was represented by a red corner on the cover, whilst the Amstrad CPC had an orange corner. During the mid 80's, computer sales were rising and Mastertronic rode this boom to great effect, finding that their games were selling on average 40,000 copies per title between 1984-87.
One of their first big sellers was Chiller, a platform game that sold 122,000 copies across the formats. Mastertronic were forced to change the in-game music when it was noted that it sounded remarkably like a certain Michael Jackson song with a similar title! This helped the company gain more publicity and soon Mastertronic were a familiar, reliable brand, appealing especially to youngsters who didn't have much money to spend on games.
Soon a lot of other companies saw the success that Mastertronic were enjoying, and wanted to emulate this - British Telecom started up Firebird who enjoyed similar success, and others labels such as Players, Americana and Kixx sprung up. In 1985, Mastertronic decided to expand, and launched a new label, MAD (Mastertronic Added Dimension) and sell the releases at £2.99 - The whole idea being that the games were a bit better for the extra money. Notable games included The Last V8, Spellbound and Hero of the Golden Talisman.
By now Mastertronic was seen as being the undisputed leader in budget software. 1986 saw them set up an American budget label (Mastertronic Inc) and soon other offshoot labels in the UK such as Bulldog, Entertainment USA and Ricochet. The games become a lot more sophisticated, such as Kikstart I and II (by Mr Chip, later to become Magnetic Scrolls). In fact Mastertronic became so successful that Virgin bought 45% of the company, heralding the takeovers in the software industry by the big names that still occurs today.
1987 saw Mastertronic take on the distribution of the Sega Master System in the UK, and of more important note to 8-bit users, complete a buy-out of veteran Melbourne House, who had enjoyed earlier success with many of its Australian programmed titles. This heralded many of that companies titles being re-released by Mastertronic, such as the popular Way of The Exploding Fist.
By the late eighties the 8-bit computer market was drying up, and consoles such as the Master System and NES were taking over the limelight. By now Mastertronic were only producing a handful of original releases, instead mostly concentrating on re-releases which it knew were guaranteed to be good sellers. In 1991, Sega bought out Mastertronic with some of the programmers staying at Virgin Interactive Europe (as it was now called).
The game was over for Mastertronic. In eight years it had gone from being a modest operation selling pretty basic games, to being a well-respected company that released classics such as Kane, Finders Keepers, and Action Biker, titles that are still fondly remembered nearly twenty years later. Cheap but always cheerful!
|
|
|
|
A sister site to Lemon Amiga. Made in Sweden by Kim Lemon 1998-2013.
Friends: Password Generator, Onlinespel
|
|
