Adventure Soft
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| Adventure Soft | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | |
| Headquarters | Sutton Coldfield, UK |
| Key people | Mike Woodroffe, Simon Woodroffe |
| Industry | Computer games |
| Products | Simon the Sorcerer series |
| Website | www.adventuresoft.com |
Adventure Soft is a UK-based video game developer which was established in the 1980s by Mike Woodroffe, then owner of Callisto Computers, one of the very early computer shops. Callisto Computers was, amongst other things, an importer and reseller of Adventure International games. It operates out of Sutton Coldfield[1]. It is best known for the successful Simon the Sorcerer series of games.
[edit] Adventure Soft's beginnings
In the beginning Adventure Soft operated out of Birmingham converting the Adventure International games by Scott Adams to run on microcomputers found in the United Kingdom market which were not currently supported. Adventure Soft employed Brian Howarth whose Mysterious Adventure series was the British answer to Scott Adams games, and who used the same game system as Scott to perform the ports.
After a time the rate of release of games by Adventure International slowed and the company began to write other games using the same system. The first and perhaps most successful of these was a 1984 game based on Gremlins written by Brian Howarth and with artwork from Teoman Irmak, whose artwork was to become legendary amongst early microcomputer enthusiasts for its quality.
1985 saw the release of a game based on the television series "Robin of Sherwood", based on the Robin Hood legend. This game was the first containing game design by Mike Woodroffe, and also compression and a graphics system capable of very limited animation.
By 1986 Adventure International in the USA was bankrupt. Adventure Soft signed deals that gave it access to the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, as well as a new more sophisticated game system.
The first fruits of this deal were "Seas of Blood" by Michael Woodroffe and Alan Cox, followed by Stefan Ufnowski's Rebel Planet. "Temple of Terror" by Mike and Simon Woodroffe followed shortly afterwards.
"Blizzard Pass" (a single player game closely related to AberMUD) by Cox and "Kayleth" (by Stefan and Ann Ufnowski) followed as the company diversified the game range. Adventure Soft also began producing games for Tynesoft including the game of Supergran and "Terraquake" (featuring He-Man).
With the rise of more powerful systems like the Commodore Amiga and a growing disinterest in text focussed games Adventure Soft began to actively exploit the graphical and multimedia angle of the games. The first 32bit game "Personal Nightmare" based on a design by Keith Wadhams featured music, animation and some mouse control coupled with a traditional text based game system. It was followed by two games based around Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and a game named Waxworks, all of which moved away from keyboard command input to mouse driven gaming with animation and music from Jezz Woodroffe (a session musician with Robert Plant, Black Sabbath and other bands). Waxworks and the Elvira games used a modified AberMUD 5 game engine.
[edit] Later years
A remodelled Adventure Soft Publishing was born in 1992 and began to release the very successful Simon the Sorcerer series games, continuing the trend towards more graphical gaming. Simon in the first game being voiced by Chris Barrie[2] who played Rimmer in the BBC situation comedy Red Dwarf.
In 1997 Adventure Soft released The Feeble Files, with the lead character being voiced by Robert Llewellyn[3] who played Kryten also in Red Dwarf.
In 1998 Mike and Simon Woodroffe set up Headfirst Productions to allow them to develop non adventure style games.
