Industry Video gaming Website www.hellogames.org Founders Richard Kay, Michael Webb | Defunct 2004 (2004) Founded 1987 | |
Software Creations was a video game developer based in Manchester, England, first established in 1987 by Michael Webb and Richard Kay. They are primarily known for their video games based on movie and comic licences like Marvel Comics, Cutthroat Island, Disney's Beauty and the Beast and the original titles Plok, Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos, and its sequel Equinox.
History
According to Richard Kay, Software Creations began in 1986 when Steve Ruddy responded to an advertisement he had placed in the Manchester Evening News:
Steve and I hit it off right away. He worked from home, and he did a boxing game called The Big KO. We worked very closely with each other for about 12 months. I hired Mike Ager and Andrew Threlfall, and we were the first four at Software Creations. I got an office on Oxford Road and it was above a computer shop directly opposite the BBC. We did a lot of games for Firebird - they were all for about three or four hundred pounds.
Most of these early games were ports of budget titles to other platforms such as the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, NES and the Game Boy. The company's breakthrough game was the Commodore 64 version of the arcade hit Bubble Bobble, a conversion which won critical acclaim and commercial success, and led to Software Creations being asked to do many more ports of popular arcade games. By this time the company had grown to include brothers Mike, Tim, and Geoff Follin, and artist Mark Wilson.
An early demo of Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos by Mike Webb won Software Creations a contract with Nintendo, leading to some high-profile NES and Super NES games.
During the early 1990s, Software Creations was responsible for the development of sound tools used in the creation of music for the Nintendo 64 and its development systems.
Software Creations titles in their later years were all published by now the defunct company Acclaim Entertainment. By May 2002, Acclaim had purchased most of their assets and established their own in-house development unit called Acclaim Studios Manchester. Software Creations CEO Paul Hibbard moved over to the new company as General Manager after the take-over, with all titles produced under the name Acclaim Entertainment. Just prior to Acclaim's collapse in 2004, the Manchester studio was dismantled and sold off to try and cover Acclaim's financial difficulties.