Mastertronic
Encyclopedia
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
founded in 1983. Their first games were distributed in mid-1984. At its peak the label was the dominant software publisher in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, a position achieved by selling cassette-based software at the £1.99
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
and £2.99 price-points. As well as being an exclusive wholesaler of computer games to Woolworth's, Toys "Я" Us and other leading retailers, Mastertronic sold software in outlets such as newsagents which had not been previously associated with the software market.
Later diversification included the setting up of US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
operations to source and distribute their software, as well as an unsuccessful arcade games division (Arcadia Systems
Arcadia Systems
Arcadia Systems was a subsidiary of Mastertronic which developed arcade games during the mid-late 1980s. The systems were based on Commodore Amiga technology...
). However, it was their decision to market the Sega Master System
Sega Master System
The is a third-generation video game console that was manufactured and released by Sega in 1985 in Japan , 1986 in North America and 1987 in Europe....
in the UK that ultimately proved most successful. It resulted in the Master System outselling its rival, the NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
throughout the 8-bit era and was cited by some as Virgin Group
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
's reason for investing in the company (and later buying it outright).
As the budget software market declined, the Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
hardware distribution became the dominant part of the business, and the company was eventually sold (and merged into) Sega itself. Although the original company no longer exists, the rights to the name were acquired by another company. The company, now known as Mastertronic Group, was formed as a result of a merger of The Producers and Sold Out Sales & Marketing in 2006. Just Flight and Just Trains, both specialist simulations publishers were acquired by the Mastertronic in 2008. Mastertronic licences and distributes valuePC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
software on CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
under the Sold Out, MAD and PC Gamer Presents labels. They also own the Everyone Can Play and Great Indie Games labels. .
The beginning
In 1983 Martin AlperMartin Alper
Martin Alper is a video game designer and the former President of Virgin Interactive. Alper was the co-founder of Mastertronic, which went on to become Virgin Interactive. Alper was also the person who approached Westwood Studios co-founder Brett Sperry about creating Dune II...
, Frank Herman and Alan Sharam founded the computer game publishing company Mastertronic. The three had some financial backing from a small group of outside investors and previous experience in video distribution. Their initial venture involved bundling packages of 100 tapes ("dealer packs") and sending them to news agents, toy shops, motorway service stations, or just about anyone who would take them. At that time (1984) mainstream retailers generally refused to take the risk on budget games because of poor quality and sales. Mastertronic eventually won them over with a regular supply of good quality and high selling games. Another key figure at the time was ex-Notts Cricket batsman Richard Bielby who ran a distribution network servicing a large number of small retailers.
New labels, expansion and diversification
In late 1985 Mastertronic launched their M.A.D ("Mastertronic's Added Dimension") label. This meant that they could sell games at a slightly higher price (£2.99). The first ever M.A.D. game was 'The Last V8The Last V8
The Last V8 is a video game published by Mastertronics on their M.A.D. label. It was released in 1985 for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit and Amstrad CPC. The title echoes a plot point from the Mad Max series of movies The design was done by Richard Darling and the programming by David Darling. The...
' and many more were soon to follow.
Martin Alper
Martin Alper
Martin Alper is a video game designer and the former President of Virgin Interactive. Alper was the co-founder of Mastertronic, which went on to become Virgin Interactive. Alper was also the person who approached Westwood Studios co-founder Brett Sperry about creating Dune II...
, who had the most marketing flair, went to the USA in 1986 to set up Mastertronic Inc. The UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
company was managed by Frank Herman, whilst Alan Sharam increasingly specialised in sales and logistics
Logistics
Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet the requirements of customers or corporations. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and...
(warehousing, packaging, controlling production schedules). As the business continued to grow Mastertronic created another label in 1986 - 'Entertainment USA', when it began working closely with several American writers, including Sculptured Software
Sculptured Software
Sculptured Software Inc. was a late twentieth century video game developer in the Salt Lake City, Utah metropolitan area. They specialized in porting games to different platforms, especially from arcade games to home console games.-History:...
and Randall Masteller. They wanted an outlet to sell games to the UK market, and so Mastertronic moved in, often using Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard is a music composer best known for his composition of computer game theme music, especially for microcomputers of the 1980s such as the Commodore 64...
or David Whittaker to re-do the music. Soon afterwards, this name was used by Woolworths as the new name for their wholesale
Wholesale
Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...
business.
In 1987 Mastertronic decided to expand their distribution of software and began exporting titles back across the Atlantic, so the label "Bulldog" was created primarily to distribute the 'Best of British' games in the US (The name Bulldog actually came from a small wholesaler called Bulldog Distribution who got into financial difficulties and was taken over the previous year). Several other labels were invented for other publishers who wanted them to re-issue their old full price product at budget prices, such as Rack-it for Hewson
Hewson
Hewson is a surname and may refer to -* Ali Hewson , activist and wife of U2's Bono* Allan Hewson , former New Zealand Rugby union All Black* Arthur Hewson , Australian politician...
and Americana for US Gold. However by this time the market for budget games had begun to decline sharply. A typical game might sell 50,000 units in 1986, but only 15,000 in 1988 and 5,000 in 1990. This was the impact of more competitors in the budget market, with many companies dumping their previously full-price product at the cheaper price point.
Mastertronic bought out Melbourne House
Melbourne House
Krome Studios Melbourne, originally Beam Software, was a video game development studio founded in 1980 and based in Melbourne, Australia. The studio operated independently from 1987 until 1999, when it was acquired by Infogrames, who changed the name to Melbourne House...
when that label was struggling with financial problems (Melbourne House kept its label identity) - this also meant that they had first refusal on re-releases of games such as The Way of the Exploding Fist
The Way of the Exploding Fist
The Way of the Exploding Fist is a 1985 fighting game by Gregg Barnett of Beam Software. Originally developed on the Commodore 64 and published in June 1985 by Melbourne House, ports were made for Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron and Commodore 16...
. And so their re-release label 'Ricochet' was born. They pulled off a few major re-releases at £1.99, most notably Crazy Comets and Impossible Mission
Impossible Mission
Impossible Mission is a platform computer game for several home computers. The original version for the Commodore 64 was programmed by Dennis Caswell and published by Epyx in 1984.-Description:...
.
Merger with Virgin Interactive
Having bought Melbourne House and with heavy financial commitments to the Arcadia project Mastertronic itself was now suffering severe cash flowCash flow
Cash flow is the movement of money into or out of a business, project, or financial product. It is usually measured during a specified, finite period of time. Measurement of cash flow can be used for calculating other parameters that give information on a company's value and situation.Cash flow...
problems. Virgin
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
stepped in and Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....
purchased the 45% of shares held by the outside investment group. The remaining 55% was held by Alper (25%), Herman (20%) and Sharam (10%) until 1988 when they sold out in a highly complex deal which required their continuing involvement in the business and achievement of profit and cash flow targets. The company was renamed the 'Mastertronic Group Ltd', and later was merged with Virgin Games
Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...
to create 'Virgin Mastertronic'. Virgin
Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...
had their own team of programmers and wrote many of their games in-house, a major change to the way Mastertronic previously organised itself.
It was Frank Herman who, in early 1987 spotted that Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
had no UK distributor for the Master System range. Mastertronic sold all they could get that year and were then appointed as distributors in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
as well, and thus was Sega Europe was born. Branson undoubtedly wanted to buy Mastertronic in order to get into the growing Sega business.
The Sega takeover
Soon after the completion of the merger all the marketing effort went into full price games under the Melbourne House label and it was clear that the budget side was sliding into oblivion, the competition had become intense as everyone was recycling their old full price games as budget games. In addition, the children who used to buy 8-bit computers were now buying SegaSega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
and Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
consoles. Sega sales were booming so much that nobody really cared about the traditional Mastertronic business. Although staff recruitment actually rose, this was all for the Sega operations. By 1991 nearly all the company's turnover, and certainly all the profit, came from Sega-related business.
As a result nearly all the staff moved over to Sega when they took over the business from Virgin and only a handful of games programmers stayed with the publishing side (quickly renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment). After the Sega takeover Frank became deputy Managing Director of Sega Europe and Alan was Managing Director of Sega UK. Martin left the UK and became resident in the US.
Influence on the industry
Compared to its main competitors, Mastertronic was a highly professional operation. The management understood that sourcing games was relatively easy while marketing and distribution was the hard part. Emphasis was set on creating a brand image, establishing distributor chains, persuading the larger high streetHigh Street
High Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...
stores to stock the product and ensuring a fast turn-round from the tape duplicators and the printers so that fresh supplies of successful games could be produced quickly.
Mastertronic also notably pioneered the 'colour coding' for games by having a coloured triangle on the top right hand corner of the front inlay and rectangles on the spine with the catalogue number and format, for example ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
games were yellow, Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
were red, Amstrad
Amstrad
Amstrad is a British electronics company, now wholly owned by BSkyB. As of 2006, Amstrad's main business is manufacturing Sky Digital interactive boxes....
were orange and MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
were white. This led many software houses to use variations on this theme but keep the colour coding so people could easily identify the format, Mastertronic for a time went one step further and their 199 Range had the cassette boxes coloured the same. The US releases pioneered the plastic DVD-style cases now common among computer and console games.
Much of the early output was supplied by just two producers
Game producer
A video game producer is the person in charge of overseeing development of a video game.The earliest documented use of the term producer in games was by Trip Hawkins, who established the position when he founded Electronic Arts in 1982...
- The Darling brothers, who formed Codemasters
Codemasters
The Codemasters Software Company Limited, or Codemasters is a British video game developer founded by Richard and David Darling in 1986...
as soon as they could break their contract with the company, and Mr. Chip Software who continued to write games for Mastertronic for some time. Mastertronic never employed in-house programmers to write games. Everything that was published had been produced either by other software houses or by freelance authors. This was an ideal approach for the fast output of many diverse games. At this time thousands of bedroom programmers were trying to get rich quickly by writing games. While this was not so good for creating a consistent throughput of a series or for developing highly complex games, one huge advantage was that it kept overheads low and outsourced the risks of software development
Software development
Software development is the development of a software product...
to others. Mastertronic did employ specialists to review and test games, to encourage and assist authors and to provide technical expertise. As well as permanent staff temporary assistance came from several of game authors - including Nigel Johnstone, Richard Aplin, Stephen N Curtis and Tony Takoushi.
One of Mastertronic's key markets was the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
. The famed C64 composer Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard is a music composer best known for his composition of computer game theme music, especially for microcomputers of the 1980s such as the Commodore 64...
produced some classic music for the company's C64 range such as One Man and his Droid
One Man and His Droid
One Man and His Droid is a game published by Mastertronic in 1985 for use on the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 16, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computer systems. The name of the game is a play on the title of the BBC television show One Man and His Dog. The object of the game is to use a...
, Hunter Patrol
Hunter Patrol
Hunter Patrol was a video game published by Mastertronic in 1985. The game was for the Commodore 64 home computer system. The music for the game was written in the same military style as the music from Battle of Britain. All music for this game was composed by Rob Hubbard....
, Spellbound
Spellbound (computer game)
Spellbound is a computer game that was designed and programmed by David Jones with music by Rob Hubbard and released in 1985 for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC home computers...
, Action Biker
Action Biker
Action Biker is a 1985 game for 8-bit home computers released by Mastertronic...
, Phantoms of the Asteroid and Master of Magic
Master of Magic (Mastertronic)
Master of Magic is a computer role-playing game for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers. It was distributed by Mastertronic in 1985 under its M.A.D. label.-Description:...
. These are still regarded by many enthusiasts as classics and having music of this quality on budget-priced games greatly enhanced Mastertronic's reputation. However because the actual profit per unit sold was small, the company could not afford to advertise as much as full-price software houses. In the opinion of Anthony Guter, this led to some resentment from the game magazines of the day, these problems may well have hampered more general coverage of the software range.
The 'New' Mastertronic
The new Mastertronic group has three business units; Mastertronic Games, The Producers (manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
and fulfilment) and Mad4Games (a mobile
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
games service). The group has also purchased the low-cost software distributor 'Sold Out'. The label has been retained, and is (as it was previously) being used to sell software at the £5 (frequently "3-for-£10") price-point. The company is also distributing software under the old 'M.A.D.' imprint, as well as another label associated with PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
magazine. Games on these labels are being sold for £10 (or "3-for-£20").
Mastertronic started the Great Indie Games publishing label, to spread independent games only available on the internet to shops.