Acid Software sold a programming language and then set out to prove it with games. Its founders, Simon Armstrong and Mark Sibly, worked from an office in St Kevins Arcade on Karangahape Road, Auckland, sharing the building with another small games team, Vision Software. Sibly wrote Blitz Basic 2, a BASIC for the Amiga that compiled to machine code, and Armstrong sold it. By March 1994 a racing game written with it in the same office was fifth in The One’s chart. The British press was not always sure where Acid was. “It seems that every time we get any good press in the English Amiga mags they flatter us [by] calling us AUSTRALIANS!” Acid’s own magazine complained in 1993.
Fast facts
- Founders: Simon Armstrong and Mark Sibly.
- Based: 10 St Kevins Arcade, 183 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand.
- First product: Blitz Basic 2, shipping from June 1992, with the owners’ magazine Blitz User.
- Games published: Skidmarks (1994), Guardian (1994), Roadkill (1994), Super Skidmarks (1995).
- In Britain: a London PO box in 1994; by 1996 its orders went through Guildhall Leisure in Doncaster.
Blitz Basic 2 and Blitz User
The date Acid was founded is not recorded in the public sources. It was trading by June 1992, when the first issue of Blitz User went out in the box with Blitz Basic 2. “As I write this,” Armstrong wrote in its editorial, “the first 1000 Blitz BASICs wait quietly beside the door. Waiting to be exported around the world.” The One later described Acid as “originally formed by just two men”; Armstrong called himself “the marketing manager for Acid Software” in a 1993 column, and Amiga Format called him “Acid Software boss”.
Blitz User was part manual, part office newsletter. Its “Back in the office” column reported the arrival of the CD32, the CD of the month, and a mouse that kept climbing into the office’s computers. Acid’s public domain disks carried Blitz games with their source code, among them Sibly’s Defender conversion and Vision Software’s Zombie Apocalypse, so buyers could see how they were written.
The shareware plan
When Amiga Format’s editor, Marcus Dyson, met Armstrong at the World of Commodore show in Sydney in July 1993, he found the Acid stand “like an open and completely disorganised games arcade”, with Defender, Zombie Apocalypse and a demo of Skidmarks on the monitors. Over dinner Armstrong explained that Acid wanted to start “a shareware revolution”, with everyone writing games and “seeing some financial reward for it”, and that the way to do it was to put Blitz Basic on a magazine cover disk. Amiga Format did exactly that in November 1993, with a competition run with Acid for the best program written in it. One entry, Andy Davidson’s Total Wormage, became Worms.
The games
Acid’s first commercial game came from its own office. Skidmarks was written in Blitz Basic 2 by Andrew Blackbourne, a student at Auckland University described in Blitz User as the “office junior”, and Armstrong hoped it would be “the first Blitz2 commercial game to hit the top ten”. It came out at the turn of 1994, reached number five in The One’s chart that March, and CU Amiga gave it 92%. Acid’s advertisements promised a national championship for owners with modems.
Sibly’s Guardian, a fast 3D shoot-’em-up for the CD32, followed in 1994 and scored 90% in Amiga Power, and Roadkill, another racer, scored 84%. Super Skidmarks arrived early in 1995 with twice as many tracks, cows on wheels and towable caravans. Amiga Power, previewing it, said Acid had “become one of the Amiga’s greatest assets over the last twelve months”, having “put New Zealand on the map”. By the end of 1995 Acid was at work on a tennis game, Center Court.
Later years
In 1995 Sibly formed his own label, Black Magic, and its first game, Gloom, was published by Guildhall Leisure. Acid’s British business moved to Guildhall too: in 1996 Amiga Format readers ordered Blitz Basic 2.1 for £24.99 by sending a cheque payable to Acid Software to Guildhall Leisure at Kirk Sandall, Doncaster, and Guildhall reissued Acid games at £14.99.
The Acid Software name was still in use in December 2024, when it announced Mark Sibly’s death on Facebook.
Sources
- Blitz User (Acid Software, Auckland): issue 1, June 1992 (editorial, the St Kevins Arcade address, the PD disks); issue 3, March 1993 (“Back in the office”: the office shared with Vision Software, Skidmarks “written by office junior Andrew Blackbourne”); issue 4, June 1993 (the “AUSTRALIANS” complaint, the office mouse, Skidmarks as “likely to be the first software developed in Blitz2 to be released on a commercial basis”); issue 5, 1993 (Andrew at Auckland University, “the first Blitz2 commercial game to hit the top ten”, the CD32’s arrival).
- NZAmiga (Amiga Down Under) issue 1, December 1992/January 1993: Simon Armstrong’s Blitz BASIC column (“I’m the marketing manager for Acid Software”).
- Amiga Format issue 51, October 1993: Marcus Dyson’s report from the World of Commodore show in Sydney (the Acid stand, the shareware plan, “Acid Software boss”). Issue 52, November 1993: Blitz Basic 2 on the cover disk and the competition. Issues 81–83, February–April 1996: the Blitz Basic 2.1 offer through Guildhall Leisure.
- The One issue 66, March 1994: chart (Skidmarks at number five); work-in-progress feature on Guardian (Acid “originally formed by just two men”, sharing a building with Vision Software).
- CU Amiga, February 1994: Tony Dillon, Skidmarks review (92%; Acid Software, PO Box 3172, London).
- Amiga Computing issue 72, April 1994: Acid Software advertisement for Skidmarks (the modem championship). Issue 110, March 1997: Guildhall Leisure reissue of an Acid game at £14.99.
- Amiga Power issue 43, November 1994: Guardian review. Issue 46, February 1995: Super Skidmarks preview (Acid “one of the Amiga’s greatest assets”; Skidmarks 78%, Roadkill 84%, Guardian 90%).
- Amiga Format issue 73, July 1995: Gloom preview (Black Magic, Guildhall Leisure).
- Amiga Computing (US edition) issue 5, December 1995: Acid at work on Center Court.
- amiga-news.de, “Mark Sibly (Blitz Basic) passes away”, 14 December 2024 (web, secondary): the announcement on Acid Software’s Facebook page. https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-12-00066-EN.html