Acornsoft | Code Like It's 198x

For about five years, the company that made the BBC Micro also ran one of its busiest software publishers. Acornsoft sold programming languages, word processors, adventure games and arcade conversions from an office in Cambridge, and in September 1984 it launched Elite, the space game by two Cambridge undergraduates that ACE later reckoned was “probably responsible for selling many BBCs”. Less than two years later Acorn had closed Acornsoft as a separate company. Its games carried on under another publisher’s name.

Fast facts

Parent: Acorn Computers, Cambridge.
Managing director: David Johnson-Davies, until 1986.
Machines: Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron.
Best known for: Elite (1984), by Ian Bell and David Braben.
Other games: Snapper, Meteors, Planetoid, Starship Command, Castle of Riddles, Super Invaders, Aviator, Revs, JCB Digger.
Other software: languages including Forth, Lisp, Logo and Comal, the View word processor and the ViewSheet spreadsheet.
End: reabsorbed into Acorn in 1986; the games label passed to Superior Software.

From the Atom to the BBC Micro

Acornsoft started before the BBC Micro existed. Its first customers owned Acorn’s Atom, and by November 1981 dealers were advertising “Software from ACORNSOFT” in numbered packs of Atom games, with titles such as Star Trek, Wumpus, Invaders and Lunar Lander. Its managing director, David Johnson-Davies, also wrote books for Atom and BBC owners, among them Practical Programs for the BBC Computer and Acorn Atom.

When the BBC Micro arrived, Acornsoft became its manufacturer’s publisher. The first issue of Acorn User, in August 1982, promised that “all the products of Acornsoft will, of course, be announced first in Acorn User”, and listed Acornsoft’s address as 4a Market Hill, Cambridge. In January 1983 it announced its third adventure game, Castle of Riddles, with prizes worth £2,000 for solving it; retail and mail-order copies were to be released on the same day so that no one had a head start. In August 1983, in time for the Electron’s launch, Johnson-Davies confirmed 12 titles rewritten for it, a list that shows the range of the business: the languages Forth and Lisp, the games Snapper, Monsters, Meteors and Starship Command, Chess, Draughts and Reversi, and educational and home titles such as Creative Graphics, Tree of Knowledge and Personal Money Management.

Languages were a large part of what Acornsoft sold. The BBC Micro came with BBC BASIC, and Acornsoft added others: Lisp and Forth on cassette, then Logo and Comal, while the View word processor and ViewSheet spreadsheet gave the machine a business side.

The authors

Several of Acornsoft’s best games came from young freelance programmers, some of them Cambridge students. Starship Command was by Peter Irvin, a student at St John’s College. Ian Bell’s Freefall came out from Acornsoft before Elite. “People take their micros with them at the beginning of term,” Bell told Acorn Programs.

Geoff Crammond, then working at Marconi, sent his first game, Super Invaders, to Acornsoft “out of the blue in the hope that the company would like and publish it”. He had written it in mode 1, “a more laborious process than using mode 7”: “Acornsoft already had a space invaders game written in mode 7 but accepted mine instead.” His next game was planned with the company from the start. Crammond discussed a flight simulator with Acornsoft, and they chose the Spitfire. “You can also perform stunts and aerobatics on it, unlike a DC10,” said Johnson-Davies. Aviator took Crammond nine months of evenings and weekends, and after it he left Marconi to program full time. His motor racing simulator Revs followed in 1985, modelled on Silverstone and written with the racing driver David Hunt, whom Acorn had sponsored; Acorn User listed it at the same prices as Elite, £14.95 on cassette and £17.65 on disc.

Owners who upgraded from cassette to disc had a problem: they could buy their programs again or copy them. In 1984 Acornsoft offered a third choice. Owners could send in an Acornsoft cassette with half the price of the disc version and get the disc in exchange, a scheme Acornsoft believed was the first of its kind from a home software publisher.

Elite

Bell and Braben brought Elite to Acornsoft soon after they started writing it, and the company lent Braben a BBC Micro. Acornsoft kept the project secret until the launch in September 1984, when it presented the game to the press at Thorpe Park as the lead title in a Christmas range of 20 programs, backed by a £150,000 advertising campaign. Its advertisement in Acorn User asked £14.95 on cassette and £17.65 on disc for the BBC Micro, and £12.95 for the Electron. The game sold 13,000 copies in its first two weeks, and Acorn Programs reported Acornsoft’s forecast of Christmas sales “in the region of 100,000 — more than double those of any other Acornsoft game so far”.

Acornsoft published the BBC Micro and Electron versions; the authors sold the rights for other home computers to Firebird. A reader writing to ACE in September 1989, complaining about how publishers had come to favour big multi-format releases, used Acornsoft’s game as the measure: “On this basis the original Acornsoft version of Elite would have died at birth.” The Elite entry has the full story of the game.

Folded back into Acorn

Acornsoft did not survive a reorganisation of its parent. In April 1986 Acorn User reported that Acornsoft, “previously a separate trading company”, had been brought back “under the wing of the main Acorn company”. The staff stayed, but Johnson-Davies was made redundant. “Acornsoft has effectively been melted down and reintegrated into Acorn,” a spokeswoman said, adding that Acorn was “now more interested in the serious home user”. The magazine noted that the publishing schedule had shrunk and that an improved colour Elite for the 6502 second processor had still not appeared.

That version did exist. Acornsoft sold about 200 copies, Computer Gamer reported later, without marketing it, only to people who wrote in and asked.

Superior Software and Acornsoft

In the autumn of 1986 Acorn’s games passed to Superior Software of Leeds. The two companies jointly launched ten games for the new BBC Master Compact, and by December a joint Superior Software/Acornsoft logo was appearing on new games, which Acorn User described as the result of three months of negotiations. “Acornsoft is dead! Long live Acornsoft!” wrote Computer Gamer that month, introducing Galaforce, the first release on the joint label. Superior then went through the back catalogue. In February 1987 Computer Gamer reviewed its new Elite: one double-sided disc with versions for every BBC Micro and Master model, including the second processor version that Acornsoft had never properly released.

Sources

Computer & Video Games issue 1, November 1981: dealer advertisement, “Software from ACORNSOFT”, Atom game packs.
Acorn User issue 1, August 1982: editorial promise on Acornsoft products; Acornsoft, 4a Market Hill, Cambridge.
Acorn User issue 6, January 1983, news: Castle of Riddles and its £2,000 prizes; David Johnson-Davies, managing director.
Acorn User issue 13, August 1983, news: the 12 Electron titles.
Acorn User issue 20, March 1984: Planetoid (Acornsoft) in the chart.
The Micro User, February 1984: Lisp and Forth manuals and cassettes from Acornsoft.
Acorn Programs, May 1984, news: the disc replacement service; Johnson-Davies as managing director.
Nicole Segre, “Flying high on the wings of a Spitfire simulator”, Acorn Programs, June/July 1984, pp. 12–13: Crammond, Super Invaders, Aviator, Johnson-Davies on the Spitfire; news pages: JCB Digger.
Acorn User issue 27, October 1984: Acornsoft’s Elite advertisement and prices.
Acorn User issue 35, June 1985, news: “‘Revs’ follows ‘Aviator’ lead” (Silverstone, David Hunt, prices).
Acorn Programs, November 1984, news: the Thorpe Park launch, 20 titles, the £150,000 campaign.
Nicole Segre, “Limitless horizons for the Elite team”, Acorn Programs, December 1984: Irvin at St John’s, Freefall, the BBC Micro lent to Braben, secrecy, 13,000 copies and the Christmas forecast.
Acorn User issues 42 and 43, January and February 1986: dealer price lists for Acornsoft Logo and Comal.
Acorn User issue 45, April 1986, news: “Acornsoft — back in the fold”.
Acorn User issue 51, October 1986, and issue 53, December 1986: Master Compact titles from Acornsoft and Superior; the joint logo.
Computer Gamer issue 21, December 1986: Galaforce, “Acornsoft is dead! Long live Acornsoft!”
Computer Gamer issue 23, February 1987: Superior’s Elite and the second processor version.
ACE issue 24, September 1989: reader’s letter on Elite.
ACE issue 42, March 1991: all-time greats.
Wikipedia, “Acornsoft” (web, secondary): formed in late 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acornsoft