Atlantis Software came to games from video. Its founders ran a business that distributed horror films on cassette, and in the spring of 1984 they decided that computer games, like videos, should sell in volume at a low price. Atlantis was one of the first publishers to follow Mastertronic to £1.99, and it did something the arcade-minded budget labels rarely tried: alongside the shoot-‘em-ups it sold card games, board games and a seafaring trading game. One of its card games won CRASH readers’ vote as the best of its kind in 1984.
Fast facts
- Founded: January 1984, in London, by Michael Cole and Rodger Coghill.
- First games: four, released in May 1984 at £1.99.
- Address: 19 Prebend Street, Islington, London N1, in 1984–85; later 28 Station Road, London SE25.
- Formats: Spectrum and Commodore 64 first, with VIC-20, Amstrad and MSX games planned from 1985.
- Labels: Atlantis at £1.99, and Atlantis Gold at £2.99 from 1985.
- Best-known games: Eights and Chinese Patience (David Simon), Vagan Attack, Master Mariner, Connect 4 and the Mafia Contract adventures.
From videos to games
CRASH told the company’s story in November 1984. Rodger Coghill ran Atlantis Video Productions, a video distributor in Wapping, and Michael Cole had been managing director of one of the largest software distributors in Britain. (CRASH added that its own artist, Oliver Frey, had once designed video box covers for Atlantis.) Sinclair User named some of the films: Nightmare Maker, One Dark Night and Plague.
The two men reasoned that with four million home computers expected in British homes by the end of 1984, and half their users under sixteen, games cost too much to sell in the numbers they should. A “pocket-money price” was the answer. Cole spent five months evaluating hundreds of games at the company’s Islington premises and picked four to release in May 1984. In July Sinclair User reported that Atlantis had matched Mastertronic’s £1.99 and was releasing four Spectrum and Commodore games a month. Atlantis advertised in CRASH for more, offering “high royalties on world-wide sales”. By November it had sixteen games on sale and expected twenty by Christmas. “We were amazed at the high standard of some of the games sent to us for evaluation,” Cole said.
Cards, boards and the high seas
CRASH reviewed the first three in October 1984. Its editorial had promised to back “any software house that could produce really good programs at a cheap price”, and now it had found “three games from Atlantis Software” that were “worth the asking price and that haven’t been written down to match the price”. Vagan Attack, by John Green, was a Star Trek-style space game with real-time battles. “It’s amazing that a game of this quality and complexity should be on sale at £1.99,” one reviewer wrote. Master Mariner was a trading game in which the player sailed a brig in search of a fortune.
The third was a card game. Eights, by David Simon, dealt the player and the computer seven cards each. Its CRASH reviewer explained why such games usually failed: “in the end it is much easier to drag the real game out and play it rather than play it on the computer. But Eights seems to have overcome that.” CRASH’s readers agreed, and voted it the best board, card or puzzle game of 1984. Atlantis put the award at the top of its next advertisement as “proof that budget software can be quality software”.
David Simon followed it with Chinese Patience, a two-player version of patience against the Spectrum, in which, CRASH found, “the computer plays a near-perfect game” and “grinds your mistake into your face”. Connect 4 was “simply a computer version of the well known plastic wall divider with holes”, as CRASH put it. Atlantis also sold adventures, among them Mafia Contract, and in January 1987 CRASH’s adventure column counted Atlantis, “not least with their famous Mafia games”, among the budget publishers that had kept adventuring alive.
What CRASH made of them
CRASH’s index of every Spectrum game it had reviewed up to the end of 1987 lists more than twenty Atlantis titles. Some of their scores:
| Game | Score | Issue |
|---|---|---|
| Moron | 80% | 34 |
| The Thinker | 79% | 15 |
| Nicotine Nightmare | 78% | 15 |
| Sceptre of Bagdad | 75% | 40 |
| Vagan Attack | 73% | 9 |
| Eights | 73% | 9 |
| Connect 4 | 72% | 15 |
| Master Mariner | 71% | 9 |
| Mrs Mopp | 70% | 10 |
| Chinese Patience | 68% | 20 |
| Pioneer | 67% | 10 |
| Rattler | 53% | 14 |
| Revenge of the C5 | 42% | 26 |
| Jack and the Time Rings | 32% | 29 |
| League Challenge | 28% | 38 |
| Pro Golf | 26% | 37 |
| Mafia Contract | 7/10 | 12 |
The last is on CRASH’s ten-point adventure scale. Mrs Mopp was a re-release of a game CRASH had already reviewed at nearly £5 more. Revenge of the C5, as CRASH remembered 1986, did its best “to squeeze the last dribbles of humour” out of Sinclair’s electric car. Not every reader agreed with the reviewers. In January 1987 one wrote to CRASH that Pro Golf was among “the most accurate and enjoyable games I have ever played”; CRASH gave it 26% the following month.
Later years
Atlantis kept going after most of its first-wave rivals had gone. By 1987 it had moved to Station Road in south London. In 1989 and 1990 its games turned up on magazine cover tapes: CRASH gave away Sceptre of Bagdad on its Powertape in September 1989 and Survivors and Luna Atac in 1990, and ZZAP!64 put Rollin’ and Connect 4 on its Christmas 1990 cassette. Your Sinclair reviewed a new Atlantis game, Hobgoblin, in September 1991, and Atlantis four-game packs were still being sold, and hacked for cheats in Amstrad Action, in 1992.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 28, July 1984, pp. 4–5: Atlantis matching Mastertronic’s £1.99, four games a month, Atlantis Video Productions and its films, “pocket-money software”.
- CRASH issue 6, July 1984, p. 40: Atlantis advertisement (Michael Cole, 19 Prebend Street, London N1, “high royalties on world-wide sales”).
- CRASH issue 9, October 1984: editorial, “El Cheapo”, and reviews of Vagan Attack (p. 11), Master Mariner (p. 19) and Eights (p. 94).
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984, p. 132: Atlantis profile and competition (Cole and Coghill, January 1984, the May releases, the Islington premises, sixteen games, Cole’s quotation, Oliver Frey); reviews of Mrs Mopp (p. 51) and Pioneer (p. 140).
- CRASH issue 14, March 1985, p. 117: Atlantis advertisement (Eights and the readers’ awards, 23 games at £1.99, Atlantis Gold at £2.99, VIC-20, Amstrad and MSX).
- CRASH issue 15, April 1985, p. 46: Connect 4 review.
- CRASH issue 20, September 1985, p. 39: Chinese Patience review (David Simon; Eights “voted best board/card/puzzle game in the 1984 CRASH Readers’ Awards”).
- CRASH issue 36, January 1987: letters (Pro Golf), review of 1986 (Revenge of the C5) and adventure column (the Mafia games).
- CRASH issue 48, Christmas Special 1987: review index (the scores in the table).
- Computer & Video Games issue 70, August 1987: review listing Atlantis Software at 28 Station Road, London SE25.
- CRASH issue 68, September 1989: Powertape (Sceptre of Bagdad) and Atlantis competition. Issues 78 and 80, July and September 1990: Powertape contents (Survivors, Luna Atac).
- ZZAP!64 issue 68, December 1990: cover-tape contents (Rollin’, Connect 4).
- Your Sinclair issue 69, September 1991, p. 58: Hobgoblin review. Issue 76, April 1992: mail-order listing of the Atlantis 4 Pack.
- Amstrad Action issue 84, September 1992: cheats for Atlantis’s 4 Game Packs 1 and 2.