In September 1988 Commodore User reviewed a game most of its readers already knew. U.S. Gold’s conversion of Atari’s arcade game Gauntlet had been reviewed at full price early in 1987. Now it was back at £2.99, on a new label. “This is US Gold’s new cheapo label,” the reviewer wrote. “And what a first release!”
The label was Kixx, and its business was giving old games a second life. U.S. Gold had built its name on expensive American imports and arcade licences. Kixx took games whose full-price sales had run out and sold them again at a pocket-money price. It kept doing so for the rest of the 8-bit era, then did the same on the Amiga, the Atari ST and the PC.
Fast facts
- Owner: U.S. Gold, and from 1996 Eidos.
- Launched: summer 1988, at £2.99 a cassette.
- First managers: John Mearman and Lesley Bossen, both formerly of Mastertronic.
- First releases: Gauntlet and Metrocross.
- Later ranges: 16-bit Kixx at £7.99 from 1991; Kixx XL at £12.99 to £14.99 from 1992; Kixx Classics on the PC at £4.99 by 1998.
A cheap label from a dear publisher
A budget label was an odd fit for U.S. Gold, which had always charged more than its rivals. According to The Story of US Gold, the idea grew out of its compilations. Tim Chaney, U.S. Gold’s managing director, complained that a game sold in April was unwanted by September. The They Sold a Million compilations, made with Ocean, showed that old hits could sell again. Mastertronic had already proved that games could sell at £1.99. Chaney chose £2.99, or £4.99 on disk.
CRASH announced the label in its September 1988 issue, calling it “a very selective budget venture. Known as Kixx (not sure why)”. It expected about 12 titles in the first year, starting with games CRASH had already reviewed: Gauntlet (92%), Metrocross (77%), World Games (71%), Ace of Aces (62%) and Tenth Frame (55%). They would sell at £2.99 from “some time in the middle of August”. Amstrad Action reported in October that Gauntlet and Metrocross were out.
ACE named the people behind it in November. “Kixx has been formed by ex-Mastertronic employees John Mearman and Lesley Bossen, who reckon the Kixx philosophy of quality not quantity is just the thing the market needs.” The first games came from “the U.S.Gold and Gremlin back catalogue”, so from the start Kixx sold Gremlin Graphics titles as well as U.S. Gold’s own. ACE’s plan was bigger than CRASH’s: 24 titles over the next year, “approximately a third of those being original titles”, all at £2.99 on cassette.
New games at budget prices
The original games did appear. In February 1989 ACE reported that Kixx was continuing “its re-release theme” with Bravestar, World Games, Way of the Tiger, Rygar and Super Cycle, and that the Spanish developer Topo Soft, which had written U.S. Gold’s Pepsi Challenge game Mad Mix, had been signed “to produce Kixx’s first original games, Blackbeard and Colosseum”.
ACE reviewed Blackbeard the next month: “Kixx’s first original product”, £2.99 on the Spectrum and Amstrad. The player guides a pirate around the decks of HMS Victory to recover his stolen treasure map, and drinking too much of the rum that restores his energy leaves him staggering. “Entertaining — if a little slow”, the review concluded, with an ACE rating of 670 out of 1,000.
Everyone’s back catalogue
Kixx did not only sell U.S. Gold games. By the early 1990s its 8-bit list included Thalamus games such as Hunter’s Moon, Creatures and Turrican, System 3’s Flimbo’s Quest and MicroProse’s MicroProse Soccer. In September 1992 ZZAP!64 reviewed Flimbo’s Quest and Sega’s Super Monaco GP as Kixx cassettes at £3.99, and its readers’ chart for that month put MicroProse Soccer, Creatures and Turrican on Kixx in its top five.
The price rose slowly. ZZAP!64’s May 1991 issue had Kixx games at both £2.99 and £3.99, and £3.99 became the usual 8-bit price. The label also sold compilations: in 1991 Kixx Multimix 1 collected World Class Leaderboard and other Leaderboard golf games.
Some re-releases came back to judgement. Out Run, the arcade licence CRASH had given 72% at full price in 1988, returned on Kixx at £2.99 and scored 58% in December 1990.
The 16-bit labels
In March 1991 Amiga Computing reported that U.S. Gold was “about to release the first games on their Kixx label” for the Amiga, “all priced at £7.99”. The first batch included RoadBlasters, Thunder Blade, Blasteroids, World Class Leaderboard, Gauntlet II and Out Run.
A dearer range followed. The Story of US Gold dates Kixx XL to November 1992, a label “to cater for more serious gamers”. Amiga Format’s December 1992 budget guide had Kixx XL selling Midwinter and Battlehawks 1942 at £12.99, while plain Kixx sold Rick Dangerous at £7.99. In September 1994 Amiga Power’s chart had Street Fighter 2 and Battle of Britain on Kixx at £14.99, and the magazine gave the Kixx re-release of MicroProse’s Stunt Car Racer 91%. In 1995 the label was selling CD32 games at £10. According to The Story of US Gold, Kixx XL’s sales grew from £1.8 million in its first year to £3.1 million by 1994.
Under Eidos
In 1996 Eidos bought CentreGold, the group that owned U.S. Gold. Eidos dropped the U.S. Gold name but, according to The Story of US Gold, kept Kixx with the rest of the subsidiaries, and re-released U.S. Gold’s last game, Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996, on it. The label carried on selling PC games. In 1997 PC Zone advertised an Our Price promotion with prize vouchers inside every Kixx box, and in November 1998 it reviewed the Titanic adventure as a £4.99 “Kixx Classics” release. The period and later sources checked for this entry do not record when Eidos stopped using the name.
Sources
- Commodore User, September 1988, p. 71: Gauntlet review (“US Gold’s new cheapo label”).
- CRASH issue 56, September 1988, p. 8: news, “Alive and Kixxing” (the first titles, about 12 in the first year, £2.99, mid-August).
- Amstrad Action issue 37, October 1988, p. 11: news (Gauntlet and Metrocross out; Blackbeard due).
- Commodore Computing International vol. 7 no. 2, October 1988, p. 8: news, “Kixx off!” (£2.99; Gauntlet, Metrocross, World Games, Ace of Aces and 10th Frame).
- ACE issue 14, November 1988, p. 10: news, “Kixx to kill?” (John Mearman and Lesley Bossen; the U.S. Gold and Gremlin back catalogues; 24 titles, a third original; £2.99).
- ACE issue 17, February 1989, p. 70: “Cheap ‘n’ cheerful” budget news (the re-releases; Topo Soft, Blackbeard and Colosseum).
- ACE issue 18, March 1989, pp. 81–82: Blackbeard review (ACE rating 670).
- CRASH issue 83, December 1990, p. 63: Out Run re-release (£2.99; 58%).
- Amiga Computing issue 34, March 1991, p. 41: news (the first 16-bit Kixx titles at £7.99).
- ZZAP!64 issue 73, May 1991: Kixx reviews at £2.99 and £3.99 (Technocop, Hunter’s Moon); Kixx Multimix competition, p. 39.
- ZZAP!64 issue 88, September 1992, p. 10 (readers’ chart) and pp. 42–45 (Flimbo’s Quest and Super Monaco GP at £3.99).
- Amiga Format issue 41, December 1992, pp. 79–85: budget guide (Kixx at £7.99; Kixx XL at £12.99 and £14.99).
- Amiga Power issue 41, September 1994: chart (Kixx at £14.99) and the Stunt Car Racer re-release (91%). Issue 48, April 1995, pp. 70–71: CD32 re-releases at £10.
- PC Zone issue 55, October 1997, p. 36: the Kixx promotion at Our Price. Issue 69, November 1998, p. 119: Titanic, “£4.99 Kixx Classics”.
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of US Gold (Fusion Retro Books, 2015), pp. 68–69 (the compilations, the £2.99 price, Mearman and Bossen, Kixx XL in November 1992), p. 105 (Kixx XL sales) and p. 110 (Kixx passing to Eidos). This modern book draws on interviews with U.S. Gold staff.