Krisalis Software | Code Like It's 198x

Krisalis spent most of its life making other people’s games run on machines they were not written for. Its programmers took Namco’s Pac-Mania and Taito’s Chase HQ to the Atari ST and Amiga, and Lemmings and Gremlin’s Lotus Turbo Challenge II to the Acorn Archimedes, a machine few games publishers bothered with. Out of that trade grew a publisher with its own games, from a Manchester United licence to Soccer Kid, a platform game about a boy and his football. All of it came from Rotherham, from an office at Teque House, Masons Yard.

Fast facts

Founded: May 1987, as the development team Teque, by Tony Kavanagh, Peter Harrap and Shaun Hollingworth.
Based: Teque House, Masons Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate, Rotherham.
Run by: Tony Kavanagh, managing director.
Conversions: Pac-Mania, Blasteroids, Toobin’, Xybots, Continental Circus, Chase HQ, Laser Squad and many more; Archimedes versions of Lemmings, James Pond, SWIV, Chuck Rock and Lotus Turbo Challenge II.
Published: Manchester United (1990), Manchester United Europe (1991), Hill Street Blues (1991), Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash (1991), Arabian Nights (1993), Soccer Kid (1993).
Later: console and PC work into the late 1990s, including FA Manager for Eidos and Airport Inc for Take 2.
Closed: 2001.

Teque

Harrap and Hollingworth came from Gremlin Graphics in Sheffield, where Harrap had written the Monty Mole games, including Monty on the Run. In November 1988 Your Sinclair described their new company, started by “ex-Gremlin programmers Shaun Hollingsworth and Peter Harrap — yup, those wacky funsters who gave us the Monty games”, with Tony Kavanagh as managing director. They were not writing everything themselves: Teque’s The Munsters was being written for all six formats by Bill Caunt and Peter Hickinson.

Teque grew fast. By November 1989 it employed 23 people, The One reported, and most of its work was converting other companies’ games. Its list by the spring of 1990 included Prison, Pac-Mania, Blasteroids, Toobin’, Xybots, Thunderbirds, Passing Shot, Continental Circus, Chase HQ, Laser Squad and Cyberball. When The One visited Caunt and Hickinson at work on the 16-bit Chase HQ for Ocean, they explained where a racing conversion starts: “We always do the road first — that’s the central routine that the entire game is based on, so it’s vital to get that working first.”

In March 1989 The One reported that the “newly-formed Krisalis (formerly Chrysalis)” had signed Ultimate to convert its old 8-bit games to the ST, Amiga and PC, starting with Sabre Wulf and Atic Atac, with Hollingworth and Harrap in charge. Krisalis became the publishing side of the business, set up, as The One put it that November, “for the release of original product”.

Manchester United

Krisalis’s first game under its own name, Amiga Format recorded in 1992, was Manchester United in 1990. Its advertising promised both halves of a football game: the matches, with penalties, throw-ins, an action replay and a stadium drawn across 15 screens, and a management game with training, injuries and a transfer market. Versions were promised for machines from the Spectrum and MSX to the Archimedes. The club’s name was the selling point: “According to Krisalis, Manchester United is the biggest brand-name in sport,” ACE reported in June 1991, as the sequel arrived. Manchester United Europe took the club into the European Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Cup, and Krisalis said it had used ideas from more than 3,000 reply cards sent back by players of the first game.

The sequel travelled. Reviewing the PC version in June 1992, the Greek magazine PC Master said the game had won over a large share of Kick Off’s fans with its easy controls and good graphics, but that the PC conversion had lost several of the features that had made it famous. The reviewer was pleased by one thing before the game even started: it asked which language to use. “At last, a company that respects users who don’t speak English.”

More football licences followed, among them Graham Taylor’s Soccer Challenge and John Barnes’ European Football, and later Manchester United Premier League Champions.

Hill Street Blues and Soccer Kid

Not everything was football. Krisalis’s 1991 game of the television series Hill Street Blues put the player in charge of the precinct, and its advertising described something bigger than a licence usually offered: “a computer controlled city which generates an environment displaying 300 vehicles and 400 people who live and work within the Hill Street Precinct for you to interact with”, with up to nine crimes to deal with at once, “ranging from Muggers to Bank Robbery, Drug Pushers to Murderers”.

Soccer Kid, written by Neil Adamson, Nigel Little and Matt Furniss and sold for £29.99 on the Amiga in 1993, was a platform game in which the hero used a football for everything: to kill enemies, to reach high platforms and to collect items out of reach. When the 3DO version appeared in 1995, 3DO Magazine wrote that “while Amiga platformers are usually dire, Soccer Kid is one of a select few exceptional to that rule”, and called the 3DO version “undoubtedly the best yet”. Arabian Nights, a platform adventure starring Sinbad, came out the same year.

The Archimedes conversions

Krisalis was one of the few companies converting mainstream games to the Acorn Archimedes. A software price list in Acorn User in October 1992 carried Krisalis versions of Lemmings, James Pond, SWIV, Chuck Rock, Quest for Gold and Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash, and in the same issue Krisalis advertised three more games that would appear first at that year’s Acorn User Show. One was Lotus Turbo Challenge II, the Amiga racing game Magnetic Fields had written for Gremlin: “In an amazing piece of programming Krisalis have converted this best seller for the Acorn Archimedes.” Anyone who could not get to the show could order by post, with dispatch promised for 16 October 1992. Krisalis later converted Speedball 2 to the Archimedes too.

Games that went elsewhere

Krisalis also worked with Julian Gollop’s team through their publisher, Blade Software. Gollop told Retro Gamer that the Amiga version of Lords of Chaos was ported from the Atari ST “by Krisalis software, which was a partner with our publisher, Blade Software”. In 1991, with an early demo of what would become X-COM: UFO Defense, the Gollops approached Krisalis and Domark before signing with MicroProse, Edge reported in 2003.

The later years

Krisalis moved with the market. In 1995 it developed the 3DO version of Interplay’s Battle Chess. In February 1997 PC Gamer reported that it was converting UEFA Champions League for Philips, and noted its earlier football successes, including Manchester United Europe and the Mega Drive hit European Club Soccer; Tony Kavanagh was still its director. In 1999 it was the developer of FA Manager for Eidos on the PlayStation and worked with Sensible Software on Sensible Soccer European Club Edition for GT Interactive. Harrap and Hollingworth were still there: Arcade magazine described Harrap in May 1999 as “a director at Krisalis Software with Shaun”.

Take 2 published its PC management game Airport Inc, which entered the ChartTrack PC chart printed in PC Zone in April 2000 at number eight. PC Zone’s review gave it 37%. By March 2001 the German magazine PC Player was asking, in an editorial about vanished publishers, “who really misses the products of Krisalis or Reline?” Public sources give 30 November 2001 as the date the company ended. By 2005 Kavanagh was head of Kuju Entertainment’s Sheffield studio, according to Edge.

Sources

The One issue 6, March 1989: news (“newly-formed Krisalis (formerly Chrysalis)”; the Ultimate conversions; Hollingworth and Harrap).
Your Sinclair issue 35, November 1988: The Munsters preview (Teque; Hollingworth and Harrap; Tony Kavanagh; Bill Caunt and Peter Hickinson).
The One issue 14, November 1989: Chase HQ work in progress (Teque’s founding and size; Krisalis as its publishing company).
ZZAP! issue 60, April 1990: “Teque — the developers” (founders and conversions).
The One issue 38, November 1991: profile of Dean Lester, managing director of Teque and PR manager for Krisalis.
The One issue 19, April 1990: Manchester United advertisement.
ACE issue 45, June 1991: Manchester United Europe news (reply cards; “the biggest brand-name in sport”).
Zero issue 19, May 1991: Hill Street Blues advertisement.
AMIGA POWER issue 2, June 1991: Hill Street Blues and Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash reviews. Issue 25, 1993: Arabian Nights review. Issue 29, 1993: Soccer Kid review (£29.99).
Amiga Format Special issue 4, 1992: industry directory entry for Krisalis.
PC Master (Greece) issue 30, June 1992, p. 82: Manchester United Europe PC review.
Acorn User issue 123, October 1992: software price list and Krisalis advertisement (Lotus Turbo Challenge II; Teque House address).
3DO Magazine issue 1, 1995: Soccer Kid and Battle Chess reviews.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 40, February 1997: UEFA Champions League news.
Arcade issue 3, February 1999: Sensible Soccer European Club Edition review. Issue 4, March 1999: FA Manager preview. Issue 6, May 1999: Monty Mole feature (Harrap and Hollingworth at Krisalis).
PC Zone issue 88, April 2000: ChartTrack PC chart (Airport Inc).
PC Player (Germany), March 2001: editorial.
Edge issue 131, Christmas 2003: X-COM feature. Issue 144, January 2005: Kuju studio listing.
Retro Gamer issue 112, 2013: Lords of Chaos (Julian Gollop).
Wikipedia, “Krisalis Software” (web, secondary): the date the company ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krisalis_Software