Before Mastertronic, as ACE later put it, Spectrum software “cost anything from £5 to £10”. In the spring of 1984 Mastertronic launched a range of Spectrum and Commodore games at £1.99 each, and Sinclair User reported that it took more than 100,000 orders in its first week, from small independent shops as well as W H Smith. Asked how the established publishers felt about it, chairman Frank Herman said: “They hate us.” Within a year Mastertronic claimed audited sales of two million games. By the end of 1987 it owned a full-price publisher, ran an arcade-machine business, and was selling Sega’s consoles in Britain.
Breaking the £2 barrier
Sinclair User called cut-price games “the latest upset in the industry”. That spring Pulsonic had launched Spectrum games at £2.95; Mastertronic went “one better”, “breaking the £2 barrier” with titles “at an unprecedented £1.99 each”. Other publishers had said prices could not fall without killing profits. Herman disagreed: the secret, he said, lay in “direct mass marketing”.
That meant selling where games had not been sold before. ACE, looking back in 1990, listed motorway service stations, newsagents, garage forecourts and supermarkets. By May 1985 Mastertronic had also set up Shuttlesoft to distribute budget software; CRASH reported that Firebird was its only supplier apart from Mastertronic itself, and that managing director Martin Alper had said Firebird was the only other budget company likely to stay in business.
Computer & Video Games reported in July 1985 that Mastertronic, “formed in April 1984”, claimed to be the brand leader in budget software, and that “in its first 12 months of trading, Mastertronic says it has audited figures of sales for two million games”. The Games Machine later said the company had been founded on All Fool’s Day by three people; Herman, Alper and Alan Sharam are usually named as its founders.
Where the games came from
Many of the first games came from two teenagers. Richard and David Darling had their own company, Galactic, and Commodore Computing International reported in December 1984 that more than half of Mastertronic’s first 30 titles were theirs. In August 1984 Galactic and Mastertronic formed a joint company, AI Products; Richard, aged 16, told the magazine he attended “the monthly board meetings and weekly meetings”. Their Chiller was Mastertronic’s biggest early seller, over 100,000 copies on the Commodore 64 and 30,000 on the Spectrum by the summer of 1985. It also caused trouble. A music-rights agency said its tune copied Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”; Herman denied that the game had been withdrawn, but agreed “to negotiate a royalty” and “to use different music in future production runs”. CCI wondered, if Chiller had nothing to do with Thriller, why a Michael Jackson lookalike had been wandering around the press launch. The Darlings left in 1986 to found Codemasters.
Most games arrived in the post. In August 1985 Sinclair User reported that Mastertronic received around 200 games a month; in May it had looked at 220. It could spend “ten minutes on each”, and many came “without instructions or any form of documentation”. Two that month were almost ready to publish.
What £1.99 bought
CRASH’s January 1988 index shows how widely the Spectrum catalogue varied:
| Game | Label in index | CRASH score | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knight Tyme | Mastertronic | 94% | 29 |
| Amaurote | Mad | 92% | 40 |
| Mister Magic | Mastertronic | 86% | 31 |
| Finders Keepers | Mastertronic | 85% | 13 |
| Universal Hero | Mastertronic | 83% | 33 |
| Lap of the Gods | Mastertronic | 80% | 33 |
| One Man and His Droid | Mastertronic | 76% | 23 |
| Chronos | Mastertronic | 55% | 41 |
| Action Biker | Mastertronic | 52% | 19 |
| Chiller | Mastertronic | 42% | 15 |
| Rapid Fire | Mastertronic | 32% | 45 |
| 1985 | Mastertronic | 21% | 25 |
One company, many labels
By 1986 Mastertronic was selling under several names. Mastertronic Added Dimension (MAD) sold games at £2.99, among them the Magic Knight arcade adventures; Your Sinclair counted Finders Keepers, Spellbound, Knight Tyme and Stormbringer as the series. Entertainment USA carried American games, Bulldog was another £1.99 label, and Ricochet re-released older full-price games at £1.99, including Ultimate’s Knight Lore and Alien 8 at Christmas 1987.
The group spread beyond software too. In April 1987 CRASH listed “all the Mastertronic labels, Bulldog, the new Mastersounds record label and Mastervision videos, and the Arcadia arcade machine specialists”, and wondered where the offices would find room for Melbourne House’s staff. Arcadia made coin-op machines built on the Amiga.
Buying Melbourne House
In early 1987 Mastertronic bought Melbourne House, the full-price publisher of The Hobbit and The Way of the Exploding Fist. Geoff Heath, who had left Melbourne House for Mastertronic, promised CRASH that it would “retain its own identity” and that “it won’t be producing budget titles, and Mastertronic won’t be going full price”. Alfred Milgrom, Melbourne House’s founder, gave Edge a different account ten years later: “Mastertronic decided that Melbourne House should move directly to 16bit and ditch its 8bit heritage, and as a result we spent a whole year developing products that went nowhere. They never got published.”
Sega and Virgin
In 1987 Mastertronic began distributing Sega’s Master System in Britain; Sega’s advertisements in September 1987 said “Distributed in the UK by Mastertronic Ltd”. In the same autumn Richard Branson’s Virgin Group bought a 45% stake. ACE reported that Virgin explained the move by Mastertronic’s expertise in fields where Virgin had little: budget software, arcade machines and distribution in the United States. ACE’s review of 1987 put the two deals together: “Mastertronic swallowed up Melbourne House in February; eight months later, Virgin bought substantial minority interest in Mastertronic.” In 1988 it became part of the Virgin group, trading as Virgin Mastertronic.
Virgin Mastertronic was Sega’s European console distributor. It told ACE in 1989 not to expect a PAL Mega Drive before Easter 1990, and it launched the console in Britain in 1990. Later accounts say that in 1991 Sega bought the business, which became part of Sega Europe, and that the remaining publishing side became Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 27, June 1984: “Games firm masters prices” (the £1.99 launch; Frank Herman on direct mass marketing; 100,000 orders in the first week; “They hate us”).
- Sinclair User issue 28, July 1984: the budget “onslaught” led by Pulsonic and Mastertronic; “breaking the £2 barrier”.
- Commodore Computing International vol. 3 no. 6, December 1984: Frank Herman as chairman; the Chiller music dispute; the Darling brothers, Galactic and AI Products.
- CRASH issue 16, May 1985: Shuttlesoft and Martin Alper, managing director.
- Computer & Video Games issue 45, July 1985: “formed in April 1984”; two million games in the first twelve months.
- Sinclair User issue 41, August 1985, pp. 51–54: Clare Edgeley, “Programs for Profit” (200 games a month; ten minutes each; Chiller’s sales).
- ZZAP!64 issue 17, September 1986: Entertainment USA (Mastertronic), £1.99. Issue 20, December 1986: Mastertronic Added Dimension, £2.99.
- CRASH issue 39, April 1987: Mastertronic buys Melbourne House; Geoff Heath; the labels, Mastersounds, Mastervision and Arcadia.
- Your Sinclair issue 19, July 1987: Stormbringer and the MAD Magic Knight games. Issue 25, January 1988: Ricochet re-releases of Knight Lore and Alien 8 at £1.99.
- Computer & Video Games issue 71, September 1987: Sega Master System advertisement (“Distributed in the UK by Mastertronic Ltd”).
- The Games Machine issue 1, October 1987: budget feature (founded on All Fool’s Day by three people).
- ACE issue 3, December 1987: Arcadia, the Amiga-based coin-op subsidiary. Issue 4, January 1988: Virgin’s 45% stake. Issue 5, February 1988: review of 1987 (Melbourne House, Virgin’s minority interest).
- CRASH issue 48, January 1988: index of reviews (the scores and issue numbers above).
- ACE issue 23, August 1989: Virgin/Mastertronic as Sega’s European console distributor. Issue 35, August 1990: Mega Drive launch through Virgin Mastertronic.
- ACE issue 29, February 1990: history of the budget labels (founded 1984; where the games were sold; Codemasters in 1986; Melbourne House in 1987; Virgin in 1988).
- Edge issue 46, June 1997: Alfred Milgrom on Melbourne House under Mastertronic.
- Wikipedia, “Mastertronic” (web, secondary): the founders and the 1991 sale to Sega. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastertronic