Mirrorsoft | Code Like It's 198x

Mirrorsoft was the software house of the Daily Mirror, and so, in the end, of Robert Maxwell. It began in 1983 selling Mr Men programs and multiplication games through Boots and W. H. Smith, and eight years later it was one of the country’s biggest games publishers, with the Bitmap Brothers, Cinemaware and Tetris on its books. In between, it sold the console rights to Tetris that it did not turn out to own, and lost them to Nintendo in a week of meetings in Moscow. It did not fail on its own account. When Maxwell drowned in November 1991 and his companies came apart, Mirrorsoft was, as Amiga Format put it, “a healthy company… dragged down”.

Fast facts

Owner: Mirror Group Newspapers, part of Robert Maxwell’s group. By the late 1980s Maxwell’s son Kevin oversaw it.
Run by: Jim Mackonochie, who started it as MGN’s development manager.
First releases: end of November 1983, for the BBC Micro and Electron.
Labels: Mirrorsoft; PSS, 80% owned from 1987; Image Works, launched in 1988; the budget label Mirror Image. It also published Cinemaware’s games in Britain.
Sister company: Spectrum HoloByte in the United States.
Games: Dynamite Dan, Strike Force Harrier, Biggles, Tetris, Speedball, Xenon 2, Bloodwych, Bombuzal, Mega-lo-Mania.
End: liquidation at the end of 1991; Acclaim bought its remaining games early in 1992.

Mr Men and the newspaper

Acorn User announced the new company in December 1983 under the headline “Mr Men star for Mirrorsoft”. Three packs were due at the end of November, two of them for the BBC Micro and Electron, and the second release, Quick Thinking, came from Widgit Software. Jim Mackonochie, MGN’s development manager, explained that Mirrorsoft would act as a publisher “with its own vetting team”, aiming at “the games and home education sector”. It had its own logo, in red, and its titles would be advertised in the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror. Software was “one of 25 projects MGN is expanding into, which include cable, video and satellite TV”.

Mackonochie was already thinking about the paper’s comic strips. The first three tapes did not use them, he said, but “if a software house wants to use a character in the paper, we will consider that”: Andy Capp, perhaps, or Garth, or the Perishers. Andy Capp did become a Mirrorsoft game, in early 1988.

The early advertisements were for the family. In Big K in April 1984, under the line “Software for all the family”, Mirrorsoft sold Widgit’s Sum Vaders, in which only mental arithmetic stopped alien robots invading, “for all family members, from 8 years to adult”, and Robot Tables, which taught multiplication by building robots. Orders went to PO Box 50, Bromley.

Dynamite Dan

CRASH, looking back over its own history in 1987, marked the moment Mirrorsoft became a games publisher. After “a short and low-profile history of educational software, Mirrorsoft suddenly produced Dynamite Dan, the ever so attractive Jet Set Willy clone which because of its playability, clever map and fiendish difficulty well deserved the Smash it received”. That review, in July 1985, gave the Spectrum game 94%. Dan had to find the dynamite, blow open Dr Blitzen’s safe and escape in an airship, and Mirrorsoft promised that the first caller to name the tune played as the airship took off would win a flight in the Goodyear blimp.

The games did not replace the educational line; they sat beside it. A Mirrorsoft advertisement in Amstrad Action in September 1986 ran three columns side by side: games (Dynamite Dan, Biggles, Boulder Dash, Sai Combat, Spitfire 40, Strike Force Harrier), early learning (First Steps with the Mr Men, Here & There with the Mr Men) and children’s entertainment (Caesar’s Travels, an animated storybook). Orders now went to a freepost address in Paulton, near Bristol.

Labels and the sixteen-bit years

Mirrorsoft grew by adding labels. In 1987 it took an 80% holding in PSS, the wargames publisher. It published Cinemaware’s games, such as Defender of the Crown, and FTL’s Dungeon Master in Britain, and Spectrum HoloByte’s Falcon. In September 1988 Amstrad Action reported the launch of a new entertainment label, Image Works, which joined Cinemaware and PSS “under the wing of Mirrorsoft”. Its first releases included Tony Crowther and David Bishop’s Fernandez Must Die and Bombuzal.

Image Works also had the Bitmap Brothers. Amiga Computing reported that Mirrorsoft had offered them more money than Melbourne House, Mastertronic and Virgin could muster, and their Speedball (1988) and Xenon 2: Megablast (1989) came out on the label, with Speedball 2 following in 1990. In April 1989 readers of EMAP’s magazines voted Mirrorsoft the 16-bit software house of the year at the Golden Joystick Awards. Later releases included Sensible Software’s Mega-lo-Mania (1991).

Tetris

The London agent Robert Stein offered Tetris to Mackonochie. By David Sheff’s account in Game Over, Mackonochie was not sure it would sell, and showed it to Spectrum HoloByte, Mirrorsoft’s sister company in America; Mirrorsoft would take Europe if HoloByte took the United States and Japan. The Maxwells had financial control of both companies. In June 1987 Stein signed a contract with the two, although he still had no contract with Moscow, and they released Tetris for home computers in January 1988 in a red box with St Basil’s Cathedral on the front. The full story is told in the Tetris rights wars.

Mirrorsoft then sold on rights it did not securely hold. It traded the console rights for North America and Japan to Atari Games in exchange for Atari’s Blasteroids, a deal Sheff says Kevin Maxwell backed over Spectrum HoloByte’s objections. Edge later put the problem simply: Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte “understood their Tetris rights to be more extensive than they really were”. In February 1989 Kevin Maxwell went to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet agency Elorg, in the same week as Stein and Henk Rogers. According to Sheff, when Elorg showed him Rogers’s Japanese Tetris cartridge, Maxwell said Mirrorsoft had not licensed video-game rights and the cartridge must be pirated, which helped Elorg argue that it had never sold those rights. Stein left with the arcade rights; Kevin Maxwell, Edge wrote, “came away with nothing but empty assurances”. On 22 March 1989 Elorg signed the console rights to Nintendo and telexed Mirrorsoft to say so. Robert Maxwell’s attempts to reverse the deal through the Soviet government failed.

Maxwell and Sinclair

Maxwell had nearly owned a much bigger part of the British computer industry. In the summer of 1985 he agreed to take control of Sinclair Research, and Sinclair User ran “Who is Robert Maxwell?” for its readers. The rescue fell through within weeks: the board of Maxwell’s company Hollis decided, on its bankers’ advice, that it “would not be advisable”, and Sinclair’s creditors and bankers kept the company going instead. In 1986 Sinclair sold its computer business to Amstrad.

The collapse

Robert Maxwell was found to be missing from his yacht near the Canary Islands on 5 November 1991. It then emerged that he had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds to prop up the group. Mirrorsoft was reputedly profitable through 1991, Amiga Power reported, but it was caught up in the turmoil inside the Mirror Group. Its staff got the news on New Year’s Eve: the company had gone into liquidation just before Christmas, and hopes of a buy-out led by its managing director, Peter Bilotta, and sales and marketing director, Sean Brennan, came to nothing. Developers were left with unpaid work. Graftgold’s Steve Turner, whose Fire & Ice was part-financed by Mirrorsoft, called it “another case of a major publishing company going under while owing money to its developers”.

Early in 1992 Acclaim, until then a console publisher, bought what was left. The One reported that Acclaim had bought “all of Mirrorsoft’s licences, trademarks and properties under development”; Computer and Video Games said it had taken over “all the 16-bit games from the now-defunct Mirrorsoft”, and CU Amiga that it had “snapped up what was left”. Other games found new homes. Strangeways, which had been writing Apocalypse for Mirrorsoft, used a clause in its contract to take it to Virgin; Graftgold’s Fire & Ice went to Renegade; and UBI Soft acquired Vivid Image’s First Samurai and reissued it with Mega-lo-Mania. The Bitmap Brothers held the trademarks to their games, and Virgin published the Sega versions of Xenon 2 and Speedball 2 in 1992.

Sources

Acorn User issue 17, December 1983: “Mr Men star for Mirrorsoft” (Jim Mackonochie, the first releases, Quick Thinking, the 25 projects, the comic-strip characters).
Big K issue 1, April 1984: Mirrorsoft advertisement (“Software for all the family”, Sum Vaders and Robot Tables by Widgit Software, PO Box 50, Bromley).
CRASH issue 18, July 1985, pp. 26–27: Dynamite Dan review, 94%, and the Goodyear blimp competition.
Amstrad Action issue 2, November 1985: Dynamite Dan for the CPC (Dr Blitzen, the safe, the blimp).
CRASH issue 46, November 1987: the magazine’s history (“up came Mirrorsoft”).
Amstrad Action issue 12, September 1986: Mirrorsoft catalogue advertisement (games, early learning, children’s entertainment; Paulton, Bristol).
C16 & Plus/4 Handbook issue 9, April 1987: “Mirrorsoft Takeover” (80% of PSS).
ZZAP!64 issue 37, May 1988: Andy Capp (Mirrorsoft).
ST/Amiga Format issue 5, November 1988: credits for FTL/Mirrorsoft, Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte/Mirrorsoft titles.
Amstrad Action issue 36, September 1988: “New image for Mirrorsoft” (Image Works joins Cinemaware and PSS).
Amiga Computing, December 1988, p. 78: the Bitmap Brothers’ move to Mirrorsoft and Image Works.
David Sheff, Game Over (1993; GamePress edition, 1999), chapters 13 and 14: Stein, Mackonochie and Spectrum HoloByte, the Maxwells’ control of both companies, the June 1987 contract, the Blasteroids trade and Kevin Maxwell, the February 1989 meeting and the cartridge, the telex of 22 March 1989, Robert Maxwell’s response.
Edge issue 74, August 1999: Henk Rogers interview (“understood their Tetris rights to be more extensive than they really were”; Kevin Maxwell in Moscow).
Edge issue 100, August 2001: Tetris feature (Kevin Maxwell “came away with nothing but empty assurances”).
Sinclair User issue 41, August 1985: Maxwell’s takeover of Sinclair Research. Issue 43, October 1985: “Sinclair saved by creditors” (the Hollis board’s decision).
Amiga Power issue 10, February 1992: “Mirrorsoft go bust!” (New Year’s Eve, profitable through 1991, Peter Bilotta and Sean Brennan, games left unfinished).
The One issue 41, February 1992: administration and Acclaim’s purchase; Strangeways, its contract clause and Virgin; Steve Turner’s comment.
Computer and Video Games issue 124, March 1992: Acclaim takes over Mirrorsoft’s 16-bit games.
CU Amiga, March 1992: Acclaim “snapped up what was left of Mirrorsoft”; UBI Soft’s First Samurai and Mega-lo-Mania.
Amiga Format issue 33, April 1992: “Whatever happened to Mirrorsoft?” (liquidation before Christmas, “a healthy company”).
Computer and Video Games issue 132, November 1992: Virgin Games advertisement for Xenon 2 and Speedball 2 on Sega machines.
Wikipedia, “Robert Maxwell” (web, secondary): his death on 5 November 1991 and the pension funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell