The Edge began, in the autumn of 1984, as a press release. Tim Langdell, managing director of the London software house Softek, announced that Softek’s games team had asked to become “an independent division” and would now be called The Edge. CRASH wondered how a breakaway group fitted into Softek’s “tiny two-room offices” in London. Within two years that small Covent Garden label had published Fairlight, which CRASH gave 95%, and Bobby Bearing, which it gave 94%. Both drew solid-looking rooms in isometric projection on a 48K Spectrum.
Fast facts
- Parent: Softek International, run by Tim Langdell; The Edge was its games label from 1984.
- Addresses: 31 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in 1984–85; 12/13 Henrietta Street, Softek’s address, on the Fairlight adverts of early 1986; 36–38 Southampton Street from September 1986.
- Distribution: its 1985 adverts told shops that “authorised dealers can order directly from EMI Distribution”.
- Best-known games: Fairlight (1985) and Fairlight II: A Trail of Darkness (1986) by Bo Jangeborg; Bobby Bearing (1986) by Robert and Trevor Figgins; Garfield: Big, Fat, Hairy Deal (1988).
- Other labels: Softechnics, for utilities such as The Artist, and ACE, for arcade conversions, from 1987.
- Later: The Edge Interactive Media in London in 1990, then a company in Pasadena, California, by 1991, later known as Edge Games.
Megagames
The Edge introduced itself with big claims. Its first games, CRASH reported in October 1984, were billed as “megagames”, “the first ever”. The Commodore 64 game Quo Vadis had already been Personal Computer Games’ game of the month, and the Spectrum shoot-‘em-up Starbike had been “voted” into Computer and Video Games’ Hall of Fame before it was even released. CRASH reviewed Starbike in November: £6.95, written by Paul Curtis, with speech through Currah’s Microspeech add-on and a high-score table its reviewers admired. It scored 77%. “Let’s hope Softek doesn’t go right over The Edge,” the news page joked.
The next big hit was stranger. Brian Bloodaxe (March 1985, £7.95, by Charles Bystram) is a Viking who has spent centuries frozen in a block of ice. He thaws out in 1983, sets off to finish conquering Britain, and has to steal the Crown Jewels and sit on the throne. There are 104 screens of platform jumping, objects to carry three at a time, and the Monty Python theme tune as its music. CRASH gave it 86%. The game claimed to run on a system called “Primary Imbalance”, and one reviewer decided that this meant it took so many attempts to load.
Fairlight
Fairlight came from Bo Jangeborg, a Swedish programmer who had written the drawing program The Artist for Softek. He came to London in 1985 meaning to stay a week. He stayed seven months, lodging at Langdell’s house, and wrote Fairlight there. In November 1985 CRASH gave it 95%, with 97% for graphics. The magazine’s index of the year’s reviews printed the score as 96%, the figure that is sometimes quoted for it. Its rooms are full of objects with weight, which the player pushes, stacks and climbs. Jangeborg later told Edge that it had sold more than 50,000 copies.
The rooms were drawn with Grax, the tool behind what The Edge called its Worldmaker technique (see Worldmaker and Grax). When Jangeborg went home to Sweden, CRASH reported, Grax stayed behind with The Edge as the basis for more adventures and perhaps a product readers could buy. In September 1986 The Edge said it was planning Dreamscape, an icon-driven adventure-writing system that “just might include” Grax. Fairlight II: A Trail of Darkness followed at Christmas 1986. CRASH’s reviewers were cooler about it, and by April 1987 one of them wrote that “The Edge have been disappointing lately, Fairlight II was pretty but unplayable”.
Jangeborg did not work for The Edge again. In May 1987 CRASH’s John Minson reported that he had “had enough of life on The Edge”. Two years later Jangeborg told the Swedish magazine Atari-STen that “the conflict with The Edge” had taken up much of his time, and that it was “something I would rather forget”. Edge magazine later said that he had left after a contractual dispute.
Bobby Bearing
The other isometric game is about a ball bearing. Bobby has to find his brothers, lost in a three-dimensional maze called the Metaplanes, and nudge them home one at a time, while black bearings with huge teeth try to knock him senseless. Robert and Trevor Figgins wrote it, and The Edge called the technique “Curvispace 3D”. The ball rolls up ramps and round curves and bounces off walls, and CRASH’s reviewers were struck by how convincingly it all behaved. They compared it with Spindizzy and Marble Madness, called it “a technically stunning game”, and gave it 94% in August 1986, at £7.95.
Licences and conversions
From 1987 The Edge looked for bigger names. The Games Machine reported in October 1987 that “all quiet at The Edge” had given way to a burst of new titles and a new label, ACE, for arcade conversions. Its games included the shoot-’em-up Xecutor and a conversion of Sega’s Alien Syndrome.
The Edge’s own catalogue kept its interest in detailed 3D rooms. Inside Outing (February 1988, £8.99, by Michael St Aubyn) sends a thief through a widow’s house to find the jewels her late husband hid, among furniture and plates that can each be moved on their own. CRASH’s reviewers could not agree on it. One gave it 94% and called it “the closest thing to real life on the Spectrum”. Another gave it 75% and pointed out that the telephone was twice the size of the tables. The overall mark was 82%.
The biggest licence was Jim Davis’s cat. Garfield: Big, Fat, Hairy Deal took 90% in CRASH in March 1988. Langdell told the magazine that Garfield had “a following from five to 95”. His wife and colleague, Cheri Langdell, described “very firm guidance from above as to the image of Garfield”: the cat could not swear or kill anyone, and could not die in the game, only fall asleep. Only one of The Edge’s proposed scenes was cut. In it Garfield used “an instrument to do something that might be considered aggressive”.
By 1990 The Edge was selling Darius+, its version of Taito’s shoot-’em-up, for the Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64, Amiga, ST and PC. That summer a recruitment advert in The Games Machine, signed by Langdell for “The Edge Interactive Media”, listed licences including Garfield, Snoopy, Asterix, MTV and Marvel comic characters.
Edge Games
In December 1991 The One found Langdell in California, running a company from Pasadena that it called “The Edge Interactive Multimedia Inc” and developing for CD platforms. The Italian author Alessandro Grussu writes that Langdell later dissolved the British company and set it up again in California as Edge Games. Grussu also calls Langdell one of the industry’s most controversial figures, for suing other companies over their use of the word “edge”.
Those claims reached a federal court. In October 2010, according to the trade paper MCV, Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ordered the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel Edge Games’ “edge” trademarks. The order said there was “scant evidence that Edge Games has invested any amount of funds into the development of recent products and services bearing the asserted marks”. It also required Langdell to tell every licensee that the marks had been cancelled.
Sources
- CRASH issue 9, October 1984, p. 42: news, “The Edge” (the press release, the “independent division of Softek”, the two-room offices, Quo Vadis and Starbike, “megagames”).
- CRASH issue 10, November 1984, p. 148: Starbike review (The Edge, £6.95, Paul Curtis, Currah Microspeech, the C&VG Hall of Fame; 77%).
- CRASH issue 14, March 1985, p. 41: The Edge advertisement (31 Maiden Lane; EMI Distribution); p. 116: Brian Bloodaxe review (£7.95, Charles Bystram, 104 screens, 1983, “Primary Imbalance”; 86%).
- Sinclair User issue 43, October 1985, p. 124, and issue 45, December 1985, p. 144: Softek International at 12/13 Henrietta Street. Amstrad Action issue 12, September 1986, p. 6: The Edge advertisement (“We’ve moved!”, 36–38 Southampton Street).
- CRASH issue 22, November 1985, p. 20: John Minson, “Trip to Grax”; pp. 26–27: Fairlight review (95%). CRASH issue 24, January 1986: The Edge’s Fairlight advertisement (12/13 Henrietta Street) and the 1985 index of reviews (Fairlight, 96%).
- CRASH issue 31, August 1986, pp. 20–21: Bobby Bearing review (The Edge, £7.95, Robert and Trevor Figgins, “Curvispace 3D”, 150 screens; 94%).
- CRASH issue 32, September 1986, p. 97: The Edge’s plans for Fairlight II and Dreamscape. CRASH issue 36, Christmas Special 1986, pp. 32–33: Fairlight II review. CRASH issue 39, April 1987, p. 26: Shadow Skimmer review (“The Edge have been disappointing lately”). CRASH issue 40, May 1987, p. 12: John Minson on Jangeborg.
- Atari-STen (Sweden) 1989 no. 2, June 1989, p. 22: interview with Bo Jangeborg (“the conflict with The Edge”); quotations translated. “The making of… Fairlight”, Edge issue 135, April 2004, pp. 112–115 (the seven months in London, lodging with Langdell, sales of more than 50,000, the contractual dispute).
- The Games Machine issue 1, October 1987, p. 127: “ACE goes over the Edge” (the ACE label for arcade conversions).
- CRASH issue 49, February 1988, p. 91: Inside Outing review (£8.99, Michael St Aubyn; 94%, 76% and 75% from the reviewers, 82% overall).
- CRASH issue 50, March 1988, pp. 18–19: Garfield: Big, Fat, Hairy Deal review (90%) and “Big, Fat, Hairy Licence”, with Tim and Cheri Langdell.
- Computer and Video Games issue 102, May 1990, p. 15: Darius+ advertisement (formats; “coding (c) 1989 The Edge/Softek”). The Games Machine issue 32, July 1990, p. 37: The Edge Interactive Media recruitment advertisement.
- The One issue 39, December 1991, p. 47: Langdell in Pasadena.
- Alessandro Grussu, Spectrumpedia, volume 1, English edition (2022), p. 312: “Softek/The Edge/Softechnics/ACE, 1980–1990” (the ACE label’s Alien Syndrome and Xecutor; Langdell’s lawsuits over “edge”; the company re-founded in California as Edge Games).
- “Langdell ordered to announce ‘Edge’ defeat”, MCV, October 2010 (web, secondary): Judge William Alsup’s order cancelling Edge Games’ trademarks. https://www.mcvuk.com/langdell-ordered-to-announce-aedgea-defeat/