Atlantis Software

Atlantis Software

Industry	Computer and video games
Founded	1984
Founder	Michael Cole, Rodger Coghill
Defunct	1992
Headquarters	London, England
Products	Computer games

Atlantis Software was a London-based^[1] UK computer games publisher that published a number of games during the 1980s^[2] and early 1990s.^[3][4]

The company was set up by Michael Cole and Rodger Coghill in January 1984 with the first four games released in May of that year.^[5] The philosophy of the company was to sell high volume at low 'pocket-money' prices - at first all games were £1.99.^[5] The Atlantis Gold label was launched the following year at £2.99 (the 'Gold' tag was soon dropped with games at both prices being released under the Atlantis logo but with the suggested price on the cover).

Their primary focus remained on the low-cost cassette-based games for 8-bit machines for £1.99^[2][6] and £2.99^[7][8] (commonly known as "budget" games) that formed a significant part of the UK 8-bit software market during the 1980s.

However, they later published games for the 16-bit disk-based Atari ST and Commodore Amiga formats.^[4]

Formats covered included the ZX Spectrum^[9] on which they published several games reviewed by the UK gaming press.

Select titles

• Master Mariner, 1984 (ZX Spectrum)
• Monster Munch, 1984 (Commodore 64)
• Cops 'n' Robbers, 1985 (Commodore VIC-20, C64, Commodore 16, Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, Atari 8-bit)
• Death Race, 1985 (VIC-20, C64, C16, Atari 8-bit)
• League Challenge, 1986 (Spectrum, C64, C16, Electron, BBC, Atari 8-bit, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST)
• Survivors, 1986 (Spectrum, C64, C16, Electron, BBC, Atari 8-bit, CPC, MSX)
• Panik!, 1986 (C16, Electron, BBC, Atari 8-bit)
• Gunfighter, 1988 (Spectrum, C64, Electron, BBC, Atari 8-bit, CPC)
• Crack-Up!, 1989 (Spectrum, C64, Electron, BBC, Atari 8-bit, CPC)
• Cavemania, 1990 (Spectrum, C64, CPC, Amiga, ST)
• Hobgoblin, 1990 (Spectrum, C64, Electron, BBC, CPC)
• Apache Flight, 1992 (Amiga, ST)

Dates shown are for the first version. In many cases, ports to other machines were released over a number of years (e.g. League Challenge wasn't ported to Amiga until 1991).

Atlantis also re-released games that had been published at a higher price by publishers such as Computasolve and Audiogenic at the same budget price as their new titles. Examples of this are Mrs Mopp, 3D Glooper, Omega Orb, Last Of The Free and Psycastria 2.

References