AMSOFT

The software wing of Amstrad, Amsoft was created with one very specific goal: to get software on the shelves for the launch of the CPC 464. Amstrad owner Alan Sugar viewed this as a key element in the succesful launch of the machine was determined not to make similar mistakes to the Dragon 32, Oric, Enterprise and dozens of other would be competitors to the BBC, ZX Spectrum and C64 and first and foremost amongst them was taking on successful brands with a large back catalogue of software.

To do this, Amsoft were given a very simple brief of getting as many games on to the shelves as possible to support the launch and first years of the machine's life, regardless of how good the programme was. The Amsoft priority in the early years was very much quantity over quality, famously refusing to bid for prestigious games like Elite because they could knock out a dozen other games for the price of buying the rights to that one game.

Strictly a third party publisher, Amsoft did no coding in house, instead franchising out to a number of other developers including Indescomp (who published the titles in Spain on behalf of Amsoft), Mr Micro and James Software to name only a few.

In this time the distinctively bright Amsoft branding did it's job and the early games sold well thanks to some savvy marketing and an eye for a good opportunity.

The earliest success for Amsoft, and it's biggest legacy, was the Roland series. Named after Roland Perry the character was used as the basis for a number of games none of which (with the exception of Roland in Time and Roland in Space had anything to do with each other! Instead, the Roland brand was added almost arbitrarily to a selection of games from different developers and despite the generally poor quality of these titles, they still sold by the bucket load!

As games became more advanced and the bigger companies like US Gold, Mikro-Gen and Ocean broke away from the Amsoft branding to publish for the machine under their own labels, Amsoft tried re-branding itself by introducing the Amsoft Gold label. Despite an encouraging start by re-releasing disk versions of Sorcery and Strangeloop (by adding the moniker '+' to both games and including additional areas of gameplay) not to mention a few good original titles like Doors of Doom, it became all too clear that Amsoft Gold had little or no distinction in terms of quality control from plain old Amsoft and the company was quietly disbanded, it's last releases Tapper and Hardball despite being potentially high-profile arcade ports, were sneaked out with little fanfare. Indeed the last game in development for the company, a conversion of the coin-op Spy Hunter, was never actually released by Amsoft, eventually being released on US Gold's budget label Kixx.

This is a list of Amsoft games in chronological order.

• Friss Man (1985)
• Seesaw (1985)
• Supertripper (1985)
• Rock Hopper (1985)
• Kingdoms (1985)
• Overlord 2 (1985)
• Campeones (1985)

• Le Géographe France (1984)
• Le Géographe Monde (1984)
• L'Apprenti Sorcier (1985)

• http://amsoft.cpcwiki.eu/ (New Link)