Activision
The world's first thirty party software delveloper, American company Activision have been in existence in one form or another since 1979 when ex-Atari programmers David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead joined forces with former music industry executive Jim Levy in creating a new company that would give credit to the programmers for their work, a policy for which Atari had received a great deal of criticism from its employees over a prolonged period.
After some major successes for the Atari 2600, including Pifall and River Raid, the company began to diversify their output in-line with the changing American home software market and survived the great computer crash thanks primarily to their work on the Commodore 64. The group continued to grow, acquiring one of the biggest names in text adventures, Infocom in the process. In the mid 1980s, the still growing Activision created a UK office to handle their work in Europe with a prime objective to get a foothold in any available markets and behind only the ZX Spectrum and the already coded Commodore 64 software, the CPC became a core market for the company in Europe and they continued to support the CPC for the duration of the machine's high street shelf life.
As well as under their own banner, Activision released a number of games under the Electric Dreams label a British subsidiary of the company who were tasked with the production of software suitable for the European market, with one eye firmly on what could also be sold in the United States.
Activision appointed former Quicksilva boss Rod Cousens to the post of managing director of Electric Dreams with complete control over their output and he was soon promoted to the head of all of Activision's UK based activities which consisted of arcade conversions, film tie-ins and orginal software.
A less successful off-shoot was Gamestar which made only five releases before being wound-up.
Releases for CPC
Activision
- Afterburner
- Altered Beast
- Ballblazer
- Dragon Breed
- Dynamite Dux
- The Eidolon
- Enduro Racer
- Fifth Axis
- Fighter Bomber
- Fighting Soccer
- Galactic Games (1987)
- Galaxy Force
- Gee Bee Air Rally
- Ghostbusters
- Ghostbusters II
- Guadalcanal
- Hacker
- Hacker II
- Hammerfist
- High Frontier
- Hot-Rod
- Howard the Duck
- Knightmare
- Koronis Rift
- Little Computer People
- Master of the Lamps (1985)
- Mindfighter
- Mindshadow
- Ninja Spirit
- Power Drift
- Predator
- Quartet
- Rampage
- The Real Ghostbusters
- Rescue on Fractalus!
- Sailing
- SDI
- Sonic Boom
- Space Shuttle
- Super Wonder Boy
- Time Machine
- Time Scanner
- Wonder Boy
Electric Dreams
- Aliens
- Aliens: US Edition
- Back to the Future
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Championship Sprint
- Dandy
- Explorer
- Firetrap
- Hijack
- Incredible Shrinking Sphere
- Karnov
- Mermaid Madness
- Prodigy
- R-Type
- Spindizzy
- Star Raiders II
- Super Hang-On
- Super Sprint
- Tempest
- Winter Sports
- Xarq
