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| Founded By: | |
| Location: | ? |
| Year Started: | |
| Year Wound Up: | |
| Titles in Database: | 9 |
| Rights Now With: | ? |
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Titles per Year
Breakdown by Genre
Breakdown by Platform
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Added: 28 May 2011
Other (non-programming) members of the company:-
Julie Turner
Julie worked part time and was responsible for the payroll and was the Company Secretary. She also maintained the accounts.
Kevin Holloway
Kevin ,who had previously programmed for Graftgold rejoined to take the position of Development Manager. He managed the office and the external contact with the publishers. He organised presenting new games to publishers and negotiated contracts. This allowed Steve Turner undertake the technical programming needed to break into 3d games on the Playstation and PC.
Alex Martin
Alex joined Graftgold in the last couple of years and worked on the game design of the tank combat game finally known as Hardcorps that was never published.
Jason Page Musician
As well as programming Jason arranged the music for many games and worked on the music drivers. His credits include
Head The Ball C64
Offroad Racer c64
Musician Offroad Racer All
Simulcra All versions
Paradroid 90 All versions
Fire ice All versions
Uridium 2 All versions
Lee Banyard Musician
Lee took over from Jason and created the music and sound effects for Virocop and Motox. |
Added: 28 May 2011
Graftgold was formed in 1983 when Steve Turner decided to quit his day job as a commercial programmer to concentrate on producing computer games. Realising that his ambitions were too much for one man to realise, he hired a close friend, Andrew Braybrook, to work for him. After a brief spell developing games for the Dragon home computer, Graftgold soon turned their attention to the more lucrative Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum markets.
Much of Graftgold's early success came about through their association with Hewson Consultants. Formed by Andrew Hewson in the early 1980s, Hewson Consultants became one of the UK's most successful computer game publishers. Whereas many publishers at the time relied on larger parent companies to handle the manufacturing of their products, Andrew Hewson owned his own cassette duplication plant, affording them much greater control over their ability to respond to market trends. Hewson were eventually bought out by 21st Century Entertainment in 1991, but left behind a legacy that includes more than a fair share of classic 8-bit and 16-bit titles. Many of Graftgold's most memorable titles were published by Hewson, including (but not limited to): Paradroid, Uridium, Quazatron and Ranarama . |
Added: 28 May 2011
The Telecomsoft era
Towards the end of the 1980s, it became apparent that Hewson Consultants were suffering financial difficulties. Two of its in-house programmers, Dominic Robinson and John Cumming, responded to this development by leaving the company to join Graftgold. Steve Turner decided it would be in Graftgold's best interest to seek another publisher, so they parted ways with Hewson and signed a publishing deal with Telecomsoft, the software division of British Telecom.
Hewson weren't happy to see their most successful development partner jump ship, particularly because Graftgold were due to deliver two keenly anticipated titles -- Magnetron (by Steve Turner, for the ZX Spectrum) and Morpheus (by Andrew Braybrook, for the C64). Graftgold argued that because they weren't contracted to Hewson, they were perfectly within their rights to seek an alternate publisher. Unable to sustain a protracted legal wrangle, Hewson eventually settled with Telecomsoft out of court and parted company with Graftgold.
Graftgold's relationship with Telecomsoft was considerably short lived, producing only a small handful of titles. The most successful game to emerge from this relationship is undoubtedly Rainbow Islands, a near perfect conversion of Taito's classic 1987 arcade machine for the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC in 1989. Due to complicated contractual obligations, the Amiga and Atari ST versions of Rainbow Islands were published by Ocean Software in 1990.
[edit] The Microprose/Activision era
The dawn of the 1990s saw a fundamental shift in the way computer games were developed. Whereas the games of the 8-bit era were typically developed by a single individual within a matter of months (sometimes even a few weeks), the more demanding 16-bit titles required larger teams, longer development times and considerably larger budgets. Royalties from their impressive back catalogue of titles allowed Graftgold to make this transition with ease, hiring in excess of 30 additional people to work on a large number of products within a team environment.
The success of Rainbow Islands solidified Graftgold's reputation as a dependable conversion house, which led to them producing further critically acclaimed conversions of arcade games (such as Flying Shark and Off Road Racer) in addition to their original titles. Graftgold's path through the 16-bit era, however, would remain rocky. The acquisition of Telecomsoft by Microprose in 1989 worked in their favour, but newly-forged deals with Hewson Consultants (by then on its last legs) and Activision proved disastrous. Hewson's liquidation forced them to sell the publishing rights for Paradroid 90 to Activision. While the game sold well on the Amiga, a PC Engine version that had been in development was shelved. To make matters worse, Graftgold had also been developing Realms, an expensive realtime strategy game, for Activision when it was announced that the publishing giant was in severe financial difficulty and had begun closing down many of its international operations. No longer contracted to develop any titles for Microprose, the future of Graftgold looked bleak.
[edit] The Virgin/Renegade era
Graftgold's salvation arrived in the form of Virgin Interactive. Graftgold had already formed a close working relationship with Virgin through their development of Off Road Racer a few years earlier. Having bought back the rights for Realms from Activision, Graftgold finished the game for Virgin. From 1991 to 1993, Graftgold concentrated on Sega's primary gaming platforms — the Master System, Game Gear and Mega Drive — developing and converting numerous titles for these consoles for Virgin.
At the same time they were developing Sega games for Virgin, Graftgold also struck up a publishing deal with Renegade, who salvaged a number of products that had initially been promised to Mirrorsoft. Graftgold's experience had taught them that one way to ensure survival in the industry was to forge deals with multiple publishers rather than place all their eggs in one basket. Renegade published Gra |
Added: 28 May 2011
Graftgold was formed in 1983 when Steve Turner decided to quit his day job as a commercial programmer to concentrate on producing computer games. Realising that his ambitions were too much for one man to realise, he hired a close friend, Andrew Braybrook, to work for him. After a brief spell developing games for the Dragon home computer, Graftgold soon turned their attention to the more lucrative Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum markets.
Much of Graftgold's early success came about through their association with Hewson Consultants. Formed by Andrew Hewson in the early 1980s, Hewson Consultants became one of the UK's most successful computer game publishers. Whereas many publishers at the time relied on larger parent companies to handle the manufacturing of their products, Andrew Hewson owned his own cassette duplication plant, affording them much greater control over their ability to respond to market trends. Hewson were eventually bought out by 21st Century Entertainment in 1991, but left behind a legacy that includes more than a fair share of classic 8-bit and 16-bit titles. Many of Graftgold's most memorable titles were published by Hewson, including (but not limited to): Paradroid, Uridium, Quazatron and Ranarama . |
Added: 28 May 2011
Artists:-
John Cumming
Soldier Of Fortune C64
Flying Shark Spectrum, Amstrad
Rainbow Islands All versions
Offroad Racer All versions
Simulcra Amiga,ST
Steve Wilkins
Virocop Amiga and Atari
Empire Soccer SuperNintendo
Motox PC,PSX
Hardcorps PC,PSX
Michael Field
Paradroid 90 Amiga and Atari
Realms PC,Amiga, ST
John Lilley
Ottifants Megadrive
Superman Master System, Gamegear
Realms PC,Amiga, ST
Paradroid 90 Amiga, ST
Fire and Ice 8 bit Master System, Gamegear
Mark Bentley
Uridium 2 Amiga
Steve Rushbrook
Uridium 2 Amiga
John Kershaw
Ottifants Megadrive
Virocop Amiga
Motox PC
Phillip Williams
Fire and Ice Amiga, ST
Colin Seaman
Ottifants Megadrive
Virocop Amiga
Motox PC
Martin Sawkins
Ottifants Megadrive
Empire Soccer All
Emma Cubberly
Ottifants Megadrive
Fire And Ice CD 32
Simon Sheridan
Virus Alert Amiga
Terry Cattrell
Uridium 2 Amiga
Mike McGregor Motox All |
Added: 28 May 2011
Dominic Robinson Flying Shark Spectrum
Simulcra Amiga,ST
Rainbow Islands Amiga,ST
68000 Kernel
John Cumming Soldier Of Fortune C64
David O'Connor Soldier Of Fortune Spectrum
Rainbow Island Spectrum, Amstrad
Offroad Racer PC
Realms PC
Gary J Foreman Orion c64
Rainbow Islands c64
Paradroid 90 PCEngine
Offroad Racer Amiga and Atari
Amiga Realms
Jason Page Head The Ball C64
Offroad Racer c64
Eldon Lewis Ottifants Megadrive
Darren Eteo Fire and Ice Master System, Gamegear
Simulcra Amiga and Atari
Motox PC
Rod Mack Superman Master System, Gamegear
Empire Soccer SuperNintendo
Iain Wallington Ottifants Megadrive
Virocop Amiga
Motox PC
Kevin Holloway Ottifants Master System, Gamegear
Empire Soccer PC
Motox PC
Rainbow Islands PC
Dan Leslie Motox PSX
Simon Clay Empire Soccer Acorn
C Kernel
Jose Doran Empire Soccer Amiga
Chris Wood Fire n Ice PC
Pete Ivey Hardcorps PC,PSX
Charles Knight Rainbow Islands PSX
Matthew Whitton Motox PC,PSX
Matthew Ritchie Hardcorps PC,PSX
Rob Wallis HardCorps PC,PSX | The Retro Isle team
Added: 26 Jun 2026
Click here to view a list of titles we have in the database here at Retro Isle. |
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