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| Founded By: | Geoff Brown |
| Location: | Unit 10, The Parkway Industrial Centre, Heneage St, Birmingham B7 4LY |
| Year Started: | 1984 |
| Year Wound Up: | 1996 |
| Titles in Database: | 301 |
| Rights Now With: | Eidos Interactive |
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| U.S. Gold was founded in Birmingham in 1984 by Geoff Brown as the publishing division of Centresoft, a computer game distribution company he and his wife Anne Brown founded in 1983. US Gold's primary purpose was to re-publish popular American Atari and Commodore 64 games in the UK and Europe.
This proved to be a landmark in UK games publishing as UK published games up until then had been fairly crude. Brown decided to not only raise the price point of US Gold games to £9.99, but also to promote the games with full-colour adverts in popular user magazines. When the popular computers in the UK became the ZX Spectrum and later the Amstrad CPC Brown was faced with the problem of converting the US games he was licensing to UK formats.
He teamed up with a UK publisher, Ocean Software, based in Manchester, who were also very prolific at the time and they were responsible for the first US Gold conversions to UK formats. This arrangement proved difficult to continue as Ocean became more and more involved with their own development for their own games.
Brown then decided to farm out his US Gold Development to independent UK developers and also founded his own development studios. This business plan proved to be an instant success, prompting U.S. Gold to expand by acquiring smaller developers and seeking out licences that they could commercialise. At the same time Centresoft became the largest UK games distributor with key High Street retail accounts such as Boots and John Menzies as well as most of the independent computer retailers.
The company was voted Best Software House Of The Year at the Golden Joystick Awards. |
Titles per Year
Breakdown by Genre
Breakdown by Platform
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Retro Isle
Added: 19 Sep 2016
U.S. Gold was founded by Geoff Brown in Birmingham in 1984 as the sales department of Centresoft. It was planned to mainly publish Atari and C64 games from the USA on the European market. Furthermore, U.S. Gold also converted many titles to other platforms and licenses were also another important part of their portfolio.
In 1986 U.S. Gold secured the license for the soccer game for the World Cup in Mexico in 1986 for themselves. Although they had bought the license at the time, U.S. Gold didn't manage to finish the game. However, U.S. Gold advertised broadly, that this game would offer pioneering innovations. Due to lack of time people bought the game World Cup Football by Artic Software. With changed graphics the title was published just in time for the Soccer World Cup 1986 as World Cup Carnival on the C64, CPC and Spectrum. Gamers, retailers and the press were aghast. The original game had already been four years old at the time of publishing! However, U.S. Gold tried to pitch their version of Artic's World Cup Football pioneering version of a classic. Later, U.S. Gold had to bow to the critics and admit having made a mistake.
Despite all this U.S. Gold got the FIFA license for the Soccer World Cups 1990 in Italy and 1994 in the USA.
U.S. Gold took over the sale of the successful Epyx sports games of the "Games Series" in Europe. With this U.S. Gold proved that they could sell good sports games successfully. After the bankruptcy of Epyx in 1989 U.S. Gold began to establish a similar sports series and for this also bought licenses from the IOC. The game Olympic Gold, which had been published as the official game for the Olympic Games 1992 in Barcelona, was a success both with the critics and commercially. After that U.S. Gold also won the license for the Olympic Winter Games 1994 in Lillehammer, as well as the Olympic Games 1996 in Atlanta. The titles that followed were not successful.
Until the 1990s, U.S. Gold could expand successfully, but with some distribution agreements they did not have the right touch. Especially a contract with Lucasfilm Games caused more costs than profit. To combine the energy, U.S. gold were pooled together as Centresoft Plc Group. At this point of time, U.S. Gold had two internal game developers, Silicon Dreams and Core Design. Silicon Dreams was founded by U.S. Gold while Core Design had been bought. This cooperation, however, did not last long: In 1996 they were taken over by Eidos, which made the name U.S. Gold disappear shortly after the takeover. The last title released under the logo of U.S. Gold was Atlanta 96.
U.S. Gold used several labels for the sale of the games in Europe. The most well-known is probably Synsoft, which is today wrongly equalled with Synapse Software. Hidden behind Synsoft is more else than a label under which exclusive Synapse Software titles were sold in Europe.
Some of the most well-known U.S. Gold labels were:
Synsoft
Go!
All American Adventures
Americana Software
Kixx! |
The Retro Isle team
Added: 31 Jan 2026
Click here to view a list of titles we have in the database here at Retro Isle. |
Retro Isle
Added: 19 Sep 2016
A Kickstarer campaign was started in May 2014 for a book called "The History of U.S. Gold", written by Chris Wilkins. This was a definitive book documenting the history of the revered 80's and 90's games publisher U.S. Gold.
Below are the details from the Kickstarter page:
656 backers pledged £27,348 to help bring this project to life.
The Story of U.S. Gold
Thanks to to the supporters of this campaign, a book on 'The Story of U.S. Gold' will be created over the next year or so.
We have said September 2015 as a delivery date for the book just to give us a bit of breathing space in case of any unforeseen challenges.
If you missed the campaign, you can still pre-order the U.S. Gold book on the Revival site and be part of those who receive the initial run, here :
http://www.revivalretroevents.com/index.php/shopping
You can also order a copy of 'The History of Ocean' as well as posters and other Revival memorabilia in the shop.
Thanks again for all the support you have given us,
Chris & Roger
The book, 'The Story of U.S. Gold', will be 200+ pages in length and finished to the very same high standard adopted for 'The History of Ocean Software' publication (the same printing company is going to be used).
The U.S. Gold logo on the front cover will be embossed making the book a desirable addition to any gaming fan or book collector.
The book will chart the rise and rise of U.S. Gold throughout the 1980's and 1990's up to the sell-off to Eidos, talking to all those who created the company, Geoff and Anne Brown, and the management team that guided the company through 12 years of successful business.
And how can we not explore the origins of Tomb Raider, a title Eidos eventually published but was born under U.S. Gold's watch.
The book will talk to the developers of U.S. Gold's successful releases - titles such as Beach Head, Impossible Mission and Summer Games as well as arcade conversions like Outrun, Tapper, Spy Hunter and Strider.
The book will also explore the creation and running of 'Centresoft' - a company owned by U.S. Gold that became the largest distribution centre of games in the UK - Ocean Software was their biggest customer.
Artwork and never before seen photographs will be littered throughout the book. | Retro Isle
Added: 2 May 2015
Centresoft still exists today. Their website is here: https://www.centresoft.co.uk/ |
Added: 2 May 2015
There is a kickstarter project for a book called "The History of US Gold", by Chris Wilkins. Here's the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/47744432/the-history-of-us-gold |
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