The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and the 32-bit 3DO Interactive Multiplayer that launched the same year. Powered by two custom 32-bit processors – Tom and Jerry – in addition to a Motorola 68000, Atari marketed it as the world's first 64-bit game system, emphasizing its 64-bit bus used by the blitter, however, none of its three CPUs had a 64-bit instruction set in the same way as later 64-bit consoles such as the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo 64. The Jaguar launched with Cybermorph as the pack-in game, which received divisive reviews. The system's library ultimately comprised only 50 licensed games.
Broderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia, as well as The Print Shop—originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers—and the Myst and Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Broderbund was purchased by SoftKey in 1998.
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.
Boulder Dash is a maze-based puzzle video game released in 1984 by First Star Software for Atari 8-bit computers. It was created by Canadian developers Peter Liepa and Chris Gray. The player controls Rockford, who tunnels through dirt to collect diamonds. Boulders and other objects remain fixed until the dirt beneath them is removed, then they fall and become a hazard. Puzzles are designed around collecting diamonds without being crushed and exploiting the interactions between objects. The game's name is a pun on balderdash.
Snow Bros. is a 1990 platform arcade video game originally developed by Toaplan first published in Japan, then in North America by Romstar and later in Europe. Starring the eponymous snowmen twins Nick and Tom, players are tasked with travelling through 50 stages, throwing and building snowballs, jumping on and off platforms to navigate level obstacles while dodging and defeating monsters in order to rescue the princesses Puripuri and Puchipuchi from captivity. Although first launched in arcades, the game was later ported across multiple platforms, each one being created by different third-party developers and featuring several changes or additions compared with the original version. Conversions for various microcomputers were in development but none were officially released to the public.
Dinamic Software was a Spanish video game producer and publishing company. It was founded in 1984, and its activity ceased in 1992, comprising the Golden Era of Spanish Software. One year later, a part of its owners founded an independent company named Dinamic Multimedia. At the end of the 1980s, another company, Aventuras AD, who began to produce text adventures, was born from Dinamic Software.
Ocean Software Ltd was a British software development company that became one of the biggest European video game developers and publishers of the 1980s and 1990s.
EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor and is developed by CadSoft Computer GmbH. The company was acquired by Autodesk Inc. in 2016 who announced to support the product up to 2026 only.
After The War is a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game published in 1989 by Dinamic Software, where the player must navigate through a hostile post-apocalyptic city. Although the name of the city is not mentioned in the game itself, both official promotional and unreleased artwork by Luis Royo and Alfonso Azpiri suggest that it is a post-nuclear version of New York City.
Opera Soft was a Spanish computer game developer of the Golden Era of Spanish Software of the 1980s. It released many games for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and similar computers in the mid-1980s, but its games were not as popular on the PC. Founded in 1986, the company obtained success with its title Livingstone Supongo in the same year. The game is based on the 19th-century explorer Dr. Livingstone. Within Spain, one of their most popular games was La Abadía del Crimen, based on Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.
SoftSide is a defunct computer magazine, begun in October 1978 by Roger Robitaille and published by SoftSide Publications of Milford, New Hampshire.
RoboCop is a run & gun and beat 'em up video game developed and published by Data East for arcades in 1988 based on the 1987 film of the same name. It was sub-licensed to Data East by Ocean Software, who obtained the rights from Orion Pictures at the script stage. Data East and Ocean Software subsequently adapted the arcade game for home computers.
DROsoft was a Spanish computer and video game software distributor headquartered in Madrid. The company was founded in 1985 out of DRO Records, Spain's first independent record label. It is considered to have played a part in the golden age of Spanish software, having been described as one of the "principal distributors" of the age.
Bugaboo (The Flea), later published in Spain as La Pulga, is a video game written by the Spanish programming duo Paco Portalo and Paco Suarez for the ZX Spectrum and published by Quicksilva in 1983. It was later released for the Commodore 64 and MSX were produced. The Amstrad CPC port was published under the name Roland in the Caves using the Roland character.
Cosmi Corporation (COSMI) was an American computer software company based in Carson, California. It sold low-cost software directly to consumers in large retail outlets, computer stores, and drug, hardware, and grocery stores. It had two major imprints: Celery Software, and Swift Software/Swift Jewel.
The golden age of Spanish software was a time, between 1983 and 1992, when Spain became the second largest 8 bit computer entertainment software producer in Europe, only behind the United Kingdom. The disappearance of the 8 bit technology and its replacement by the 16 bit machines marked the end of this era, during which many software companies based in Spain launched their career: Dinamic Software, Topo Soft, Opera Soft, Made in Spain and Zigurat among others. The name Edad de oro del soft español was coined by specialized magazines of the time and has been used to refer to these years until nowadays.
Ultrasoft was a computer game developer and computer game publisher located in Bratislava, Slovakia. The company specialised in the development and publishing of games for the ZX Spectrum home computer. With over 40 titles published, its most successful including the platform game Towdie and puzzle games Atomix and Hexagonia – Atomix 2. Ultrasoft also acted as an exclusive distributor within the territory of Czechoslovakia for Domark and Ocean Software game software houses based in the UK. Apart from computer games, the company also published a dozen or so non-game titles, mostly for learning foreign languages, as well as text, image, sound and music editors.
Big Five Software was an American video game developer and publisher in the first half of the 1980s founded by Bill Hogue and Jeff Konyu. The company developed games for the Tandy TRS-80 and later Atari 8-bit computers. Most of its TRS-80 games were clones of arcade video games, such as Galaxy Invasion (Galaxian), Super Nova (Asteroids), Defense Command, and Meteor Mission II. Big Five also sold an Atari joystick interface called TRISSTICK which was popular with TRS-80 owners.
The history of video gaming in Spain dates back to the 1970s, and by 2014 the country was the 10th-highest-grossing market for video games worldwide. In 2018, the Spanish video game market posted a revenue of €1.53 billion, up from €1.35 billion in 2017. The country's audience of game players was 16.8 million that year; demographically, it was 59% male and 41% female. Reportedly 80% of people aged 6-to-10 played video games, while 24% of those in the 45–64 age range did so.
