Codemasters

Related Topics:
Codemasters

Codemasters (earlier known as Code Masters) is one of the oldest British software houses. The CEO is Rod Cousens, formerly of Acclaim.

History

Founded in 1985 by Richard and David Darling (who worked previously for Mastertronic), Codemasters quickly established themselves in the growing ZX Spectrum market, mostly with action games that required the player to solve simple puzzles by combining different objects. One of the best examples of these games are the Dizzy series, which turned Dizzy into the un-official Spectrum mascot. While Codemasters found their roots in the ZX Spectrum, they did not exclusively write for this one computer - they also released software (including the Dizzy series) for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.

They were famous for releasing a long series of games called "Advanced Something Simulator" or "Professional Something Simulator". This led to the parody "Advanced Lawnmower Simulator" being developed, praised to the skies and then published by Your Sinclair magazine as an April Fool's Day stunt.

Codemasters' games in the 1980s were also highly acclaimed not only for their quality, but also surprisingly for the fact that they only released budget titles very cheaply. Hence when, in 1992, they began to cut down on the budget releases in favour of full-price titles, they attracted the ire of many fans and the gaming press, the latter questioning the commercial logic behind it as Codemasters had known a great deal of success from their budget titles.

As the 8-bit computer market diminished, Codemasters turned to developing for the 8-bit and 16-bit console markets, as well as moving away from their budget title legacy to more full-price games on the 16-bit computers - 1993 saw the last title in the budget Dizzy series, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, although they released a full-price Dizzy game, Fantastic Dizzy later. They had major success with the Micro Machines series and Pete Sampras Tennis on the Sega Mega Drive. Both franchises featured the J-Cart, allowing two extra controllers to be attached to the game cart without requiring EA's 4 way play or SEGA's four player adaptor.

The company also attracted both smirks and scorn from the gaming press and the gaming public in the 1980s with gleaming quotes that appeared to come from the gaming press on the packaging of their games (e.g. "This game is absolutely brilliant!" on Fruit Machine Simulator) - a standard feature of game packaging. However, on closer inspection, the quote could be seen to be attributed to none other than David or Richard Darling, the founders of Codemasters.

Console Mods

Codemasters is notable for making the large majority of games published by the controversial Camerica company, which bypassed Nintendo's lock-out chip by breaking the 10NES "code" and produced unlicensed NES games. These NES games were known for being shiny gold and silver cartridges that were slightly different from normal NES cartridges in shape, though they still fit into the cartridge slot. Many Codemasters titles were also featured on Camerica's Aladdin Deck Enhancer.

In 1990 Codemasters developed a device called the Power Pak, later renamed the Game Genie. It was cheat cartridge for the NES, released in the US by Galoob and in Canada and the UK by Camerica. Codemasters would later develop a successful game based on Galoob's Micro Machines toy range.

Recent Titles

Codemasters have since continued to release titles for later generation systems, such as the TOCA Touring Car series, Colin McRae Rally series and Operation Flashpoint. They currently own the rights to use the title Operation Flashpoint 2, but there have been legal wrangles with Bohemia Interactive Studio, the developers of the original game. It has been speculated that Bohemia may break with them and release a game independently called Armed Assault - Operation Flashpoint 2 will be developed by a different team. In spite of these rumours, Codemasters released Elite, developed by Bohemia, for Xbox in October 2005.

June 2006 saw the long awaited release of Sensible Soccer 2006 for the PS2.

The Consolevania Challenge

The company received a surprising taunt from an unlikely source in early 2006. With the release of Episode 2.3 ^* of Consolevania on the 12th March, the end of the show included a sequence where the main cast members issued an invitation to the company (specifically the Darling Brothers) to come up to Scotland to face them. The venue: a pub cark park in Glasgow. The time and date: 3pm Saturday the 18th March.

The impression from the team's tone seemed to be fighting talk. However, the cast members (with the exception of Kenny) are clearly men more of wit and charm than of violence. The whole thing could be put down to a publicity stunt, or just an exercise in discovering who'll actually turn up. Though whatever happens, the lads are likely to have someone film the proceedings, with the footage more than likely to feature in the next episode of the show.

"Develop 100" list

In 2005, Codemasters was named as the top independent games developer by "Develop magazine", an international monthly journal for video game developers ^*.

External links

British video game companies | Dizzy