Melbourne House is a game development studio owned by Atari and based in Melbourne, Australia. They were founded in 1980 under the name Beam Software. They are known for the early games The Way of the Exploding Fist (Commodore 64) and The Hobbit (1982) (ZX Spectrum). They are the largest and most established Australian software developer.

In the early 90s Melbourne House found success in their home country with releases such as Aussie Rules Footy and International Cricket for the NES. In the mid-to-late 90s, Melbourne House found further success with PC titles Krush Kill 'n' Destroy (KKND), and the sequel Krossfire. Unfortunately, they released KKND2 in South Korea well before they released it in the American market, and pirated versions of the game were available on the internet before it was available in stores in the U.S. They also helped produce SNES games such as WCW Super Brawl, Super Smash TV and an updated version of International Cricket titled Super International Cricket. They ported the Sega Saturn game Bug! to Windows 3.x in August, 1996.

The studio developed racing games DethKarz and GP500 shortly before being acquired by Infogrames and cementing a reputation as a racing game developer with Le Mans and Space Race (both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2), followed by the technically impressive Grand Prix Challenge (PlayStation 2), before a disastrous venture into third-person shooters with Alien Escape (PlayStation 2, GameCube).

In 2004 the studio released Armada for the PlayStation 2 games console and based on the toy franchise of the same name.

The studio is currently working on a PlayStation 2 port of Eden's next-generation Xbox 360 title Test Drive: Unlimited.

External links

• Melbourne House official web site - "under development" as of May, 2006
• Information at Sinclair Infoseek
• Melbourne House to be sold off Next-Gen
• Melbourne House profile on MobyGames

Computer and video game companies | Companies of Australia | Home computer software companies