Adventure Soft is a British video game developer and publisher established by Mike Woodroffe, initially as an importer and reseller of Adventure International games as Adventure International (UK), and later using the names Horror Soft, Adventuresoft UK and Headfirst Productions.
The firm operates out of Sutton Coldfield,
Adventure International UK
Woodroffe, who owned a music shop in
Birmingham, entered the software industry by opening a computer department within the store, Calisto Computers,
importing American software which was otherwise unavailable in the UK.
The success of many of the titles from Adventure International led to Woodroffe licensing the name from Scott Adams to form
Adventure International (UK).
The company employed
Brian Howarth, the author of the
Mysterious Adventures series of text adventures, to convert Adams' titles to run on
found in the
United Kingdom market which were not currently supported.
By 1985, the release of games by Adventure International had slowed and the company began to write other games using the same system. The first
Further deals were signed, including a game based on the television series Robin of Sherwood,
Adventuresoft UK
By 1986 Adventure International in the U.S. was
bankruptcy, leaving the UK company unable to continue trading under that name. A new company was formed,
Adventuresoft UK, whose first title was their second
Fighting Fantasy conversion,
Rebel Planet, written by Stefan Ufnowski and published by U.S. Gold.
U.S. Gold published further Adventuresoft titles over the next few years, including Ufnowski's
Kayleth (based on story in
Asimov's Science Fiction magazine,
by Woodroffe
and
.
In 1988, Adventuresoft also worked with U.S. Gold to produce
Heroes of the Lance based on the first
Dragonlance campaign module for the
Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.
Adventuresoft also created
Blizzard Pass, the first game by Alan Cox
which was
product bundling with the
ZX Spectrum +2 by some retailers. Cox later developed parts of the game into
AberMUD.
Horror Soft
With the rise of more powerful systems like the
Amiga and a growing mainstream disinterest in text-focused games, Woodroffe created
Horror Soft to actively exploit the graphical and multimedia angle of the games.
Their first 16-bit game, Personal Nightmare, features music, animation and some mouse control coupled with a traditional text-based game system. It was followed by two games based around Elvira, Mistress of the Dark: and , and Waxworks, all of which moved away from keyboard command input to mouse-driven gaming with animation and music from Jezz Woodroffe (a session musician with Robert Plant, Black Sabbath and other bands).
Adventure Soft Publishing
Adventuresoft was remodelled as
Adventure Soft Publishing in 1992,
although the company wasn't incorporated until 1998
and the company continued to be referred to as Adventuresoft in the gaming press.
The company continuing the trend towards more graphical gaming with the release of
Simon the Sorcerer, their most successful game.
The game uses a new engine, the "Adventure Graphic Operating System", written by Alan Cox and based on
AberMUD.
It also includes voice acting from
Roger Blake and
Chris Barrie as Simon
who played
Arnold Rimmer in
Red Dwarf. Barrie was replaced by Brian Bowles for the when Barrie’s fees became unaffordable.
In 1997 Adventure Soft released
The Feeble Files, with the lead character being voiced by
Robert Llewellyn who played
Kryten also in
Red Dwarf.
Headfirst Productions
In 1998 Mike and Simon Woodroffe set up Headfirst Productions to allow them to develop non-adventure style games. The company released
Simon the Sorcerer 3D in 2002 and
in 2005. The intellectual property rights to
Simon the Sorcerer remained with Adventure Soft, so were unaffected when Headfirst first went into administration the following year.
Games
External links
