Krome Studios Melbourne, originally Beam Software,[1] was an Australian
video game development studio founded in 1980 by Alfred Milgrom and
Naomi Besen and based in
Melbourne, Australia.[2][3] Initially formed to produce books and software to be published by Melbourne House, a company they had established in London in 1977,[1] the studio operated independently from 1987 until 1999, when it was acquired by Infogrames, who changed the name to Infogrames Melbourne House Pty Ltd..[4] In 2006 the studio was sold to
Krome Studios.[4]
The name Beam was a contraction of the names of the founders: Naomi Besen and Alfred Milgrom.
History
Home computer era
In the early years, two of Beam's programs were milestones in their respective genres. The Hobbit, a 1982 text adventure by Philip Mitchell and
Veronika Megler,[5] sold more than 500,000 copies.[6][7] It employed an advanced parser by Stuart Richie and had real-time elements. Even if the player didn't enter commands, the story would move on.[8] In 1985 Greg Barnett's two-player
martial arts game The Way of the Exploding Fist helped define the genre of one-on-one fighting games on the home computer.[8] The game won Best Overall Game at the
Golden Joystick Awards.[9]
In 1987 Beam's UK publishing arm,[10] Melbourne House, was sold to
Mastertronic for £850,000.[11] Beam chairman Alfred Milgrom recounted, "...around 1987 a lot of our U.K. people went on to other companies and at around the same time the industry was moving from 8-bit to 16-bit. It was pretty chaotic. We didn't have the management depth at that time to run both the publishing and development sides of things, so we ended up selling off the whole Melbourne House publishing side to Mastertronic."[2] Subsequent games were released through varying publishers. The 1988 fighting games Samurai Warrior and Fist +, the third instalment in the Exploding Fist series, were published through Telecomsoft's
Firebird label. 1988 also saw the release of space-
shoot'em-upBedlam, published by GO!, one of
U.S. Gold's labels, and The Muncher, published by
Gremlin Graphics.
Shift to consoles and PCs
In 1987 Nintendo granted a developer's licence for the
NES and Beam developed games on that platform for US and Japanese publishers. Targeted at an Australian audience, releases such as Aussie Rules Footy and International Cricket for the NES proved successful.[12] In 1992 they released the original title Nightshade, a dark superhero comedy game. The game was meant to be the first part in a series, but no sequels were ever made; however, it served as the basis for Shadowrun. Released in 1993, Shadowrun also used an innovative dialogue system using the acquisition of keywords which could be used in subsequent conversations to initiate new branches in the
dialogue tree. Also in 1993 they released Baby T-Rex, a
Game Boy platform game that the developer actively sought to adapt the game to a number of different licensed properties in different countries around the world including the animated film We're Back! in North America and the puppet character
Agro in their home country of Australia.[13]
1998 saw a return to RPGs with Alien Earth, again with a dialogue tree format.[16] Also in 1998, the studio developed racing games DethKarz[15] and GP 500.
In 1999 Beam Software was acquired by
Infogrames and renamed to Infogrames Melbourne House Pty Ltd.
In December 2005, Atari decided to shift away from internal development, seeking to sell its studios, including Melbourne House.[19] In November 2006,
Krome Studios acquired Melbourne House from
Atari and was renamed to Krome Studios Melbourne.[20] It was closed on 15 October 2010, along with the main Brisbane office. Next to the game development, Beam Software also had the division Smarty Pants Publishing Pty Ltd., that created software titles for kids, as well as the proprietary video compression technology VideoBeam, and Famous Faces, a facial motion capture hardware and software solution.
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abDeMaria, Rusel and Wilson, Johnny L. (2004) High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games McGraw-Hill/Osborne, Berkeley, Calif., p. 347,
ISBN0-07-223172-6