Microdeal

From The Dragon Archive

Microdeal was a British software company which operated during the 1980s and early 1990s from its base at Truro Road in the town of St Austell, Cornwall. The company, founded by John Symes was one of the major producers of games and other software for the 8-bit home computers of the time, in particular the Dragon 32 and the similar Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer ("CoCo").

The 8-bit software market dwindled toward the end of the 1980s and Symes officially announced that Microdeal would no longer publish for the Dragon and Tandy machines on 1 January 1988; from this point they would concentrate on the newer generation of 16-bit computers, the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, with their remaining stock of Dragon and Tandy software to be sold off by a company called Computape. The companies publishing licences were sold to Hi-Soft and it ceased trading in the early 1990s.

Activities

Some of Microdeal's software was produced in-house by the company's own programmers (including Steve Bak, Rita Jay and Ed Scio) but they also licensed software from foreign sources, such as the American Tom Mix Software and Spectral Associates, and published the works of independent programmers (notably Ken Kalish who was responsible for some of their most successful titles). Much of the software brought to Britain from the US was originally written for the Tandy CoCo (which was the more popular machine there) and converted to work with the Dragon. These conversions were contracted out to a company called Northern Software Consultants where they were handled by lead programmer Chas Robertson. Chas also designed the dongle device that was experimentally used for copy protection of a single Microdeal title, Buzzard Bait. Some of Microdeal's licenced games were renamed for the British market. For example, they released a series of games based around the company mascot Cuthbert (Cuthbert Goes Digging, Cuthbert In The Jungle, etc). The original members of this series were written in-house by Steve Bak, but later additions were completely unrelated. Rather, they were renamed titles from several different sources - the graphical limitations of computers at that time meant that a character was unrecognisable and could be given any convenient name. Microdeal also had a brand called Pocket Money Software, which published simpler games submitted by users at a lower price than the main titles. While some Pocket Money games were arguably of poor quality, others were among the company's most popular titles.

Microdeal also sold Cuthbert-branded blank media (tapes, disks, etc), re-boxed and sometimes adapted hardware (such as joysticks) made by other companies and published an occasional semi-informative, semi-promotional magazine called The Cuthbert Chronicle. They also accounted for most of the advertising space and reviews of Dragon User magazine.

John Symes the founder of Microdeal went on to run a car dealership in Bournemouth.

Software

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Air Traffic Control

Airball

Alcatraz II

Aquanaut 471

Athletyx

Backgammon

Beam Rider

Cashman

Caverns Of Doom

Chambers

Co-Res Editor / Assembler

Cosmic Zap

Crash

Crazy Painter

Cuthbert And The Golden Chalice

Cuthbert Goes Digging

Cuthbert Goes Walkabout

Cuthbert In Space

Cuthbert In The Cooler

Cuthbert In The Jungle

Cuthbert In The Mines

Danger Ranger

Defense

Demolition Derby

Demon Seed

Devil Assault

Donkey King

Downland

Draconian

Dragon Hawk

Dragon Invaders

Dungeon Raid

Eight Ball

Escape

Filmastr

Flipper

Frogger

Fury

Galactic Ambush

Galagon

Glaxxons

Golf

Grabber

Intergalactic Force

Invaders Revenge

Jerusalem Adventure 2

Katerpillar Attack

Keys Of The Wizard

King Tut

Light Pen

Lunar Rover Patrol

Machine Language Tutorial

Mansion Adventure 1

Module Man

Morocco Grand Prix

Mr Dig

Mudpies

Pengon

Phantom Slayer

Pinball

Planet Invasion

Program Pack 1

Program Pack 2

Program Pack 3

Program Pack 4

Program Pack 5

Programmers Utilities

Racer Ball

Rainbow Writer

Rommel 3D

Scarfman

Shock Trooper

Skramble

Space Fighter

Space Monopoly

Space Raiders

Space Shuttle

Space War

Space Wrek

Speed Racer

Star Spores

Stone Raider II

Storm

Syzygy

Talking Android Attack

Tangle Wood

Tele-Artist

Tele-Forth

Tele-Mod

Tele-Tutor

Tele-Tutor 2

Tele-Writer

The Dark Pit

The Dragon Composer

The King

The Vortex Factor

Time Bandit

Touch Typing Tutor

Touchstone

Trekboer

Ultimate Adventure 4

Williamsburg Adventure 3

Wizards Quest

Worlds Of Flight

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Disks

Tapes