U.S. Gold Ltd.

Moby ID: 587

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U.S. Gold was a British computer and video game publisher and developer from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, producing numerous titles on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms.

U.S. Gold was founded in Birmingham in 1984 by Geoff Brown as the publishing division of Centresoft. The publisher continued to expand their operation well into the 1990s. However, a number of their licensing deals, particularly one with LucasArts, fell through, threatening to affect their income. In order to help consolidate their finances, they joined forces with UK software distributor CentreSoft to form the CentreGold Plc Group. Internal game development studios owned by U.S. Gold were the internally formed Silicon Dreams and acquired Core Design.

The group was acquired by Eidos Interactive in April 1996. Eidos sold off CentreSoft and maintained Core Design as a developer but decided to discontinue the U.S. Gold brand. Silicon Dreams was sold back to U.S. Gold founder Geoff Brown and became the keystone for his new development venture Geoff Brown Holdings (GBH).

The last retail game to bear the U.S. Gold logo was Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996, released in June 1996.

Associated labels of U.S. Gold:

Credited on 500 Games from 1984 to 1996

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Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996 (1996 on DOS, PlayStation, 3DO)
Olympic Summer Games (1996 on Game Boy, SNES, Genesis)
Olympic Soccer (1996 on DOS, PlayStation, SEGA Saturn...)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996 on DOS, PlayStation, SEGA Saturn...)
Witchaven II: Blood Vengeance (1996 on DOS, Windows)
Search & Destroy (1995 on DOS, Windows 3.x)
Thunderstrike 2 (1995 on DOS, PlayStation, SEGA Saturn)
Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu (1995 on DOS, Macintosh)
Head-On Soccer (1995 on SNES, Genesis, Jaguar)
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time (1995 on Windows, Windows 3.x, Macintosh)
Terminal Velocity (1995 on DOS, Windows, Macintosh...)
Alice in Wonderland (1995 on Windows 3.x)
1830: Railroads & Robber Barons (1995 on DOS)
A-10 Tank Killer + Extra Missions (1995 on Amiga)
Anvil of Dawn (1995 on DOS, Windows)
Chronomaster (1995 on DOS, Macintosh, Windows...)
Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings (1995 on SNES, Genesis)
Johnny Bazookatone (1995 on DOS, PlayStation, SEGA Saturn...)
Links 386 CD (1995 on DOS, Macintosh)
Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer (1995 on DOS)

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History +

April 1996

Eidos Interactive acquires CentreGold plc, which includes US Gold, Core Design, and CentreSoft.

1991

U.S. Gold to enter US market through Accolade. After having distributed their games in the US by different publishers on a game to game basis, Accolade now takes the publishing for all the UK produces games in the US.

1987

U.S. Gold covered a 30 percent market share of the full-price games market in the UK.

1984

Company founded.

Trivia +

This is the same address that Kixx used to occupy.

Winner Software House of the Year 1988 in the "Golden Joystick" Awards organised by the magazine Computer and Video Games (reported issue #79, 1988/5). Only UK software houses were included in the Awards.

The cassette versions of US Gold's games had a very characteristic loading screen (loading games from cassette usually took several minutes): the computer would play synthesized renderings of The Star-Spangled Banner, Yankee Doodle, and Dixie's Land repeatedly, in that order, until the loading of the game finished and gameplay could commence. While playing the music the screen would display a countdown of the remaining number of "blocks" to be loaded, along with a scrolling line of text advertising other US Gold games, existing as well as upcoming ones.

Source: Wikipedia

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