Emerald Software
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| Industry | Video games |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1988 |
| Defunct | 1991 |
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Headquarters | Waterford, Ireland |
Key people | David Martin, Mike Dixon |
| Products | The Running Man, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker |
Number of employees | 17 programmers, 5 graphic artists, 2 administration |
Emerald Software was a video game publisher founded in 1988 by two UK entertainment executives - David Martin of Martech, and Mike Dixon who previously worked with EMI and worked as the company CEO.
The company was headquartered in a three-storey Georgian house ("Washington Lodge") in Wilkin Street, Waterford, Ireland.
The company had varying fortunes and failed in 1991, with the few remaining staff having worked without pay for the final few months in an attempt to keep the company going.
The people
The company was mostly populated by graduates or placement students from the then-named Waterford Regional Technical College - with some from University College Dublin and others with no formal computer training.
At its peak, Emerald Software employed 17 programmers and 5 graphic artists. These people were spread across 5 departments, loosely split to cover each of the supported development platforms and graphic art - with two additional personnel in Administration and Human Resources.
The developers were:
- Michael Murphy
- Brian Kelly
- Frank Somers
- Billy Newport
- Brian Gorman
- Robert Healy
- Martin Murphy
- Robert (Sean) Rogers
- Paul Kelly
- Damian Scattergood (Mr Z80)
- Jonathon Brogue
- Niall Whelan
- Aidan Troy
- Martin Duggan
The artists were:
- Martin Ahearne
- Clare Scott
- Paul McLaughlin
- Mark Cushen
- Jer O'Carroll
Development
The company authored games for the Commodore Amiga, IBM PC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC systems.
Development for Amiga and Atari ST games was carried out using Manx C, and Motorola 68000 Assembly language. As both Amiga and ST were 68000 based machines, games were typically authored on the Amiga and then ported using an in-house authored porting / remote-debug / development environment; this allowed the code to be edited on the more capable Amiga, then transmitted to the ST and remotely executed/debugged from the Amiga. The development system was written by Brian Kelly and was based on Lattice C. Graphics and sound routines required re-authoring, but in many cases this was straightforward.
The Amiga games did not run on top of Workbench / AmigaOS - but on a custom-written tiny OS (KOS) with a proprietary disk format which offered higher data capacity per diskette, as well as helping to impede casual copying. This was written by Brian Kelly (the K in KOS).
Development for Spectrum and CPC games took place on a commercially available cross-assembler development environment (PDS) hosted on an IBM PC clone which was electronically connected to a Spectrum. This allowed the game to be authored on the stable PC environment (complete with disk backup), then "blasted" directly into the Spectrum memory to allow for immediate testing. Developing in this manner allowed for significantly higher development speeds than could be achieved by native development on the Spectrum.
As both ZX Spectrum and CPC 464 were Zilog Z80 based machines, CPC versions were usually ported versions of the Spectrum games, with the graphics display on the more-capable CPC reconfigured to be close to that of the more primitive Spectrum. Z80 development was primarily run by Damian Scattergood. The team developed a graphics display system for the CPC 464 that emulated the Spectrum screen layout which meant graphics routines could be ported quickly. Damian also developed his own macro programming language that meant that code could be compiled and shared instantly across both platforms. Z80 development was actually done on a PC where the code could be edited and complied quickly, and then was ported via RS232 direct onto the Spectrum and CPC machines for testing.
List of games
The company produced a number of games during its brief existence, to somewhat mixed reviews. These were largely ports of existing arcade games (Vigilante for example) or original movie tie-ins (The Running Man) but there were also some original game concepts (e.g. Phantom Fighter):
- The Deep (1988)
- Phantom Fighter (1988)[1]
- The Running Man (1989)
- Vigilante (1989)
- Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (1989)
- Fallen Angel (1989)
- Treasure Trap (1990)
Trivia
- The well-respected intro sequence[1] for the Amiga version of 'The Running Man' occupied practically one full 800k diskette of the two diskette set. Running in a continuous loop till interrupted, it featured digitized voice, music and video sequences from the film, and so was often left running in computer stores as an Amiga feature demonstrator.
- The date of the first Emerald Software Christmas Party (December 21, 1988) coincided with the ill-fated Pan Am Flight 103; the breaking news on the hotel televisions had a somewhat sobering effect on all concerned.
- Graphic Artist Jer O'Carroll went on to animate Lara Croft for Eidos.
- Phantom Fighter developer Billy Newport is now at IBM working as an architect for Java middleware and founded Trackpedia, a web site for driving enthusiasts.
- Damian Scattergood went on to develop other computer games as a freelancer programmer such as Superted the search for spot. He then joined SYMANTEC where he was development manager for Norton Commander for Dos/Windows. He then took on responsibility for translation tools development and localization manager for products such as pcAnywhere, Norton Ghost, Winfax, Visual cafe and other utilities. Damian is now Managing Director of STAR Translation Services in Dublin, Ireland. He is also founder of LocalizationWorks a jobs site for localization professionals.
- Niall Whelan left Emerald after one year to join Claris Ireland a subsidiary of Apple Inc. and subsequently worked in localization roles for a number of US based companies including Informix, Davidson & Associates aka. CUC Software (Games localization for studios such as Blizzard, Knowledge Adventure, Sierra Online) and is now Director of Localization with Ariba Technologies Ireland Ltd.
- Paul McLaughlin moved to the UK where, after various freelance art roles, he began a long association with Peter Molyneux to become Head of Art at Bullfrog Productions, Lionhead Studios and more recently 22cans.