Flair Software
 | |
| Industry | Video games |
|---|---|
| Founded | 5 June 1990 |
| Headquarters | Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom |
Key people | Colin Courtney |
| Products | Elvira: The Arcade Game Oscar Dangerous Streets Realm |
| Brands |
|
Casual Arts, formerly known as Flair Software, is a British video game developer and publisher of the 1990s that developed and published games for the Amiga, CD32, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, PlayStation, Saturn, and Super NES. It was founded by Colin Courtney in 1990 after his previous company, Tynesoft, went bankrupt.[1] It retained Tynesoft's MicroValue brand and published Elvira: The Arcade Game which had originally been scheduled for publication by Tynesoft.[1]
The company is mainly associated with and colorful Amiga games such as Trolls, Oscar, and Whizz. In 1993, platformer Oscar was bundled with Millennium's Diggers as a launch bundle for the Amiga CD32 and it was considered one of the mascot games for the system.[2] Flair Software's 1994 fighting game Dangerous Streets (that was a pack-in game for the CD32 later in its lifespan) is generally considered one of the worst games of all time.
The games Trolls and Oscar were remade and re-released in 2010 as Nintendo DSiWare by Virtual Playground (part of the MicroValue group of companies[3]) under the new titles Oscar in Toyland (since the Trolls license couldn't be used anymore [4]) and Oscar in Movieland. In 2011 Virtual Playground also released two new original Oscar games (Oscar in Toyland 2 and Oscar's World Tour) for DSiWare.
The company currently operates under the name Casual Arts and releases games for Windows, Mac, Nintendo DS/3DS, iOS, Android, and Kindle.[5]
Selected games
[edit]- Turn n' Burn (1990, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS)
- Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1991, Commodore 64) (publisher)
- Elvira: The Arcade Game (1991, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS)
- Euro Soccer (1992, Amiga, MS-DOS)
- Trolls (1992, Amiga, CD32, Commodore 64, MS-DOS)
- Oscar (1993, Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, SNES)
- Surf Ninjas (1993, CD32)
- Dangerous Streets (1994, Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS)
- Summer Olympix (1994, CD32)
- Whizz (1994, Amiga, MS-DOS, PlayStation, Saturn, SNES)
- Rally Championships (1994, Amiga, MS-DOS)
- Soccer Superstars (1995, Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS)
- Realm (1996, SNES)
- Time Paradox (1996, MS-DOS)
- MegaMorph (1997, MS-DOS)
- Double Agent (1998, Windows, Amiga)
- Jungle Legend (1999, Windows)
References
[edit]- ^ a b "From the Archives: Tynesoft". Retro Gamer. No. 75. Imagine. 31 March 2010. p. 82-87.
- ^ "Oscar". Retro Gamer. 2012-08-01. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
- ^ "Virtual Playground Games". IGN. Archived from the original on March 14, 2014. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
- ^ "European Nintendo downloads: Oscar in Troll-land". Joystiq.com. 2009-08-28. Retrieved 2015-07-17.
- ^ "FAQ". Retrieved 15 March 2023..
