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Beam Software

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Krome Studios Melbourne
Company typeVideo game developer
IndustryVideo games
Founded1980
HeadquartersMelbourne, Australia
Key people
Kevin Burfitt, Myles Abbott, Mark Coombes, Holger Liebnitz, Russel Comte, Darren Bremner, Marshall Parker, Kyuji Kawase
ProductsTransformers: Armada, Test Drive Unlimited (port), Shadowrun, Grand Prix Challenge, Le Mans 24 Hours, The Hobbit, The Way of the Exploding Fist, Krush Kill 'n' Destroy, KKND2: Krossfire, DethKarz, GP500, Looney Tunes: Space Race, Men in Black II: Alien Escape, The Dame Was Loaded
Number of employees
40
Websitehttp://www.melbournehouse.com/

Krome Studios Melbourne, formerly Melbourne House, is a video game development studio owned by Krome Studios and based in Melbourne, Australia. They were founded in 1980 under the name Beam Software by Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen. The name, Beam, is a contraction of Alfred and Naomi's initials.

They are known for the early games The Way of the Exploding Fist (Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Commodore 64 and Commodore 16), The Hobbit (1982) (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro) and Sherlock (1984)(ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64). Melbourne House is one of the longest surviving game development companies in the world and for most of its existence has been the largest game development studio in Australia.

In the early 90s Melbourne House found success in their home country with releases such as Aussie Rules Footy and International Cricket for the NES. In 1993 they released Shadowrun (SNES), which was a rather novel take on the console RPG and Adventure genres at the time and to this day has a small but devoted fan base. In the mid-to-late 90s, Melbourne House found further success with PC titles Krush Kill 'n' Destroy (KKND), and the sequel KKND2: Krossfire. Unfortunately, they released KKND2 in South Korea well before they released it in the American market, and pirated versions of the game were available on the internet before it was available in stores in the U.S. They were the developers of the 32-bits versions of The Lost Vikings II for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC in 1996. They also helped produce SNES games such as WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling, Super Smash TV and an updated version of International Cricket titled Super International Cricket. They ported the Sega Saturn game Bug! to Windows 3.x in August, 1996.

The studio developed racing games DethKarz and GP500 shortly before being acquired by Infogrames and cementing a reputation as a racing game developer with Test Drive: Le Mans and Looney Tunes: Space Race (both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2), followed by the technically impressive Grand Prix Challenge (PlayStation 2), before a disastrous venture into third-person shooters with Men in Black II: Alien Escape (PlayStation 2, GameCube).

In 2004 the studio released Transformers: Armada for the PlayStation 2 games console and based on the toy franchise of the same name. The game reached the top of the UK PlayStation 2 games charts, making it Melbourne House's most successful recent title.

The studio recently completed work on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable ports of Eden's next-generation Xbox 360 title Test Drive: Unlimited.

In 2006 Krome Studios announced that it had acquired Melbourne House from Atari and that the studio would be renamed to Krome Studios Melbourne.

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