is a UK-based of games.
In the beginning Adventure Soft operated out of
Birmingham converting the
Adventure International games by
Scott Adams to run on
Microcomputer s found in the
United Kingdom market which were not currently supported. Adventure Soft employed
Brian Howarth whose
Mysterious Adventure series was the British answer to Scott Adams games, and who used the same game system as Scott to perform the ports.
After a time the rate of release of games by
Adventure International slowed and the company began to write other games using the same system. The first and perhaps most successful of these was a
1984 game based on ''
Gremlins '' written by Brian Howarth and with artwork from
Teoman Irmak , whose artwork was to become legendary amongst early microcomputer enthusiasts for its quality.
1985 saw the release of a game based on the
Television series "
Robin Of Sherwood ", based on the
Robin Hood legend. This game was the first containing game design by Mike Woodroffe, and also compression and a graphics system capable of very limited animation.
By
1986 Adventure International in the USA was
Bankrupt . Adventure Soft signed deals that gave it access to the
Fighting Fantasy Game Books by
Steve Jackson(UK) and
Ian Livingstone , as well as a new more sophisticated game system.
The first fruits of this deal were "Seas Of Blood" by Michael Woodroffe and
Alan Cox , followed by
Stefan Ufnowski 's
Rebel Plane t. "
Temple Of Terror " by Mike and
Simon Woodroffe followed shortly afterwards.
"
Blizzard Pass " (a single player game closely related to
AberMUD ) by
Alan Cox and "
Kayleth " (by
Stefan Ufnowski and
Ann Ufnowski ) followed as the company diversified the game range. Adventure Soft also began producing games for
Tynesoft including the game of
Supergran and "Terraquake" (featuring
He-Man ).
With the rise of more powerful systems like the
Commodore Amiga and a growing disinterest in text focussed games Adventure Soft began to actively exploit the graphical and multimedia angle of the games. The first 32bit game "
Personal Nightmare " based on a design by Keith Wadhams featured music, animation and some mouse control coupled with a traditional text based game system. It was followed by two games based around
Elvira Mistress Of The Dark which moved away from keyboard command input to mouse driven gaming with animation and music from Jezz Woodroffe (a session musician with
Robert Plant ,
Black Sabbath and other bands). The Elvira games used a modified
AberMUD 5 game engine.
A remodelled Adventure Soft Publishing was born in situation comedy
Red Dwarf .
In .
In
1998 Mike and Simon Woodroffe set up
Headfirst Productions to allow them to develop non adventure style games.
