Wednesday 3 am quiz: Software houses by street view building

[XTM]

There's nothing to stop people posting their own quizzes at 3am on a Wednesday morning!

That's what he said. A very reasonable suggestion. So here's my Wednesday 3 am quiz then.

The picture shows nine Google Street View images of buildings where U.K. software houses that published Speccy games back in the day were situated. Can you guess the software houses?

There are some hints. The letters A to C hint at the first letter of that software house's name in the alphabet according to this list:
A = first letters ABCDEFGHI
B = first letters JKLMNOPQR
C = first letters STUVWXYZ
For example, for Ocean Software, the letter would be B; for Gremlin Graphics, it would be A. Note: these two example software houses are not featured in this quiz.

Furthermore, looking very closely at the pictures won't hurt either, as there is a barely visible, faint (for a reason, I didn't want to make this too easy) hint on each of them. Feel free to zoom in, like 200% or more, otherwise you probably won't even see what I'm talking about.

Since this is a quiz that was posted at 3 am and is made up of 3x3 pictures, I'm adding a "secret" condition with the number 3, but I won't reveal it yet.
Good luck!

[ParadigmShifter]

9 looks like Level9

[worcestersource]

7 US Gold

[Lee P]

I think 9 is Microsphere.

[Oloturia]

Is 8 Mikro-Gen?

[Pobulous]

1 - Gremlin?

[5MinuteRetro]

The picture shows nine Google Street View images of buildings where U.K. software houses that published Speccy games back in the day were situated. Can you guess the software houses?

Well, for numero uno I'm guessing Anirog/Anco. However, if I were to be a pedant -- and I am -- that company's address appears to have been 8 High Street, Horley. However, the picture you posted appears to be as close as Google Street View can get to 8 High Street, Horley -- but the centre of this image is actually 5 High Street, Horley, occupied by Mayhews estate agents. Currently occupying 8 High Street, Horley, is Boots. So, the correct image should be this one, with Boots circled. Less grandiose, sure, but perhaps more fitting for a 1980s software outfit:



Right, that's me done here, I think! I'm going to get out more.

[worcestersource]

I’d like to suggest that 3 is Bug Byte.

[XTM]

As I wrote in my first post:

Since this is a quiz that was posted at 3 am and is made up of 3x3 pictures, I'm adding a "secret" condition with the number 3, but I won't reveal it yet.

This secret condition, since this is a "quiz of threes" so to speak, also has a three in it: "Guesses are only valid within 3 hours of me posting this quiz". The only guess submitted during these three hours came from ParadigmShifter, but it was wrong.
You're probably thinking "what the hell??" now. I'll be honest, I never meant for this to be a proper quiz, just a pi** take, "inspired" by the snarky response that "there's nothing to stop people posting their own quizzes at 3am on a Wednesday morning" after I voiced my opinion about "participation concerns" on another quiz a while ago.
Well. This one is over. Sorry for wasting your time as I won't respond to the guesses made (except for 5MinuteRetro - yes, you are correct). Go ahead and remove your likes, I don't care either way. Here are the solutions:
1. Anirog Software
8 High Street, Horley, Surrey

2. P.S.S.
452 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry

3. Cronosoft
3 Lentons Lane, Leverton, Boston, Lincolnshire

4. The Edge
31 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London

5. Abbex Distribution Ltd
17 Marble House, Elgin Ave, London

6. Martech
6 Bay Terrace, Pevensey Bay

7. U.S. Gold
Unit 10, Parkway Industrial Center, Heneage Street, Birmingham

8. Quicksilva
13 Palmerston Rd, Southampton

9. Microsphere
72 Roseberry Road, London

[Lee P]

Well as the author of said "snarky" comment, that'll teach me to reply to anything ever!

[ParadigmShifter]

It is funny that it made you annoyed yet you had to wait until 3AM Wednesday morning to make your point though

It's only a quiz after all. Let's get quizzical, quizzical, let's get quizzical.

Olivia! I thought you were so nice and innocent (until last 5 minutes of Grease anyway), then I saw this filth in your song

You know what I mean
I took you to an intimate restaurant
Then to a suggestive movie
There's nothin' left to talk about
Unless it's horizontally

Blimey!

[MustardTiger]

Can you post clear screenshots of the games overlayed in the images? They were driving me mad.

[R-Tape]

Well as the author of said "snarky" comment, that'll teach me to reply to anything ever!

This is all your fault Lee. Disappointed.

[Lee P]

I shall say ten Hail Clives and twenty booooo BIPs as penance.

[R-Tape]

I shall say ten Hail Clives and twenty booooo BIPs as penance.

Not good enough Lee. There's nothing stopping you posting a 'name the developer's earlobe quiz' at 5.15am on a Sunday morning to make up for it.

[Lee P]

That's a great CSSCGC idea! I'll get on it right away.

[bluespikey]

As a youngster I'd always imagined gleaming towers of industry. Most of these, especially number 5, are the sort of place when you find an especially cheap bit of kit of ebay, look up the posting address, and backoff cos it looks like a dodgy untraceable address.

[5MinuteRetro]

As a youngster I'd always imagined gleaming towers of industry. Most of these, especially number 5, are the sort of place when you find an especially cheap bit of kit of ebay, look up the posting address, and backoff cos it looks like a dodgy untraceable address.

Me too, which is why, whenever I come across an address from BITD, I like to check it out on Street View. For example, this scruffy mid-terrace on a back street of Great Yarmouth was once home to the illustrious DK'Tronics. Moreover, for dull reasons, over the past decade or so, I've walked past this faded gaff multiple times blissufully unaware that is was once a hive of industrial activity that produced such delights as Benny Hill's Madcap Chase.

[flange]

Not forgetting Kaydee, also in Yarmouth.

Allegedly set up by a disgruntled family member from DK Tronics hence the reversed phonetically sounding name.

The keys, keycaps and legends were the same on both DK's and Kaydee's external keyboards and their UDG boards shared identical content barring set 5 of the UDGs.

[flange]

Some places looked a bit nicer.

Eprom services, North Leeds manufacturer of amongst other things EPROM programmers for the Zeddy and the Speccy (which I have and still use.)

[Sham Mountebank]

Spirit Software is a great one for this game. This is what their Kensington address looks like today:


Pretty swish huh? Hardly the place you'd expect to be the postage address for a notorious ZX Spectrum rip -off. Except, this is what it looked like in 1983.

https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk ... 68&i=90578

Yeah. That's more like it. That's the kind of seedy lockup I can imagine a dodgy geezer using.

Also, this is the point where I desperately push my blog, which is full of this sort of rubbish:
https://whereweretheynow.blogspot.com/2 ... tware.html

[Lee Bee]

Great collection of images. Though I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to "guess" these if we don't already happen to know. Personally, I'd rather be given a list of the 9 answers so I can try and fit the buildings to the company based on style/scale.

[spider]

This topic does make me curious to see (old picture if buildings have been destroyed aka Software Projects*** is now a Tesco or similar) for MikroGen / Bug-Byte etc.

*** Pretty sure I had one at some point.

[5MinuteRetro]

Great collection of images. Though I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to "guess" these if we don't already happen to know. Personally, I'd rather be given a list of the 9 answers so I can try and fit the buildings to the company based on style/scale.

Reading the OP’s subsequent post I’m not sure the intention was for them to ever be guessed. Ho hum. I love this stuff though, so if I get any free time over the next few days, I’ll try to put together a similar Street View-based quiz — so stay tuned.