Most prolific games publishers?

[Bolton80]

Hi all, could anyone provide a list of the publishers who released the most Spectrum games please?

What I'm looking for is the top 30(ish) publishers, that published English language games, and not purely re-release labels like Hit Squad?

If it's a 2 minute job for someone, maybe even make it a top 50 publishers.

I'm sure there's ways of doing this with ZXDB, but I am hopeless at trying to use it!

In case you're wondering why I want this, I'm putting together a directory of games publishers with their releases on my DIVMMC.

Thanks in advance all!

[PeteProdge]

I'm pretty sure it's US Gold. I'm trying to find my Best Speccy game by US Gold poll, but all attempts at a forum search return nothing, which makes me wonder if it got wiped? Out of all the software brands I've touched, I'm fairly sure US Gold was the longest, something like 130 games or so.

Also, why has the front page of this site eliminated the Genre: All Games filter from search? I used to be able to get an accurate list of standalone games from that. Now I'm having to leave it blank and getting results mixed in with compilations and other things.

[8BitAG]

Zenobi must be up there.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Without checking data, I would say one of those re-released companies, like Alternative. They published tons of games.

[Ralf]

This list would probably include that crazy Ashley Greenup guy with his countless train simulators

[Bolton80]

This list would probably include that crazy Ashley Greenup guy with his countless train simulators

B***dy hell. Never seen those before, but looks less like my definition of a 'game' and more like hard work. Think I'll leave those to the Spectrum Trainspotters, if there are any... quite a niche audience!

[p13z]

B***dy hell. Never seen those before, but looks less like my definition of a 'game' and more like hard work. Think I'll leave those to the Spectrum Trainspotters, if there are any... quite a niche audience!

True. Hanging around in anoraks with a flask of Bovril sounds much more like the domain of C64 owners.

[StooB]

Approximate top 50, with number of original releases shown in brackets. Zenobi and Ashley Greenup not included!

1 US Gold (111)
2 Ocean (105)
3 Mastertronic (105)
4 Codemasters (93)
5 Sinclair (76)
6 CRL (75)
7 Gremlin (66)
8 Atlantis (64)
9 Firebird (Silver and Silver 199 budget labels) (59)
10 Artic Computing (57)
11 CCS (57)
12 Alternative (53)
13 Activision (52)
14 Zeppelin Games (45)
15 Domark (42)
16 Hewson (42)
17 Mikro-Gen (42)
18 Quicksilva (37)
19 Bug-Byte (37)
20 Lothlorien (36)
21 Players (35)
22 Imagine (Ocean label, not the original) (35)
23 Melbourne House (34)
24 Virgin Games (34)
25 Dk’Tronics (30)
26 Players Premier (29)
27 Martech (29)
28 Elite Systems (27)
29 Cult Games (26)
30 Electric Dreams (24)
31 Tynesoft (23)
32 PSS (22)
33 Firebird (full price labels) (21)
34 CDS Microsystems (20)
35 Hi-Tec (20)
36 Silversoft (20)
37 Silverbird (20)
38 The Edge (19)
39 Mirrorsoft (18)
40 Blaby Computer Games (17)
41 Software Projects (17)
42 Gilsoft (16)
43 Pirate Software (16)
44 Virgin Mastertronic (16)
45 D&H Games (15)
46 Incentive (15)
47 Infogrames (15)
48 Scorpio Gamesworld (15)
49 Micromega (15)
50 Go! (15)

[Pegaz]

Approximate top 50, with number of original releases shown in brackets. Zenobi and Ashley Greenup not included!

Nice list.
Most of my favorite Spectrum publishers are in the bottom and some are not even in the top 50, like Odin.
btw, what about Beyond software ?
One of the most influential Spectrum publishers for me, I thought they would be there.

[StooB]

Nice list.
Most of my favorite Spectrum publishers are in the bottom and some are not even in the top 50, like Odin.
btw, what about Beyond software ?
One of the most influential Spectrum publishers for me, I thought they would be there.

Only 12 releases for Beyond.

[Ralf]

And Ultimate is missing here.

Well, I guess prolific <> important

[Lee Bee]

Adding these up, the top 50 publishers released a combined total of 1912 games, which is around 10–20% of all Speccy games, depending on which estimate you go on.

Another set of data I'd be fascinated to know… There were 3 publishers who produced 16 games, and 6 publishers produced 15 games. What about 14 games, 13 games, etc, down to 1? Might make an interesting chart.

[71owl]

Why are Zenobi missing? I know they were involved with a lot of re-releases but the vast majority of their adventure games were original.

[Hank Scorpio]

Why are Zenobi missing? I know they were involved with a lot of re-releases but the vast majority of their adventure games were original.

Also a few of Masterronics games were re-releases as well and I'd imagine quite a few of Sinclair's so Zenobi should be on the list IMHO

[Matt_B]

I make it 199 original games for Zenobi, give or take a few.

I can get that they're not exactly in the same league as U.S. Gold and Ocean, when it comes to both commercial and critical success, but they're still a games publisher. If the question was about getting games into retail stores, they'd probably score a lot less, mind you.

Ashley Greenup comes in with 57, while we're at it.

[PeteProdge]

When I tackled Zenobi Software for the 'Best game by...' poll, I found 143 titles on original release by them. I had to do to elimination rounds so that the poll could fit the 127 limit.

viewtopic.php?p=100210

Frankly, in terms of the number of original releases, Zenobi makes US Gold look like Viz Design.

[8BitAG]

As Pete mentioned, a chunk of the Zenobi titles could be classed as re-releases; even if in many cases those releases were of titles only previously published for a bried period of time by another homebrew labe;l so Zenobi would've produced the bulk of the sales. The Guild and The Adventure Workshop (whose catalogue overlaps) are probably the other two big adventure mail order publishers but their sales aren't in the same league as the 1,000+ copies Zenobi sold of some titles.

Obviously, Zenobi weren't a "proper" publisher... because Zenobi was actually run properly as a business and paid their authors advances and regular royalties on sales... unlike certain mainstream Spectrum labels!

[Pegaz]

I remember their adventure Infiltrator, because of the loading screen with an excellent 3D chess set.
It looks even better than the one from Psi Chess and is almost identical to Fig Chess, except the pieces are inverted and colored in a yellow/black instead b/w combination.
I still think, that the Fig Chess set was used here, also the game itself was made with PAW, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone else's work was borrowed.

[8BitAG]

I think I tracked down at one point the exact game that John... ahem, borrowed... those chess pieces from for that loading screen for both The Infiltrator and the earlier game in the series, The Pawns of War.

(Edit: It's Cyrus II, isn't it, I think? https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... m/Cyrus_II Although all those 3D chesss games... Psion Chess, Psi Chess, Fig Chess... use the same basic pieces.)

The loading screens on Zenobi games were usually nothing to do with the authors. The game itself is original!

[Pegaz]

I think I tracked down at one point the exact game that John... ahem, borrowed... those chess pieces from for that loading screen for both The Infiltrator and the earlier game in the series, The Pawns of War.

(Edit: It's Cyrus II, isn't it, I think? https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... m/Cyrus_II Although all those 3D chesss games... Psion Chess, Psi Chess, Fig Chess... use the same basic pieces.)

The loading screens on Zenobi games were usually nothing to do with the authors. The game itself is original!

Yes, both sequels use the same picture, just colored differently.
I think this is definitely not a Cyrus II set, Psi Chess is great, but still different.
This is Fig Chess set with inverted pieces and board edge removed, with 99.9% certainty.

[pavero]

The most active publishers

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/zxdb/te ... ishers.php

Code: Select all

SELECT p.label_id, b.name as original_pub, b.country_id, count(e.id) as count
FROM entries e
LEFT JOIN publishers p ON p.entry_id = e.id AND p.release_seq = 0
LEFT JOIN labels b ON p.label_id = b.id
WHERE p.label_id is not null and e.id < 100000
GROUP BY p.label_id, b.name, b.country_id
ORDER BY count DESC, b.name, b.country_id

[Waldroid]

I love a bit of Sunday lunch SQL!

[Einar Saukas]

I still think, that the Fig Chess set was used here, also the game itself was made with PAW, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone else's work was borrowed.

If you load Fig Chess, play a couple moves, rotate board, take a screenshot, then manually mirror the image... You will get this:

[StooB]

down to 1?

Publishers that seem to have only ever released one Spectrum game:

Alphabatim - Christian Uruqhart's own label which published Robot Messiah
Wizard - Tony Crowther's brief attempt at an independent publisher (William Wobbler)
Starzone - who published Zaxxan, the first game with Oliver Frey artwork, which was on sale for nearly a year until US Gold came along and took all their money
English Software - published plenty of games for other systems, mainly the Atari 8 bit, but disappeared after Leviathan, their only Spectrum release
Ubik - where Rob Hubbard started his career and whose only release was Paranoid Pete, their rejected Weetabix game
Megadodo - whose only existing game is Pheenix which became Alternative Software's first release
Channel 8 - who re-released all of Digital Fantasia's adventures but only managed one original release, Borzak, before going into liquidation