U.S. Gold

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U.S. Gold
Founded: 1984
T-series code: T-79
Merged into: Eidos (1996)
Headquarters:
Birmingham, United Kingdom

U.S. Gold is a British video game developer and distributor between 1984 and 1996. Initially making a name for itself by importing American Commodore 64 software into Europe, U.S. Gold grew into one of the largest games publishers in the United Kingdom, before being absorbed into Eidos Interactive in 1996.

History

U.S. Gold was founded in Birmingham in 1984 by Geoff Brown as the publishing division of Centresoft. At the time it was established it was porting several US Atari and Commodore 64 games to the 8-bit home computer format in Europe. Over time it gained the rights to port well known games such as Street Fighter, Final Fight, Ghouls n Ghosts, Forgotten Worlds among others. However, a number of their more lucrative licensing deals, particularly one with LucasArts, fell through, threatening to affect their income. In order to help consolidate their finances, they joined forces with UK software distributor CentreSoft to form the CentreGold Plc Group. Internal game development studios owned by U.S. Gold were the internally formed Silicon Dreams and acquired Core Design.

The three-way partnership at the heart of CentreGold didn't last long, however, as the group was acquired by Eidos Interactive in April 1996. Eidos sold off CentreSoft and maintained Core Design as a developer but decided to discontinue the U.S. Gold brand. Silicon Dreams Studios was sold back to U.S. Gold founder Geoff Brown.

The last retail game to bear the U.S. Gold logo was Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996, released in June 1996 for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation, PC and 3DO. The remaining U.S. Gold games awaiting publication at the time of their acquisition by Eidos were released in August 1996 with the exception of Dream Team Basketball, a cancelled PlayStation game.

U.S. Gold is credited as the publisher of the canceled Sonic's Edusoft and the developer of the also canceled Sonic the Hedgehog (Amiga).

During the mid-90s U.S. Gold had a short-lifed publishing label called Front Street Publishing. Only the Sega 32X version of BC Racers was ever published under this name, though the unreleased 32X versions of Soulstar X, Virtual Golf, Shellshock and Thunderhawk II were also set to use the label.

Softography

Master System

Mega Drive

Mega-CD

Game Gear

Saturn

Amiga

Atari 8-bit family

Atari ST

Amstrad CPC

BBC Micro

Commodore 64

ZX Spectrum

References

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