Gremlin Graphics
1984-99

One of the most prolific publishers of 8-bit games, Gremlin was also one of the very few to survive the demise of the 8-bit computers. They lasted until 1999 when, now renamed Gremlin Interactive, they were swallowed up by the giant French entertainment company Infogrames.

Gremlin's very first game, Monty Mole - a well-executed Manic Miner clone - was a massive hit, thanks to a carefully-arranged controversy which made the company's name. At the time, the British news agenda was dominated by the bitter year-long miners' strike and the personal struggle between Margaret Thatcher and miners' leader Arthur Scargill. Gremlin, who were based in Sheffield not far from the South Yorkshire coal mines, hit on the idea of setting Monty Mole in a mine with Scargill as the notional "baddie". (In fact, Scargill's involvement was limited to a caricature on the loading screen and a nondescript miner sprite on the last screen of the game.)

Gremlin's founder Ian Stewart was open about it - "We didn't aim to get adverse publicity, even though that can be beneficial. It was just as well the miners' strike continued or we would have fallen flat on our faces." The gambit paid off and the game received a lot of coverage from the press as well as being featured on the ITN News at Ten. It duly became a bestseller.

Gremlin settled down after that, producing a steady stream of mostly good to excellent games for the Spectrum and Commodore 64 over the next eight years. Although most were published under its own name, on a few occasions Gremlin worked as a contractor for other publishers - most notably for Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2, published by US Gold.

The company was one of the last to leave the dying Spectrum market, in 1992, concentrating instead on the growing 16-bit, PC and console markets. The change in emphasis was reflected in a change of name in 1994, to Gremlin Interactive. It produced a number of well-received games, most notably the Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge series (the first of which did appear on the Spectrum) and the Actua series of sports games. In March 1999, Infogrames bought Gremlin outright for £25 million.

Interviews and Articles

• A Gremlin in the Works (CRASH, July 1985)

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© Chris Owen 1994-2003