Beam Software / Melbourne House

Forum

Hi Sumeans,

First time poster, long time reader, but don't worry I'm not about to request any songs.

What I am curious about, and I thought this would be the place to get a good response, is some information about the early years of Beam Software / Melbourne House.

I recently did a feature article listing the top 10 games ever developed in Australia, talking about the games themselves, awards they won, and information about the developer themselves (http://www.australiangamer.com/feature.php?id=91).

Through extensive research through company websites, gaming forums, the sumea website and lots of googling, I was able to compile all the information I needed. With one exception.

The relationship between Beam Software and Melbourne House. Initially, from what I can gather, Beam was the developer and Melbourne House was a subsidory of Beam setup to handle publishing. Were they two seperate companies, or one in the same? I read that after Melbourne House was aquired by Masteronic and then Virgin (and subsequently 'Virginised' to reflect the name), it was then relaunched under the Melbourne House name again by Beam Software. Then Atari came in. And Beam dissapeared.

Thats all I've got. The beam software site no longer exists, the melbourne house website just links to a Transformers ad, and I can't seem to find any more information.

Any help here would be much appreciated. Glad to finally be a part of this community, and all the best to everyone in the New Year!

Submitted by souri on Fri, 06/01/06 - 6:28 AMPermalink

My memory is a bit hazy, but I'm sure they started off as a publisher called Melbourne House, and the software arm of the company was Beam Software. I've put my bit of research into what happened to Melbourne House over the years in [url="http://www.sumea.com.au/sdevelopersprofile.asp?developer=9"]Sumea's developer profile[/url], so that covers all I know.

quote:Originally posted by Yug

Thats all I've got. The beam software site no longer exists, the melbourne house website just links to a Transformers ad, and I can't seem to find any more information.

Wouldn't it be great if someone managed to grab the Beam site before it disappeared about 7 years ago?

Hey, wait a minute! That's exactly what I did! [;)] The Way Back Machine doesn't even have it, but here's what I managed to salvage and store a long time ago of the site. Hope it helps!

Submitted by Yug on Fri, 06/01/06 - 6:44 AMPermalink

Souri, you rock mate :)

So all the way up until 1997, Melbourne House was the publishing subsidiary of Beam Software ... interesting

Submitted by souri on Fri, 06/01/06 - 6:49 AMPermalink

Actually, it's more like Beam was the software subsidiary of Melbourne House.

Submitted by Yug on Fri, 06/01/06 - 11:41 AMPermalink

Yup, that makese sense ... cheers

While I'm on the subject, is there a contact email for the media or press relations person for Atari Melbourne House that you know of?

Submitted by Quatermass on Wed, 11/01/06 - 1:07 AMPermalink

I used to work there, and I beleive that Melbourne House was a book publisher of sorts.

Submitted by Gazunta on Thu, 12/01/06 - 4:25 AMPermalink

I was the guy that wrote 90% of all the content on Beam's hotgames.com site that they mention on some of their press releases...total freedom to trash whatever game I didn't like that day, as long as it wasn't a Beam game :)

Sigh, good times...