Beam Software

Um, went on and studied at university, computer science, and then graduating that I started making, um, games for the Amiga and PC.

And so the games, earlier games were things like, uh, Halloween Harry, shareware, published by Apogee, uh, and The Flight of the Amazon, Amazon Queen, a point and click, which was, uh, made with, uh, Renegade and Beam Software, which was a, a, a highlight of my life.

Um, it was pretty amazing.

Um, actually, we got to work with, uh, Penelope Keith, who sadly passed away.

And, um, that sort of led to us, um, you know, being sold in stores, 'cause the Halloween Harry then got rebranded as Alien Carnage, was sold in shops through FormGen.

So yeah, it really opened it up for us, and I think it was a good calling card, um, then we went on to make other games.

Melbourne House as well, like, how did they end up publishing, uh, games, you know, uh, and Beam Software? They were previously a book publisher [laughs] so it's, um, a very kind of strange shift to go into that.

Well, well, as I said, when I was, when I was in, uh, when I was very young, I, I didn't realize Beam was actually, uh, Australian.

This game's designer was praised in the British Micropress for the clear manual, ease of use, and even the eight included example games.

Meanwhile, in Australia, Melbourne House put out Herg, high-level, user-friendly, real-time games designer by William Tang of Beam Software.

It was a menu-driven editor for enhanced spectrums that allowed you to create a game with up to three additional variations, that is, modes.

Pac-Man switching from running away to eating ghosts would be one such variation.

But it didn't have to be a Pac-Man.

You could make a shoot-them-up something, or even the latest hotness, a platformer.

Three example games were there to get you started, and if you ended up somewhere interesting, Melbourne House ran contests.

Herg has neither a Wikipedia nor a Moby Games page.