The company was originally set up in 1983 by Colin Courtney and Trevor Scott[1]
to release
educational software but soon moved into the
video games market on which it concentrated for most of its time. It developed numerous
games for a wide variety of
8-bit micros, particularly those less well catered for by other publishers such as the
Commodore 16,
BBC Micro and
Atari 8-bit. They also had a budget label, MicroValue, that issued compilations, reissues and some original games.[1]
They had most success with their
multi-load games such as Summer Olympiad, Circus Games and Rodeo Games. They also released licensed ports to smaller systems such as
Software Projects' Jet Set Willy (
Atari 8-bit,
Commodore 16/
Plus/4,
BBC Micro and
Acorn Electron),
First Star Software's Boulder Dash (BBC, Electron) and Spy vs. Spy (C16/+4, BBC, Electron) and
Mindscape's Indoor Sports (C16/+4, BBC, Electron). From the late 1980s, they released games for the 16-bit computers
Amiga and
Atari ST as well as
PC but failed to capture a large share of this new market and with the demise of the 8-bit games scene, their sales fell. The company went bankrupt in June 1990[2] when its sister printing business incurred massive debts.[1]
Legacy
Programmer Brian Jobling left the company in 1988 to set up
Zeppelin Games with programmer and journalist Derek Brewster.[1]
Colin Courtney set up a new company,
Flair Software, which continued to use the MicroValue label for budget releases. Flair published one title that had originally been scheduled for release by Tynesoft, Elvira: The Arcade Game,[1] but a reported conversion of
Games Workshop's Blood Bowl[3][4] never appeared. The company currently operates under the name Casual Arts and releases games for PC, Mac, Nintendo DS/3DS, iOS, Android and Kindle.[5]