Sega
Frank Herman, in early 1987, spotted that Sega had no UK distributor for the Master System range, because Ariolasoft had failed to impress the Japanese-based group. He applied and Mastertronic were appointed distributor for one year. Martin Corrall, who was somewhat at a loose end after the absorption of Melbourne House, was the ideal manager for this new line of business. The company sold all it could get that year, the UK distributorship was renewed and in addition within two years were appointed as distributors in France and Germany, and thus was born the huge business that was to become Sega Europe. In 1991 the group turnover was around £100 million, a phenomenal growth. Nearly all of the sales, and certainly all of the profit, came from Sega products. Staff numbers soared but the traditional games publishing side began to be neglected. Full price games such as Golden Axe and Supremacy were achieving significant results and making the budget business seem irrelevant.
In early 1991 Sega expressed interest in taking over the business. Virgin Group was happy to sell. Sega had no interest in the games publishing side. As a result nearly all the staff moved over to Sega when they bought the business that summer and only a handful of Virgin games programmers stayed with the publishing side (quickly renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment. By that time the budget business was dying and nobody cared about it. In any case the competition had become intense as everyone was now recycling their old full price games as budget games. And of course the kids who used to buy C64s and Spectrums were now buying Segas and Nintendos.
After the Sega takeover Frank Herman became deputy Managing Director of Sega Europe (with Nick Alexander as MD) and Alan Sharam was Managing Director of Sega UK. Martin Alper stayed with Virgin and continued to head up VIE for several years, remaining resident in the US. And I also moved to Sega where I became European IT Manager.
Postscript
VIE rebranded its budget range under the Tronix label, possibly because the legal rights to the name Mastertronic remained with Sega Europe. Sometime around 1992-3 VIE pulled out of budget games altogether. It is still possible to buy original Mastertronic tapes because large quantities of unsold games came back from the retailers and some are still being sold today. Somehow the name continues to bring back memories. There must be many thousands of kids who could not afford the more expensive games and who were able to enjoy gaming thanks to Mastertronic. The business really was unique – it could not be replicated today. Games are now developed by teams of programmers and designers and typical retail prices are £30 – £45. The days when a teenager could walk unannounced into an office, load up a tape and instantly be offered a publishing deal have gone. But there was really a time when this happened. It is beginning to feel like a legendary era but it was only twenty years ago8.
In August 2003 Mastertronic was reborn. The name was used to launch a new range of budget games, all of which had previously done well as full price titles. Frank Herman joined them in March 2004, resuming his old position as Chairman. There was no relation between the new company and the old, other than the name. Sadly it all came to an end in 2015 when the new Mastertronic, in financial difficulties for over a year, went into administration.
Footnotes:
- Martin Alper to me on several occasions; echoed almost word for word in a later blog by a VIE employee, and also here where the author writes “Probably the single biggest problem at Virgin which I think was a big factor in lots of the other problems was that the boss was not a gamer in any way shape or form”.
- In my opinon but there may have been a prototype game somewhere
- I never understood the success of this title. What is the point of playing a simulated fruit machine on a computer when the only point of a fruit machine is to gamble?
- I was annoyed because the Amigas were relatively expensive and I was trying to keep track of what we we spending.
- I can’t remember if this name was just co-incidence or if the packaging company renamed itself when it got our business. The owner of the business, David Bishop, confusingly has the same name as one of Virgin Games chief game designers who later worked at VIE with Martin Alper.
- Snyder later married one of Mastertronic’s merchandising team, Ann Kemp, and settled in England.
- I disagreed with the purchase because we could have easily launched our label with the £850,000 purchase price and had plenty to spare.
- based on first version of this history
Last major revisions: June 2016
There are also many references to the development of the company’s business, image and corporate structure in the sections Style and Press.
I have tried to make this as impersonal as possible but inevitably my own experiences form part of the story.
© Anthony Guter – April 2004 and updated 2012 and 2016. Layout for this edit completed 2025.
Neil from the RetroManCave/Retro Collective on Youtube now owns the Mastertronic trademark and is planning to release a load of budget games using it. Its mentioned on their latest update video.