Melbourne House

**Krome Studios Melbourne**, originally **Beam Software**, was an Australian video game development studio founded in 1977 by Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen and based in Melbourne, Australia.[1] The studio operated independently from 1988 until 2000, when it was acquired by Infogrames, who changed the name to **Melbourne House**. In 2006 the studio was sold to Krome Studios.

The name Beam was a contraction of the names of the founders: Naomi Besen and Alfred Milgrom.

## History

### Home computer era

In the early years, two of Beam's programs were milestones in their respective genre. *The Hobbit*, a 1982 text adventure by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler, sold more than a million copies. It employed an advanced parser by Stuart Richie and had real-time elements. Even if the player didn't enter commands, the story would move on. In 1985 Greg Barnett's two-player martial arts game *The Way of the Exploding Fist* helped define the genre of one-on-one fighting games on the home computer. The game won Best Overall Game at the Golden Joystick Awards.

In 1988 Beam's publisher, parent company Melbourne House, was sold to Mastertronic for £850,000. Subsequently games were released through varying publishers. The 1988 fighting games Samurai Warrior and *Fist +*, the third installment in the Exploding Fist series, were published through Telecomsofts Firebird label. 1988 also saw the release of space-shoot'em-up *Bedlam*, published by GO!, one of U.S. Gold's labels, and *The Muncher*, published by Gremlin Graphics.

### Shift to consoles and PCs

In 1987 Nintendo granted a developer's licence for the NES and Beam developed games on that platform for US and Japanese publishers. Targeted at an Australian audience, releases such as *Aussie Rules Footy* and *International Cricket* for the NES proved successful. In 1992 they released the original title *Nightshade*, a dark superhero comedy game. The game was meant to be the first part in a series, but no sequels were ever made; however, it served as the basis for *Shadowrun*.

In 1993 they released *Shadowrun*, with an innovative dialogue system using the acquisition of keywords which could be used in subsequent conversations to initiate new branches in the dialogue tree. In 1997, Beam relaunched the Melbourne House brand, under which they published the PC titles *Krush Kill 'n' Destroy* (KKND), and the sequels *KKND Xtreme* and *KKND2: Krossfire*. They released *KKND2* in South Korea well before they released it in the American and European markets, and pirated versions of the game were available on the internet before it was available in stores in the U.S. They were the developers of the 32-bits versions of *Norse By Norse West: The Return of the Lost Vikings* for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC in 1996.They also helped produce SNES games such as *WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling*, *Super Smash TV* and an updated version of *International Cricket* titled *Super International Cricket*. They ported the Sega Saturn game *Bug!* to Windows 3.x in August, 1996.

1998 saw a return to RPGs with *Alien Earth*, again with a dialogue tree format Also in 1998, the studio developed racing games *Dethkarz* and *GP 500*.

In 1999 Beam Software was acquired by Infogrames and renamed to Infogrames Melbourne House.

### 2000s

They continued to cement a reputation as a racing game developer with *Test Drive: Le Mans* and *Looney Tunes: Space Race* (both Dreamcast and PlayStation 2), followed by the technically impressive *Grand Prix Challenge* (PlayStation 2), before a disastrous venture into third-person shooters with *Men in Black II: Alien Escape* (PlayStation 2, GameCube).

In 2004 the studio released *Transformers* for the PlayStation 2 games console based on the then current Transformers Armada franchise by Hasbro. The game reached the top of the UK PlayStation 2 games charts, making it Melbourne House's most successful recent title.

The studio then completed work on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable ports of Eden's next-generation Xbox 360 title *Test Drive: Unlimited*.

In December 2005, Atari decided to shift away from internal development, seeking to sell its studios, including Melbourne House. In November 2006 Krome Studios announced that it had acquired Melbourne House from Atari and that the studio would be renamed to Krome Studios Melbourne.

## Games

### As Beam Software/Melbourne House

* 1982: *Hungry Horace, Horace Goes Skiing, Horace and the Spiders, The Hobbit*
* 1984: *Castle of Terror, Hampstead, Mugsy, Sherlock*
* 1985: *Gyroscope, Lord of the Rings: Game One, Terrormolinos, Way of the Exploding Fist, Wham! The Music Box*
* 1986: *Kwah!, Asterix and the Magic Cauldron* (Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC), *Marble Madness, Mugsy's Revenge, Redhawk*
* 1987: *Bop'n Rumble*, *Throne of Fire, Roadwars, Shadows of Mordor*
* 1988: *Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo*, The Muncher, Xenon
* 1989: *War in Middle Earth, Back to the Future* (NES)
* 1990: *Back to the Future Part II & III* (NES), *Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum* (NES), *Boulder Dash* (Game Boy), *NBA All-Star Challenge* (Game Boy), *The Punisher* (NES)
* 1991: *Hunt for Red October* (Game Boy), *Smash TV* (NES), *Family Feud* (NES), *J. R. R. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan* (DOS), *Aussie Rules Footy* (NES), *Power Punch II* (NES)
* 1992: *T2: The Arcade Game* (Game Boy), *NBA All-Star Challenge 2* (Game Boy), *Tom and Jerry* (GB), *Super Smash TV* (SNES), *George Foreman's KO Boxing* (Game Boy)
* 1993: *We're Back BC* (Game Boy), *Agro Soar* (Game Boy), *Blades of Vengeance* (Genesis), *NFL Quarterback Club* (Game Boy), *Radical Rex* (Genesis), *Shadowrun* (SNES), *Super High Impact* (Genesis, SNES), *Tom and Jerry - Frantic Antics* (Genesis)
* 1994: *The Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness* (Game Boy); *WCW: The Main Event* (Game Boy); *Super Smash TV* (GG, SMS); *Solitaire FunPak* (Game Boy); *Cricket '97 Ashes Edition* (PC); *Radical Rex* (SNES)
* 1995: *True Lies* (GB, Genesis; SNES); *The Dame Was Loaded* (PC)
* 1996: *5 in One Fun Pak* (GG); *Wildcats* (SNES)
* 1997: *Caesars Palace* (PlayStation)
* 1997: *Krush, Kill 'n' Destroy* (PC)
* 1998: *Dethkarz* (PC)
* 1998: *NBA Action '98* (PC)
* 1998: *KKnD 2: Krossfire* (PC, PlayStation)
* 1999: *GP 500* (PC)

### As Infogrames Melbourne House/Atari Melbourne House

* 2000: *Test Drive Le Mans* (Dreamcast); *Looney Tunes: Space Race* (Dreamcast)
* 2001: *Le Mans 24 Hours* (PS2)
* 2002: *Le Mans 24 Hours* (PC); *Space Race* (PS2); *Men in Black II: Alien Escape* (PS2); *Grand Prix Challenge* (PS2)
* 2003: *Men in Black II: Alien Escape* (Nintendo GameCube)
* 2004: *Transformers* (PS2)
* 2007: *Test Drive Unlimited* (PS2, PSP)