Special FX Software

Special FX Software is a British video game developer that was formed in 1987 by Ocean Software executives Paul Finnegan and Jonathan Smith. The company went defunct in 1992, and it was succeeded by Rage Software.

The company was originally founded in 1987 by former Imagine Software and Ocean Software executive Paul Finnegan and programmer Jonathan Smith, along with some other former Ocean developers, that was based in Liverpool.^[1][2][3][4] The first game they developed was Hysteria, for Software Projects, for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. It was a massive commercial success to critical acclaim.^[5][6][7]

In 1988, after the release of Hysteria and the tensious falling-out between the Special FX directors and Software Projects, the company signed a deal with Ocean Software, who were the old employers before he left for Special FX, in order to handle publishing, sales, marketing and distribution of the company's future video game titles. The first title to come out of the deal was Firefly, which was a shoot-em-up game that also received critical acclaim.^{[8][9][10][11]} The company followed it up with G.U.T.Z, which was another critically acclaimed shooter.^[12][13] Special FX is planning on to develop another shooting game, Vertigo, but the game never went released.^[13][14]

The company moved its focus to licensed titles on Ocean's meddling in 1988, to go in line with other developers in Ocean's system, with the hit title Batman: The Caped Crusader, which was a critical and commercial success for major computer platforms, making the company's first entry into the licensed game business, and also the company's first game for 16-bit platforms.^[15][16][17]

The company followed it up by acquiring the video game rights on behalf of Ocean, the movie titles The Untouchables and Red Heat, for contemporary computer platforms.^[18][19] Over time, Special FX's quality came to a decline after critically acclaimed original titles, with the usual bread and butter movie license tie-ins and arcade ports publisher Ocean Software had.^[20] The company's first movie tie-in title Red Heat met with a positive reception from computer game critics.^[21][22] The next title The Untouchables, for 16-bit computers, also met with a positive reception from computer game critics.^[23]

The company also expanded its focus onto porting arcade hits, in order to secure the rights to port the arcade games Cabal, which was released in 1989 for 8-bit computers (the 16-bit versions was done by Ocean France) to critical acclaim,^[24][25] and Midnight Resistance, which was released in 1990 to a near positive response,^[26][27] and after the success, the company was largely responsible for creating the 16-bit computer versions of the RoboCop 2 video game, which also had a positive reception.^[28][29][30]

The company tried hard onto NES production in 1991 with the game The Untouchables, and after that Special FX made one last major move with the video game tie-in for Hudson Hawk for Ocean Software,^[31] for all major computers, NES and Game Boy, to a mixed response from contemporary video game critics, attributable by the negative reception of the movie.^{[32][33][34][35]}

Right after the completion of Hudson Hawk, the Special FX team split up as relations between Special FX board of directors and publisher Ocean Software grew sour. Members, like programmer Robert Tinman and music composer Keith Tinman relocated from Liverpool to Ocean's Manchester base to finish the game titles, the NES game The Legend of Prince Valiant and the Game Boy version of Mr. Do!, the latter which was released in an incomplete state,^[1][36] while the rest of the team stayed in Liverpool, while Special FX became an independent publisher in late 1991/early 1992, and the company was renamed to Rage Software, to produce the video game Striker, which met with critical acclaim.^{[37][38][39][40]}