German video game developer
This article has multiple issues. Please help
improve it or discuss these issues on the
talk page. (
Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
.mw-parser-output .hidden-begin{box-sizing:border-box;width:100%;padding:5px;border:none;font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .hidden-title{font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .hidden-content{text-align:left}@media all and (max-width:500px){.mw-parser-output .hidden-begin{width:auto!important;clear:none!important;float:none!important))You can help expand this article with text translated from
the corresponding article in German. (December 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like
DeepL or
Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider
adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,065 articles in the
main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide
copyright attribution in the
edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an
interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Ariolasoft]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template ((Translated|de|Ariolasoft)) to the
talk page.
For more guidance, see
Wikipedia:Translation.
This article relies largely or entirely on a
single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the
talk page. Please help
improve this article by
introducing citations to additional sources.Find sources:
"Ariolasoft" –
news ·
newspapers ·
books ·
scholar ·
JSTOR (April 2018)
(
Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Ariolasoft GmbH, later known as United Software, was a German video game developer, publisher and distributor. It started in 1983[1] as the software subsidiary of Ariola Records, itself the record division of Germany's large Bertelsmann empire. From 1985 to 1988 Stephen Molyneux, formerly Head of Software at Atari International GmbH in Hamburg, held the position of Head of Software[2] with responsibility for international negotiations and licensing of software at its headquarters in Munich. Ariolasoft also had a British subsidiary, Ariolasoft UK, which was run by Ashley Gray (later replaced by Willie Carminke) and Frank Brunger.[1]
The company released games for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST and Amiga systems. It was also the German publisher for Activision games developed for the Atari 2600, and the European publisher for Electronic Arts and Broderbund games, before those companies set up their own European offices. Ariolasoft also developed the cassette ports of those titles, and also developed original games. In addition to software activities, they were also the German distributor of the Master System between approximately 1987 and 1988.[1]
In 1990, the company was renamed United Software, which in 1993 was taken over by MicroProse Germany.[1]
