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in order to participate in the changing economy and society. According to
Haddon and Skinner (1991, 435) available fi gures suggest that Britain had
a higher per capita installed base of micros than many other Western Euro-
pean countries at this time. The dominant user of the micro in the home
were young males.
Meanwhile, across the water Atari had already globalized its production
network and established a factory to manufacture its arcade cabinets in a
small town in the centre of the R. of Ireland. Tipperary was the chosen site
and the American company shipped up to two thousand cabinets a month
to Europe from a port in the south of Ireland. Tens of thousands of Atari
hits including Centipede , Missile Command and Asteroids passed through
the Irish town for European markets. In the mid-1980s arcade cabinets
with games such as Marble Madness , Gauntlet and Temple of Doom were
produced. As with many successful game companies the parent company
was the target of numerous takeovers. Atari became Atari/Warner Com-
munications in 1978, and from 1985 until 1990 the factory was run as
a joint venture with the Japanese company Namco. Ownership reverted
back to Warner from 1990 to 1995 until Chicago-based Midway Games
purchased the plant in 1995. The plant was purchased the following year
by Namco Europe and would close after twenty years in 1998 (McCormick
2008). The acquisition of companies and the relocation of game production
to cheaper cost locations are themes that recur throughout the history of
the games industry in both Ireland and the UK.
Whereas Atari was just manufacturing games developed outside of Ire-
land, in the southern town of Waterford a small company called Emer-
ald Software produce a string of original 8- to 16-bit games, including
Moonwalker and The Running Man in the late 1980s. Emerald had been
founded that year by two Englishmen: Dave Martin, an ex-maths teacher,
and Mike Dixon, whose background was in the music industry. The com-
pany received commissions from U.S. Gold to work on Michael Jackson's
Moonwalker and from Grandslam to work on the Schwarzenegger spin-of
The Running Man . The Jackson side-scrolling Amiga hit was later released
on the Sega. There was also Vigilante , a fi ghting game, and an Amiga-
based shooter, Phantom Fighter . The company closed in 1991. One former
employee noted, “Towards our demise, we were asked to churn out X titles
in four weeks to save ourselves . . . I personally built a game from start to
fi nish in three weeks: a fi ve-level beat-'em-up with the compulsory baddy at
the end of each level” (Barter 2004).
Dave Perry is one of the best-known game designers from the island
of Ireland during this period. In an interview for gamedevelopers.ie we
again see the infl uence of public investment in computing as he recalls that
“my school in Belfast, Methodist College Belfast, received a big govern-
ment grant for computers, and I was pretty much glued to the computers
from there on out. I started writing games that were published in topics
and magazines. That's how you bought games back then—you had to buy
 
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