Rainbow Arts & Softgold

[CodyJarrett]

Do any of the German (or otherwise) members here know what the link between Rainbow Arts and Softgold was?

It seems that they were both bought by Funsoft in 1997, which was then bought by THQ in 1999. But, what about the earlier years?

[AmiGer]

Seems that Softgold has created a "new" Turrican 3. The original amiga version by Kaiko had quality problems and has never been released (only the demo).

I found this nice german Turrican III page:
http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/fi...ent-diary.html

German info from thelegacy.de:
Nach der Fertigstellung von T2 (Amiga) wurde 1991 sofort mit T3 begonnen. Davon gab es sogar eine Demo-Version. Leider wurde aber Factor 5 mit der Entwicklung des Mega Turrican (Mega Drive/1992) beauftragt. Kaiko übernahm die Konvertierung für Amiga. Währenddessen wurde Super Turrican (SNES/1993) fertiggestellt. Kaiko zerbrach und Turrican 3 (Amiga) wurde aufgrund von Qualitätsmängeln eingestellt. Um der gebeutelten Amiga-Gemeinde doch gerecht zu werden, vereinbarten Factor 5, Softgold und Peter Thierolf ein neues T3-Projekt. Die endgültige T3-Version ist mit Mega Turrican nahezu identisch.

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by AmiGer
Seems that Softgold has created a "new" Turrican 3. The original amiga version by Kaiko had quality problems and has never been released (only the demo).

???
Kaiko???
I have part 2 of thsi WIP but never been able to read it of course. It always looked to me just like Factor 5's turrican, and I thought the kaiko peeps joined the Factor 5 team (they always did joint efforts, they were like friends or something?)

I'd be most interested in hearing about this!

[DrBong]

Originally posted by CodyJarrett
Do any of the German (or otherwise) members here know what the link between Rainbow Arts and Softgold was?

It seems that they were both bought by Funsoft in 1997, which was then bought by THQ in 1999. But, what about the earlier years?

I've previously done a little bit of research on this one.

From what I can gather, Rainbow Arts was established as a publisher in Germany in 1984. At the time they were very keen to get a slice of the C64 market, which as you know became huge in the 80s. Softgold was a C64 developer at the time. The two companies seemingly found each other and formed what by 1987 would become the biggest publisher/developer partnership in Germany. Both companies had the foresight to become involved early on in the Amiga market, which also became quite lucrative.

I'm not sure if Softgold had an "exclusive" development contract with Rainbow Arts as, say, DMA Design might have had with Psygnosis. However, it was obvious that the two companies were very tight, to the point that Softgold established a budget label called Top Shots in the 80s, which published many of Rainbow Arts back-catalogue Amiga games.

Anyway, the partnership between the two companies seemed to extend into the mid-1990s at least where they moved on to PC (and probably other platforms) when the Amiga market went into decline.

Here is the point where my research turned up vague and confusing info. From what I understand Rainbow Arts was bought out in 1997 by Funsoft/Softgold (as opposed to Funsoft buying out Rainbow Arts/Softgold). Could be a case of the developer getting bigger than the publisher and then buying them out, or at least merging with another company to raise the money for a buyout. Whatever the case, as you stated, Rainbow Arts, Softgold and Funsoft were all acquired by THQ pretty soon after in 1999.

Hope that sheds some light on the intertwined histories of Rainbow Arts and Softgold for you

[CodyJarrett]

DrBong:

Are you sure that Softgold were a developer? I can't find anything (on the Amiga at least) which suggests that they were a developer.

They seem to have published Fate: Gates Of Dawn and distributed Legend Of Faerghail in the UK.

[DrBong]

They developed Mission Elevator for micro-partner in 1987. I have the original and if you want more detail about that release then look here:

[Cody - took away URL!]

Then there's a reference to Softgold and Rainbow Arts by a guy who was development director of both Softgold and Rainbow Arts here:

http://www.wingssimulations.com/aboutus.html

As I said, the exact nature of the relationship between Softgold and Rainbow Arts is not clear, but Softgold certainly started out as a C64 developer and the two companies were tight but not 100% exclusive.

Softgold did a lot of developing for C64 and some for Amiga in the 1980s. On the Amiga (and perhaps other platforms) they branched out in the late 1980s as a publisher and distributor (IIRC they distributed Lucasarts games in Germany).

Neverthless, whenever I've seen Rainbow Arts and Softgold credited for an Amiga game, Rainbow Arts has always been the publisher and not Softgold (except for the budget Top Shots re-releases). Softgold may not always have had a development role in the Amiga projects they collaborated on with Rainbow Arts. It could be that they helped with distribution also.

Unfortunately, the links between a lot of the German Amiga companies are always going to be hard to figure out unless you get something from the horse's mouth, as it were.