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. The studio operated independently from 1988 until 2000, when it was acquired by Infogrames, who changed the name to Melbourne House.
In the early years, two of Beam's shows were milestones in their respective genres. The Hobbit, a 1982 text adventure by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler, sold over a million copies. It used an advanced Stuart Richie parser and had real-time elements. Even if the player didn't enter any commands, the game continued.
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 computers, winning the top prize for Best Game at the Golden Joystick Awards. .
In 1988 Beam Publishing, the parent company Melbourne House, was sold to Mastertronic. The games were later released through different publishers. The 1988 fighting games Samurai Warrior and Fist+, the third installment in The Way of the Exploding Fist series, were published through the Telecomsofts Firebird label. 1988 also saw the release of Space-shoot'em-up Bedlam, published by GO!, one of the US Gold imprints, and The Muncher, published by Gremlin Graphics.