Editing Beam Software (section)

=== Home computer era ===
In the early years, two of Beam's programs were milestones in their respective genres. ''[[The Hobbit (1982 video game)|The Hobbit]]'', a 1982 text adventure by Philip Mitchell and [[Veronika Megler]],<ref>{{citation|title=Author of '80s classic ''The Hobbit'' didn't know game was a hit|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/18/hobbit_author_veronika_megler_reminisces/|publisher=[[The Register]]|date=18 November 2012|access-date=10 December 2012|last=Sharwood|first=Simon}}</ref> sold more than 500,000 copies.<ref name="history">{{cite web|url=http://www.beam.com.au/E3/comphist.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19971021035824/http://www.beam.com.au/E3/comphist.htm|title=Beam Software Company History|website=beam.com.au|archive-date=October 21, 1997|access-date=March 25, 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Fred|last=Milgrom|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/97755746/the-age/|title=Innovator keeps firing|newspaper=[[The Age]]|page=14|date=September 29, 1997|access-date=March 25, 2024|via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> It employed an advanced parser by Stuart Richie and had real-time elements. Even if the player didn't enter commands, the story would move on.<ref name="demaria">DeMaria, Rusel and Wilson, Johnny L. (2004) ''High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games'' McGraw-Hill/Osborne, Berkeley, Calif., p. 347, {{ISBN|0-07-223172-6}}</ref> 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 the home computer.<ref name="demaria" /> The game won Best Overall Game at the [[Golden Joystick Awards]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.gamesradar.com/golden-joysticks-ultimate-list-ultimate-games-1983-2014/ | title=Golden Joysticks Awards' ultimate list of ultimate winners: 1983 - 2016 | date=27 October 2017 | publisher=GamesRadar.com | access-date=2017-12-31}}</ref>

In 1987 Beam's UK publishing arm,<ref>{{Cite magazine|date=12-18 February 1987|title=Mastertronic Buys Melbourne House|url=https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2946&page=4|magazine=Popular Computing Weekly|pages=4}}</ref> Melbourne House, was sold to [[Mastertronic]] for £850,000.<ref>{{cite web |last=Guter |first=Arthur |title=A History of Mastertronic |url=http://www.aguter.plus.com/mastertronic/mastertronic_history.htm |website=Mastertronic |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180224213520/http://www.aguter.plus.com/mastertronic/mastertronic_history.htm |archive-date=February 24, 2018 |date=June 2016}}</ref> Beam chairman Alfred Milgrom recounted, "...around 1987 a lot of our U.K. people went on to other companies and at around the same time the industry was moving from 8-bit to 16-bit. It was pretty chaotic. We didn't have the management depth at that time to run both the publishing and development sides of things, so we ended up selling off the whole Melbourne House publishing side to Mastertronic."<ref name=NGen33/> Subsequent games were released through varying publishers. The 1988 fighting games ''[[Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo|Samurai Warrior]]'' and ''Fist +'', the third instalment in the Exploding Fist series, were published through Telecomsoft's [[Telecomsoft#Firebird|Firebird]] label. 1988 also saw the release of space-[[shoot'em-up]] ''Bedlam'', published by GO!, one of [[U.S. Gold]]'s labels, and ''[[The Muncher]]'', published by [[Gremlin Graphics]].