Earliest European video games?

[Adrian Fomble]

We all know when it comes to video games, the two biggest countries throughout the vast majority of the industry's history has been dominated by two (or three) countries: America and Japan. And to a much lesser extent Britain. And brands like Atari and Nintendo are the biggest examples to mark their establishment in the entertainment world. But we also have European games as well... and I did some research and found out that Spain had an arcade shooter back in the 1980's.

So which leads me to ask are there any other video games produced in ANY parts of Continental Europe that have existed during the mid 1980's and before?

[Starter Set]

Well, in 88 was released "L'Arche du Captain Blood". Made by ERE Informatique (France) and published by ERE Informatique, Infogrames and Mindscape.

The international name of the game is just "Captain Blood".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captai...d_(video_game)



I used to own that one back then i remember. Not sure you can find a lot of game before 1985 to be honest cause, well, the market wasn't really there for such a product. (at least where i lived)

Home gaming really exploded with Nintendo and its NES. Why for example a French or German company would make video games before that? Who would have been the customers?

Even for arcade, i'm really not sure.

[dancj]

Well the ZX81 came out in 1981 and the ZX Spectrum in 1982. From the start, both had loads of games - mostly written in the UK I think.

[Digifiend]

The NES actually wasn't all that successful in the UK. I owned a Commodore 64. Commodore was American, but many of the games were by Ocean and Codemasters, which are both British (Ocean was later taken over by Infogrames, who also bought the Atari brand - Codemasters still exists today).