U.S. Gold Limited was a British

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ...

based in Witton, Birmingham, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their

distributor A distributor is an electric and mechanical device used in the ignition system of older spark-ignition engines. The distributor's main function is to route electricity from the ignition coil to each spark plug at the correct time. Design ...

firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Holdings (later renamed CentreGold). The company primarily aimed at publishing games imported from the United States with a lower price tag in Europe and especially the United Kingdom.

History

By 1985, U.S. Gold projected a turnover of for their first fiscal year, and expected to release further 150 games in the year to come. In 1988, U.S. Gold received the

Golden Joystick Award The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be vote ...

for "Software House of the Year". The company also operated the budget range label Kixx. In 1988, the company struck a deal with Japanese company

Capcom is a Japanese video game company. It has created a number of critically acclaimed and List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil'', ''Monster ...

to port their

arcade video game An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...

s for

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

s in Europe. They paid or for a ten-game deal with Capcom. The first four games they announced as part of the deal were ports of the 1987 arcade games ''

Street Fighter is a Media mix, Japanese media franchise centered on a series of fighting games developed and published by Capcom. Street Fighter 1, The first game in the series was released in 1987, followed by List of Street Fighter video games, six other ma ...

'', '' Tiger Road'', '' 1943: The Battle of Midway'' and '' Black Tiger'' for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for "Colour Personal Computer") is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spec ...

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

and

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

platforms. Their first five Capcom releases sold over 250,000 copies in the UK by 1989, with their best-selling Capcom release up until then being '' Bionic Commando'' with over 70,000 UK sales. Their next Capcom release was '' Forgotten Worlds'' in 1989. In April 1996, Eidos Interactive acquired the entire CentreGold umbrella (including U.S. Gold) for , as a result of which U.S. Gold and CentreSoft ceased all operations.

Games published

References

{{Authority control Defunct companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Eidos Golden Joystick Award winners Square Enix Video game companies established in 1984 Video game companies disestablished in 1996 Video game publishers