Acclaim Studios London

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Acclaim Studios London
Probe - 01.png
Founded 1984
Headquarters Cheltenham, England, UK
Other Names Probe Entertainment
Iguana London
Acclaim Studios London

Acclaim Studios London was an English game developer founded by Fergus McGovern. It was founded in 1984 as Probe Software or Probe Entertainment. The company developed for most of the platforms that were popular during its lifespan. These included the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Genesis, and Master System. The company had also developed a bevy of movie-licensed games such as Alien 3, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robocop 3.

In October 1995, Acclaim purchased Probe and renamed the company Acclaim Studios London on the 27th. The company closed its doors in 1999 when Acclaim went out of business.

Games

Music Development

Amstrad CPC and Atari ST

The following games use the same driver:

Game Boy

The first two Probe Software games on the Game Boy used a sound driver by Jeroen Tel. After that, starting in 1994, Edward Haynes developed a new sound driver, used for the rest of Probe's Game Boy titles. David Shea developed the last driver used by Probe.

All games by Probe that use Haynes' and Shea's versions of the driver feature a "(C)Probe." string at the start of the sound code.

Genesis/32X

Many composers worked for Probe during their Genesis/Mega Drive development including Andy Brock, Steve Collett, and even outsourcing music to Matt Furniss of Krisalis Softwware.

In Back to the Future III, the game uses a driver by John M. Philips, who arranged Barry Leitch's score from the computer versions. For FIFA Soccer 96 (32X), the game contained audio by Kris Hatlelid.

The unreleased Genesis version of Jelly Boy, as well as Body Count and The Pagemaster, uses GEMS. Andy Brock later modified the GEMS engine to create Probe's custom sound driver, which was used for Batman Forever, Stargate, Judge Dredd, Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble, and the Genesis and 32X ports of Primal Rage. According to Brock, the composers would use a variant of Edward Haynes' IMED engine by David Shea to write their music.

NES

The only composer to do NES music for Probe Software was Jeroen Tel, in which he wrote his own audio driver and wrote the music in hexadecimal.

Sega Master System

Some of the company's games' audio was outsourced to Krisalis Software, in which Matt Furniss wrote the music in a tracker program for the Atari Mega ST.

For their in-house work, Jeroen Tel composed the music and sound effects in his sound driver in assembly.

Allister Brimble used Tel's sound driver for the Master System and Game Gear ports of Mortal Kombat.

SNES

Andy Brock's explanation of the SNES sound development at Probe:

“
Carl Muller was the programmer who wrote the initial proprietary audio development system for Probe, and then David Shea took over to further develop the tools. (The version used for T2 Arcade SNES was all Carl's version). After him, another guy named Edward Haynes developed it further until he quit at the end of 1994 over not being paid an Xmas bonus or something, then Dave Shea came back on to finish it. The final version of it was called IMED (named after the programmer Ed), and was actually great to use.
„

Chuck Rock credits the audio driver to Carl Muller, Stefan Walker, Sean Dunlevy, and Jason Gee.

Audio Personnel

Links

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