Private company

U.S. Gold

British video game publisher

U.S. Gold Limited was a British video game publisher based in Witton, Birmingham, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their distributor firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Holdings (later renamed CentreGold). U.S. Gold started life as a UK distributor and manufacturer for existing games licensed from the US market, but soon moved towards publishing original titles.2 It is part of Eidos Interactive.1 It ceased to exist in 1996.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 20, 2026.

Overview

1984Founded1
  • Industryvideo game industry1
  • HeadquartersBirmingham1
  • Founded inBirmingham1
  • Legal formprivate company limited by shares1

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U.S. Gold Limited was a British video game publisher based in Witton, Birmingham, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their distributor firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Holdings (later renamed CentreGold).2

The story

Early history

U.S. Gold was founded in 1984. It initially functioned as a UK manufacturer and distributor for existing games licensed from US publishers (such as Cosmi, Microprose

and Synsoft/Synapse) that had, until then, only been available on import.

Following negotiations, U.S. Gold were able to sell these games for £10 on the British market, rather than the £30 or so they initially sold for in the United States. Some titles were also converted to run on formats more popular in the UK (e.g. Tapper, which was converted for- amongst others- the ZX Spectrum via Ocean/Platinum Productions and the BBC Micro by Micro Power).

Increasing success

By 1985, U.S. Gold projected a turnover of US$6 million for their first fiscal year, and expected to release further 150 games in the year to come. The company increasingly moved towards being a publisher of original titles in their own right.

In 1987, they launched GO! label with Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper being the first game released under the label. In 1988, U.S. Gold received the Golden Joystick Award 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 to port their arcade video games for home computers in Europe. They paid £2 million or $3,557,642 (equivalent to $9,700,000 in 2025) 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, Tiger Road, 1943: The Battle of Midway and Black Tiger for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Amiga 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 October 1994, CentreGold acquired the developer Core Design.

Sale and closure

In April 1996, Eidos Interactive acquired the entire CentreGold umbrella (including U.S. Gold) for £17.6 million; as a result of this, U.S. Gold and CentreSoft ceased all operations.

From Wikipedia’s article on U.S. Gold, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Subsidiaries and ownership

Former owners and parents

From Wikidata.1

Acquisitions

  1. Succeeded by Eidos Interactive1

Timeline

  1. Jun 1996Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. Apr 1996Acquired Acquired by Eidos Interactive1
  3. 1984Founded Founded in Birmingham1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
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