According to Richard Kay, Software Creations began in 1986 when Steve Ruddy responded to an advertisement he had placed in the
Manchester Evening News: Most of these early games were ports of budget titles to other platforms such as the
Commodore 64,
ZX Spectrum,
Amiga,
Atari ST,
NES and the
Game Boy. The company's breakthrough game was the Commodore 64 version of the arcade hit
Bubble Bobble, a conversion which won critical acclaim and commercial success, and led to Software Creations being asked to do many more ports of popular arcade games. On 1 May 2002 Acclaim announced that they had acquired Software Creations, which was renamed Acclaim Studios Manchester. At the time, Software Creations had approximately 70 employees. Acclaim Studios Manchester was closed as part of Acclaim Studios and all of its development facilities on 27 August 2004. Rod Cousens and Barry Jafrato, who served as
chief executive officer and head of publishing for Acclaim, respectively, announced in September 2004 that they were planning to create Exclaim as a new video game publisher with the help of Europlay Capital Advisers. Exclaim was set to acquire and reinstantiate Acclaim's two UK studios, namely Manchester and Cheltenham, and re-employ their roughly 160 previous members. Exclaim's opening was expected on 11 October, however, Cousen's ownership over the two studios was challenged by Acclaim's liquidator, Allan Mendelsohn, leaving the UK staff in a state of limbo. A successor to Acclaim Studios Manchester, SilverBack Studios, was founded by Jon Oldham in April 2005 and employed 15 former Acclaim Studios Manchester staff. == Games ==