Melbourne House

Background

Melbourne House was an Australian video game company that began in 1977. The same year, Beam Software was founded as its subsidiary. In 1987, the Melbourne House brand was sold to Mastertronic, which used it until 1989, when it was folded into Virgin Interactive and the Melbourne House brand was shut down. In 1996, Virgin managed to put off the brand and it was picked up by Beam Software, the former subsidiary to Melbourne House, to be used as a publishing name for some of their games. Its first reappearance was in 1997, but the two names were always used separately. In 1999, Melbourne House was sold to Infogrames and was renamed "Infogrames Melbourne House". Beam Software soon went out of gaming business. In November 2006, Melbourne House was acquired by Krome Studios and became "Krome Studios Melbourne", but closed down in 2010.

Melbourne House

1st Logo (Late 80s-1989)

Logo: There is a 3D border shield made of stone. It can be light brown or gray. A red dot lies on the shield, designed as a 3D object. Below the dot, we read "MELBOURNE HOUSE".

Technique: None.

Music/Sounds: None.

Availability: Rare. It's seen on War in Middle-Earth and Obliterator, among other games, mainly for Amiga.

2nd Logo (March 5, 1997-October 13, 1999)

Logo: The screen is full of white noise. The camera zooms out and we see a blue drawn eye with a TV in his eyeball. There are five eyelashes, two of them being red and gold. Under the eye is the text "Melbourne House". The whole picture is in 2D.

Variants:

In KKND: Krossfire, the whole animation is in 3d and the eye is being shot. After this, it makes arms and legs and starts to shoot back.
In Dethkarz, the eye has four wheels and rides all over the screen before bumping into its normal position.

Technique: The static noise.

Music/Sounds: TBA

Availability: Used on Dethkarz, GP 500 and on the KKND game series.

Infogrames Melbourne House

1st Logo (November 13-27, 2000)

Logo: On a spotlight, we see the Infogrames shield with "Melbourne House" aligned to the right below it. Below are the footsteps of a blue Indian armadillo with its red Indian blanket.

Technique: None.

Music/Sounds: None.

Availability: It was only used on 2 Dreamcast games, Test Drive Le Mans/Le Mans 24 Hours, and Looney Tunes: Space Race.

2nd Logo (June 22, 2001-April 8, 2003)

Logo: On a white background, the camera zooms out from the back of an old-fashioned cartoon-style CRT TV monitor and pans out to reveal a pale pink short-whiskered armadillo playing video games on the TV, mindlessly hitting buttons and rocking the joystick on the (Atari 2600 reminiscent) controller on a blue/bright purple globe. Everything is upside-down at first, but the camera cuts to a view of a kangaroo copying the same deed the armadillo is currently doing, viewed right-side up. The animals sit on opposite hemispheres of the globe. The kangaroo sits on the top of the globe, and vice-versa. However, everything is upside down yet again when the stacked words "MELBOURNE HOUSE" in an odd cartoon font appear over it, each word going around the globe from opposite directions. Suddenly, the animals freeze and look at the text frighteningly, as the globe rotates 180 degrees and change poles. After the animals blink a couple times, the "MELBOURNE HOUSE" text revolves around the world (a la the Universal Pictures logo) and the text "INFOGRAMES", in the same style behind the globe, joins in. Despite this, the animals continue playing on their consoles until the logo fades out.

Technique: The animals playing their video games, the camera zooming, and the text rotating. It's all CGI.

Music/Sounds: The sound of tapping buttons with a bouncy cartoon synth soundtrack that stops when the animals stop and resumes when the text rotates. Comical sound effects are also included.

Availability: Appears on the PlayStation 2 ports of Le Mans 24 Hours and Space Race (and the PC port of the former title), and Men in Black ll: Alien Escape for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube.

3rd Logo (November 22, 2002)

Logo: On a black background, we see a wheel spinning, and flames stick all over it. Eventually, the screen flashes and we see the wheel in a box inside a red background with a white box. The large white word "RACING" appears on the bottom of the wheel, and "MELBOURNE HOUSE" appears on the bottom of that.

Technique: All the animation in the logo.

Music/Sounds: Racing car sounds.

Availability: It was only used on Grand Prix Challenge for the PlayStation 2.

4th Logo (February 25, 2004-April 13, 2007)

Logo: On a black background, we see blue lines which are apart of a shape, which reveals to be the MH logo in blue, then a flash happens inside the MH and the background turns white with "melbourne house" appearing on the bottom of the MH. The box around it vanishes and the MH turns 2D.

Technique: CGI animation.

Music/Sounds: A synth sounder.

Availability: Was used on Transformers for PlayStation 2 and the PSP and PlayStation 2 versions of Test Drive Unlimited.