It was announced today that the British Mastertronic brand is being relaunched by games industry veterans Andy Payne and Paul Patterson. The company was originally founded in 1983, and it made its name publishing budget-priced games for the Commodore 64, Atari ST, Spectrum, and several other systems available at that time.

　　Mastertronic was responsible for bringing countless games to the mass market in the '80s, including Spellbound, One Man and his Droid, Zork, Xenon, Kung-Fu Master, and a large number of games developed by the Darling brothers--who went on to form Codemasters. In 1987, Mastertronic brought the Sega Master System into the UK, and it was subsequently appointed the official distributor of the console for France and Germany. The company later bought Melbourne House, was itself bought out by Virgin, and eventually evolved into what's now Sega Europe.

　　"With the sad demise of the great name of Virgin Interactive Entertainment and subsequent confusion surrounding the relationship with French publisher-owner Titus, we thought it was an ideal opportunity to bring back a true classic British brand and inject high standards into the value market," said Patterson, who previously worked as MD at Ocean before taking the helm at 3DO.

　　"In a market where brand equity is vital, we felt it was the right time to look at value publishing in terms of delivering revenue to all parties," added Payne, who actually worked with Virgin Mastertronic and has been at UK-based Just Flight for the last seven years. "Mastertronic actually created true mass-market distribution for games by delivering great value, choice, and a seal of quality. There is much talk of the mass market today, so we will see if we can get our products to that magical place. We will be adhering to those original Mastertronic core values in everything we do."

　　Mastertronic is expected to announce its product lineup for the fourth quarter of 2003 later this month. We'll bring you more information on this story as soon as it becomes available.