CP Software was a prominent British technical and entertainment software house founded in the first half of the 1980s. Its main headquarters were firmly established in the town of Burford, within the county of Oxfordshire. The company gained tremendous relevance inside the Amstrad PCW ecosystem due to its ability to provide serious utility software, advanced utilities, and highly optimized board game simulators.
The company's origins in consumer computing trace back to earlier platforms such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where they quickly earned prestige due to the technical quality of their Artificial Intelligence algorithms for mathematical and board games. With the massive arrival of the Amstrad PCW on the market, CP Software immediately identified the potential of a machine initially targeted at offices and word processing, deciding to provide it with native programming tools and high-end cerebral games.
The "Lightning" Line and Technical Utilities
One of the firm's biggest technical milestones for the PCW range was the creation and development of the Lightning Basic and Lightning Basic Plus compilers. These tools allowed programmers of the system to compile structured code and break the speed limitations imposed by other interpreters of the era, providing direct support for the computer's high-resolution graphic screen management. This infrastructure was complemented by advanced suites like Graphics, The Universe & Everything for PCW 8256-8512, a commercial environment specifically designed to exploit the monochrome high-resolution drawing capabilities of the PCW.
Chess Specialization and Artificial Intelligence
CP Software became an undisputed benchmark in computerized chess simulators under CP/M environments thanks to its strategic alliance with the famous British programmer Chris Whittington. Their flagship chess engine series, which includes milestones like Clock Chess 88 and the legendary Clock Chess 89, was extensively tested against multiple commercial rivals of the time. Specialized media and manual records (such as publications in 8000 Plus magazine) verified that the Clock Chess 89 engine consistently outperformed traditional competing engines like Amsoft's Cyrus 2 Chess or the company's own previous versions, becoming the most versatile chess engine in the PCW commercial catalog.
Strategy Games and Preservation
The company dominated the strategy and reflection game market with the release of complex titles like Bridge Player 2000 With Tutor, programmed directly by Richard Wheen. This software included an advanced interactive analytical system ("Tutor mode") praised by prestigious contemporary magazines like PC Plus for its ability to carefully instruct users in Bridge bidding sequences. A large portion of this catalog was later unified and commercialized in the iconic floppy disk compilation titled Classic Games 4.