Although Colossus Chess was developed on an Apple ][ the first version to be signed up for publication was for the Commodore 64 (known as Colossus Chess 2.0) by CDS Micro Systems (later CDS Software , director Giles Hunter) of Doncaster. Shortly after that the Atari rights (various 8-bit models) were signed up by Manchester based English Software (director Philip Morris) who at the time were specialising in Atari software. The success of the Commodore 64 version persuaded CDS to blanket license all versions of Colossus Chess on all platforms for five years. Later both Colossus Backgammon and Colossus Draughts were also licensed by CDS. A later version of Colossus Draughts was marketed personally by myself.

CDS later traded as Guildhall Leisure and now iDigicon with a range of other game and education software available.

English Software are now believed to be defunct.