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Rainbird Software
Telecomsoft was a British video game publisher and a Division (business), division of British Telecom. The company was founded by Ederyn Williams, Dr. Ederyn Williams in 1984 and operated three separate labels: Firebird, Rainbird, and Silverbird. The first employee was James Leavey, seconded from elsewhere in BT, who, along with Tony Rainbird, became the driving force behind the company in the early days. History Telecomsoft was founded in 1984 when computer games were the fastest growing sector within the computer software market at the time. Despite a turnover of over £6 million in 1987/88, British Telecom sold the three labels to MicroProse in 1989 in a deal reported to be worth around £2,000,000 after a failed management buyout. MicroProse sold the Silverbird label soon after acquisition, but continued to use the Rainbird and Firebird labels for a short period. Labels Firebird British Telecom brought in Tony Rainbird, owner of budget software publisher Micro-Gold, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Division (business)
A division, sometimes called a business sector or business unit (segment), is one of the parts into which a business, organization or company is divided. Overview Divisions are distinct parts of a business. If these divisions are all part of the same company, then that company is legally responsible for all of the obligations and debts of the divisions. In the banking industry, an example would be East West Bancorp and its primary subsidiary, East West Bank. Legal responsibility Subsidiaries are separate, distinct legal entities for the purposes of tax A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...ation, regulation and Legal liability, liability. For this reason, they differ from divisions, which are businesses fully integrated within the main company, and not legally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revs (video Game)
Revs is a 1985 Formula Three simulation written initially for the BBC Micro by Geoff Crammond and published by Acornsoft that is notable for its realistic simulation of the sport and as a precursor to its author's later work on '' Formula One Grand Prix'' and its sequels. Technical consultancy was provided by Formula Three driver David Hunt, whom Acornsoft's parent company Acorn Computers had sponsored during the British Formula Three Championship. Gameplay Unlike most contemporaneous racing games, ''Revs'' features selection of aerodynamic settings by the player and a full three-dimensional environment. The player is allowed to drive the wrong way around the track or even away from it completely. Unusual for the time, the track and terrain are not planar, but undulations in the ground are reproduced. The game was noted for its use of the BBC's hardware in achieving its display: such was the difficulty in squeezing the game into the BBC's limited memory, part of the game code actu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Realtime Games
Realtime Games Software Ltd. was a British computer game developer, founded in 1984 by three Leeds University students Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions, and Graeme Baird. Their first game, ''3D Tank Duel'', was a wireframe graphics game, in the style of Atari, Inc.'s '' Battlezone'' arcade game, for the ZX Spectrum. This was followed up with ''Starstrike 3D'', a game based on Atari's ''Star Wars'' arcade game. Starfox was published in 1987, and ''Carrier Command'' was published in 1988. The company was also involved in porting ''Elite'' to IBM PC compatibles and ''Starglider'' to the ZX Spectrum. Realtime's early titles were self-published. Later games were published by Rainbird. Graeme Baird subsequently went to work for Psygnosis, while Ian Oliver founded ''Cross Products'' to produce game development systems for consoles, in a joint venture with Andy Craven of nearby Vektor Grafix Vektor Grafix was a British computer game development company led by John Lewis and Andy Craven. V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argonaut Software
Argonaut Games PLC was a British video game developer founded in 1982, most notable for the development of the Super NES video game ''Star Fox'' and its supporting Super FX hardware, as well as for developing '' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos'' and the ''Starglider'' series. The company was liquidated in late 2004, and ceased to exist in early 2007. History Founded as Argonaut Software by teenager Jez San in 1982, the company name is a play on his name (J. San) and the mythological story of '' Jason and the Argonauts''. Its head offices were in Colindale, London,Company Summary . Argonaut Ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnetic Scrolls
Magnetic Scrolls was a British video game developer active between 1984 and 1990. A pioneer of audiovisually elaborate text adventure games, it was one of the two largest and most acclaimed interactive fiction developers of the 1980s. ''Magnetic Scrolls'' was one of the first game developers to use graphics and animation in its text adventure games, which set it apart from other companies in the genre. The company's games were known for their complex puzzles, intricate storylines, and immersive gameplay. Some of the most popular games developed by Magnetic Scrolls include The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves, and Jinxter. History Formation Formed by Anita Sinclair, Ken Gordon and Hugh Steers in 1984, London-based Magnetic Scrolls initially dabbled with development on the Sinclair QL home computer before deciding to take advantage of the emerging Atari ST and Amiga gaming platforms. Having secured a publication deal with Rainbird, a British software label owned by Telecomsoft, they b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bubble Bobble
is a 1986 platform video game, platform arcade game developed and published by Taito. It was distributed in the United States by Romstar, and in Europe by Electrocoin. Players control Bub and Bob, two dragons that set out to save their girlfriends from a world known as the Cave of Monsters. In each level, Bub and Bob must defeat each enemy present by trapping them in bubbles and popping, who turn into bonus items when they hit the ground. There are 100 levels total, each becoming progressively more difficult. ''Bubble Bobble'' was designed by Fukio "MTJ" Mitsuji. When he joined Taito in 1986, he felt that Taito's game output was of mediocre quality. In response, he decided to make a game that was fun to play and could rejuvenate the company's presence in the industry. Mitsuji hoped his game would appeal to women, specifically couples that visited arcades. As such, he decided to make ''Bubble Bobble'' focus largely on its two player co-operative mode. He made bubbles the core mech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Sceptre
''Dark Sceptre'' is a strategy game, strategy adventure game, adventure video game by Mike Singleton's design team Maelstrom Games, for Beyond Software. It was published by Firebird Software for the ZX Spectrum in 1987 in video gaming, 1987 and for the Amstrad CPC in 1988 in video gaming, 1988. Gameplay The task in ''Dark Sceptre'' is to recover the eponymous artefact. The player controls a company of warriors by assigning them specific tasks, and is hindered by six other computer-controlled factions. The main display shows a side-view of the currently watched warrior, which scrolls and tracks him as he moves through the game world. Each warrior has a rank, ranging from Thegn, Thane, the team leader, to Thrall, the pawn of the game. Other ranks include Mystics, Heralds, Savages and Assassins. Play is real-time, with the player pausing to issue commands in Plan mode and then viewing results in Watch mode. Commands are selected from a menu screen and range from character-targeting a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Singleton
Mike Singleton (21 February 1951 – 10 October 2012) was a British video game designer who wrote various well-regarded titles for the ZX Spectrum during the 1980s. His titles include '' The Lords of Midnight'', ''Doomdark's Revenge'', ''Dark Sceptre'', '' War in Middle Earth'' and ''Midwinter''. Before developing video games, Singleton was an English teacher in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. Early work Singleton was originally a teacher and started programming in the late 1970s, and writing ''Computer Race'', a horse racing game he designed for a betting shop on the Commodore PET. Moving on from this, he began working on arcade games for the Pet, working with PetSoft, where he wrote ''Space Ace'' entirely in 6502 machine code. The game broke sales records of the day by selling three hundred copies. Singleton's association with PetSoft turned out to be short-lived, as PetSoft, who had been due to enter into a contract with Sinclair Research in Cambridge to write s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultimate Play The Game
Ashby Computers and Graphics Limited, trading as Ultimate Play the Game, was a British video game developer and publisher, founded in 1982, by ex-arcade game developers Tim and Chris Stamper. Ultimate released a series of successful games for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, MSX and Commodore 64 computers from 1983 until 1987. Ultimate are perhaps best remembered for the big-selling titles ''Jetpac'' and ''Sabre Wulf'', each of which sold over 300,000 copies in 1983 and 1984 respectively, and their groundbreaking series of isometric arcade adventures using a technique termed Filmation. ''Knight Lore'', the first of the Filmation games, has been retrospectively described in the press as "seminal ... revolutionary" ('' GamesTM''), "one of the most successful and influential games of all time" ('' X360''), and "probably ... the greatest single advance in the history of computer games" (''Edge''). By the time of the label's last use in 1988 on a retrospective compilation, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe. The series spawned a total of six distinct models: The ''CPC464'', ''CPC664'', and ''CPC6128'' were highly successful competitors in the European home computer market. The later ''464plus'' and ''6128plus'', intended to prolong the system's lifecycle with hardware updates, were considerably less successful, as was the attempt to repackage the ''plus'' hardware into a game console as the ''GX4000''. The CPC models' hardware is based on the Zilog Z80A CPU, complemented with either 64 or 128 KB of RAM. Their computer-in-a-keyboard design prominently features an integrated storage device, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
