Realtime Games Software Ltd. was a British

computer game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

, founded in 1984 by three

Leeds University , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

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 The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

. This was followed up with ''Starstrike 3D'', a game based on Atari's ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...

'' arcade game. Starfox was published in 1987, and ''

Carrier Command ''Carrier Command'' is a 1988 video game published by Rainbird for the Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC compatibles, ZX Spectrum, Macintosh, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. ''Carrier Command'' is a cross between a vehicle simulation game and a real-time st ...

'' was published in 1988. The company was also involved in

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

Elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...

'' to

IBM PC compatibles IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

and ''

Starglider ''Starglider'' is a 3D video game published in 1986 by Rainbird. It was developed by Jez San under his company name Argonaut Software. The game is a fast-moving, first-person combat flight simulator, rendered with colourful wireframe vector g ...

'' 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 Psygnosis Limited (known as SCE Studio Liverpool or simply Studio Liverpool from 1999) was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ell ...

, 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. Vektor Grafix was founded by Craven and Danny Gallagher in 1986. Their first release were home ports of the ''Star Wars'' arcade games. The Leeds-base ...

References

Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Video game companies established in 1984 {{UK-videogame-company-stub