Realtime Games Software

Realtime Games Software Ltd. is a defunct British video game developer. It was 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 the Battlezone arcade machine, written for the ZX Spectrum. This was followed up with "Starstrike 3D", a game based on the "Star Wars" arcade machine. Throughout its existence, the company continued to innovate in the world of 3D graphics, with their most notable release being "Carrier Command". The company was also involved in porting "Elite" to the PC and "Starglider" to the ZX Spectrum.

Realtime's early output was self-published, though later they took the more traditional route to market with their games mainly being 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.

Partial list of games

*"3D tank Duel", 1984
*"Starstrike 3D", 1985
*"Starstrike II", 1986
*"Starglider", (ZX Spectrum), 1987
*"Starfox" (Amstrad/Spectrum), 1987 (Published by Ariolasoft), not to be confused with the Super Nintendo game of the same name.
*"Elite", (DOS), 1987
*"Carrier Command", 1988
*"Battle Command", 1990
*"Star Wars Arcade Game";1980

External links

* [http://www.crashonline.org.uk/29/realtime.htm CRASH article from 1986 on Realtime]
*WoS pub|id=^Realtime+Games+Software+Ltd$