Realtime Games Software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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

The company was also involved in porting Elite to the PC and Starglider to the Spectrum.

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.