Argonaut Games
| Argonaut Games PLC | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Public limited company |
| founding | 1982 (as Argonaut Software Ltd.) |
| resolution | 2004 |
| Seat |
London , UK
|
| Branch | Software development |
Argonaut Games PLC was a British game developer. Founded in 1982 by teenager Jez San as Argonaut Software, the company's name was based on the film Jason and the Argonauts .
history
The company produced its first game Skyline Attack for the Commodore 64 . The Starglider games for Amiga , Schneider CPC and Atari ST followed later .
Argonaut managed, among other things, to bypass the Game Boy's copy protection, which was supposed to prevent unlicensed software from being played. The copy protection was based on Nintendo's company logo, which was displayed every time the console was started with a licensed game. Once the logo reached the center of the screen, the bootloader checked that the logo was in the correct position. If a vendor had used the logo on an unlicensed product, this would have given the console manufacturer the opportunity to file a lawsuit over the unauthorized use of the company logo. Argonaut managed to get around this without the improper output of the Nintendo logo. Argonaut and Nintendo entered into a business relationship as Nintendo wanted the studio, which specializes in 3D technology, to help it transition to the development of 3D games. This led to the development of the RISC- based 3D additional chip Super FX for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , which was built into the plug-in modules with the game software and provided the console with additional computing power. The chip was a key stone in the development of the Railshooter StarWing , which for the first time offered dynamically illuminated, textured polygon graphics for the 16-bit game console. While the game was designed by Nintendo, Argonaut took on the technical side, including the design of the chip and the development of the 3D graphics. Argonaut also developed the game Vortex, which is also based on Super FX .
In 1998, the department that designed the chip split off from Argonaut as Argonaut RISC Core to produce configurable RISC -based chips. Argonaut Software split in 1999 into Argonaut Technologies and Argonaut Games. In October 2004, Argonaut Games laid off 100 employees and was put up for sale. In 2005 the company went bankrupt and was wound up in 2006.
Selected games
- Skyline Attack , 1984 ( Commodore 64 )
- Starglider , 1985 (1986/87 for the CPC series)
- Starglider 2 , 1988
- After Burner , 1988 (16bit conversions)
- Vortex , 1994 ( SNES )
- Creature Shock , late 1994 PC
- Croc: Legend of the Gobbos , 1997 (PS1)
- Croc 2, 1999 (PS1)
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , 2001 (PS1)
- I-Ninja , 2003 ( Xbox , PC, PS2 , GameCube )
- Carve , 2004 ( Xbox )
- Malice , 2004 ( Xbox )
Web links
- www.argonaut.com ( Memento from July 25, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
- Argonaut (AGT) - Company Overview ( Memento from May 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- Argonaut Games at MobyGames (English)