Firebird History
Continued...
The first of the higher priced Firebird Gold titles were also released, including Demons of Topaz, Buggy Blast (co-written by future Rainbird Publisher, Paul Hibbard) and Gyron, which had the added incentive of giving the player a chance to win a Porsche 924 LUX or cash equivalent.
Firebird Gold went on to publish a number of classic games over the next few years, including Elite, Cholo, both Revs and Revs + and The Sentinel to name just a few. The latter two titles were written by programming legend, Geoff Crammond, who is still writing racing games today, in the form of the phenomenally successful F1 Grand Prix series.
Herbie Wright was employed in January 1985 as Project Manager for Firebird Gold, leaving James Leavey to concentrate on Firebird Silver. Sadly, James Scoular died from a heart attack in March 1985, forcing a reshuffling of the managerial pack. In April 1985, Joss Ellis was brought in as 'Contract Development Manager', which involved working on the 'Gold' label and establishing the ‘Firebird Hot' range.
Acornsoft had a huge hit with David Braben and Ian Bell’s classic space trading game Elite on the BBC and Acorn Electron formats during 1984. When the rights to publish conversions of Elite were put up for auction, Telecomsoft entered into a sealed bidding war with a number of other publishers. This was an auction that Telecomsoft won, paying an undisclosed sum for the rights.
In anticipation of the Elite conversions, Telecomsoft also opened a US office to sell a selection of Firebird and Rainbird games. This proved to be a good move as the Elite conversions were a major success. Reviews were almost universally positive, and sales were equally impressive. This success opened the doors to allow Telecomsoft to expand in a big way, acquiring Beyond Software, signing Odin Computer Graphics (OCG) and expanding into a new publishing label called Rainbird. Telecomsoft also negotiated with Ultimate - Play The Game (better known today as Rare) to develop and distribute Commodore 64 versions of some of their most popular Z80 games.
A number of changes were made to the Firebird brand between 1984 and 1989. The original budget range added a new mid-range label fairly early on, called 'Firebird Super Silver'. Adverts for games like Thunderbirds, Willow Pattern, Chimera, and Don’t Panic soon appeared. They were packaged in slightly larger fragile white plastic clamshell cases with artwork instead of screenshots on the cover.
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