Firebird History
Continued...
A year or so later, the entire budget portfolio was merged under the ‘Firebird Silver £1.99 Range’ label. Out went the screenshots on the cover, and a number of early Firebird Silver games like Chickin Chase, Collapse, Booty and Willow Pattern got re-released with new artwork.
The budget range also adopted colour coding on the inlays for different game formats. Spectrum games were yellow, Commodore games were red, Amstrad CPC games were orange, Atari 8-bit games were green, BBC/Electron were pale blue, C16/+4 were purple.
The premium Firebird label, Firebird Gold, became a full-price label with games starting at £9.95. Firebird Hot was therefore introduced by Herbie Wright and Joss Ellis as a mid price-point label, with games like Runestone, Rasputin, Costa Capers and Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin being sold at £7.95. Both labels eventually disappeared, and the full-price label simply became known as Firebird.
The red Firebird logo remained unchanged until the last incarnation of the budget range was reborn as Silverbird. To fit in with the new publishing model, the red flaming wings on the Firebird logo were pushed upwards in a more dynamic pose. The new Firebird logo was given a motto for the first time, proclaiming it to be A Legend in games software. The distinctive 'flaming chevrons' were also introduced to all Firebird packaging to complete the new look, which was promoted to retailers and distributors via the fourth issue of Telecomsoft News in early 1988. Magazines were sent a press release to confirm the change.
Thanks must go to Dr Ederyn Williams for some of the historical information shown here. Additional thanks must go to Terry Finnegan for his information on the logo designs, Mark Green (from the redkeyreddoor website) for allowing me to use parts of his interview with James Leavey, and James Leavey for his additional fascinating insights into the early days of Firebird!
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