The Bird Sanctuary - Rainbird History

Rainbird History

Rainbird Software was the brainchild of Tony Rainbird who originally helped to set up Telecomsoft in 1984. After the success of the conversions of Elite (published under the Firebird Gold label), Telecomsoft expanded and bought Beyond Software from EMAP. Beyond had published a number of very innovative and commercially successful 8-bit games, including both Lords of Midnight games. Telecomsoft also signed a 12 month deal with Odin Computer Graphics (OCG) (who had developed and published Robin O' The Wood and Nodes of Yesod amongst others). They went on to produce games including The Plot, Scary Monsters and Night on the Tiles for Firebird.

It was around that time in the mid 1980's that Tony Rainbird's attention turned towards the new Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga computers. It became obvious that the newer 68000-based 16-bit machines were ideal for the more complex software that an older consumer would prefer - namely utilities, simulations and adventure games. The onus would be on quality packaging and quality software, with little or no money spent on marketing. Word-of-mouth and magazine previews and reviews would help promote the titles, and more emphasis would be made on the developer than before.

The decision was made to go with distinctive blue boxes, and the original intention was for the label to be called Bluebird. Unfortunately, the name was already registered to another company. Of course, an obvious alternative was to call it Rainbird (which wasn't registered) and so Rainbird Software was born. The Rainbird logo was originally designed for the Bluebird name, but it was liked so much that they decided to keep it despite the name change.

The launch of the new Rainbird label was handled by Mike Baxter of Solutions PR, with Tony Rainbird and Anita Sinclair in attendance, amongst others.

The first few Rainbird titles were lined up quite quickly. The OCP Art Studio and The Music Studio were released on the existing 8-bit systems, and the first few 16-bit titles came from Jez San (Argonaut Software) and Anita Sinclair (Magnetic Scrolls). Starglider and The Pawn were soon ready to become Rainbird's launch products on the new ST and Amiga platforms. Both games sold well, and were eventually converted or ported to a whole range of different platforms, including all of the ageing 8-bit formats. Realtime Games Ltd did a particularly good job of converting "Starglider" to the Spectrum 48k/128k, and the game walked away with Newsfield's Spectrum 'Game of 1986' award for its troubles.

Tony Rainbird recruited Paula Byrne from rival games publisher Melbourne House as Marketing Manager for Rainbird in early 1986. Paula soon became instrumental in getting Telecomsoft to relocate from Upper St Martins Lane to New Oxford Street in the Summer of '86. The mix of corporate BT suits and progammers in jeans and t-shirts lead Paula to the decision to relocate the business to seperate premises.

During this period it became increasingly apparent that Tony Rainbird was yearning to return to his entrepreneurial roots, and shortly after the move to the new offices, Tony left Telecomsoft to become Business Consultant and Financial Controller for Inter-Mediates Ltd, the PR company originally contracted to help launch Rainbird and who ran the Silver Club.

Ederyn Williams interviewed a number of internal candidates for the job of running Rainbird following Tony's departure, and Paula got the nod. However, within a year Paula was promoted again to Telecomsoft's General Manager. Paul Hibbard then stepped up to become Publisher for Rainbird, a position he held until late 1988, when he left Telecomsoft and ended up at MicroProse (UK) Ltd, just six months before they bought Telecomsoft from BT.

Rainbird went from strength to strength after the launch, publishing a total of five Magnetic Scrolls games (The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Jinxter, Corruption and Fish!), the inevitable sequel to Starglider, Carrier Command (Realtime's first original 16-bit title), Tracker, Legend of the Sword, UMS and Graftgold's Morpheus to name just a few. See the Titles section for the entire list.

When Firebird was re-branded (and Silverbird was introduced), Telecomsoft also took the chance to alter the Rainbird packaging as well. Out went the slim A5-size blue boxes and in came the smaller, chunkier blue boxes instead. This change was announced to distributors and retailers via Telecomsoft News, and magazines were also sent a press release to confirm the change.

Inter-Mediates

About a year after Tony Rainbird left Telecomsoft and joined Inter-Mediates, Inter-Mediates' MD Dave Carlos sold the company to Tony Rainbird and his silent business partner (Magnetic Scrolls' Anita Sinclair). Tony then proceeded to turn the company into a software and hardware mail order venture called Special Reserve, which included an adventure club called Official Secrets. The annual fee was set as £19.95 for the UK and £24.95 for the rest of the EEC, but this included an exclusive Magnetic Scrolls min-adventure called Myth as an incentive for people to join.

Anita Sinclair had been very keen to set up Official Secrets and this was probably the main reason why she decided to invest in Inter-Mediates with Tony Rainbird. However, the Mail Order side quickly became the core of the business, and the adventure club gradually faded into the background.

When MicroProse (UK) Ltd bought Telecomsoft, Magentic Scrolls did not negotiate with the new owners to continue distribution of their adventures, mainly because the right to sell their products was not assignable. Instead, they took BT's stock of all their Magnetic Scrolls titles and used Inter-Mediates as distributor until the stock was all sold. At the same time, they also began looking for a new publishing partner for their next game, Wonderland, which ended up being published by Virgin Games.

The first Special Reserve shop opened in Sawbridgeworth (Essex) in 1991. A number of new stores followed over the next dozen years, with the final store opening in Norwich in 2003. Inter-Mediates was also involved in setting up Freeola, a company that offered free website hosting. In fact, the first few years of this very website was hosted by Freeola! Unfortunately, Inter-Mediates was forced into liquidation in November 2005.