Flagship Titles

No game in the Telecomsoft catalogue matters more than Elite. David Braben and Ian Bell designed it for the BBC Micro in 1984, initially published by Acornsoft. Firebird acquired the C64 rights and published that port in 1985 - bringing the game to a far wider audience and cementing its legendary status.

Elite's central achievement is its procedurally generated galaxy: 2,048 planets across eight galaxies, each with a name, economic profile, government type, and tech level - all compressed into tiny memory footprints via a seeded random number system the developers called "Fibonacci spiral" generation. The player begins with a Cobra Mk III, a modest credit balance, and complete freedom. Trade, piracy, bounty hunting, mining, exploration - the game imposes no linear path.

The wireframe 3D graphics, rendered on hardware without a floating-point unit, required mathematical ingenuity from Braben and Bell that was genuinely novel. The docking sequence - Strauss's Blue Danube playing (on compatible hardware) as the player manoeuvres into rotating space stations - remains iconic. Martin Galway's SID version of the Blue Danube for the C64 port is itself a celebrated piece of chiptune composition.

Elite spawned sequels (Frontier: Elite II, 1993; Frontier: First Encounters, 1995) and eventually Elite Dangerous (2014), still under development by Frontier Developments. The original game's influence on open-world design is incalculable - acknowledged by designers from Peter Molyneux to No Man's Sky's Sean Murray.

Platform history: BBC Micro (1984, Acornsoft); C64 and ZX Spectrum (1985, Firebird); Amiga, Atari ST, NES, and others (1988–1991, Firebird). The Amiga and ST versions added enhanced graphics.

Carrier Command arrived in 1988 and immediately redefined what a strategy simulation could achieve on home hardware. Developed by Realtime Games - a small UK studio already known for Tau Ceti - it placed the player in command of a futuristic aircraft carrier in a contested island chain, opposing an AI-controlled enemy carrier.

The genius of the design is its layered complexity. At the macro level, the player manages a resource war - capturing and holding islands to produce fuel, materials, and equipment for the carrier. At the tactical level, you deploy up to four Manta fighters and four Walrus amphibious vehicles, and can switch to direct control of any of them at will - flying, driving, or commanding from a first-person 3D cockpit.

The Games Machine awarded it 98% on release - one of the highest scores in the magazine's history. ACE gave it 96%. Critics praised the depth of the resource management, the quality of the filled-polygon 3D graphics on Amiga and Atari ST, and the enemy AI, which could pursue its own island-capturing strategy while you slept.

Carrier Command's influence persists. Bohemia Interactive released Carrier Command: Gaea Mission as a direct remake in 2012. The game's hybrid real-time-strategy/first-person structure anticipated design patterns that became mainstream only a decade later.

Starglider is Jez San's breakthrough: a filled-polygon 3D space combat game published by Rainbird in 1986. At a time when most 3D games used wireframe graphics, Starglider rendered its environments and craft with solid surfaces - a technical achievement that set it apart.

CRASH magazine awarded it Game of the Year for 1986 on the ZX Spectrum. On the Amiga and Atari ST, its smooth filled-polygon performance drew comparisons to arcade hardware. The game combines rail-style mission sequences with free-flight exploration, enemy combat, and a distinctive science-fiction aesthetic.

Jez San's Argonaut Software followed Starglider with Starglider 2 (1988), a more ambitious open-world solar system game. The company's later work - particularly the development of the Super FX chip for the SNES, which powered Star Fox (1993) - traces directly from the 3D graphics techniques pioneered in the Starglider series.

Starglider's legacy extends into the fabric of 3D gaming: the trajectory from Rainbird's filled-polygon shooter to Star Fox to modern 3D games is a continuous line of technical inheritance. San's GDC 2004 talk, "The History of Argonaut Games," covers this progression in detail.