Argonaut Software
3D before its time
Jez San's Argonaut Software pioneered 3D graphics on home computers and co-developed Nintendo's Super FX chip, shaping console gaming's polygonal future.
Founded by a sixteen-year-old, Argonaut Software spent two decades at 3D gaming’s frontier. Jez San’s company progressed from Commodore 64 vector graphics through Amiga filled polygons to console hardware co-design. The Super FX chip—developed with Nintendo—enabled Star Fox and proved British programmers could innovate at silicon level. Argonaut’s closure in 2004 ended an era, but alumni spread across studios that would define modern gaming.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1982 by Jez San (aged 16).
- Location: London, later Edgware.
- Key achievement: Super FX chip development.
- Closed: 2004.
Technical evolution
| Era | Achievement |
|---|---|
| 1982-85 | Vector graphics on C64 |
| 1986-89 | Filled polygons on 16-bit |
| 1990-93 | Super FX chip development |
| 1994-04 | 3D engine development |
Key games
| Title | Year | Platform | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skyline Attack | 1985 | C64 | Early 3D attempt |
| Starglider | 1986 | ST, Amiga | Breakthrough 3D |
| Starglider 2 | 1988 | ST, Amiga | Advanced engine |
| Star Fox | 1993 | SNES | Super FX showcase |
| Croc | 1997 | PS1, Saturn | 3D platformer |
| Harry Potter | 2001-03 | Multi | Commercial peak |
Nintendo partnership
San’s demonstration of Game Boy 3D led to unprecedented collaboration. Argonaut engineers worked with Nintendo’s hardware division to create the Super FX chip—a RISC processor embedded in cartridges. The relationship soured after Nintendo worked with other developers on Super FX titles, but the chip’s impact was lasting.
Argonaut in 1994, profiled
Edge devoted its February 1994 prescreen feature to the company, and it is the fullest picture of Argonaut this library holds. The opening line is the business model in one sentence:
Producing 3DO and PC CD-ROM games for Sony and Virgin, and Super FX games for American third parties — that’s the Argonaut Software of 1994. And all this while still in bed with Nintendo.
The magazine confirms the founding detail above: “since establishing Argonaut at the age of 16, Jez San has landed on his feet time and time again — with his company now one of the most prominent in the business”.
It also punctures the offices. Anyone expecting the trappings of a company with a Nintendo contract “would surely be” disappointed — Edge found a modest North London operation, and named the people in it: Carl Graham, Ian Crowther on product support, graphic artist Marcus Punter and musician Gwynn among them.
The honest assessment
Argonaut’s reputation rests on the technology. Edge was not persuaded, and the dissent belongs here because it comes from the magazine least inclined to sneer at technical ambition:
Apart from Starglider and its technically stunning sequel, it’s difficult to find [an explanation for] the company’s spectacular success. Some of the games that followed were poor.
Two landmark games and a chip, across a dozen years, with a catalogue in between that the period’s most serious magazine called poor. That is a fairer summary than “two decades at 3D gaming’s frontier”, and it does not diminish the Super FX.
The Mario chip
The Super FX had a working name that stuck internally. Edge, describing the successor silicon:
The SFX II, running approximately 30% faster than the original Mario chip — the real name for the Super FX.
“Mario chip” was the internal designation; “Super FX” was the marketing. A RISC processor sold inside a cartridge, so that the console’s capability shipped with the game rather than the machine — which is why Star Fox could do something no other SNES cartridge could.
How the Nintendo relationship ended
The entry says the partnership “soured after Nintendo worked with other developers on Super FX titles”. Edge shows the mechanism, and it is more specific than that:
Starfox II is currently being coded in-house [at Nintendo], while FX Trax is being handled by two temporary Argonaut defectors, under the [guidance] of the game god himself, Shigeru Miyamoto, in Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters.
So by early 1994 Nintendo had taken the Star Fox sequel in-house, and was running another Super FX title in Kyoto using Argonaut staff seconded there. The technology Argonaut co-designed was being used without Argonaut — with Argonaut’s own people, in Nintendo’s building. Star Fox 2 was famously never released.
⚠ The Star Fox above is the SNES original of 1993, which Argonaut co-developed. Star Fox 64 (1997) is Nintendo’s own, with no Argonaut involvement — the two are easily confused.
The sequel that never came
A footnote with a familiar shape. In June 1992 a Hungarian magazine reported that Jez San had “finally given in” and would produce Starglider 3 that year, to be published by Argonaut itself.
⚠ Single-source, and a rumour rather than an announcement. It never appeared. Recorded here only because the Starglider pair is what Edge judged the company’s real achievement, and a third was still being asked for six years after the second.
Alumni legacy
Argonaut staff founded or joined:
- Criterion Games (Burnout, later NFS)
- Rocksteady (Batman Arkham series)
- Various Guildford-area studios
Closure
Harry Potter games provided late commercial success, but development contracts became unsustainable. Argonaut entered administration in 2004, ending 22 years of 3D innovation.
Starglider, and who else touched it
Starglider (1986) is the release that made Argonaut’s name, and two facts about its publication connect it to the rest of this Vault.
It was published under Rainbird — which is to say under Telecomsoft, British Telecom’s software arm, the same group that ran Firebird’s £2.50 budget shelf. CRASH rated it 95%, and 97% for the 128K version (issue 36).
And Argonaut did not do the 8-bit conversions. ACE, August 1988, credits those to Realtime Games Software — “Realtime produced 3D Starstrike, 3D Starstrike II and the 8-bit conversions of Starglider” — before Realtime went on to Carrier Command.
The same ACE piece notes what Telecomsoft was assembling: solid 3D was “a field that Realtime pioneered and BT are swiftly monopolising”. Amiga Format, in December 1989, lists the cohort that field consisted of — Braben with Virus, Realtime with Carrier Command, Mike Singleton with Whirligig, Paul Woakes with Mercenary, and “Jez San’s company Argonaut did a sequel to Starglider”.
Argonaut is usually told as a story that runs from a teenager’s bedroom to Nintendo silicon. The middle of it is less solitary than that: a small British vector-graphics scene, several studios deep, with the phone company buying up most of it.