Telecomsoft | Code Like It's 198x

In 1984 British Telecom, the company that ran Britain’s telephones, started publishing computer games. CRASH admitted that it was “not immediately obvious why BT should wish to be ‘The Power Behind the Joystick’”. Five years later its software business, Telecomsoft, was one of the larger publishers in the country. It had Elite, The Sentinel, Starglider, Magnetic Scrolls’ adventures and Carrier Command in its catalogue, and turnover of close to £6 million a year. Then BT decided games did not fit, and sold the lot to MicroProse, for a price ACE heard was only £400,000.

Telecomsoft published under three names: Firebird, Rainbird and, from the late 1980s, Silverbird. This entry follows the business that owned them. The Firebird and Rainbird entries cover the labels and their games.

Fast facts

Owner: British Telecom. Firebird was set up in 1984 inside BT’s New Information Services division.
Labels: Firebird (budget Silver range, then full price), Rainbird (full price, from 1986), Silverbird (budget, by 1988). BT also bought Beyond and Odin.
People: Ederyn Williams, Tony Rainbird, James Leavey, Herbie Wright, Paula Byrne.
Address by 1989: First Floor, 64–76 New Oxford Street, London WC1.
Sold: to MicroProse, spring 1989.

A phone company goes into games

CRASH explained the logic in May 1985. BT was already in electronic publishing through Prestel, Micronet and Gamestar, and Dr Ederyn Williams, General Manager of its New Information Services division, set up Firebird in the spring of 1984. That May it began advertising for programs, and nearly two thousand arrived in three months. Tony Rainbird joined from his own label, Micro-Gold, in June. James Leavey moved across from elsewhere in the company in July to run publicity. James Scoular, formerly publisher of Personal Computer Games, ran Firebird until his sudden death in 1985.

Firebird’s first games went on sale in the autumn of 1984 at £2.50, with real screenshots on the box. The Firebird entry tells that story. The dearer Gold range was run by Herbie Wright, who joined from the publisher VNU at the start of 1985. CRASH described each Gold game as “a separate project”, polished “to a very high level” and promoted with “expensive artwork”.

The deal that changed the business’s size was Elite. Acornsoft held the rights only for Acorn’s machines. Firebird took the rest for what ZZAP!64’s first issue called, on rumour, “a six-figure sum”, and published it on the Commodore 64 in 1985 and then on the Spectrum, Amstrad and other machines. BT also set up an American company to sell Firebird’s games in the United States. Retro Gamer’s 2004 history of Telecomsoft names it Firebird Licensees Inc., formed in New Jersey in 1985, and says Elite was among its first releases there.

More labels

By the spring of 1986 BT was buying. ZZAP!64 described it that April as an “ever open set of arms”, working either through New Information Services or “under the guise of Firebird”. Beyond, the publisher of Lords of Midnight, “was the first to be captured”. Tony Rainbird, by then an “ex-Firebird executive”, had “his own label, Rainbird, another BT investment”, and “only days ago Odin/Thor announced marketing deals with BT”. Retro Gamer’s later account of that spring describes the Odin deal as a takeover, with the rights to future Odin releases becoming BT’s property while Odin stayed in Liverpool, and in 1988 ACE called Odin “another label bought and then lost in the mists of time”. Not every approach worked: Firebird had conversion deals for Ultimate’s Spectrum games but “failed to secure the full marketing agreement” that went to US Gold.

The group now had a name. CRASH reported in September 1986 that the Liverpool developer Odin, “whose marketing is now taken care of by Telecomsoft”, would share a stand with Firebird and Rainbird at the PCW Show. Commodore Computing International described Telecomsoft that November as “BT’s joint software marketing arm”, and reported that its export manager, Jane Cavanagh, had agreed a deal worth over £1 million to sell Firebird and Odin games in Germany for the rest of 1986.

Rainbird was the full-price label. Its first games in 1986 included Starglider from Argonaut and Magnetic Scrolls’ The Pawn, and that spring it announced deals with Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9. Tony Rainbird himself resigned in November 1986. Beyond’s name faded, and in March 1987 Herbie Wright was “Group Publisher for Firebird Gold and Beyond”.

Prizes

Telecomsoft’s games won a steady run of Computer & Video Games Golden Joystick Awards. Wright collected an award for Firebird at the ceremony for 1985, when Elite was runner-up for Game of the Year. For 1986, readers voted Geoff Crammond’s The Sentinel Best Original Game and The Pawn Adventure of the Year. Magnetic Scrolls’ The Guild of Thieves was Adventure Game of the Year for 1987, with Level 9’s Knight Orc, also a Rainbird game, runner-up. For 1988 Rainbird won both adventure awards, with Corruption on 8-bit machines and Fish! on 16-bit ones. In France, Atari ST User reported in April 1989, the magazine Génération 4 named Rainbird the best foreign company of 1988, with Firebird third.

Paula Byrne

Paula Byrne ran Telecomsoft at the end. At the 1985 Golden Joysticks she had collected Melbourne House’s awards. Commodore Computing International found her in November 1986 as marketing manager at Rainbird, “BT’s growing quality label”, having started the year at Melbourne House. By early 1987 she was managing Rainbird jointly with a colleague. Commodore User called her “Firebird’s Paula Byrne” in November 1987, and by 1989 she was general manager of the whole business. ACE pointed out in April 1989 that a woman was “at the helm of one of this country’s largest software publishers: Telecomsoft”.

Graftgold, and a court case

At the PCW Show in September 1987 Telecomsoft signed Graftgold, the team of Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook, which had written for Hewson until then. Hewson had already advertised Braybrook’s Morpheus and Turner’s Magnetron. Commodore User reported in November 1987 that copies of Morpheus were going out for review when Firebird was understood to have taken out an injunction. Andrew Hewson would say only that the dispute concerned “the extent to which an exclusive licence existed”. In February 1988 ACE reported that a High Court injunction had “restrained Hewson from publishing the titles until the case can be tried”. CRASH reported in March that the case had gone Firebird’s way. Magnetron came out on Firebird and Morpheus on Rainbird, the first games of what CRASH called “Graftgold’s long-term exclusive contract with Firebird”. The Graftgold and Hewson entries follow the dispute from each side.

The same CRASH news story reported a second break. Level 9 had left Rainbird for a new label, Mandarin. ACE reported the same month that Level 9 had “severed relations with Rainbird”.

Sold to MicroProse

In 1989 BT decided to sell. The One reported in April that Telecomsoft was up for sale because it no longer fitted “the overall Telecom structure”, after a buy-out by its senior managers had failed. Your Commodore reported in May that Byrne and her team had been unable to agree a management buy-out, and put Telecomsoft’s turnover at almost £6 million. The Games Machine named Mirrorsoft, Mediagenic and NEC among the likely buyers, and MicroProse as another.

MicroProse won. Computer Gaming World reported that it had acquired “British Telecomsoft” in May 1989. ACE asked its UK managing director, Stuart Bell, what would happen to the three labels. He was “totally confident” that Firebird and Rainbird would continue, but less sure about Silverbird: “It’s a big jump from there down to the £1.99 category.” ACE repeated a rumour that MicroProse had paid only £400,000 for “the entire Telecomsoft empire”, which it thought “remarkably cheap”, and said Telecomsoft had firmly denied rumours of heavy losses. “I’m contractually bound,” Bell said, “not to discuss the historical performance of the company.”

Retro Gamer’s 2004 history adds the background from Telecomsoft’s side. Byrne was asked in August 1988 to look for buyers. BT announced the sale on 24 February 1989, saying that entertainment software publishing was “no longer consistent with the Company’s corporate goals”. MicroProse’s first day as owner was 9 May 1989.

After BT

Games that were in development came out with “Firebird/MicroProse” on the label, among them Core Design’s Rick Dangerous. One exception was Graftgold’s conversion of Taito’s Rainbow Islands. MicroProse’s deal with Taito fell through, and in March 1990 ACE reported that Ocean had bought Graftgold’s code from MicroProse. Rainbird carried on for a while: ACE covered Maelstrom’s Midwinter as a Rainbird game in March 1990. Retro Gamer says that MicroProse sold Silverbird on, published its new games under its own labels, and let Firebird and then Rainbird lapse.

Sources

CRASH issue 16, May 1985, pp. 105–108: “The Boys from Buzby” (Ederyn Williams and the New Information Services division; the May 1984 advertisement; Tony Rainbird, James Leavey, Herbie Wright; the Gold range; James Scoular).
ZZAP!64 issue 1, May 1985: Elite review and the “six-figure sum” rumour.
ZZAP!64 issue 12, April 1986: British Telecom, Beyond, Rainbird, Odin/Thor and the Ultimate marketing agreement.
Computer & Video Games issue 55, May 1986, pp. 90–91: the 1985 Golden Joystick Awards (Firebird’s Herbie Wright; Paula Byrne and Geoff Heath for Melbourne House; Elite runner-up).
CRASH issue 32, September 1986: “Telecomsoft treats!” (Odin’s marketing; the PCW Show stand).
Commodore Computing International vol. 5 no. 4, November 1986: Jane Cavanagh and the German export deal; Paula Byrne at Rainbird.
Amtix! issue 17, March 1987: Paula Byrne at Rainbird; Tony Rainbird’s resignation in November 1986.
ZZAP!64 issue 23, March 1987: Herbie Wright, Group Publisher for Firebird Gold and Beyond.
Computer & Video Games issue 66, April 1987, pp. 100–101: the 1986 Golden Joystick Awards (The Sentinel; The Pawn).
CRASH issue 46, November 1987: “Telecomsoft signs Graftgold”.
Commodore User, November 1987: the Morpheus injunction; Paula Byrne; Andrew Hewson’s comment.
ACE issue 5, February 1988: “BT get Graftgold games”.
CRASH issue 50, March 1988: “Double trouble for Telecomsoft” (the court case; Graftgold’s exclusive contract with Firebird; Level 9 and Mandarin).
ACE issue 6, March 1988: “Level 9 join Mandarin”.
Computer & Video Games issue 79, May 1988, pp. 38–39: the 1987 Golden Joystick Awards (The Guild of Thieves; Knight Orc).
ACE issue 11, August 1988, p. 10: Odin, “another label bought and then lost in the mists of time”.
Atari ST User vol. 4 no. 2, April 1989: “Rainbird gets the vote” (Génération 4 awards); Telecomsoft’s New Oxford Street address.
ACE issue 19, April 1989: Paula Byrne “at the helm” of Telecomsoft.
The One issue 7, April 1989: “Telecomsoft troubles” (the sale; the failed buy-out).
Your Commodore vol. 5 no. 8, May 1989: Paula Byrne, the management buy-out and the turnover.
The Games Machine issue 18, May 1989: “Telecomsoft goes up for sale” (the possible buyers).
Computer & Video Games issue 92, June 1989, pp. 62–63: the 1988 Golden Joystick Awards (Corruption; Fish!).
ACE issue 22, July 1989: MicroProse’s purchase; Stuart Bell; the £400,000 rumour.
Computer Gaming World issue 63, September 1989: “Microprose Acquires British Telecomsoft”.
ACE issue 26, November 1989: games credited to Firebird/MicroProse.
ACE issue 30, March 1990: Ocean and Rainbow Islands; Midwinter on Rainbird.
“Memories of Telecomsoft”, Retro Gamer issue 4, 2004: Firebird Licensees Inc.; the August 1988 approach; BT’s announcement of 24 February 1989; 9 May 1989; the fate of the labels. A later history drawing on former staff; details from it are attributed in the text.
Retro Gamer issue 22, 2005, p. 16: a look back at March 1986 (BT’s acquisition of Odin; future Odin releases to become BT’s property; Odin to stay in Liverpool).