Argonaut Games

Argonaut Games PLC was a British video game developer founded in 1982. It was known for the Super NES video game Star Fox and its supporting Super FX hardware, as well as for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos and the Starglider series. The company was liquidated in late 2004, and ceased to exist in early 2007.
==History==
Founded as Argonaut Software by teenager Jez San in 1982, the company name is a play on his name (J. San) and the mythological story of Jason and the Argonauts.
Its head offices were in Colindale, London, and later in the Argonaut House in Edgware, London. Its U.S. head office was in Woodside, California in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 1990, Argonaut collaborated with Nintendo during the early years of the NES and SNES, a notable incident being when Argonaut submitted a proof-of-concept method of defeating the Game Boy's copyright protection mechanism to Nintendo. The combined efforts from Argonaut and Nintendo yielded a prototype of the game Star Fox, initially codenamed "SnesGlider" and inspired by their earlier Atari ST and Amiga game Starglider, that they had running on the NES and then some weeks later on a prototype SNES. Jez San told Nintendo that his team could only improve performance or functionality of the demonstration if Nintendo allowed Argonaut to design custom hardware to extend the SNES to have true 3D capability. Nintendo agreed, so San hired chip designers and made the Super FX chip. They originally codenamed it the Mathematical Argonaut Rotation I/O, or "MARIO", as is printed on the chip's surface. So powerful was the Super FX chip used to create the graphics and gameplay, that they joked that the Super NES was just a box to hold the chip.
After building the Super FX, Argonaut designed several different chips for other companies' video game machines, which were never released. These include machines codenamed GreenPiece and CD-I 2 for Philips, the platform codenamed VeggieMagic for Apple and Toshiba, and Hasbro's "virtual reality" game system codenamed MatriArc.
In 1995, Argonaut Software was split into Argonaut Technologies Limited (ATL) and Argonaut Software Limited (ASL). With space being a premium at the office on Colindale Avenue, ATL was relocated to an office in the top floor of a separate building. The building was called Capitol House on Capitol Way, just around the corner. There, they continued the design of CPU and GPU products and maintained "BRender", Argonaut's proprietary software 3D engine. They won a chip design project with LSI Logic for a potential PlayStation 2 design. LSI Logic became a minor investor in Argonaut.
In 1996, John Edelson was hired as the company General Manager. John Edelson ran the group for two years. Capital was raised in 1996–1998 from Tom Teichman and Apax Partners. According to Jez San, Argonaut remained an independent developer by choice, and had turned down several buyout offers.
In 1997, the two arms of the company once again shared an office as the entire company was moved to a new building in Edgware. In September 1997, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos was released by Fox Interactive for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. A PC version of the game was also later released in 1998.
In 1998, ATL was rebranded ARC after the name of their main product, the Argonaut RISC Core, and became an independent company spun off to the same shareholders. ARC was an embedded IP provider. Bob Terwilliger was engaged as the President.
Argonaut Software Limited became Argonaut Games and was floated in 1999.
In early October 2004, Argonaut Games called in receivers David Rubin & Partners, laid off 100 employees, and was put up for sale. Many former employees would join newly established developer Rocksteady Studios. A lack of a consistent stream of publishing deals had led to cash-flow issues and a profit warning earlier that year. In 2005, the company entered liquidation and was dissolved in early 2007.
==BRender==
BRender (abbreviation of "Blazing Renderer") is a development toolkit and a realtime 3D graphics engine for computer games, simulators, and graphic tools. It was developed and licensed by Argonaut Software. The engine had support for Intel's MMX instruction set and it supported Microsoft Windows, MS-DOS and PlayStation platforms. Support for 3D hardware graphics accelerator cards was added. Software made with BRender includes Carmageddon, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, FX Fighter, I-War, and 3D Movie Maker. It was released as free and open-source software under the MIT License on May 3, 2022.
==Games developed==
Title 	Original release	Platform
Skyline Attack 	1984 	Commodore 64
Starglider 	1986 	ST, Amiga
Starglider 2 	1988 	ST, Amiga
Days of Thunder 	1990 	DOS, Game Boy
Race Drivin' 	1992 	Game Boy
A.T.A.C. 	1992 	PC
Birds of Prey 	1992 	Amiga
X 	1992 	Game Boy
Star Fox 	1993 	Super Nintendo
King Arthur's World 	1993 	Super Nintendo
Vortex 	1994 	Super Nintendo
Stunt Race FX 	1994 	Super Nintendo
Creature Shock 	1994 	PC
The Ren & Stimpy Show: Fire Dogs 	1994 	Super Nintendo
FX Fighter 	1995 	PC
Alien Odyssey 	1995 	PC
Scooby-Doo Mystery 	1995 	Super Nintendo
FX Fighter Turbo 	1996 	PC
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos 	1997 	PC, PlayStation, Sega Saturn
Tails' Adventure 	1997 	PC, Sega Saturn
Buck Bumble 	1998 	Nintendo 64
Croc 2 	1999 	PC, PlayStation
Croc 	2000 	GBC
The Emperor's New Groove 	2000 	PC, PlayStation
Alien Resurrection 	2000 	PlayStation
Red Dog: Superior Firepower 	2000 	DC
Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge 	2000 	PC, PlayStation
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone	2001 	PlayStation
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 	2002 	PlayStation
Bionicle: Matoran Adventures 	2002 	GBA
Bionicle 	2003 	GameCube, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox
I-Ninja 	2003 	GameCube, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox
SWAT: Global Strike Team 	2003 	PlayStation 2, Xbox
Carve 	2004 	Xbox
Malice 	2004 	PlayStation 2, Xbox
Power Drome 	2004 	PlayStation 2, Xbox
Catwoman: The Game 	2004 	GameCube, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Star Fox 2 	2017 	Super Nintendo
===Cancelled games===
Title 	Development Period	Platform
8-Kings 	— 	N-Gage
Orchid 	2003 	GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Bionicle: City of Legends	2004 	Xbox, PlayStation 2
I-Ninja 2 	2004 	PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube
Zero Hour 	2004 	PlayStation 2, PSP
Cash on Delivery 	 	PlayStation 2
Kanaan 	 	PC
Unnamed Yoshi Game 	1995 	Nintendo 64