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Argonaut Games plc was a British video game developer. 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 Edgware, London. ==History== The company produced its first game ''Skyline Attack'' for the Commodore 64. It later produced the 3D ''Starglider'' games for the Amiga and Atari ST platforms. In 1993, Argonaut collaborated with Nintendo during the early years of the NES and SNES. The combined efforts from both Nintendo and Argonaut made a prototype of the game ''Star Fox'', initially codenamed "NesGlider" 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 of the 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' never-released video game machines. This included the following: the machine codenamed ''GreenPiece'' and ''CD-I 2'' at Philips; the machine codenamed ''VeggieMagic'' at Apple Inc.; and Hasbro's "virtual reality" game machine, codenamed ''MatriArc''. In 1996, 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. 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 1998, ATL was rebranded ''ARC'' after the name of their main product, the Argonaut RISC Core, and became an embedded IP provider. Argonaut Software Limited became Argonaut Games and was floated in 1999. In late October 2004, Argonaut Games called in receivers David Rubin & Partners, laid off 100 employees, and was put up for sale. Lack of a constant stream of deals with publishers had led to cashflow issues and a profit warning earlier in the year. In 2005, the company was placed into liquidation and in 2006 was dissolved. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Argonaut Games」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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