Rainbird

Founded By:Tony Rainbird
Location:First Floor, 64-67 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1PS, England
Year Started:1984
Year Wound Up:1989
Titles in Database:25
Rights Now With:Microprose (1989-1993) -> Spectrum Holobyte (1993-1998), Hasbro Interactive (1998-2001), Infogrames (2001-)
Rainbird was a publishing label of Telecomsoft.

The Rainbird label was established by Tony Rainbird, a former Micro-Gold employee who joined Telecomsoft to help set up the Firebird label. For legal reasons, the label's original name, Bluebird, had to be changed, although it still retained Tony Rainbird\'s original idea of releasing all its games in striking blue packaging.
Designed as a premium label above the existing Firebird label, Rainbird quickly forged a strong partnership with a number of developers who would produce their next range of high profile games. Magnetic Scrolls and Argonaut Software were amongst the first developers to benefit from a publishing deal with the label. Titles such as The Pawn and Starglider received unprecedented levels of critical acclaim and much attention outside the popular gaming media (a special version of the latter made it onto Get Fresh, a popular Saturday morning children's show in the UK, in a regular competition slot).

Realtime Games, a successful ZX Spectrum developer who specialised in fast 3D action games, came on board to convert Starglider to the ZX Spectrum and would go on to develop the critically acclaimed Carrier Command for Rainbird.

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The Retro Isle team
Added: 6 Oct 2025
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