Founded by Jez San in 1982, the company was based in Edgware, London, and also had offices in the US.
The company's first titles were for the Atari ST and Amiga, including Starglider, a very impressive 3D space war shooter, other 3D work on the strength of that such as Race Drivin' were released.
X on the Game Boy was another extremely impressive polygon style shooter, which was noticed by a Nintendo employee, the Argonaut team were then flown over to Japan, and the project became a joint one between Nintendo and Argonaut.
This effectively made them a third party company, leading to their next project which was Starfox (Starwing in the west), released in 1993.
The company designed a new processor chip to help the Super NES produce the polygons for the game, this was the Super FX chip, the company then used this in further titles such as Stunt Race FX and Vortex.
In 1995, Argonaut Software was split into Argonaut Technologies Limited (ATL) and Argonaut Software Limited (ASL)
ASL throughout the 1990s produced games for PC, PS1, Saturn, such as FX Fighter, Alien Resurrection and Harry Potter titles, before being floated as Argonaut games in 1999.
The company were producing Starfox 2, using a new Super FX chip in 2003-4, but Nintendo elected not to release the very nearly finished game.
In late 2004, the receivers were called in, a lack of publishing deals and the cancellation of Starfox 2 were major factors.
Many of the staff were laid off, a good few were taken on by Rocksteady Studios, which was formed by two ex Argonaut staff.
The company was put into liquidation in 2005, and finally dissolved a year later.
Software Products
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