Realtime Games Software

{{short description|British video game developer}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{One source|date=September 2019}}

Realtime Games Software Ltd. was a British computer game developer, founded in 1984 by three Leeds University students: Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions, and Graeme Baird.{{Cite web|url=http://www.crashonline.org.uk/29/realtime.htm|title=CRASH 29 - Realtime Software}}

Their first game, 3D Tank Duel, was a wireframe graphics game, in the style of Atari, Inc.'s Battlezone arcade game, for the ZX Spectrum. This was followed up with Starstrike 3D, a game based on Atari's Star Wars arcade game. Starfox was published in 1987, and Carrier Command was published in 1988. The company was also involved{{Vague|date=September 2019}} in porting Elite to IBM PC compatibles and Starglider to the ZX Spectrum.

Realtime's early titles were self-published, while later games were published by Rainbird.

Graeme Baird subsequently went to work for Psygnosis, while Ian Oliver founded Cross Products to produce game development systems for consoles, in a joint venture with Andy Craven of nearby Vektor Grafix.{{Citation needed|date=September 2019}}