Telecomsoft was a British video game publisher and a division of British Telecom. The company was founded by Dr. Ederyn Williams in 1984 and operated three separate labels: Firebird, Rainbird, and Silverbird. The first employee was James Leavey, seconded from elsewhere in BT, who, along with Tony Rainbird, became the driving force behind the company in the early days. History Telecomsoft was founded in 1984 when computer games were the fastest growing sector within the computer software market at the time. Despite a turnover of over £6 million in 1987/88, British Telecom sold the three labels to MicroProse in 1989 in a deal reported to be worth around £2,000,000 after a failed management buyout. MicroProse sold the Silverbird label soon after acquisition, but continued to use the Rainbird and Firebird labels for a short period. Labels Firebird British Telecom brought in Tony Rainbird, owner of budget software publisher Micro-Gold, to help set up the first Telecomsoft label, Firebird. Originally named Firefly Software, the label had to be renamed when it was discovered that the name had already been registered by another company. The first titles to be published on the Firebird Silver label in November 1984 were The Wild Bunch for the ZX Spectrum, Booty for the Commodore 64 and Bird Strike for the BBC Micro. Although there were doubts as to whether or not the market could afford to sustain a range of budget titles, the Firebird Silver releases were successful. In February 1985, Booty was the third best selling video game in the UK, behind only Ghostbusters and Daley Thompson's Decathlon. While Firebird Silver would release budget titles priced at £2.50, Firebird Gold would release more prestigious titles at a higher price. Firebird Gold established itself just as well as its budget counterpart. The label became synonymous with many classic 8-bit titles such as Elite, Revs, and The Sentinel. In October 1985, the budget range was relaunched as the lower priced Firebird Silver 199 Range and a full price label, Firebird Hot, was created to publish titles such as Costa Capers, the sequel to Technician Ted. A further label called Firebird Super Silver was a short-lived mid-price range which published titles such as Chimera and the Amstrad CPC version of Booty at £3.99. Firebird's success allowed them to acquire a number of third party developers, see Telecomsoft acquisitions below, and they also established a deal with Ultimate Play