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
Colindale,
London, and later in the Argonaut House in
Edgware, London. Its U.S. head office was in
Woodside, California in the
San Francisco Bay Area. The combined efforts from Argonaut and Nintendo yielded a prototype of the game
Star Fox, initially codenamed "SnesGlider" and inspired by its earlier
Atari ST and
Amiga game
Starglider, that it had running on the NES and then some weeks later on a prototype 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 it 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' video game machines, which were never released. These include machines codenamed
GreenPiece and
CD-I 2 for
Philips, the platform codenamed
VeggieMagic for
Apple and
Toshiba, and
Hasbro's "virtual reality" game system codenamed
MatriArc. In 1995, 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, it continued the design of CPU and GPU products and maintained "
BRender", Argonaut's proprietary software 3D engine. They won a chip design project with LSI Logic for a potential
PlayStation 2 design. LSI Logic became a minor investor in Argonaut. In 1996, John Edelson was hired as the company General Manager. John Edelson ran the group for two years. Capital was raised in 1996–1998 from Tom Teichman and Apax Partners. According to Jez San, Argonaut remained an independent developer by choice, and had turned down several buyout offers. chip inside a PAL cartridge of
Star Wing, both developed by Argonaut. 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 September 1997,
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos was released by Fox Interactive for the
PlayStation and
Sega Saturn. A PC version of the game was also later released in 1998. In 1998, ATL was rebranded
ARC after the name of its main product, the
Argonaut RISC Core, and became an independent company spun off to the same shareholders. ARC was an embedded IP provider. Bob Terwilliger was engaged as the President. Argonaut Software Limited became Argonaut Games and was
floated in 1999. In early October 2004, Argonaut Games called in receivers David Rubin & Partners, laid off 100 employees, and was put up for sale. Many former employees would join newly established developer
Rocksteady Studios. A lack of a consistent stream of publishing deals had led to cash-flow issues and a profit warning earlier that year. In 2005, the company entered liquidation and was dissolved in early 2007.
Reopening (2024–present) On 28 August 2024, Jez San reopened Argonaut Games as a boutique publisher that would focus on re-releasing and remastering Argonaut's existing franchises alongside the publication of third-party independent titles. Its first release is a remaster of
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, which had previously been teased by San the previous year. On 25 September 2024, Argonaut announced it had made a strategic investment in Ancient Machine, the developer of the forthcoming PC narco-thriller
VICE Undercover. ==BRender==