The success of his small-press published game
Mekton convinced Mike Pondsmith that he would be able to make a business by designing games, so he founded R. Talsorian Games in 1985, and using this new company he published a second edition of
Mekton (1986). The company's second game was
Teenagers from Outer Space (1987). The third published edition of
Mekton was called
Mekton II (1987) and was the company's first game to use their full-fledged
Interlock System. Pondsmith's next game,
Cyberpunk 2013 (1988), was R. Talsorian's second design to use the Interlock game system. R. Talsorian was one of the first RPG publishers to embrace
desktop publishing. Its first desktop published books were
Mekton II in 1987, which looked much different from products that R. Talsorian would be putting out just a few years later (such as
Cyberpunk 2020 (1989)).
Cyberpunk became wildly popular and received most of the company's attention for much of the rest of its lifespan. After an eight-year hiatus that began with its withdrawal from GenCon in 1998 over a conflict regarding floor space and dealer space, the company began a semi-regular publishing schedule again in 2006. Despite its "major" lines being on hiatus during that period, RTG still supported three licensed anime RPG lines (
Bubblegum Crisis,
Armored Trooper VOTOMS and
Dragonball Z) through its ANimechaniX label and occasionally issued reprints for
Mekton Z and
Cyberpunk 2020. On January 4, 2006, R. Talsorian Games founded their first demo team, The Chrome Berets. The Chrome Berets were founded and are supervised by David "Knighthawk" Simpson, creator of Knighthawk’s Cyberpunk Archive, a popular fan site for the game. The purpose of The Chrome Berets is to promote the company and products and playtest upcoming products. ==References==