Elite Systems

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Elite Systems Limited
Elite Systems - 1.jpg
Founded 1984
Headquarters Walsall, West Midlands, England
Website bmginteractive.com
Other Names MotiveTime

Elite Systems, Ltd. was a British game development company founded by Richard and Steve Wilcox. The company was established under the name Richard Wilcox Software. They were known for their Commodore 64 games such as Airwolf, Commando, and Ghosts 'N Goblins. During their NES development, they didn't put credits in their games, but it is unknown why.

Elite started a subsidiary called MotiveTime. Most of the development team from Elite would move over to MotiveTime and would pay their employees bonuses based on the company's profits, but over time, the profits eventually reduced to virtually nothing. According to one of the developers, what may have happened is MotiveTime's profits were kept deliberately low so as not to pay out big bonuses. One way this was done was by the company leasing computer equipment and office space off Elite at inflated prices as well as using some of the remaining Elite staff as "consultants".


Later, some former Elite staff members formed NMS Software. Some ex-Elite staff would also create Arc Developments.

Games

Music Development

Commodore 64

Elite had a license to Novaload, a tape loading system which had its own music format where notes had to be entered in BASIC. Initially, Elite used the example tune, but by September 1985, one programmer had asked Mark Cooksey to arrange his favorite song, Living on Video, last heard in April 1986.

NES

All of Elite's NES games were composed by Mark Cooksey. He wrote the music in Notator for the Atari ST, and would use a utility to convert his music to his sound driver. Mark would use the same sound driver for his work with Spidersoft on their game Cliffhanger (NES) and NMS Software.

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