STUDIO PROFILE ARC DEVELOPMENTS

Elite Systems was a computer games publisher in Aldridge, Walsall. In the early Eighties, the Wilcox family built the company into a successful publisher of mainly licensed products, based on well-known TV programmes, famous personalities, arcade coin-op licences or well-known brands. As the company grew, it assembled a group of in-house and freelance programmers, artists and musicians. Among those who worked for Elite were programmers Byron Nilsson, Richard Underhill, Chris Coupe and graphic artist Paul Walker.

Byron began his career at Dalali Software before joining Elite, whilst Richard Underhill was a freelancer who was headhunted by Steve Wilcox in 1986. Paul Walker’s journey to Elite also started as a freelancer whilst he was still at school, initially drawing loading screens before progressing to in-game graphics. Elite eventually offered him a full-time job working as a graphics supervisor. Paul accepted the job and found himself managing a team of eight.

Titles that Paul worked on with Byron, Richard and Chris at Elite included an adaptation of the 1973 James Bond film Live And Let Die, Mike Reid’s Pop Quiz, conversions of popular arcade games like Buggy Boy and Bomb Jack, as well as Overlander, but the friends found that it could sometimes be difficult working there.

Byron eventually realised that he needed to make a change to his career and that he wanted to have a lot more control over his destiny. “It wasn’t that I was particularly unhappy, but