Rapier Multimedia

Rapier Multimedia is a British technology, electronics, and media company. It is known for manufacturing the Game-Fi consoles.

History
Rapier Electronics started in 1963 as a manufacturer of TV sets. It was owned 25% by Granada Television, 25% by Associated-Rediffusion, 25% by ABPC, and 25% by ITC Entertainment. The sets were designed to pick up both BBC and ITV channels.

As Rapier became more profitable, the IBA ordered it to be divested from the ITV companies in 1979. This was coincidentally around the time of the microcomputer boom. In 1981, the Rapier 8 (R8), named because of its 8-bit processor, was launched.

The R8 was popular mainly for playing video games, and competed with the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, among many others. It inspired 2 later models, the 1982 Rapier 8 mkII, and the 1983 Rapier 8 mkIII.

After the video game console market, dominated by Atari, crashed, Rapier had its best sales yet. In 1985, faced with the upcoming launch of the Nintendo Famicom and its cheaper NES model on European shores, the 16-bit Rapier 16 was released — advertising full backwards compatibility with R8 games.

Due to their success in Europe, Rapier subcontracted South Chinese hardware and toy company CCC to make their computers available to Asian markets. Rapier’s US partner was OS-Ready, which had created PowerOS, the first successful line of operating systems before MS-DOS and Windows took over. Both of these companies were acquired by Rapier outright over the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In 1989, the Rapier 32 was released, with the killer feature: 32-bit graphics and processing power. This beat anything, computer or console, on the market at the time, but also turned out to be Rapier’s last ever microcomputer.

Rapier CEO Max Anderson wanted to get into the console market, due to the successful sales of Nintendo, Sega, Zerona, Square, and Theorysonic systems in the UK. The “Game-Fi” project was hurriedly rushed through production, and the first in a long line of consoles, the original Game-Fi, was released in 1992.

The Game-Fi, like the Rapier 32 before it, boasted 32-bit capabilities.

(More TBA)

Microcomputers

 * Rapier 8 (1981)
 * Rapier 8 mkII (1982)
 * Rapier 8 mkIII (1983)
 * Rapier 16 (1985)
 * Rapier 32 (1989)

Home consoles (Game-Fi line)

 * Game-Fi (1992)
 * Game-Fi Odyssey (1995)
 * Game-Fi Chaos (2002)
 * Game-Fi Extreme (2007)
 * Game-Fi Revolution (2013)
 * Game-Fi Regeneration (2017)
 * Game-Fi Orion (2021)