Starglider

The game takes place over the surface of the occupied planet Novenia, and it is the player's goal to rid the world of the mechanised Egron invaders.

Starglider was packaged with a sci-fi novella by James Follett, describing the game's background story, in which the Egrons effortlessly blitz Novenia despite the planet possessing a previously impenetrable network of utterly deadly defense satellites. The Egrons defeat the system by disguising their battleships as a flock of intergalactic migratory birds, the Stargliders. The defense satellites had been programmed not to fire on these birds (which migrated between planets regularly) and hence did not recognise the Egron battleships as enemies, allowing the Egrons to reach the surface unopposed. The player pilots the only existing example of a prototype fighter craft, initially armed only with lasers, as the TV-guided missiles require an enormous amount of energy to launch and control, which can only be gained by induction as the craft skims over areas with high-tension power conduits.

Starglider was Firebird's third best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987. COMPUTE! called it "a visually smooth concoction that is so realistic in its feel that you'll duck and squirm in your seat", especially praising the Atari ST version's graphics and sound. The game won the award for Game Of The Year 1986 in Crash.

The game sold close to 200,000 copies.

A prototype version of Starglider, codenamed NESGlider, was developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System utilizing a similar method to accelerate graphics as the future Super FX chip for the SNES would. Argonaut showed the prototype to Nintendo in 1990 but were advised to instead develop the game for the as yet unreleased Super Famicom. They ported the demo to the Super Famicom prototype which took approximately one week.

The game was never released; nonetheless, it spawned a sequel, entitled Starglider 2. The series inspired Argonaut Software to partner with Nintendo in creating the Super FX enhancement chip for Super NES in order to enable the StarFox series.