Elite System is a British video game developer and publisher group created in 1984 as Richard Wilcox software.
It is known for producing arcade game conversions for home computers. Under the name Richard Wilcox Software, a single title was released: Blue Thunder, for the ZX Spectrum, 8-bit Atari, and Commodore 64. In August 1984, the group was relaunched under the name Elite Systems.
In 1986, the team began hiring independent developers to cover the development of 8-bit conversions for multitude of gaming machine licenses.
In 1986 “Golden Joystick Awards”, named Elite “Software House of the Year” supported by almost all video game publications of the time. In 1989 “Paperboy” received the “Game of the Year” award by the British software industry.
Elite Systems would initiate video game creation for the NES and Game Boy in the early 1990s through its internal development partner MotiveTime.
In 2010, the company began selling versions of classic ZX Spectrum games licensed from the original developers for iOS and Android systems. However, in 2014 they received numerous complaints from the developers themselves that they had not received any emolument for copyright. Steve Wilcox responded with a statement, on his website, in which he claimed that he was “working” to make all outstanding payments and that the games were being removed from the various publishing platforms.
In April 2014, it was reported that Elite Systems had fully paid the arrears, canceling the contracts it had with developers.