War
of the Worlds
In early 1982, Cinematronics released War of the Worlds, a conversion kit for
Star Castle. The game had
originally been designed by programmer Rob Patton in 1979.
[Rob Patton] One night we all went out to see the
new movie Alien. The next day we were
thinking about game themes and I threw out the idea that we could draw decent Martians
on legs and Tim (Skelly) volunteered to
draw some sketches.
Tim Skelly remembers that the game was partially based
on an idea he had for a Space Invaders
inspired game
[Tim Skelly] My idea…was to do
something like Space Invaders." To take advantage of the vector
display, I wanted to have the enemies attack towards the player and scale up,
rather than drop on top of you -- the classic top-down/PO switcheroo. I think
the War of the Worlds theme came from wanting the player to shoot the
legs out from under the attackers. This suggested the walking tripods of
H. G. Wells. I had a bear of a time drawing a three-legged walk cycle that
still worked at each stage. Just doing a three-legged walk cycle was bad
enough! I also distinctly remember suggesting to Jim Pierce that we might want
to do a copyright search on the name. Jim, of course, could not care less[1].
The game featured a battle against a series of enemies
based on the three-legged, tower-like ships in the film of the same name. While
Tim Skelly created the game art, a new artist handled the cabinet art. Frank
Brunner was unable to provide art for the game (Skelly recalls that he didn't
like working on "tech stuff"). Instead, Rick Bryant, another comic
book artist was hired to create cabinet art (he later did the cabinet art for Tailgunner, Star Castle, and Armor Attack). Rob Patton left before
the game was completed and went to Hughes Aircraft, where he worked on projects
involving spy satellites. War of the
Worlds fared poorly during testing and was shelved indefinitely.
In late 1981,
Cinematronics was riding high but there were problems. Black and white games
were becoming increasingly passé and Cinematronics monochrome vector system was
looking increasingly dated. Creating an entirely new hardware system would be expensive
and time consuming so instead, the company decided to update its vector system
to handle color. They had considered releasing Solar Quest in color but dropped the idea when they were unable to
obtain enough color monitors. They did, however, produce a color version of War of the Worlds. As it had
previously, the game tested poorly at the 1982 AMOA show and was dropped.
Reportedly, only about a dozen units were ever produced (possibly including
just two in color). One problem may have been that the system did not have the
horsepower to generate enough enemies to make the game interesting or
challenging.In 1983, the game was
licensed to Progressive Game Distributors, aka PGD, a company founded by former
Cinematronics exec Dave Stroud.
By this
time, Tim Skelly had left Cinematronics to work on Gremlin's (and the
industry's) first color vector game. Gremlin had lured him away by promising
him royalties on the games he created. Wanting to remain loyal to
Cinematronics, Skelly offered to stay with them for a smaller royalty figure
than that offered by Gremlin, but they refused.
Outpost and Boxing
Bugs |
Tim Skelly |
In any
event, Cinematronics eventually entered the color vector arena. The first
Cinematronics color vector game that is known for certain to have released was
1981’s Boxing Bugs, which had
actually started out as a Scott Boden game named Outpost.
[Scott Boden] Outpost was a game that had a center warrior
with a cannon and gun defending a 'outpost'. I temporarily left
Cinematronics (I think I did that 3 times, young and overconfident), and
when I came back Jack Ritter took over the project. His 'cute' game concept
tuned it into Boxing Bugs.
Jack Ritter had come
to Cinematronics after stints at NCR and Burroughs. He had entered the computer
field after some early experiences with the counter-culture of the late 1960s
and early 70s.
[Jack Ritter] I Went to San Francisco,
and lived in North Beach. I lived off of welfare. (It was the late 60's). I
survived off of the payments: $52 per week!
I lived in a house with various female student strippers, who for some
reason liked to walk around the house naked. I didn't protest. One of them was
Lorraine, of "Sweet Lorraine" fame (a song by Country Joe and the
Fish). Anyway, after nine months of, as they say, Sex, Drugs, & Rock N'
Roll (an accurate characterization, actually), I got bored.
Ritter’s interest in video
games had come when he got his first look at Tim Skelly’s Star Castle and became an instant fan. When he came to
Cinematronics, his first task was to create a new game based on Boden’s Outpost. The game was called Boxing Bugs.
.
In Boxing Bugs, the player was represented
by an arm-like cannon with a boxing glove at one end that sat in the center of
the screen surrounded by an octagonal wall. A paddle control rotated the
cannon. Pushing one button caused the boxing glove to spring outward and
pushing another allowed the player to shoot out of the opposite end. A third
button served as a “panic button” which the player could use a limited number
of times to pushed away everything touching one of the walls. Outside the walls
were a number of bombs. Enemy bugs would appear from the edges of the screen
and try to position the bombs next to walls to open a hole that they could use
to blow up the player himself. The most notable feature of Boxing Bugs was that it used a real color vector system – though it
ended up being the only game produced on the system.
[Jack Ritter] Boxing Bugs was a real color vector game - no overlays. It was the
first and only color vector game released for that system. They stopped doing
games for that platform after Boxing
Bugs. [It’s] too bad; they could have milked the old gal for at least 2
more games. Instead, they put their hopes into a next-generation color vector
system, designed in-house. It used a display list architecture, with no double
buffering capability, so you got screen glitches if you tried to push its
performance. It performed flakily in the field with its 1st game, and thus, the
system got a reputation as a lemon.
 |
Boxing Bugs screenshot |
Jack
the Giant Killer and Naughty Boy
 |
| Jack the Giant Killer in production |
1982 also saw Cinematronics release
its first licensed games. First up was Jack
the Giant Killer, licensed from Hara Industries. The game put the player in
the role of Jack in a multi-stage platform game that involved climbing a
beanstalk then navigating clouds and ladders to reach the giant and steal his
treasure (and, ultimately, the princess). Cinematronics tried a number of
things, including 3 x 5 tip cards and a contest with a one-ounce golden egg as
a prize, to promote the game. A second version called Treasure Hunt was produced that prevented the player from falling
of the vine, but it didn't help (Video
Games magazine reported that it made the game worse). The game was a
financial disaster for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Some called it
"Jack the Company Killer". The driving force behind the Hara deal was
Fred Fukumoto, who'd replaced Jim Pierce as president in December, 1981.
By that time, Pierce and Tom Stroud, Sr. began spending less and less time at Cinematronics, leaving others to handle the day-to-day operations. Fukumoto purchased 5,000 boards for Jack the Giant Killer from Hara. Because they came with no documentation aside from schematics, Cinematronics had to reverse engineer the boards to create a programmer’s manual. The results were hardly worth the effort as Jack the Giant Killer was a resounding flop in the arcades. Rumors swirled that someone at the company had personally profited from the licensing deal, which left Cinematronics with a pile of unused boards and a financial mess on their hands. The company began casting about for ways to use the remaining inventory of boards. Naughty Boy, licensed from Jaleco, was better but no runaway success. Many saw this as the beginning of the end for Cinematronics. Video Games magazine's report on the 1982 Amusement Operators Expo in Chicago was brutal: "…the ghost town that is the Cinematronics booth makes absolute sense. Boxing Bugs, War of the Worlds and Jack the Giant Killer, the company's first Japanese license (from who?), look like the kiss-of-death for this once-respected, but slowly fading games firm."
 |
Fred Fukumoto (last name misspelled in caption) |
By that time, Pierce and Tom Stroud, Sr. began spending less and less time at Cinematronics, leaving others to handle the day-to-day operations. Fukumoto purchased 5,000 boards for Jack the Giant Killer from Hara. Because they came with no documentation aside from schematics, Cinematronics had to reverse engineer the boards to create a programmer’s manual. The results were hardly worth the effort as Jack the Giant Killer was a resounding flop in the arcades. Rumors swirled that someone at the company had personally profited from the licensing deal, which left Cinematronics with a pile of unused boards and a financial mess on their hands. The company began casting about for ways to use the remaining inventory of boards. Naughty Boy, licensed from Jaleco, was better but no runaway success. Many saw this as the beginning of the end for Cinematronics. Video Games magazine's report on the 1982 Amusement Operators Expo in Chicago was brutal: "…the ghost town that is the Cinematronics booth makes absolute sense. Boxing Bugs, War of the Worlds and Jack the Giant Killer, the company's first Japanese license (from who?), look like the kiss-of-death for this once-respected, but slowly fading games firm."
Brix/Zzyzzyxx
The company's final 1982 was Zzyzzyxx, developed by Advanced Microcomputer Systems, a company
founded by an innovative programmer named Rick Dyer that had developed a number
of handheld games. Dyer pitched the
concept of Zzyzzyxx to Cinematronics,
who decided to produce it. The game had originally been titled Brix. The name was reportedly changed
when someone at Cinematronics heard that kids spent more money on games
starting with X or Z and the owner's wife suggested they call it Zzyzzyxx[2]. In
the game, the player maneuvered through several rows of brick walls moving in
alternate directions. Each wall had a number of gaps in it. Some of the gaps
contained gifts while others harbored enemies. The goal was to move from one
side of the screen to another avoiding enemies and collecting gifts on the way
to the waiting Lola. The player (Zzyzzyxx) could also make breaks or don a
helmet that allowed him to break them. Zzyzzyxx
was a dud, but Dyer and Advanced Microcomputer systems had another game up
their sleeves that would prove anything but.
By this time, the
financial situation at Cinematronics was grim. On
September 17th, 1982, Cinematronics had been granted chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection[3]
(it would go on to be the longest Chapter 11 in California history). Jim Pierce supposedly had to sell his Rolls
Royce and hock his wedding ring.
Cinematronics was a long way from done, however. Unbeknownst to Pierce,
or anyone else, their savior had already arrived in the person of Rick Dyer. Zzyzzyxx had been a dud, but Dyer and
Advanced Microcomputer systems had another game up their sleeves that would
prove anything but. In the meantime, the
company continued turning out games and hiring new employees in a desperate effort
to recapture to glory days.
[3] The reasons given were "difficulty with some foreign letters of credit coupled with slow collections from certain domestic distributors..." (Replay, Oct 1982, p.26)
[1] December 20, 2011 E-mail from Tim
Skelly to Ionpool.net (http://www.ionpool.net/arcade/cine/warworlds_history.txt)
[2] Though the story, which sounds apocryphal, may be no more than a rumor.[3] The reasons given were "difficulty with some foreign letters of credit coupled with slow collections from certain domestic distributors..." (Replay, Oct 1982, p.26)
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