Today, I take a brief break from my “literary history” to
talk about one of the more interesting software publishers of the personal
computer industry’s early years – Programma International. Those of you who cut
their gaming teeth on an Apple II may
remember Progamma for their “crude” games (most written in Integer BASIC) sold at
bargain-basement prices, but Programma was one of the earliest and largest PC software
publishers, with its 80-page catalog listing 300 titles (not all of them games) for the Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS 80, and
other systems. According to Steven Levy’s Hackers,
in fact, Programma was the biggest distributor of Apple II software in the world in 1980. Among its many offerings were utilities, business applications (including the seminal world processor Apple Pie), and a host
of games ranging from simple text games to clones of arcade games (Clowns & Balloons and Apple Invaders) to more sophisticated
games like Star Voyager and Battlestar I. Despite its
importance, however, the company has been largely forgotten and little has been
written about its history. And while this article is woefully inadequate in
that regard (I wasn’t able to find out much info about it myself), it is a
start. One that I hope will lead someone else to pick up the mantle and pen the
company’s full history.
 |
| Programma International cofounder Dave Gordon (from Softalk, July, 1983) |
Programma
International was primarily the brainchild of two men: Mel Norell and Dave
Gordon. A native of Brooklyn, Gordon attended high school in New York City.
When he was 18, his family moved to Los Angeles where Gordon earned a master’s
degree in accounting from Cal State Los Angeles in 1964 (it was the one major with no foreign language requirement). He then spent thirteen
years as an accountant and computer controller in the entertainment industry,
working for firms like Warner Communications, Gulf & Western, and Paramount.
In 1977, Gordon was working for ASI Market Research, which operated a theatre
in Hollywood that screened movie and television previews, when he made a
discovery that changed the course of his career – microcomputers. 1977 was the
year of the microcomputer “trinity” – the Apple
II, PET, and TRS-80. Fascinated
by the new devices, Gordon put a down payment on both a TRS-80 and a PET. When he
got his first look at an Apple II,
however, he immediately cancelled his orders and got an Apple II (serial number 126) instead. A self-described "pack rat" (at one point he had a collection of 5,000-7,000 LPs), Gordon decided to attempt to amass a library of every piece of public domain software made for the Apple II. He quickly began making the
rounds of users groups, computer stores, and other owners, where, as David Hunter of Softalk put it, he "copied and traded software as if they were bubble-gum cards." He apparently copied a few non-public-domain programs as
well, as he was known as one of the industry’s biggest software pirates. He
even traded software with Apple Computer itself, where he also made friends
with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and several others. According to
Softalk, he “brought out the first Woz Pack from Apple”, a collection of
programs written by Steve Wozniak (though it was also offered by A.P.P.L.E. –
the Apple Puget sound Program Library Exchange).
With
the personal computer industry exploding, Gordon began to think about forming a
company of his own. That’s where Mel Norell comes in. At the time, Norell ran Programma
Associates, a small company that produced software for the Sphere computer.
Introduced in 1975 by the Sphere Corporation of Bountiful, Utah, the 6800-based
Sphere I was one of the more interesting of the early personal computers in
that it came with a built-in keyboard, monitor, and numeric keypad – a
rarity at a time when most PCs were kit computers like the Altair 8800 (the Sphere was also available in kit form). Some have even called the Sphere the "first personal computer". It
also included 4k of RAM (expandable to 64k), a cassette interface, and multiple
I/O ports. Unfortunately, Sphere couldn't meet the enormous demand for the Sphere and only about 1300 were produced (half of them kits) before Sphere went belly up. In 1978, Gordon and Norell formed Programma International, which
quickly became perhaps the most prolific producer of Apple II software (if not microcomputer software) on the planet. Of
course, in one way that may not have been as great as an accomplishment as it
seems, given that there were only a handful of software publishers in existence
at the time. On the other hand, the fact that there WERE so few in some ways
made Programma’s accomplishments all the more important. Programma produced
software in a number of genres, but it’s the games for which they are probably best
remembered. Sadly, they are also remembered (when they are remembered at all)
for producing “cheap” games – in both price and quality. This reputation,
however, is a bit unfair. While Programma’s games were primitive compared to
games released just a few years later, in the late 1970s no one minded.
Microcomputers were new, games often sold for $10 or less, and there wasn’t
much to choose from. Still, while many of Programma’s offerings were excellent,
others were crude even by the meager standards of the 1970s. In addition, a
number of them were riddled with bugs (a result of Gordon’s policy of buying
anything and everything). Before long, Programma was experiencing cash flow
problems due to the large number of returns they were getting. In addition,
Gordon and Norell frequently clashed over the direction of the company. In
addition, Gordon and Norell were increasingly at odds over the company’s
direction. In part, this may have been due to Gordon’s larger-than-life
personality, which could be in turn charming and enthusiastic and overbearing
and unyielding. By late 1980, despite its status as the world’s largest Apple II software producer, Programma
was on its last legs. In October, Gordon and Norell sold the company to Hayden
Book Company who turned it into Hayden Software with Gordon initially staying
on as Vice President and General Manager. Gordon’s personality, however, soon
clashed with those of the Hayden executives and in he was fired in the spring of
1981 and replaced by Norell (who was heading another Hayden subsidiary called Sigma Systems). A few months later, Hayden shut down its software division entirely.
Crestfallen
at first, Gordon borrowed money from friends and started another company, called Datamost in Gordon's living room in fall 1981, along with Gordon's Arlene, his brother Allan, and his sister-in-law Ina. One of the company’s first successes was Randy Hyde’s book How to Program the Apple II Using 6502 Assembly Language, which sold
over 30,000 copies – enough to keep the fledgling company afloat. It was games,
however, for which Datamost was best known and they produced some of the
industry’s biggest hits, including Thief,
Snack Attack, Pandora’s Box, Tubeway, Pig Pen, Cavern Creatures, Spectre, Aztec, The
Bilestoad, Money Munchers, Tharolian Tunnels, Flip Out, and Swashbuckler (among many others).
 |
| Datamost's booth at the 1983 West Coast Computer Fair, from Softalk |
So,
what does Programma International (or Datamost) have to do with coin-op video
games? Programma actually bought its games from a number of programmers, many (probably
most, given the timeframe) of them young, unproven, and previously unpublished.
Among them were at least four (and probably more) who went on to design and program arcade games.
Chris Oberth
Christian H. Oberth’s interest in computer
programming started when he read Ted Nelson’s seminal Computer Lib/Dream Machines around 1974-75. His first experience
with computers came when he encountered the Plato
system while attending Wright Junior College in Chicago and (later) DeVry
University (in Downers Grove, IL). Instantly hooked, Oberth decided he had to
have a personal computer of his own and purchased an Apple II (serial #201). At the time, however, there were no classes
that taught microcomputer programming. Oberth signed up for one programming
class but dropped it after he found that it utilized punched cards and other
ancient technology. Instead, Oberth learned his craft the way many of the
third-generation programmers did – through typing in games that appeared in
magazines like Creative Computing.
Meanwhile, Oberth got a job in the shipping department for a musical instrument
repair company. In his spare time, he turned out Apple II games in his living room, packaging them on audio
cassettes in Ziploc bags and peddling them to local computer stores.
Eventually, Oberth’s skills came to the attention of Dave Gordon, who called
him and invited him to L.A. for a meeting. After the meeting, Programma published Oberth’s first game – Phasor Zap, following it up with 3-D Docking Mission (both 1978). Before
long, Oberth found a second publisher – a computer and musical instrument store
in Chicago called The Elektrik Keyboard.
 |
| screenshot from Phasor Zap |
[Chris Oberth] The Elektrik Keyboard was one of the
musical instrument dealers that our repair shop serviced. I just happened to
run into the owner walking out of CES with an Apple II under his arm. Apparently he wanted to add computers (midi
music) to his store. When I told him I owned one and knew how to program it, he
hired me on the spot.[Interview with Chris
Oberth – Retrogaming Times #24, May,
2006]
Oberth published over
a dozen games with The Elektrik Keyboard
between 1978 and 1980, while also serving as head of their computer department (it
was there that Oberth met future Gottlieb sound guru Dave Thiel). Then, in
1980, Oberth got another job offer.
[Chris Oberth] One
day while working at The Elektrik
Keyboard, a guy came in and ordered several Apple II's. He was using them
to prototype hand held games and toys at Marvin Glass. Turns out, he was the
programmer for Milton Bradley's Simon game.[Interview with Chris
Oberth – Retrogaming Times #24, May,
2006]
The meeting led to a job at Marvin
Glass (Oberth was hired by none other than Ralph Baer), where he worked on
prototype handheld games like Finger Bowl
(for Tiger), Light Fight (Milton
Bradley), and Alfie (Playskool).
After a brief stint at Marvin Glass, Oberth (along with fellow Marvin Glass
employee Gunars Licitis) went to work for Stern, where his work included Armored Car, Rescue, Tazzmania, Minefield,
Anteater (which was licensed to Tago Electronics – Oberth also produced an
Apple II version of the game called Ardy
the Aardvark for Datamost) and
the unreleased Crypt. But that story will have to wait or another post. He also worked for a number of other computer and coin-op game publishers including Microlab (Boulder Dash), Epyx (Winter Games), Mindscape (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), Gametek (American Gladiators), Incredible Technologies (World Class Bowling), and Electronic Arts (NBA Live 2001). Chris Oberth died in July, 2012 at age 59.
Gary Shannon
In 1963, Gary Shannon was fresh out of high school when
a neighbor who worked for IBM taught him the rudiments of computer programming
for a job he wanted Gary to work on. To further hone his skills, Shannon went
to a commercial programming school in Los Angeles and also did contract work
installing IBM 370s as well as business programming for Hughes Aircraft and
Capitol Records. In the 1970s, he took a job with Cal State University,
Northridge, where he soon discovered another passion.
[Gary Shannon] They had a policy where you could
take classes during the work day as long as you got your 8 hours in so I
started to work on a Masters in Computer Science. I didn't finish it, though.
What they were teaching didn't have much to do with the real world of
programming, so I dropped out of the program. Also, that was about the time
that the Apple II first hit the market and I got totally addicted to game
programming.
As his interest in the Apple II grew, Gary took a job at Rainbow Computing in Los Angeles.
Founded in 1976 by Gene Sprouse and Glen Dollar, Rainbow Computing was one of
the earliest Apple retailers (they also sold computer books and magazines,
software, and other computers like the Jupiter III). Among the customers who
frequented the store were Ken Williams (who founded Sierra On-Line in 1979),
Sherwin Steffin (who founded Edu-Ware in 1979) and Dave Gordon (a friend of
Shannon’s). Shannon soon began producing games for Programma, including Dragon Maze, Jupiter Express (an outer
space shooter), Nightmare Number Nine,
and Othello. Shannon's Nightmare #6 had been distributed by Apple in 1978. Shannon also produced
games for Softape, another cut-rate
software publisher formed in 1977 (as Softech) by three other of Shannon’s friends: William Smith,
Bill Depew, and Gary Koffler (who later served as Datamost's VP of Software).
 |
| Softape version of Shannon's Othello (the game was also published by Rainbow Computing) |
Gary wasn’t the only game programmer in the Shannon
family. His sister Kathe Spracklen and her husband Dan had programmed a chess
game for Z-80 computers called Sargon.
After they introduced the game at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire (where it
won the first computer chess tournament) they placed an ad in Byte magazine and began selling
photocopies of the code for $15. Eventually, they sold the game to Hayden
Software, who released it for a number of personal computers. Gary Shannon
programmed the Apple II port of Sargon II.
In late 1979, Shannon took a short-term contract for San Diego coin-op manufacturer
Gremlin Industries do sound-effects boards. Shannon went on to design and
program (with Barbara Michaelec) the outstanding vertical shooter Astro
Blaster, but that story will have to wait for another post.
Bob Flanagan
Perhaps the most prolific of the Apple II programmers
discussed in this post was Bob Flanagan. Flanagan’s programming career started
in middle school when his school got a pair of 33 ASR teletype terminals. Made
by Teletype Corporation and originally developed for the U.S. Navy, the Teletype
Model 33 was released to the public in 1963. It went on to become one of the
most popular terminals in the industry with over 600,000 Model 33s and 32s (the
companion model) being produced by 1976. Three models were available: the 33
ASR (Automatic Send and Receive, which used punched tape for input and output),
the 33 KSR (Keyboard Send and Receive, which used a keyboard), and 33 RO (Receive
Only, which had no input device).
[Bob
Flanagan] [the 33 ASR’s]…were hooked up to a remote computer
via acoustic phone modem. I started by typing in games from 101 BASIC Games by DEC. There were
several awesome games in there that I typed in as is, played and saved/loaded
from the paper tape…[including] BLKJAC, GOLF, GUNNER, GUNER1, HANG, HORSES,
LIFE, MNOPLY, MUGWMP, POETRY, POKER, ROCKET, ROCKT1, ROCKT2, YAHTZE, I had a
lock box with 15 or more tapes rolled up of various games. Then I started to
get bored and started modifying them to do other stuff to improve them or
experiment with an idea. Then I went in halfsies with my mom and purchased an Apple II computer when they came out in
1977. I think it was about $1,200. I then spent all my time learning assembly
language to support my first game, Speedway,
which was published by Programma International on cassette tape
Gordon initially hired Flanagan on
the recommendation of a high school friend and Programma programmer named Harry Tarnoff to do cassette
duplication, demos, and other programs. When he started designing games, he
offered them to Gordon as well. Flanagan was a huge fan of arcade games and
video games in particular, as his work for Programma (and later Datamost)
shows. Speedway was a version of the
Chicago Coin electromechanical classic of the same name, though with a strictly
vertical layout (Flanagan’s programming skills were not yet advanced enough to
do curves and turns). Flanagan’s second game, Sea Wolf, was a version of Midway’s 1976 arcade video game hit. Other
arcade-inspired games included Datamost’s Thief
(a takeoff on Berzerk) and Spectre (which one review described as
a Tron/Pac-Man combination). Other Flanagan games include Pandora’s Box, Space Ark (Datamost), and
Guardian (initially for Continental
Software under the alias Tom & Jerry, so as not to hurt Dave Gordon’s
feelings or affect Flanagan’s relationship with Datamost). While Flanagan did
the bulk of the design and programming, friends occasionally helped out (like many
of Programma/Datamost’s programmers, Flanagan worked from home) and Flanagan insisted
they get full credit for their work (unlike the coin-op and console industry, many
in the computer game industry readily gave credit to their designers in
advertising and packaging). Scott Miller helped out on Spectre, Guardian, and Pandora’s Box, Bob
Andrews on Sea Wolf, and Art Huff came up with the concept and graphics for Space Ark. Flanagan later went to work for Atari on the
coin-op games Marble Madness, Paperboy,
Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Xybots, Space Lords, Skull & Crossbones, Marble
Madness II, and Vapor TRX as even
later developed a number of titles for the PS1, Wii, and PC. But that story
will have to…well, you know.
 |
| Note the coin-op and other game elements: Berzerk robot, Space Invaders alien, Pac-Man ghost, and an enemy from Apple Panic (the enemy with two blue triangles looks familiar too but I can't place it) |
Mark Turmell (sort
of)
Another
coin-op programmer who got his start at Programma was Mark Turmell, whose coin-op
work included Smash TV and NBA Jams. Turmell’s game for Programma,
however, was never actually published. Turmell had begun studying
computers at 15, taking evening classes at Delta College (a community college
in Michigan) while attending high school during the day (his high school didn't offer computer classes). Turmell would attend high school classes in the morning then arrive at Delta at 2 in the afternoon for his five data processing classes, often staying in the campus computer room until near midnight. Attending college at age 15 offered its share of challenges. Because he had no driver's license, he was unable to check out the tapes he needed to complete his programming assignments (luckily, a professor took Turmell under her wing and wrote him a permission note to check out the materials). Nonetheless,by the time he
graduated high shool, he had almost earned enough credits for an Associate’s degree in
Data Processing.
At 16, he bought an Apple II computer, scraping together the money he made from mowing lawns and taking out a loan from his parents. Not long afterwards, he broke into the Delta College computer, just to see if he could. Instead of expelling him, however, they hired him, allowing him to earn enough money to pay his parents back. At age 17, Turmell was hired by a local engineering firm to debug a software package they had purchased to help lay out the city's sewers. The gig led to a job as a consultant with a number of other companies. Turmell, however, was intent on earning his living as a game
programmer. His first effort was a game called Head On, which he sent to Programma International. Programma gave
him a contract and planned to publish the game until another computer game with
the same title was released. While attending college at Ferris State in Big
Rapids, Michigan, he created a vertical shooter called Sneakers that featured multiple screens of zany enemies
(inspiration came from Gorf and Astro Blaster). Turmell finished the
game in about three months then fedexed it to Sirius Software. When Sirius got
the game (which went on to become an Apple II classic) they offered him a job
on the spot. Turmell followed up with Beer
Run and Free Fall before moving
on to design Atari 2600 games like Fast Eddie and Turmoil
for 20th Century Fox software then landing a job with Williams.
 |
| Mark Turmell watches Dan Thompson play |
