Exidy

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Exidy was one of the largest creators of arcade video games during the early period of video games, from 1974-1983. The company was founded by H.R."Pete" Kaufman. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics."

Some of the notable games released by Exidy included Death Race, Star Fire, Venture, Pepper II, Mouse Trap, Targ, and Spectar. Star Fire was prominently featured in the 1980 film Midnight Madness , while Mouse Trap was the subject of a song on the 1982 Pac-Man Fever album Circus. Many Exidy games can be played today on personal computers using the MAME arcade emulation software.

Exidy was most famous for its light gun games, beginning with the game Crossbow. These presented an unusual twist to the genre, where the goal is to protect characters walking through the screen by shooting down bullets and other things which are trying to kill the characters. These games were also the first to feature fully digitized sound, for all sound effects and for music (far more advanced than any other games up until the 16-bit generation). The most (in)famous game today from this series is the game Chiller. Other "C" series games include Cheyenne, Combat, Crackshot and Clay Pigeon. Chief designer for these games was Larry Hutcherson.

Exidy also made a rarely-seen motion cabinet game with vector graphics called Vertigo. Chief game designer for this game was Vic Tolomei

Another popular game from Exidy was a driving game named Top Secret. This game featured a spy car with advanced weaponry on a mission inside the Soviet Union to destroy a heavily-guarded Top Secret super weapon. Game designers for this game was Vic Tolomei, Larry Hutcherson and Ken Nicholson

Exidy also made a brief foray into the home computer market, with the Exidy Sorcerer. The Sorcerer was a modified S-100 bus based machine, but lacked the internal expansion system common to other S-100 systems. The Sorcerer also featured an advanced (for the era) text display that was capable of 64 characters per line, when most systems supported only 40 characters. Oddly, the Sorcerer did not support sound, color, or in some respects, graphics, which seems at odds with the company's video game background. The system was never very popular in North America, but found a following in Europe, notably Belgium.