Talk:Cinemaware

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Contents

[edit] Are they under again?

I want to thank 128.114.238.28 for starting this article. Even though I effectively rewrote it, the stub was a great jumping-off point. I'd been meaning to write this article for quite some time—the existing article was just the inspiration I needed. :-)

Does anyone know if they've gone under once again? Their website is still up, but they haven't done anything (apparently) since 2003. I read a review of Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown which said it sucked. Have they called it quits for good? — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:16, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cinemaware is totally inactive...

Hello. I'm the one who rewrote the end paragraph for this article. I've been looking forward to the resurection of Cinemaware for almost a decade after they went bankrupt. Nowadays, the site is totally quiet, not unless if you count a spammer who has posted several hundred topics.

It's a shame that Cinemaware left us fans in spite of embarrassment. Even short line, "We're bust; we're shutting down the site for good, all games cancelled," would have been nice, since we know what has happened.

It's a shame.

Well, there's a chance they're trying to secure additional financing. Of course, I have no idea what they're really doing, but anything is possible. :-S — Frecklefoot | Talk 00:07, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

There was a dicussion in the forums a while ago about checking on Cinemaware's offices, but no one lived in California, so no one was able to say anything.

If no one stopped the spammer in forum... I believe he is still spamming as of this hour... Then, I myself concluded, after no interaction by the Cinemaware staff since that post in October 2004. If the moderators were still active, they would ban the spammer instantly.

It's so sad... But we have to move on.

[edit] Most ported game?

Does Defender of the Crown really hold the record as the most ported game? My guess would have been Zork I, though I wouldn't have dared to bet any money on that one either. While I haven't found any definitive list of the platforms it was ported to, the [Infocom Fact Sheet] has a pretty impressive list of platforms that Infocom supported to some extent.

The article has since been clarified to say that it's the most ported Cinemaware game. My question is no longer relevant.

[edit] Mac support and other missing items

I have a bit of Cinemware knowledge, having been there from 1986 to 1989. I was the first non-executive employer who wasn't a coder or artist. Which meant I did anything that came to mind. Early on, I was the entire playtesting department.

The article neglects to mention that Cinemaware had several Mac games. The first version of 'King of Chicago' using digitized clay figures was on the Mac and then graphically redone from scratch for the Amiga and other platforms. I've made the additions

The article also omits 3 in Three, probably the last game published by Cinemaware. (I was no longer with the company by that point.) Cliff Johnson's 'Fool's Errand' had gone through the company like a virus. People would stay up playing it until dawn and then call in sick. So everybody was pretty pleased to have hime join the company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_in_Three

Cliff Johnson's site also indicates Cinemaware published this thing but I never saw it: http://www.thefoolandhismoney.com/04-cdi/CA-box.htm

It should also be noted that a number of titles were licensed for publishing on Japnese computers but I cannot say if any ever made it to market. I do recall some very difficult conversations trying to explain parts of the game structure to a guy who was forming English sentences phonetically using a translation dictionary. I finally convinced them to send their questions by fax so I could send them lengthy replies they could take as much time as they needed to decipher. After all of the international phone traffic it probably would have been cheaper if they just had us ship them an Amiga system and the games.

A bit of major trivia: Defender of the Crown was one of the first games ever to ship in a CD-ROM version. This was commisioned by Mirrorsoft, who sold the Cinemware line in the UK. This was the PC EGA version of the game with music and narration coming off the Cd in synchronization. Really just Red Book audio added to the existing game but it was a big deal back then. One of the women (Susan?) who worked on the accounting side of the company had immigrated along with her husband from Scotland. He was recruited for the voiceover work in the game.

I'm curious what platform S.D.I. was being ported to that it could have had an effect on company finances at that late date. The first versions of the game were done on the Amiga and Atari ST, mostly by Randy Platt as a contractor at Sculptured Software. This was when the company was still Master Designer Software and Cinemaware was a product line published through Mindscape. I did some playtesting of it before being hired on fulltime. I was involved throughout the PC version and was Associate Producer on the Mac version. I don't recall a C64 version and the Sinclair and Amstrad versions would have been handled by Mirrorsoft since neither of those platforms really existed in the US market.

The Mac version was done and shipping before I left the company in 1989 and there were no other versions in development or planned to the best of my recollection. So how can this game be blamed for the company's collapse?

Of all the things going wrong at Cinemaware I'd think S.D.I. was far down on the list. The biggest problem was that the founder, Bob Jacob, was enamored with the then cutting edge technologies that took far longer to become mainstream consumer items than he'd planned. A lot of time and I can only guess how much money was invested in trying to get in on the ground floor of these new technologies but it turned out to be hard enough just keeping up with what wa already out there.

For instance, the team who created 'Lords of the Rising Sun' on the Amiga were promising that the new VGA graphics just starting to become standard would allow them to make a PC version that looked as good or better than the Amiga version. At the time I left the company there wasn't even an early beta for playtesting.

Remember when DVI was an Intel platform to compete with CD-i? Hell, remember CD-i? Cinemaware got involved in both. A lot of former Cinemaware folks ended up making CD-i games for a few years, actually. So it wasn't a complete loss for them. Philips may have been clueless but it didn't bounce any paychecks. Programmers who loved the Amiga as bachelors had to take that into consideration when they acquired families and mortgages.

Remember the Hasbro NEMO? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMO_(video_game_system)

Cinemaware had a prototype demo unit.

Remember when the AdLib board was new and most PCs had no sound other than the keyboard click speaker? Well, Cinemaware spent a while developing its own PC sound solution just to have a standard for our own games. It was scrapped in favor of AdLib support. (Sound Blaster was an AdLib clone but took over the market.)

Lots of hopes, dreams, and high aspiration but very little of it translated to sellable games.

Well, it certainly sounds like you have a better grasp of what went on at Cinemaware than anyone else! Make the edits correspond to your recollections, they're probably better than anything else we have. I wrote most of the article from memory. The part about "feature creep" was from a conversation with someone I can't remember who heard it from a friend who used to work for Cinemaware. Not exactly a sterling source, but it's all I had. I'd be happy to see it go with the correct information.
I worked with Randy Platt[1][2] a few years ago. He had been working for Kodiak Studios, which was started by the same guy who started Master Designer Software, George Medos. Kodiak had just gone under (a friend of mine said that, actually, Medos just "took the money and ran") and he was doing temporary contract work for Headgate Studios. I was doing the same and we shared an office. Nice guy, I hope he found something (and quick! Nine kids!).
Actually, I worked for Master Designer Software when it was Sculptured Software (from 6/96 to 12/96). I don't know if I was there when he was, but it sure is a small world. Well, at least it was in Utah.
Thanks again for all the history! — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Sculptured Software and Master Designer Software were completely separate companies to the best of my knowledge. The extent of their relationship was a few contracted programming jobs. I met George Metos a few times but was never given any reason to believe he was part of the company and plenty of Sculptured Software developed games appeared under distribution by other companies long after MDS was renamed Cinemaware, then went on to produce many more after Cinemaware went under, and eventually was purchased by Acclaim. [[3]]

MDS was started by Robert Jacob. Bob had worked as a talent agent for game programmers, which is likely how he first became involved with Sculptured Software before . There was another much older guy involved, Richard Something but I'm drawing a blank. He'd been involved in the founding of EA and was supposedly the guy who had the idea of packaging the games like record albums and promoting the designers like rock stars. He was around infrequently and I believe he had many other business interests.

Nine kids? Egad! His first was an infant the last time I saw her. Moby Games show some pretty recent work, so I guess he's OK. Good guy. http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,3759/

That reminds me of a great story. Another coder at Cinemaware was Peter Oliphant. http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,164/ He worked at Mattel on some of those really early handheld LED games. (He'd also been in some of their TV ads as a child actor.) His involvement there led to him attending the AMOA show at which Q*bert was introduced. Peter decided to see if he could reproduce the gameplay on the Atari 800. In just three weeks he'd produced 'Mr. Cool.' It was graphically very simple, lacking the pseudo-3D pyramid efect but succeeded in its gameplay goal and at only 4K made for a very cheap cartridge. Plus Q*bert was still only in test sites.

Sierra On-line bought the publishing rights to the game and it promise to be a great coup, having a clone of a highly popular arcade machine seemingly overnight. But for reasons unknown or at least I don't recall, Sierra failed to put the game into stores for the better part of a year. By the time it was shipping there was another Q*bert inspired game coming to the Atari 800. It was titled 'Pharoah's Pyramid' and was a tour de force for the era. Opening animations, intermissions, strong use of the platform's hardware features, etc. Both games were reviewed in a magazine (Electronic Games?) side by side and of course 'Pharoah's Pyramid' was highly favored over the tiny and flat 'Mr. Cool.' Peter was left a bit angered by this because his quickie game lost it's real market window due to the delays on Sierra's end. Given all of that time Peter could easily have had a full featured game, too.

Years later, I'm having a conversation with Randy Platt and we get into the subject of how he got started as a game developer. Turns out his first big title was 'Pharoah's Pyramid.' Oh. After the conversion wound down I went down the hall to Peter Oliphant's office. (He was working on the DOS version 'King of Chicago,' IIRC.) "Hey, Peter! Did you know Randy did 'Pharoah's Pyramid?'"

First, he just sat there looking stunned. Then he leaped over his desk (the side not covered with a PC setup) like a tennis player over the net and ran down the hall with me following in his wake. When I caught up at Randy's office, Peter was standing there, pointing an accusing finger and shouting, "You! You!" Peter bore no actual malice toward Randy and they had a good time talking about how they'd crossed paths in the past but had never realized it while working in the same small company.

Another funny Cinemaware story involving Peter. This was very early on and there was no clerical staff. Beside the Bob and Phyllis Jacob, the coders and artists, there was just me for playtesting, data entry, going out to pick up more equipment, and assorted odd jobs. So when Bob and Phyllis were out of the office I was left to answer the phones. The company was then advertising in the LA Times for more programmers. I happen to have a very good memory for trivia and if a distinctive name appears on the title screen of a game I will probably remember it. On one of those days when I handling the phones an applicant called and identified himself as Peter Oliphant.

"Oh, didn't you do 'Wall War' and 'Mr. Cool?'"

There was no reply for several seconds. Peter was completely unprepared to be recognized. It was like expecting to talk to an answering machine and getting the human instead. He thought he was talking to some kind of human Who's Who of game programming and had to consider if familiarity with his past work was a positive or negative. Actually, outside of those designers and coders promoted by EA and a few well-known others, Peter was one of the few game developers in all the world I would recognize by name, largely because the name Oliphant stood out from the crowd. But for a few moments it was fun to feel like I was part of a shadowy organization monitoring the movements of everyone ever employed in the game industry.

I'll do the edits eventually but I need to get the hang of the display system. I don't want to just blather my recollections if it means ruining the appearance of the page.


I knew that Sculptured went through some name changes, but couldn't recall the previous names--I just assumed "Master Designer Software" was one of it's names. I actually joined them right as they were being purchased by Acclaim, so they had been Sculptured for years. So, my bad (sorry).
Man, I sure looked forward to each Cinemaware release. The games' artwork was far better than anything any other companies put out (with Psygnosis being a close runner-up). The only time I was disappointed was with the Amiga version of Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon (the Atari ST and DOS screenshots look pretty good, however). Man, what happened with that title? I was looking forward to cutting-edge graphics, but was rewarded with ugly, splotchy images instead (I still played it, though). The gameplay wasn't bad, but the graphics really disappointed me.
But, enough reminiscing. Thanks for the stories and the edits! If you need any help with Wikimarkup, leave a message on my user page. One thing you'll have to get used to is signing your posts (not edits to the article, just posts on Talk pages). You can do this with 3 or 4 tildes (~~~ or ~~~~). The latter is preferred since it also leaves a timestamp. Thanks again! — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, your comment: "There was another much older guy involved, Richard Something but I'm drawing a blank. He'd been involved in the founding of EA and was supposedly the guy who had the idea of packaging the games like record albums and promoting the designers like rock stars."
As far as I know, both of those things (the packaging, treating programmers like Rock Stars) were Trip Hawkins ideas, the guy who founded Electronic Arts. I think this "Richard" guy may have been pulling your leg (or trying to take undue credit). — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the Amiga version of Sinbad was the first and followed much later by the others. It was done almost entirely by Bill Williams, a certifiable genius but not the greatest artist. ( http://www.dadgum.com/giantlist/archive/williams.html ) I only knew him from telephone conversations and was shocked to learn many years later that he'd been struggling with cycstic fibrosis all his life.

The Amiga Sinbad wasn't the prettiest thing but if you look back on the special effects Bill created for that game it was technically amazing. The other versions had better artwork but were far more pedestrian in execution. Like a lot of early game developers, Bill's graphics looked pretty good until machines like the Amiga upped the ante and allowed more conventionally trained artists to compete in the gaming field. The Amiga really marked the end of the one-man development team. Even for small projects the capabilites of the platforms have grown far too much to expect any one person to cover all the bases without some aspects being mediocre.

The EA guy I'm remembering may have been Richard Melmon. None of the sites that mention him show a picture. Bob Jacob believed he had far more to do with EA's conceptual beginnings than credited and my own dealings with Hawkins made me inclined to believe it. Trip Hawkins was very much Steve Jobs protege, especially in the art of self-aggrandizement. He once told me the most blatant lie to explain the severe delay in porting One-on-One Basketball fromt he Apple to the Atari. It was really about holding out for a new disk copy protection technique that had been promised (and lasted less than 24 hours from when the game reached retail) than about the port itself. Hawkins tried to claim this was because EA was creating a magical development system that would make it as easy to port games to the PC as it was from the Apple to the Atari or C64. Considering how many Apple II games made the transition to the Atari in periods measured in days, the idea of holding up a release for months to accommodate the then miniscule PC game market was worse than ridiculous. It suggested insanity if true. I've never believed Hawkins to be insane but a boldfaced liar? Sure.

Well, I hate to sound anti-establishment, but my dealings with most suits has shown they're very good at lying, even when telling the truth would serve just as well. For example:
  • I was working on a game for a now-defunct company. The company's owner came by with a potential investor. He asked me to run it and said, "Yeah, it's mostly all in assembly for maximum speed." That was a total lie. It was all in C (and some C++) because it would've been insane to program the game all in assembly in that era. Some things we were translated to assembly (like blitting and other graphic routines), but only what had to be. Everything else was in C/C++ so it was much easier to debug and modify.
  • A friend of mine was working on a high-end 3D simulation and experimented with a new effect they wanted. The boss-guy came by his cube and asked about it. He showed it to him, but told him it wouldn't be in the production code until he totally revamped the sim's scene graph (not a trivial thing). A few minutes later the boss came back by with some potential customers and showed them the effect/feature and said, "This feature will be in our next release" (total BS).
  • Some higher-ups at another company I worked at were on a conference call with a customer. The boss and lead programmer said that the (near complete) game was designed from the ground up with multi-player in mind. The producer, however, told the truth: we hadn't even started thinking about multi-player yet, but, what features did they have in mind? He was confident they could implement whatever they wanted. He was fired as soon as the phone call ended (and he was a gnarly producer).
I have some other stories of how an engineer stepped up to fix a problem, and all of a sudden, in the suit's eyes, the problem was now the engineers fault, but I won't drone on... — Frecklefoot | Talk 19:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Man, I just finished reading this interview with Randy. Man, I shared an office with this guy for the better part of a month and I never knew I was in the presence of greatness! Really, all I knew about him was that he just lost his job from Kodiak, a company I knew very little about. I didn't know he programmed some of The Greats from Cinemaware! Geez, and we talked all the time. I guess I should've asked about his past. He sure wasn't one to toot his own horn.
I even remember hearing his end of a phone interview. One of his answers was "no, just gameplay stuff." He just claimed he was a game play programmer! He could've mentioned what he did with Cinemaware--that would mean a great deal in my book!
Please remember to sign your posts signing your posts with 3 or 4 tildes (~~~ or ~~~~). :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

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