Synapse Software

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Synapse Software Corporation (also known as SynSoft) was an American computer game development and publishing company active during the early-1980s. They developed primarily for the Atari 400 and 800 computers, and (later on) the Commodore 64 and IBM PCjr. They released many highly-regarded arcade games including Fort Apocalypse, Blue Max, Alley Cat and Shamus. The company was purchased by Brøderbund Software in late 1984.

[edit] Early games

Synapse's first releases were for the Atari machines, starting in 1981. Most of their early games were re-writes of classic games from the past, or "pseudo-action" conversions of current arcade games. For instance, Protector was a take-off of the popular arcade game Defender, but less action-oriented. In Protector the player picks up citizens of a city and ferries them one-by-one to a second city, and then again to an underground vault to protect them from the explosion of a nearby volcano.

Another notable early release was Nautilus, which featured a "split screen" to allow two players to play at once. In one-player mode the user controlled a submarine, the Nautilus, in the lower screen while the computer took control of a destroyer, the Colossus, in the upper screen. In two player mode another player took control of the destroyer. By most accounts Nautilus is the first game to feature a split-screen multi-player mode.^{[citation needed]} The same basic system was later re-used in other games, including Shadow World.

Other early games included Survivor, Chicken and Slime, many written by Mike Potter.

As the programming team grew more familiar with the Atari system, a second wave of games followed from an expanded group of developers. Popular releases included Shamus, Rainbow Walker, Blue Max, Fort Apocalypse and an official port of the arcade game Zaxxon (for the c-64 only, the atari port was from DataSoft). It was during this period that the company branched out and started supporting other platforms en masse, especially the Commodore 64, which became a major platform. Many of Synapse's games made their way to the UK as part of the initial wave of U.S. Gold-distributed imports; some were also converted to run on the more popular UK home computers, such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Although it is for their success with arcade-style games that they will be primarily remembered, they latterly branched out into other areas of software. Some time before their demise, Synapse had started work on text adventures (or as they called them, "Electronic Novels".) They were also developing a series of applications including SynFile+, SynTrend, SynCalc and SynStock. (SynFile+ was written by Steve Ahlstrom and Dan Moore).

[edit] Downfall

Synapse later got into financial difficulty. According to Steve Hales [1], they had taken a calculated risk in developing the aforementioned series of applications, and had entered into a collaboration with Atari Corp. When Jack Tramiel purchased Atari Corp. from Warner Communications, he refused to pay for the 40,000 units of software that had been shipped, even though (as the new owner of Atari) the contract should have been binding upon him.

Having been thrown into a cash crisis, Synapse was purchased by Brøderbund Software in late 1984. Although the intention had been to keep Synapse going, the market had changed, and they were unable to make money from the electronic novels. Approximately one year after the takeover, Brøderbund closed Synapse down.