Lawrence Holland

Lawrence Holland is an American game designer, and president of Totally Games. He is most famous for the Star Wars: X-Wing computer game series published by LucasArts.

Early life

Lawrence Holland studied Anthropology and Prehistoric Archeology, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University in 1979. He spent the following 2 years on archaeological expeditions in Africa, Europe, India and the United States before changing careers to game design. His interest in computer programming initially started when his college roommate attempted to program a game onto his computer. After buying his own computer, Lawrence Holland studied to figure out how the computer worked and began his career in game design. In 1983, Holland was hired by Human Engineered Software (HESware) to program and convert arcade games to home computers. He started his own team, Micro Imagery, while working with HESware in 1984. During this time, he invented his own game and composed/programmed music for numerous video games.

Early games

His first game was called "Slime" for the VIC-20. He then went on to do the music for the Commodore 64 and Apple II versions of The Bard's Tale.^[1]

Other early games included: Spike's Peak, Super Zaxxon and Project Space Station.^[2]

LucasArts

He soon became an independent game developer, and achieved notability through a series of World War II flight simulators developed for LucasArts (then LucasFilm Games): Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

The success of his WWII flight simulators lead to him being approached to develop a series of space flight simulators in the Star Wars franchise. The resulting game Star Wars: X-Wing was an instant classic, that led to the even more successful Star Wars: TIE Fighter.

Recent work

Lawrence took a break from LucasArts owned licenses in 2002 to work on a Star Trek licensed product Star Trek: Bridge Commander for Activision. His next release was a return to WWII flight simulators with Secret Weapons Over Normandy in 2003. The game was well received but sales were disappointing. The most recent release, 2007's Alien Syndrome (2007), for the Sony PSP and the Nintendo Wii, continued this trend with even lower review scores and sales.

References