MicroGraphic Image

MicroGraphicImage was a computer software company that produced games in the early eighties for predominantly Atari hardware.

Formation

MicroGraphicImage was started by former employees of a company called Games by Apollo. Games by Apollo had been among the companies that had overproduced games for the Atari 2600, creating a glut of cheap games. In the pre-Christmas market of 1983, the company became insolvent. At the time, they had a lot of games in the works for a number of platforms, including the Atari 400/800. Three former programmers from Games by Apollo would go on to form MicroGraphicImage: Tim Martin, Robert Barber, and Cash Foley. Tim Martin had been one of the lead developers on the Atari 2600 platform and Cash Foley had been on the Atari 800.

When Games by Apollo went broke, Tim Martin and another former employee, Robert Barber, developed a game entitled Halloween based on the infamous movie. The Halloween game was innovative for the time, both in content and usage of the Halloween theme music. The contract funded the founding of MicroGraphicImage. The game was released by Wizard Video Games just before the video game crash of 1983-84. This, coupled with the violent content of the game, resulted in poor sales.

Contract development

Tim and Robert's expertise was with the Atari 2600. Furthermore they were dis-satisfied with the kind of money being made through contract game development. Their strategy was to utilize the contract programming to leverage the funding of a software publishing company. They brought Cash Foley in as technical specialist with Atari and Apple computer programming. The trio went to the January 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was there they developed a relationship with Gary Carlson, one of the founding brothers of Brøderbund. In early 1983, MicroGraphicImage developed games under contract for Brøderbund, Parker Brothers, and CBS Electronics while developing Spelunker for themselves.

Spelunker

Tim and Robert had been developing the Spelunker game design for quite a while, however, it was too ambitious for the Atari 2600. Tim, Robert and Cash co-developed the game. Tim was responsible for "game logic", Cash developed the graphic engine and Game Level Editor, and Robert was the graphic designer and Level Editor.

In 1983, many computer games had a "name" attached to it. Spelunker was Tim's original idea and he programmed the game logic. When the game was released, the trio made a strategic decision to put Tim's name out front, convinced this was the first of many games and they would all have their turn. Unfortunately, the game recession that started in the winter of 82, only got worse. It was very difficult to get game distributors to take games from small single game publishers. Even though MicroGraphicImage was able to maintain a steady stream of contract work, the overhead of financial business focus going into publishing, they weren't able to make ends meet.

In 1984, they turned publication over to Brøderbund and made the Commodore 64 version. The C64 was very similar to the Atari and very little had to be changed. It had a Character Graphic mode compatible with the Atari GM1. It had better Sprite and sound support but they didn't do much to exploit this. It was primarily a port.

End of operations

Eventually, MicroGraphicImage ran out of money and closed its doors. The company didn't really go bankrupt; it simply stopped operation. Tim continued working with Brøderbund on a business level and was able recover all debt through the NES and Coin-op versions.

Tim and Cash continued to work together including at an Amiga Publishing company by the name of Inovatronics. Eventually, Tim was a founder of the Internet provider, Internet America. As of 2007, Cash Foley is working at Perot Systems.