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Exidy Games
Exidy was a developer and manufacturer of coin-operated amusements. The company was founded by H.R. "Pete" Kauffman and Samuel Hawes in 1973. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics". Notable games released by Exidy include ''Circus'', '' Death Race'', '' Star Fire'', ''Venture'', ''Pepper II'', ''Mouse Trap'', '' Targ'' and '' Spectar''. Game history Pete Kauffman (1923 – 2015) was a marketing executive at Ramtek (company) in 1972 and was one of several employees of the company who played the original Atari ''Pong'' prototype at Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Believing coin-operated video games would become a major business, he left Ramtek in late 1973 to establish Exidy with Ampex engineer Samuel Hawes. Exidy found competing with larger video game companies such as Atari, Inc. difficult. The company's Lila Zinter claimed in 1983 that "Exidy is an innovator, but ... we have a hard time breaking through the politics of getting a ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privately Held Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ''Forbes'' survey of closely held U.S. businesses sold a trillion dollars' worth of goods and service ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games, typically shaped to resemble a pistol. Early history The first light guns were produced in the 1930s, following the development of light-sensing vacuum tubes. In 1936, the technology was introduced in arcade shooting games, beginning with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite. These games evolved throughout subsequent decades, culminating in Sega's ''Periscope'', released in 1966 as the company's first successful game, which requires the player to target cardboard ships. ''Periscope'' is an early electro-mechanical game, and the first arcade game to cost one quarter per play. Sega's 1969 game ''Missile'' features electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen, and its 1972 game ''Killer Shark'' features a mounted light gun with targets whose movement and reactions are displayed using back image projection onto a screen. Nintendo released the Beam G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exidy Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a home computer system released in 1978 by the video game company Exidy. Based on the Zilog Z80 and the general layout of the emerging S-100 standard, the Sorcerer was comparatively advanced when released, especially when compared to the contemporary more commercially successful Commodore PET and TRS-80. The basic design was proposed by Paul Terrell, formerly of the Byte Shop, a pioneering computer store. Lacking strong support from its parent company, who were focused on the successful arcade game market, the Sorcerer was sold primarily through international distributors and technology licensing agreements. Distribution agreements with Dick Smith Electronics in Australia and Liveport in the UK as well as Compudata which included a manufacturing license to build, market and distribute the Tulip line of computers in Europe. The system remains relatively unknown outside these markets. The Exidy Data Systems division was sold to a Wall Street firm, Biotech, in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personal Computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large, costly minicomputers and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. Primarily in the late 1970s and 1980s, the term home computer was also used. Institutional or corporate computer owners in the 1960s had to write their own programs to do any useful work with the machines. While personal computer users may develop their own applications, usually these systems run commercial software, free-of-charge software (" freeware"), which is most often proprietary, or free and open-source software, which is provided in "ready-to-run", or binary, form. Software for personal computers is typically developed and distributed independently from the hardware or operating system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Byte Shop
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common 8-bit definition, network protocol documents such as The Internet Protocol () refer to an 8-bit byte as an octet. Those bits in an octet are usually counted with numbering from 0 to 7 or 7 to 0 depending on the bit endianness. The first bit is number 0, making the eighth bit number 7. The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used. The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Terrell
Paul Terrell is an American businessman. In December 1975, he founded the first personal computer retailer shop. He helped popularize personal computing to the hobbyist and home computing markets, and was the first retailer to sell an Apple Computer, the Apple I. The Byte Shop Paul Terrell started the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California in December 1975. By January, he was approached by individuals who wanted to open their own stores. He signed dealership agreements with them, whereby he would take a percentage of their profits, and soon there were Byte Shops in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto, Fresno, and Portland, Oregon. In March 1976, Terrell incorporated as Byte, Inc. and was one of the four big computer retailers, along with Dick Heisers, ("The Computer Store"), Peachtree in Atlanta, and Dick Brown. Apple I The Byte Shop was the first retailer of the original Apple I computer. At the time Steve Jobs was planning to sell bare circuit boards for $40, but Terrell tol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software, Inc. was a video game developer founded by John Swiderski in 1985. Mean Hamster Software created several games for the Atari 5200 from 1999-2004. They then created ''Myst'' for Windows Mobile in 2005, and after the release of '' Riven: The Sequel to Myst'' for Pocket PC in 2006, Mean Hamster began work on its first casual games. The company is located in Deer Park, Washington (just outside Spokane, WA). In 2006, Mean Hamster Software acquired the rights to the Exidy catalog, which includes titles such as ''Crossbow'', ''Venture'' and ''Mouse Trap''. The company closed its doors and laid off all its remaining employees in September 2012. Casual game development In 2007, Mean Hamster began work on casual games and partnered with PlayFirst to produce a casual game entitled ''Pet Shop Hop'' which was released in March 2008. From there, Mean Hamster partnered with Big Fish Games, Namco, and Mesmo, Inc. to develop more titles. Games developed by Mean Hamste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Nicholson
Ken Nicholson is a video game developer. Career Nicholson is a video game developer and Windows graphics pioneer. He was the founder of GamePC Consortium and inventor of the technology used by Microsoft as the basis for Windows' DirectX graphics. Examples include: * Exidy games: Crossbow, Cheyenne, Combat, Clay Pigeon, Crackshot, Chiller, Spin-A-Ball, Top Secret, Vertigo, Vortex *Epyx games: California Games for Commodore 64, The Games: Summer Edition for Commodore 64 and IBM PC *Media Vision games: Quantum Gate, Quantum Gate II, Critical Path, Forever Growing Garden *Strategic Simulations Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was a video game developer and publisher with over 100 titles to its credit from its founding in 1979 to its dissolution in 1994. The company was especially noted for its numerous wargames, its official compu ... games: Secret of the Silver Blades for MS-DOS * ATI games: Mortal Kombat III for Windows 95, Super Bubsy for Windows 95 Refere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chiller (video Game)
''Chiller'' is a light gun arcade game released in 1986 by Exidy. An unlicensed port was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 by American Game Cartridges in the US, and in Australia by HES ( Home Entertainment Suppliers), with the option of using either the standard controller or the NES Zapper. In the game, the player takes on the role of an unseen torturer who must maim, mutilate, and murder restrained non-player characters in a variety of dungeon settings. Few of the NPCs in the game are capable of fighting back, with the challenge element lying in how quickly the player can cause each of the victims to die. Gameplay The game consists of four main levels: the ''torture chamber'', the ''rack room'', the ''haunted house hallway'', and the ''graveyard''. If enough score is accumulated by completing these levels successfully, a final ''bonus round'' is unlocked, which consists of a target practice where objects traveling at increasingly high speeds must ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cheyenne (video Game)
''Cheyenne'' is a video game manufactured by Exidy and released in arcades in 1984. In this western style shooting game, the player must guide and protect "Buster Badshot" through various scenes of danger that take place in the old west, using the light gun. The gameplay is similar to Exidy's ''Crossbow''. Gameplay Stages Each level has at least three stages that can be selected in any order by shooting the corresponding hanging picture. The stages are all based in classic old western locales, such as graveyards, canyons, saloons, mines, deserts, forests, ghost towns, and the like. Once all the stages in a level have been completed, the player will then move on to a bonus "Target Practice" stage. If the player hits all the objects in this stage within the time limit, they are awarded a "Bonus Buster" - an extra life - and allowed to proceed to the next level. Enemies Throughout each stage, Buster is attacked by many enemies and will find himself in a variety of perilous situa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect of all human societies, a cultural universal. While scholars agree that music is defined by a few specific elements, there is no consensus on their precise definitions. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance, though the topic itself extends into academic disciplines, criticism, philosophy, and psychology. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice. In some musical contexts, a performance or composition may be to some extent improvised. For instance, in Hindustani classical music, the performer plays spontaneously while following a partially defined structure and using characteristic motifs. In modal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditionally, in the twentieth century, they were created with foley. In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point ''without'' the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are treated as separate elements. Dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, even though the processes applied to such as reverberation or flanging effects, often are called "sound effects". This area and sound design have been slowly merged since th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
