MicroIllusions was a

computer game developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...

and

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

of the

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

era (late 1980s to early 1990s). Based in

Granada Hills, California Granada Hills is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. The community has a sports program and a range of city recreation centers. The neighborhood has fourteen public and ten private schools. History The Granada Hills ...

, the company was a strong supporter of the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

and typically released titles on that platform before

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

it to others.

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

cancelled them as an affiliated publisher after a year of signing them up. The company went out of business in or about 1990.

General

The company impact has been summed up as, "During MicroIllusion’s brief existence they produced some visionary software that, like so much else that came out of the Amiga scene, gave the world an imperfect glimpse of its

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

future. That’s as true of

Photon Paint Photon Paint is a Hold-And-Modify (HAM) based bitmap graphics editor for the Amiga, first released in 1987. Photon Paint was the first bitmap graphics editor to incorporate 3D solid modeling and texture mapping as an integral part of the program ...

, the progenitor of photographic-quality visual editors like

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

, as it is of Music-X, a forerunner of easy-to-use music packages like

GarageBand GarageBand is a software application by Apple Inc., Apple for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or Podcast, podcasts. It is a lighter, amateur-oriented offshoot of Logic Pro. GarageBand was originally released for ...

Founding

According to ''The Digital Antiquarian'', "The seeds of MicroIllusions were planted during one day’s idle conversation when Steinert complained to

David Joiner David "Talin" Joiner (born June 1958) is an American game programmer, who created games such as '' The Faery Tale Adventure'' and '' Inherit the Earth'', contributed audio to '' Defender of the Crown II'' (1993), engineering for '' SimCity 4: Rush ...

that, while the Amiga supposedly had speech synthesis built into its operating system, he had never actually heard his machines talk; .. He proved as good as his word within a few hours. Impressed, Steinert asked if he could sell the new program ' talk to me' in his store for a straight 50/50 split. Given his circumstances, Joiner was hardly in a position to quibble. When the program sold well, Steinert decided to get into Amiga software development in earnest with the help of his wunderkind."

Applications

*''

1.0'' (2D painting with 3D generation) (1987)

*''Photon Video: Cel Animator'' (animation) (1988) Amiga *''Transport Controller'' (animation) (1988) Amiga *''Photon Paint 2.0'' (2D painting with 3D generation) (1989) Amiga / Mac *''Edit Decision List Processor'' (film/video production) (1989) Amiga *''Genesis: The Third Day'' (3D landscape generation) (1991) Amiga *Music-X (1989) David Joiner (Talin) *Music-X Jr *Dynamic CAD 2.3 *Dynamic Word *The Planetarium *Micro Midi *Dynamic Publisher

Games

* Discovery (1986), Amiga, MS-DOS, C64, Mega Drive. Created by David Joiner (Talin). Addons were released: language, Math, Science, Social Studies, Spell, Trivia 1 * '' Discovery 2.0'' (1990) * Blackjack Academy (1987), Amiga, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS created by Westwood * '' Ebonstar'' (1988), Amiga, created by the Dreamers Guild * '' Romantic Encounters at the Dome'' (1988) Amiga, MS-DOS, Mac * ''

Faery Tale Adventure ''The Faery Tale Adventure'' is a 1987 action role-playing video game designed by David Joiner and published by MicroIllusions for the Amiga, and later ported to the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, and Sega Genesis. The MS-DOS version is titled ''The Faery ...

'' (1987) Amiga, C64, MS-DOS, Mega Drive * Galactic Invasion (1987) Amiga. Developed by Silent Software. * Tracers (1988) Developed by Hacker Corp. Amiga * '' Fire Power'' (1988) Amiga, C64, Apple IIGS, MS-DOS * Mainframe (1988) C64 *''

Craps Academy Craps is a dice game in which players bet on the outcomes of the roll of a pair of dice. Players can wager money against each other (playing " street craps") or against a bank (" casino craps"). Because it requires little equipment, "street ...

'' (1988) Europe-only release, Amiga Developed by Silent Software. *'' Questmaster 1: Prism of Heheutotol'' (a.k.a. Dondra: A New Beginning) (1988) C64, MS-DOS (Apple II version by

Spectrum Holobyte Spectrum HoloByte, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher. The company, founded in 1983, was known for its simulation games, notably the ''Falcon'' series of combat flight simulators, and for publishing the first version of ''Te ...

) * Turbo (1989) Developed by Silent Software. Amiga *''

Laser Squad ''Laser Squad'' is a turn-based tactics video game, originally released for the ZX Spectrum and later for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga, Sharp MZ, Sharp MZ-800 and Atari ST and PC computers between 1988 and 1992. It was designed by Ju ...

'' (published, 1989) Developed by Blade (Teque) Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, C64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, MSX, PC-98 * ''

Dr. Plummet's House of Flux ''Dr. Plummet's House of Flux'' is a video game developed by MicroIllusions in 1989 for the Amiga. Plot ''Dr. Plummet's House of Flux'' is a game in which the unusual Dr. Plummet has invited the player character to come to his House of Flux for ...

'' (1989) * Jetsons George Jetson and the Legend of Robotopia (1989), Amiga, Mac. Developed by

The Dreamers Guild The Dreamers Guild was a North American publisher and developer of video games, that operated from 1988 until 1997 (since 1994 in Chatsworth, California). History Authors Bryan Kritzell and David C. Logan reported that The Dreamers Guild was ...

* Land Of Legends, Unreleased, Developed by Parsec Soft Systems. * '' Faery Tale Adventure II: Halls of the Dead'' (1997), sometimes credited to MicroIllusions, was completed by

for various platforms.

References

{{reflist

External links

MicroIllusions profile
from

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controlle ...

Defunct companies based in California Defunct video game companies of the United States Video game development companies Video game publishers