Larry Kaplan is an American

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

and

video game programmer A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall ...

. Kaplan studied at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

from 1968 through 1974 and graduated with a degree in Computer Science. Larry was inspired to work in the game development industry because of games like '' Breakout'' by

Atari, Inc Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. The company was founded in Sunnyv ...

Career

After graduating in 1974, Kaplan worked at Control Systems Industries for two years. There he worked on the programming behind computerized power grids and was stationed in Missoula, Missouri. He started at Atari, Inc. in August 1976 and wrote video games for the

Atari Video Computer System The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...

, including two of the console's launch titles: '' Air-Sea Battle'' and '' Street Racer''. Kaplan was one of the developers of the operating system for the Atari 400 and 800 home computers. He joined

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 ...

two months after its founding in late 1979. Kaplan left Activision in 1982 to pursue starting his own gaming hardware company Hi Toro. After Hi Toro, Kaplan started work at Amiga in 1982, but left the same year. Afterwards, Kaplan went back to work at

. and stayed until Spring of 1983, and during this time he acted as vice president of the Consumer Software Division. In 1994, Kaplan began working at

Capcom is a Japanese video game company. It has created a number of critically acclaimed and List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil'', ''Monster ...

and collaborated on a football game project and left in 1995. The same year he was hired at 3DO working on their gaming system that was in development, the M2. After leaving 3DO in late 1995, Kaplan started working at PDI as the Lead Technical Director on the movie

Antz ''Antz'' is a 1998 American animated adventure comedy film directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson from a screenplay written by Todd Alcott and the writing team of Chris and Paul Weitz. It was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks An ...

the same month. Kaplan ended up leaving the position in Spring of 1996.

Games

Atari 2600

* ''

Combat Combat (French language, French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent Conflict (process), conflict between multiple combatants with the intent to harm the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed (Hand-to-hand combat, not usin ...

'' (1977, Atari) launch title, developed with Joe Decuir, Steve Mayer, and Larry Wagner * '' Air-Sea Battle'' (1977, Atari) launch title * '' Street Racer'' (1977, Atari) launch title * '' Brain Games'' (1978, Atari) * ''

Bowling Bowling is a Throwing sports#Target sports, target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a bowling ball, ball toward Bowling pin, pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). Most references to ''bowling'' are ...

'' (1979, Atari) * ''Bridge'' (1980, Activision) * '' Kaboom!'' (1981, Activision)

Atari 8-bit computers

* '' Super Breakout'' (1979, Atari) port of the arcade video game

References

External links

*
Listing of Kaplan's library of work
at

AtariAge AtariAge is a website focusing on classic Atari video games. The site features gaming news, historical archives, discussion forums, and an online store. It was founded in 1998. Taking its name from the 1982–84 '' Atari Age'' magazine, the site ...

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of California, Berkeley alumni American video game designers American video game programmers Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients {{videogame-bio-stub