Laura Nikolich () was an American video game designer and software developer. She worked for

Parker Brothers Parker Brothers (known as Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883. It remained family owne ...

in the early 1980s where she was the sole developer for the 1982

Atari 2600 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 ...

game ''

Spider-Man Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appearance, first appeared in the anthology comic book ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 (August 1962) in ...

'' and programmed the

ColecoVision ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision. The console offered a closer expe ...

version of '' Frogger II: ThreeeDeep!''.

Education

Laura Nikolich graduated in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in engineering technology from

University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States, and other campuses in St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, ...

. She learned

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

, which she used for pager technology at

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

. Real-time programming in assembly language gave her skills useful for the emerging

video game industry The video game industry is the tertiary industry, tertiary and quaternary industry, quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the video game development, development, marketing, distribution (marketing), distribution, ...

Career

Laura Nikolich was the fifth programmer hired at

in 1981 and the fourth hired for Atari 2600 development. Nikolich worked alone for six months on the first game based on

. Working with the limitations of the system, she designed it as a vertically scrolling game, which was challenging to create. ''

'' was released in 1982, promoted through television commercials, and was a success. After ''Spider-Man'', Nikolich developed a ''

Care Bears Care Bears are multi-colored bears, painted in 1981 by artist Elena Kucharik to be used on greeting cards from American Greetings. They were turned into plush teddy bears and featured in ''The Care Bears in the Land Without Feelings'' (1983) and ...

'' game, which was never released. The game was dropped because, according to Nikolich, “marketing didn’t know what they wanted”. Nikolich was proudest of her work on ''Care Bear''s because of its technical challenges. Her work on manipulating the sprites made the design more lively and impressed people.

Games

* ''

'', Atari 2600, Parker Brothers (1982) * '' Frogger II: ThreeeDeep!'', ColecoVision, Parker Brothers (1984)

Unreleased

* ''Care Bears'', Atari 2600, Parker Brothers (1983) * ''Orbit'', ColecoVision, Parker Brothers (1983)

References

External links

Interview
on the Spider-Man Crawlspace YouTube channel
''Spider-Man''
TV commercial (1982) {{DEFAULTSORT:Nikolich, Laura 1954 births 2024 deaths American video game designers American video game programmers American women video game designers Women video game programmers