Re: whereabouts of Larry Rosenthal

At 01:50 PM 8/19/97 -0500, you wrote:
>> Has anyone ever tried tracking him down to interview him? There
>> are about 180 Larry Rosenthals doing a Yahoo search. One appears
>> to work for Sierra Systems in Oakland, and there is a listing
>> for one in La Mesa. After Vectorbeam and Cine merged, I don't
>> know if he moved down there or not.
>>
>> I'm mostly curious about prototype Vectorbeam games (obviously..)
>
> I sent him some e-mail a couple years ago when I first got Star Castle
>running on my PC. I first sent a message to verify that I had the right
>guy before I started talking about stuff. I had asked if he was the
>Larry Rosenthal who had worked for Cinematronics or Vectorbeam. His
>response was that "yes, he was the one who OWNED vectorbeam. What do
>you want?" I sent a second message describing a little of what was
>going on and he never wrote back again.
> I've also heard from people that Larry doesn't have very fond memorys
>of those days. Everyone I've talked to indicated that Larry didn't make
>out like a bandit (as the history on Zonn's page tells it)

It's not my page, only my ISP...

>but that he
>was more like fucked-up-the-ass-with-no-lube by Cinematronics. He wasn't
>getting much for holding the pattents on the hardware or writing Space
>War, so he took all the documentation (thereby screwing Cinematronics) and
>formed Vectorbeam. I don't recall if there was a lawsuit involved, but
>when Vectorbeam went under, Cinematronics bought the remains for a song
>leaving Larry with not much for all his efforts. One source said that
>while Cinematronics bought Vectorbeam (or something to that effect) it
>was the owners of Cinematronics that bought the pattents from Larry. This
>allowed them to personally collect royalties while Cinematronics was
>going down the shitter.
> Sources.... Hmmm I gained some of this from people on the net, but the
>most important parts were obtained or at least supported through talking
>to Tim Skelly and Scott Boden - both of whom were paid poorly by
>Cinematronics for writing... well you know...
> As for prototype games, Scott said he might have some old roms lying
>around somewhere for one or 2 things. He either couldn't find them or
>didn't look real hard :-) He's busy now being the owner of his own
>company on the west coast. Tim doesn't have any roms. And I don't think
>Larry has anything at all, as it would only serve to rimind him of a time
>he'd rather forget.
> BTW, Tim and Scott have both seen early versions of our emulator and were
>amused. They also appreciate the fact that people still love and play their
>games.

I think Bill did talk to Scott Boden, but most of his communications were
from more of the hardware side of things, and from people who worked at
Cinematronics slightly after the Cinematronics/Vectorbeam split.

The only person who had any ROMs was a technician, who had many of the
already discovered ROM images, he also had Sundance, a pre-production
version of Armor Attack -- where the only differences found was the Morse
Code at the start, and he did have a test ROM written for him to help test
the WG monitors using the Cine->WG conversion board. (I'll look for the
latter and upload them somewhere, Hey Al, can I stick the images on 'spies'?
They're not copyrighted or anything, they were just something Scott whipped
up for this technician as a favor.)

It certainly sounds like the people who left Cinematronics had a different
view of the Vectorbeam/Cinematronics split than those who stayed.

Can someone hack into these guys old bank statements and get the truth here?
(Joking! Are they're any FBI informants on this list?)

As for "poor ol' Larry". Get over it Larry! Geeze! It's been twenty
frickin' years since you designed and built Space War! I have had some
pretty bad experiences in my life, everyone has. Move on! Take your place
as the Hardware/Software Guru that gave us "Space War" one of the all time
classic video game that is still one of the most fun to play!

Don't worry... Be happy...

(It's ok Larry I won't charge you for this session, just don't let it happen
again, next time I'll have to charge you.)

-Dr. Zonn -- Classic Game Physiologist Phd.

PS: Uh maybe I shouldn't be the one to get in touch with Larry huh? I hate
when people I admire go moping around feeling sorry for themselves!
Received on Tue Aug 19 11:43:44 1997