On Fri, 14 May 1999 07:06:59 -0400 (EDT), Jeff Anderson <mayday19@idt.net>
wrote:
>In the article was a shot of Larry
>Rosenthal and Dan Sunday at "vectorbeam's engineering computer."
Speaking of Dan Sunday, I received some email from him that was pretty
interesting, I've been meaning to post it, so I spent some time and cleaned it
up and here it is.
For the record, I've talked with Scott Boden's ex-wife who denies that
Vectorbeam had anything to do with Star Castle, but that Star Castle was written
by Scott Boden.
I had always heard that Star Castle was designed by Tim Skelly and programmed by
Scott Boden. Maybe Tim Skelly got his ideas after going over some old Dan
Sunday code?
You be the judge...
-Zonn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 20:35:46 -0400
Subject: Vectorbeam history
I found it interesting there is still an interest in the Cinematronics /
Vectorbeam story.
My name is Dan Sunday. I was a friend of Larry Rosenthal's, and when he broke
from Cinematronics to start Vectorbeam I became his lead (and only)
programmer.
Vectorbeam lasted for one year, and was then bought by Cinematronics at which
time I left. During the year of VB existence, we (Larry and myself)
designed and programmed the following video arcade games:
* Scramble
* Speed Freak
* Tailgunner
* some word game whose name I can't remember
* Star Castle
The first three were marketed by VB in that year. The last one, Star Castle,
was not fully completed when Cinematronics bought VB and it. We had the
inner castle rotating rings and bricks working, as well as the attacking
space ships. I don't know who took over the completion of this game, but it
was conceived and initially developed by Larry and myself. (There is actually
a very amusing story concerning the origin of this game, which I may tell if
there is sufficient interest in it).
When Larry sold VB, for 2 million dollars, Cinematronics said they would keep
me on as a programmer, but it was a big let down for me at the time after
helping make VB a winning company and hoping for better.
So, you may want to append your history with this info.
Regards,
- Dan Sunday
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 21:20:39 -0500
Subject: Re: Vectorbeam history
Bill: Thanks for passing my info onto Zonn who is interested in some
details. I'll copy you on further info that he has asked about when I
send it to him. As for your question:
> Out of curiosity, what happened to Larry? I talked to several people
> from Cinematronics and no one knew what he did after Vectorbeam.
I don't know either. After we left Vectorbeam, I decided to move (back)
to the east coast. The night before I left, I had dinner with Larry and
his girl friend at some restaurant in Berkeley. After that I have never
seen or heard of him again. I once tried to find him thru the internet,
and couldn't. One possible lead is that he has a brother "Marty"
(Martin) who used to live in Berkeley. Marty and I worked in the same
lab at UCB, and it was through Marty that I came to know Larry. If you
do find out where Larry (or Marty) is, please let me know, as I would
like to look them up.
Best,
- Dan Sunday
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 22:22:00 -0500
Subject: Re: The old Vectorbeam days...
Zonn:
Thanks for your interest in these vector games. They were a lot of fun.
I haven't gotten your emulator yet, but will do so. I will try to answer some
of your questions in the following:
Zonn wrote:
> There has been a long, on going, search for the game Scramble, and all that
> has ever been found is a B&W hand drawn flyer, and one guys memory of
> playing it once. There was some doubt as to whether this game had indeed
> really existed, or whether only the flyer was circulated.
>
> It's nice to > know it at least existed!
Yes, it existed. It was the very first game the new Vectorbeam company made.
Remember, Vectorbeam only existed for 1 year: I recall Sept 1978 to Aug 1979,
but may be off a month either way. So when it first started things were
really hectic -- a scramble. We were trying to get everything off the ground,
and get a game to a big annual trade show in Chicago. We managed to quickly
put together a video pinball game, Scramble, and actually it to the Chicago
trade show.
It sold some, but not big, however enough to keep us alive. Next was Speed
Freak which was more of a success. Then Tailgunner which was the third rated
game that year (after Pac Man and Space Invaders I recall), and was a very big
success. That was the game the resulted in Cinematronics making an offer to
buy Vectorbeam from Larry, and he accepted and left. So did some of the rest
of us, myself included. Right at the end, though, a new game was being
developed in the R&D lab: OOPS.
> I have another question you might be able to answer. There is a rumor of a
> game called "OOPS!" The object of this games was to control a hypodermic
> needle and inject spermicide, and thereby keeping a bunch of sperm from
> reaching the egg. The game was supposedly written by Larry Rosenthal, or at
> least his company (I guess that would have been you?!?)
For the record, the max company size was about 80 employees. I don't remember
many full names, but:
Gil was the general manager, and ran the company. He put it all together and
made the place work. He was really upset when Larry dumped us all, and I
heard that he was trying to sue Larry for some of the profit from the sale.
There was an electrical tech, Sid, who did all kinds of stuff. Eventually,
when Exidy bought Vectorbeam (you knew that, right?), Sid programmed Armor
Attack (I think that's what it was called) with a helicopter.
In the final summer I also had a summer student (CS major from Berkeley)
working for me. He went back to school.
But back to OOPS:
> Ever hear of this game? Did it exist? Was it tested only, and never
> marketed? Or is this just an "arcade urban legend"?
Yes indeed, OOPS existed. Part of its inspiration was that Larry was obsessed
with a very attractive young lady who was playing around with him (maybe
trying to dump him, but that only made Larry more obsessive about her).
Anyway, he sometimes seemed more concerned about winning her than making
Vectorbeam work. OOPS came out of this obsession. Larry had dreamed up this
game where an egg was in the center of the screen, and sperm were coming on
from all directions. One player controlled the sperm, and turning left caused
them all to turn left, so the other player didn't really know which one you
were steering. The other flew a syringe around which when fired would send
out foam that killed sperm.
Initial prototypes demo'ed that the syringe almost always won. So, we fixed
the syringe in the center of the egg, and allowed the player to just rotate
it. This was happening when Cinematronics bought Vectorbeam, and then Tom
Shroud (?) took over. They occupied the front office, and brought along two
beautiful secretaries. After a few days, one of them came into our R&D lab (a
small room), saw what was happening, and ran out exclaiming to the whole
office: "they've got sperm on the TV monitor!". Everyone cracked up.
Now, the game potential was clearly there, but marketing an adult game to
arcades filled with minors was not a good idea. So, the sperm became space
ships, and the egg became a Star Castle. This was how Star Castle was
conceived. To balance the game difficulty, we came up with the idea of
rotating rings of bricks that had to be blown away. We had this working when
i left, but i didn't stay long enough to see Star Castle finished. However, i
consider it one of the games that larry and i created. I don't know who took
credit for it in the end.
> You wouldn't by chance (and I'm sure it's a small one!) know the whereabouts
> of these games, or ROM images, would you? It'd be cool to actually *play*
> these games!
I looked around and found the following:
* misc items, like Larry's 2 patents
* a "Maintenance Manual" for Speed Freak. It is very detailed with photos of
boards, parts lists, and circuit diagrams. I can send you a xerox if you want
it.
> For what it's worth Larry Rosenthal's version of Space War is still the most
> playable, multi-player game, ever designed, in my very humble opinion!
Yes. I agree.
> I have one of only two, found to date, Cocktail version of this game sitting
> in my dining room, a full description (and pictures) can be found at:
> http://www.e-volve.net/~clay/Spacewar.html Did Vectorbeam build this
> directly, or was this licensed out?
I remember them making a (very) small number of these, and placing them in
some lounges for testing. I don't remember what happened as a result. You
are fortunate to have one.
Best wishes,
- Dan Sunday
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 20:12:41 -0500
Subject: Re: The old Vectorbeam days...
Zonn: Glad my info was of interest to you and others.
To answer your other questions:
> #1 Do you mind if I post your letter to a "vectorgames" mailing list? It's a
> list of people pretty obsessed with video games using vector graphics. And
> as a followup would you mind if I placed a copy of your letter on the
> Cinematronics homepage?
That's fine. I have no problem with you posting this info. One thing: since
I'm sending this from my wife's email account, her name "Jassica Sunday" is
being printed as the sender. Please edit this with my name "Dan Sunday".
[No problem, I chopped off all the headers. -- Zonn]
> #2 You wouldn't have any documentation on the instruction set would you? It
> would be interesting knowing what Larry originally called the instructions.
The instruction set was very minimal, eg: there were no multiply or divide
operations. There was just a shift right with add if a set bit was shifted
out. This was used to do a multiply by repeating it the number of bits in the
word. As for the full instruction set: it was described in one of Larry's
patents, namely: US Patent # 4,053,740 (Oct 11, 1977) for a "Video Game
System". This patent explains a lot about both hardware and software, and
gives the instruction set in Larry's computer.
[Maybe minimal, but it allowed a 12x12 bit multiply in 24 cycles! Something
the 80188 couldn't do, more similar to the 80386! -- Zonn]
When I started working with Larry, we had a Z80 macro assembler with the Z80
assembly instructions removed. We then had a set of macros defining the full
instruction set plus more for Larry's machine. This let us define, for eg,
multiplication as a macro that got expanded into the correct number of basic
machine instructions. I was sure I had a listing of what all those macros
were, but haven't found it yet. I suspect it's in one of the many unpacked
boxes I have. I'll look around.
[I never heard if he found this or not. -- Zonn]
- Dan Sunday
Received on Fri May 14 16:00:10 1999
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Aug 01 2003 - 00:32:11 EDT