Cinematronics history followup

I forwarded the Cinematronics history followups to Tim (hey, I'm a
gofer!), and he sent along a nice followup, included below.

James

Thanks for sending these tidbits on, James! Zonn especially is very
serious
about his research. My. God, he owns a Sundance! Credit should go to Scott
for remembering names for me. I really am bad at it and I wrote him to
refresh my memory.

For those who noted the "Space War"/ "Space Wars" difference, you, of
course, are correct. My rule of thumb is "just don't call it Star Wars!"
(I
also keep turning that "i before e" rule around.) A fun story about the
cabinet. I never saw Larry's original version, but I do remember the
Cinematronics version was a MONSTER. I heard one distributor joke with
Pierce that when sales finally slowed down "he could sell them to third
world countries as apartment buildings." ;>)

Some notes to Zonn, who, I think did an excellent job of interpreting Dan
Sunday's comments. Now that my territorial rage has subsided, I can tell
you
that I remember trying to talk Dan out of leaving the business. Of course
he
was right to be bitter and I was still deluded, but I was disappointed
that
he left. He was a terrific programmer who managed to do true 3D
calculations
with shift loops. (Multiplication is easy, division is a bitch.)

As for Sundance, I can never remember the size of the grid because the
original design was 4x4. (and horizontal.) In high school my friends and I
would play 4x4 and 4x4x4 tic-tac-toe to make it interesting. I really
should
remember that I would have had to change it given the limitations on line
count. Side note on this. I have video tape of a 4D version of
tic-tac-toe I
programmed on the Poly 88, the machine that got me designing games. The
fourth dimension came from the fact that you could score a line though
past
moves. Very complicated, very buggy.

BTW, while I did sketches for the cabinet artwork that the artists
referenced, (not all artists like this but Frank and Rick demanded it)
Sundance is the only game I did the art for myself. Yes, it is pretty
funky.
;>)

It's been fun running through this stuff, and I haven't even told anyone
the
really good stories. (Okay, James knows one about Tailgunner.) The giant
list is so much fun because those stories are the ones everybody remembers
because they've been told over and over again.

Thank you all for keeping it alive!
Tim
Received on Wed May 26 22:22:23 1999