Re: Cinematronics history followup

Here's a version with better formatting:

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 22:41:03 1999