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Dave Ellis (born 1965) is an author, video game writer and video game designer. He is also an avid classic arcade game collector and was a columnist for Gameroom Magazine .
Ellis got his start in the video game industry with MicroProse in March 1992 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. He started out in customer service then transferred to QA and eventually worked his way up to game design. It is here Ellis was first exposed to X-COM , a game franchise he would be involved with one way or another for most of his career. In 1998, Ellis designed a new installment of the X-COM series, a space-shooter, X-COM: Interceptor .
Ellis remained with MicroProse for seven and half years, surviving two buy-outs (from Spectrum HoloByte and then Hasbro Interactive in 1999). During these years he served in various roles on several games. During this period, Ellis moved to the former MicroProse office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to work as the designer of X-COM: Genesis . He along with the rest of the studio were laid off that same year when Hasbro decided it did not want to be a video game developer.
Ellis then went to work for a new developer formed by former members of the Chapel Hill studio, Vicious Cycle Software. After less than a year, he left to work as a game designer for Random Games in Morrisville, North Carolina and remained there until November 2001, since which time the company has gone out of business. In 2005, Ellis rejoined Vicious Cycle as a game designer where he worked as a designer or writer (often both) on 19 titles for the PC and 11 different consoles and handhelds. Ellis remained with the company until November 2015, when most of the team was laid off. Vicious Cycle closed its doors forever in January 2016.
In addition to designing games at Vicious Cycle, Ellis has written the stories and voice-over scripts for most of their games since 2005. Two of these games won game writing awards. Dead Head Fred won the first Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Video Game Writing in 2008, and Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard won the 2009 Spike TV Video Game Award for Best Comedy Game. Many of the titles that Ellis has written for are licensed properties. He has written stories and scripts for games based on licenses from Cartoon Network ( Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations , Ben 10 Alien Force , and Ben 10 Omniverse ), DreamWorks ( Flushed Away , Madagascar 3 and Turbo), Universal (Despicable Me), Namco (Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 1 and 2), and Warner Bros. (Yogi Bear). In 1998, Ellis wrote a story and script based on the Star Trek: The Next Generation franchise for the first-person shooter, Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard . [1]
Since 1995, Ellis has written numerous computer game strategy guides for different publishers. As an avid classic arcade game collector, Ellis is also the author of The Official Price Guide to Classic Video Games, an authoritative work covering all the ins and outs of collecting classic arcade games, handheld electronic games and classic video game consoles.
Ellis holds a BSc from Towson University in Mass Communication (film and television production). Ellis has been married to Meghan Harkins since June 20, 1992. Currently, Meghan and Ellis make their home in North Carolina with a number of pet dogs and one cat.
Hasbro Interactive was an American video game production and publishing subsidiary of Hasbro, the large game and toy company. Several of its studios were closed in early 2001 and most of its properties were sold to Infogrames which completed its studio's closures at the end of 2001.
X.COM is a science fiction video game franchise featuring an elite international organization tasked with countering alien invasions of Earth. The series began with the strategy video game UFO: Enemy Unknown created by Julian Gollop's Mythos Games and MicroProse in 1994. The original lineup by MicroProse included six published and at least two canceled games, as well as two novels. The X-COM series, in particular its original entry, achieved a sizable cult following and has influenced many other video games; including the creation of a number of clones, spiritual successors, and unofficial remakes.
Steven Eric Meretzky is an American video game developer. He is best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the first games to be certified "platinum" by the Software Publishers Association. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. He has been involved in almost every aspect of game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.
X-COM: Genesis was a Windows strategy video game in development in the X-COM series. It was being developed by MicroProse employees, then working for Hasbro Interactive who had bought out MicroProse. Production took place in the original MicroProse offices in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the game was planned "sometime for 2001". X-COM: Genesis was never completed due to the closure of the Chapel Hill MicroProse studio.
Simon is an electronic game of memory skill invented by Ralph H. Baer and Howard J. Morrison, working for toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates, with software programming by Lenny Cope. The device creates a series of tones and lights and requires a user to repeat the sequence. If the user succeeds, the series becomes progressively longer and more complex. Once the user fails or the time limit runs out, the game is over. The original version was manufactured and distributed by Milton Bradley and later by Hasbro after it took over Milton Bradley. Much of the assembly language code was written by Charles Kapps, who taught computer science at Temple University and also wrote one of the first books on the theory of computer programming. Simon was launched in 1978 at Studio 54 in New York City and was an immediate success, becoming a pop culture symbol of the 1970s and 1980s.
X-COM: Terror from the Deep is a strategy video game developed and published by MicroProse for the PC in 1995 and for the PlayStation in 1996. It is a sequel to UFO: Enemy Unknown and the second game of the X-COM series, this time taking the war against a renewed alien invasion into the Earth's oceans.
Spy Hunter is a vehicular action game developed by Bally Midway and released in arcades in 1983.
Tempest is a 1981 arcade game by Atari Inc., designed and programmed by Dave Theurer. It takes place on a three-dimensional surface, sometimes wrapped into a tube, which is viewed from one end and is divided into either 15 or 16 lanes, depending upon whether the tube's shape was closed or open, respectively. The player controls a claw-shaped "blaster" that sits on the edge of the surface, snapping from segment to segment as a rotary knob is turned.
1996 saw many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Super Mario 64, Duke Nukem 3D, and Tekken 2, as well as new titles such as Blazing Heroes, NiGHTS into Dreams..., Crash Bandicoot, Pokémon Red/Green/Blue, Resident Evil, Dead or Alive and Tomb Raider.
1994 saw many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy VI, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Virtua Fighter 2, as well as several new titles.
X-COM: Alliance is a cancelled video game in the X-COM series. The game was developed by three different teams of MicroProse developers between 1995 and 2002. The game had the player assume the role of commander of the militarized scientific mission lost in space during the aftermath of X-COM: Terror from the Deep.
Vicious Cycle Software was an American video game development company based in Morrisville, North Carolina.
Rick Raymer is an American video game designer. He's worked for developers and publishers alike such as EAI, Hasbro Interactive, iROCK Entertainment and Vicious Cycle Software.
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games, first released in 1991. Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest, and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series. The series is considered a formulative example of the 4X genre, in which players achieve victory through four routes: "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".
Marvel Trading Card Game is a video game for the Nintendo DS, Windows, and PlayStation Portable. It was developed by Vicious Cycle Software and 1st Playable Productions and published by Konami. The game is based on Upper Deck Entertainment's Marvel Comics-based collectible card game, and was released across all three platforms in several regions in 2007.
Dead Head Fred is a horror comedy action-adventure video game for the PlayStation Portable, developed by Vicious Cycle Software and published by D3 Publisher. It was released in North America on August 28, 2007 and is powered by Vicious Cycle's proprietary Vicious Engine. It features a premise that is a combination of 1940s-style noir and contemporary horror, dubbed "twisted noir" by the design team.
Deathstar is multidirectional shooter for the Acorn Electron and BBC Micro developed by Peter Johnson and originally published in the UK by Superior Software in 1985. It is a clone of the arcade game Sinistar.
The GCW Zero is a Linux-based open-source handheld video game console created by a start up, Game Consoles Worldwide. The GCW Zero was funded by a successful crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter.com on 29 January 2013 with US$238,499 collected, originally aiming for $130,000. The project was created by Justin Barwick. The device was eventually released that year.
