If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming, or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, do not replace it.
Electric Transit was an entertainment software publisher in the mid-1980s specializing in first-person 3D games for Apple II and IBM PC computers.
The company was formed by four Edu-Ware alumni—general manager Jeff Ford, marketing director Pamela Pollack, game producer David Mullich and game developer Wesley Huntress—after EduWare was acquired by Management Sciences America. The four bought back the rights to Huntress' Wilderness: A Survival Adventure game as well as another EduWare game, Tranquility Base, from MSA and used the two products to launch their new company.
Both games were repackaged featuring colorful, illustrated manuals that were as educational as they were informative. Additional game content was added to both Wilderness and Tranquility Base, the latter of which was rechristened Lunar Explorer: A Spaceflight Simulator.
The games were distributed through Electronic Arts' new affiliated label program. Although both games were well-reviewed—especially Wilderness—neither sold well enough to make much profit. Electric Transit later switched to a new distributor, Spectrum Holobyte, but the products were near the end of their life cycle. With two of the principles, Ford and Huntress, having full-time careers elsewhere, and no profits to fund new development, the company folded after two years of operation.
Electric Transit pursued alternate retail channels by attempting to sell Wilderness through The Boy Scouts as a possible wilderness survival merit badge requirement, and Lunar Explorer through The Planetary Society. Some twenty years later, Wilderness developer Huntress went on to become president of The Planetary Society.
Mare Tranquillitatis is a lunar mare that sits within the Tranquillitatis basin on the Moon. It is the first location on another world to be visited by humans.
Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights, and other spaceflight-related experiences including cosmonaut training, spacewalk training, and launch tours. Plans announced thus far include sub-orbital and lunar spaceflights, though these are not being actively pursued at present. Nine of its clients have participated in the orbital spaceflight program with Space Adventures, including one who took two separate trips to space.
Orbiter is a space flight simulator program developed to simulate spaceflight using realistic Newtonian physics. The simulator was released on 27 November 2000; the latest edition, labeled "Orbiter 2016", was released on 30 August 2016, the first new version of the simulator since 2010. On 27 July 2021, Dr Schweiger announced to the Orbiter Community that Orbiter is being published under open source MIT license.
Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator Red Baron, the puzzle game The Incredible Machine, the Front Page Sports series, Betrayal at Krondor, and the online multiplayer game Tribes.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to video games:
Microsoft Space Simulator is a space flight simulator program, based on Microsoft Flight Simulator for MS-DOS. It was one of the first general-purpose space flight simulators and it incorporated concepts from astrodynamics, motion, and celestial mechanics.
Access Software, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Founded in November 1982 by Bruce Carver and Chris Jones, the company created the Beach Head, Links and Tex Murphy series, as well as Raid over Moscow. Access Software was acquired by Microsoft in April 1999, transitioning in name twice before being acquired by Take-Two Interactive in October 2004, receiving the name Indie Built. In January 2005, Access Software became part of Take-Two's 2K label. Following a poor financial performance at Take-Two, Indie Built was closed down in May 2006.
Wesley T. Huntress, Jr. is an American space scientist. An astrochemist and space scientist, Huntress worked for about twenty years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the 1980s, he was also a video game designer, producing games for Apple computers. In 1988, Huntress moved to NASA headquarters, where he would serve in several positions, including Director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division and Associate Administrator for Space Science.
Edu-Ware Services, Inc. was an educational and entertainment software publisher established in 1979 by Sherwin Steffin and Steven Pederson. It was known for its adventure games, role-playing video games, and flight simulators for the Apple II family of computers.
David Mullich is an American game producer and designer best known for creating the cult classic 1980 adventure game The Prisoner, producing the 1995 adaptation I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and developing many games in the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise. With a career spanning more than twenty-five years, Mullich worked not only for some of the first video game publishers, but went on to work for some of the biggest game companies of today.
Star Control 3 is a 1996 action-adventure game developed by Legend Entertainment and published by Accolade. The third installment in the Star Control trilogy, the game was released for MS-DOS in 1996 and Mac OS in 1998. The story takes place after Star Control II, beginning with a disaster that disrupts superluminal travel through hyperspace. This leads the player to investigate a new quadrant of space, joined by allied aliens from the previous games.
Gaijinworks is an American video game publishing company founded by Victor Ireland in July 2006. The company was established shortly after the dissolution of Working Designs in December 2005 of which Ireland was president. Containing the Japanese word gaijin, or "foreigner", Gaijinworks would carry on the former company's legacy of localizing "niche" Japanese games for American audiences while working closely with the original developers. Although the company was initially inactive for the first three years of its existence, the first localization project was announced in March 2009 as Hudson Soft's Miami Law for the Nintendo DS.
Alawar Entertainment is an international developer, distributor, and publisher of video games for PC, mobile platforms, games consoles and other devices based in Lewes, Delaware. Its main areas of activity are mid-core games for experienced players, as well as casual downloadable and F2P games for PC, Mac, iOS, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, social networks and other platforms.
A variety of computer graphic techniques have been used to display video game content throughout the history of video games. The predominance of individual techniques have evolved over time, primarily due to hardware advances and restrictions such as the processing power of central or graphics processing units.
An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, and Myst.
Uwingu is a private, for-profit company founded by Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator. The company lets the public nominate names for exoplanets and craters of Mars on Uwingu's new Mars map, in return for a fee. Uwingu’s mission is to create new ways for people to personally connect with space exploration and astronomy. The profits of the company are dedicated to funding space researchers, educators, and projects.
Rendezvous: A Space Shuttle Simulation, is a space simulator published 1982 by Edu-Ware, and developed by Titan Computer Products and NASA scientist Wesley Huntress.
The Long Dark is a first-person survival video game developed and published by Hinterland Studios. The player assumes the role of crash-landed bush pilot Will Mackenzie who must survive the frigid Canadian wilderness after a geomagnetic storm. The game received seed financing from the Canada Media Fund, and further funding was secured through a successful Kickstarter campaign in October 2013.
Star Control: Origins is an action-adventure game developed and published by Stardock Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, released September 20, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
