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| Outpost | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publisher(s) | Sirius Software |
| Programmer(s) | Tom McWilliams [1] |
| Platform(s) | Apple II |
| Release | 1981 |
| Genre(s) | Fixed shooter |
Outpost is a fixed shooter for the Apple II programmed by Tom McWilliams and published by Sirius Software in 1981. It is a variant of the arcade game Space Zap .
In March 1982, NBC News reported that Outpost earned McWilliams, then still a teenager, earned at least US$60,000. [2]
According to Tim Skelly, the Cinematronics port of Outpost which was being worked on by Scott Boden was reworked after their departure from Cinematronics as the more cutesy title Boxing Bugs by Jack Ritter, which both Skelly and Boden considered a "travesty". [3]
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells.
Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed by Williams Electronics in 1980 and released for arcades in 1981. A side-scrolling shooter, the game is set on either an unnamed planet or city where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis's first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was demonstrated in late 1980, before entering production in early 1981. It was distributed in Japan by Taito.
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Fueled by the previous year's release of the colorful and appealing Pac-Man, the audience for arcade video games in 1981 became much wider. Pac-Man influenced maze games began appearing in arcades and on home systems. Pac-Man was the highest-grossing video game for the second year in a row. Nintendo's Donkey Kong defined the unnamed platform game genre, while Konami's Scramble established forced-scrolling shooters. The lesser known Jump Bug combined the two concepts into both the first scrolling platform game and the first platform shooter. Other arcade hits released in 1981 include Defender, Frogger, and the Galaxian sequel Galaga.
1980 saw the release of a number of games with influential concepts, including Pac-Man, Battlezone, Crazy Climber, Mystery House, Missile Command, Phoenix, Rally-X, Space Panic, Stratovox, Zork, Adventure, and Olympic Decathlon. The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pac-Man, while the best-selling home system was Nintendo's Game & Watch. The Atari VCS also grew in popularity with a port of Space Invaders and support from new third-party developer Activision.
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Tim Skelly was a video game designer and game programmer who developed arcade games for Cinematronics from 1978 until 1981. He designed a series of pure action games using black and white vector graphics. One of his early games, Rip Off, was the first arcade game with two-player cooperative play. Star Hawk, Rip Off, Armor Attack, and Star Castle were all later ported to the Vectrex home system.
Vectorbeam was an arcade game manufacturer active in the late 1970s who specialized in vector graphics-based arcade games. It was formed after splitting off from its primary competitor, Cinematronics, and disappeared after re-merging with them soon after.
The 1981 Montreal Expos season was the 13th season in franchise history. They made it to the postseason for the first time in franchise history. Their playoff run ended in the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Rick Monday hitting a ninth-inning solo home run in game 5, subsequently referred to as "Blue Monday" by Expos fans. This was the closest the Expos ever got to a World Series appearance while in Montreal.
Solar Quest is a monochrome vector arcade game created by Cinematronics in 1981. It was designed and programmed by Scott Boden, who previously worked on Star Castle. It had a home release for the Vectrex system in 1982.
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In 1980, 22 teams took part in a one-year cable deal with UA-Columbia. The deal involved the airing of a Thursday night Game of the Week in markets at least 50 miles (80 km) from a major league park. The deal earned Major League Baseball less than $500,000, but led to a new two-year contract for 40-45 games per season.
Bug Attack is a fixed shooter video game written by Jim Nitchals for the Apple II and published by Cavalier Computer in 1981. An Atari 8-bit family version was released in 1982.
An NBC News segment airing March 8, 1982, profiled Tom McWilliams, a suburban teenager from California who earned $60,000 from the proceeds of his 1981 game Outpost.
I was no longer working for Cinematronics in 1981, but I was there long enough to provide artwork for his last game at Cinematronics. In [Scott] Boden's own words, "The last thing I was working on was Outpost (1981), which had a cannon and a gun in the center with attackers on the periphery. I left and Jack Ritter took over. He renamed it Boxing Bugs (1981) and tried to make it cute." In my opinion and Boden's, Boxing Bugs was a travesty.
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