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.
Ataxx (アタックス) is a strategy video game published in arcades by Leland Corporation in 1990. Two players compete on a seven-by-seven square grid. The object of the game is for a player to have a majority of the pieces on the board at the end of the game, by converting as many of their opponent's pieces as possible. In a single-player game, the opponents are "bio-invaders from a different dimension."
Legend Entertainment Company was an American developer and publisher of computer games, best known for creating adventure titles throughout the 1990s. The company was founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu, both veterans of the interactive fiction studio Infocom that shut down in 1989. Legend's first two games, Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls and Timequest, had strong sales that sustained the company. Legend also profited from negotiating licenses to popular book series, allowing them to create notable game adaptations such as Companions of Xanth and Gateway. Legend also earned a reputation for comedic adventures, with numerous awards for Eric the Unready in 1993. As the technology of the game industry changed, Legend continued to expand its game engine to take advantage of higher graphical fidelity, mouse support, and the increased media storage of the compact disc.
Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information during cutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games or interactive movies.
The 7th Guest is an interactive movie puzzle adventure game, produced by Trilobyte and originally released by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in April 1993. It is one of the first computer video games to be released only on CD-ROM. The 7th Guest is a horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac. The game received press attention for making live action video clips a core part of its gameplay, for its then-unprecedented amount of pre-rendered 3D graphics, and for its adult content. The game was very successful, with over two million copies sold. It, alongside Myst, is widely regarded as a killer app that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. The 7th Guest has subsequently been re-released on Apple's app store for various systems such as the Mac. Bill Gates called The 7th Guest "the new standard in interactive entertainment".
Trilobyte Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Medford, Oregon. The company was founded in February 1991 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros, who had been fired from Virgin Games after pitching their idea for The 7th Guest. They developed the game as Trilobyte and followed it up with The 11th Hour. Following a string of less successful titles and cancellations, the company shut down in February 1999. In 2010, Landeros resurrected the name under Trilobyte Games.
An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.
Graeme Devine is a computer game designer and programmer who co-founded Trilobyte, created bestselling games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, and helped design id Software's Quake III Arena. He was Chairman of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) from 2002–2003. One of Graeme's trademarks is his Scooby-Doo wardrobe. He has said of his work that "I've not stuck to any one genre, platform or IP throughout my career, and I hope people eventually work out that's just fine."
The 11th Hour is a 1995 interactive movie puzzle adventure game with a horror setting. It is the sequel to the 1993 game The 7th Guest. A 3DO Interactive Multiplayer version was planned but never released.
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty is a 1992 real-time strategy game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Games. It serves as the sequel to Dune (1992).
Matthew John Costello is an American writer specializing in the genres of horror, gothic, and science fiction. His articles have appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated. He has scripted Trilobyte's bestselling CD-ROM interactive dramas The 7th Guest and its sequel The 11th Hour, as well as many other video games.
Uncle Henry's Playhouse is the third game in The 7th Guest series. Functionally the game is a compilation game mostly composed of the puzzles from Trilobyte's games The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, and Clandestiny, but featuring little plot. The game has been noted for its low sales figures and its rarity/obscurity relative to its blockbuster predecessors, The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour. The game is primarily intended as a means of presenting puzzles from the previous titles in the 7th Guest series and consequently it has a rather simplistic plot that has been criticized by reviewers for its thinness in comparison to the previous games. The game also includes previews for two then-upcoming Trilobyte games, Tender Loving Care and Dog Eat Dog.
WSC Real 08: World Snooker Championship is a sports video game developed by Blade Interactive and published by Koch Media exclusively for Wii. It was later released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 under the name WSC Real 09: World Snooker Championship.
Martin Alper was a video game designer and the former President of Virgin Interactive, once one of the largest companies in the field. Alper was a co-founder of Mastertronic, which went on to become Virgin Interactive following its acquisition by Richard Branson. He was involved with the development of Command & Conquer at Westwood Studios and Shiny Entertainment who developed The Matrix and Earthworm Jim. He was also the person who approached Westwood Studios co-founder Brett Sperry about creating Dune II. In an interview he also explained how he fired Rob Landeros and Graeme Devine so they could set-up their own company Trilobyte during the development of The 7th Guest.
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, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres. Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified by Rick Adams as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Syberia, and Myst.
Tender Loving Care is an interactive movie originally released on August 12, 1998, by Aftermath Media. It is a psychological thriller starring Michael Esposito, Marie Caldare, Beth Tegarden, and John Hurt as Dr. Turner. It was written and directed by David Wheeler and produced by Rob Landeros, who also designed the interactive features. The game was originally produced with the intention of releasing the game under the Trilobyte label, but Landeros was fired from the company before it was released. Tender Loving Care was later released under Landeros's new company, Aftermath Media, on CD-ROM, with the option for users to watch the movie as a feature-length film as opposed to interacting with the game. In October 2012 the game was re-released under the Trilobyte Games label on the Apple iOS platform. The game is based on the 1984 novel of the same name by Andrew Neiderman.
Aftermath Media is a multimedia company based in Ashland, Oregon. It was founded by Rob Landeros and David Wheeler in 1997.
Gary Winnick is an American computer game designer, writer, artist, and animator who was the first artist hired by Lucasfilm Games. He co-designed Maniac Mansion, alongside Ron Gilbert, and created the comic book Bad Dreams.
Peter Michael Lyon is a UK-based visual artist who has worked in a wide range of 2D and 3D media spanning from traditional oil painting to computer graphics, for the science fiction and fantasy genres. According to his personal website, he has been involved in various works in the computer games industry such as graphic production, teaching and management, with 3D modelling and animation. He is known as a pioneer graphic designer for the Atari and the Amiga in the 1980s and 1990s.
