Dungeon Calling

If there’s one thing that goes together with late 70’s computer users, it’s TSR’s paper and dice game Dungeons and Dragons. Jim Connelley is dungeon master of a running D&D game in California, and one of the regular players is Jon Freeman, a neophyte to computer programming but well-versed in game design. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts with honours in English from Indiana University and a master’s degree in English from the University of California, Freeman freelances as a writer. He has two books published under his name on the subject of games: The Complete Book of Wargames is published originally by Fireside in 1978, and later in 1980 by Simon & Schuster. The other is The Playboy Winner’s Guide to Board Games, released in 1979 by Playboy Press. This work appears to be a reissue of a book from 1975 titled A Player’s Guide to Table Games, from Stackpoole Books and credited to a “John Jackson”. Freeman is also a contributor to the hobbyist magazine GAMES. Having been interested in computer programming since being a math and physics major in college in the 60’s, Connelley picks up a newfangled Commodore PET computer after they come out in 1977. Looking to write-off the purchase, Connelley enlists Freeman’s help with designing Starfleet Orion, which Connelley programs in BASIC. When they finish it in December of 1978, they have the first space-based tactical combat game for a microcomputer. Connelley initially sells it through the mail and to  friends and acquaintances, who push him to release the game commercially. In order to market the game, Connelley and Freeman form the first computer game publisher, Automated Simulations, operating out of each man’s spare bedroom in their houses in Mountain View, California. The game is followed by a sequel, Invasion Orion, also for the PET. Both games are a success and are eventually ported to other systems like the Apple II and TRS-80. An indication of the attitude the two founders have towards the type of games they want to produce is signalled by the company mascot, a stylized version of Rodin’s The Thinker holding a joystick, and the slogan ‘Computer Games Thinkers Play’.

With Freeman designing the games and Connelly as the main programmer, Automated Simulations really hits it big in 1979 with the first entry in its Dunjonquest series, Temple of Apshai. Heavily influenced by the two founder’s interest in D&D, the game is the first computer role-playing game (RPG), allowing character creation with six stats, divided into two sets: dexterity, strength, and constitution cover the physical aspect, with ego, intelligence, and intuition covering their mental state. Being a computer game, Apshai can do all the heavy lifting of probability calculations and weapons/armour modifications, leaving players to the fun of creating a character and getting on with the dungeon diving. After visiting the Innkeeper and rolling an alter ego, the player then stocks up on weapons, shield, and armour. An innovative aspect of play is the ability to haggle with the innkeeper, letting adventurers offer a slightly lower price for the equipment than the seller requests for it, in the hopes of saving a few coin on the deal. Once equipped, the player enters the Temple, populated by a variety of monsters, searching 200 rooms and catacombs for chests holding treasure.

Click button to play the original version of Temple of Apshai, on the Apple IIe

Featuring a sparse top-down display, the graphics are limited, with the rooms containing only a possible chest, guarding monster, and the bare walls. As the character is moved around the dungeon, the hallways open up to reveal new pathways and rooms, and players are directed to consult the 56-page manual, titled The Book of Lore, for immersive room descriptions and illustrations. These are written by Jeff Johnson, who also designs the dungeons for the game. Befitting the game’s close association with paper-and-dice RPGs, the manual also gives advice on how to convert your character from such a game to Dunjonquest, and how to take your experience and treasure back with you to the real world. To give players a sense of place in the Dunjonquest fantasy world, a short story titled The Adventures of Brian Hammerhand is also included.

Released after two months of intensive playtesting to get things balanced perfectly, Temple of Apshai goes on to win the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design’s Origin award for 1980’s Computer Game of the Year. Over 20,000 copies are sold of the game through 1981, for the Apple II, TRS-80 and the PET. In the wake of this success follows another entry in the Dunjonquest series, titled Hellfire Warrior. Featuring four new lower levels to Apshai, with over 200 rooms, ads for the game warn that beginners may not up for the challenge. The adventurings of Brian Hammerhand are also continued in Morloc’s Tower. Add-ons that require the original Temple of Apshai are eventually released: Lower Reaches of Apshai, Upper Reaches of Apshai and Temple of Ra. They are all adapted to every major game platform, including a C64 translation by Steve Bryson. The entire trilogy is re-released with improved graphics in 1985 in a package called The Temple of Apshai Trilogy. Other games produced in the early years of the company are Crush Crumble and Chomp, Starquest: Star Warrior, Keys of Acheron (expansion for Hellfire Warrior), Dunjonquest: Datestones of Ryn, and Starquest: Rescue at Rigel, among others… often released under the Epyx brand name, with another label, Mind Toys, used for puzzle and word games aimed at younger players. The brand name is originally to be “Epic”, to mark a goal of what quality of games the company was shooting for, but it has already been taken by Epic Records. Thus is the new name changed to Epyx, to make it sound a little more high-tech.

Click button to play Automated Simulations’ Crush, Crumble and Chomp on MS-DOS

Free Fallin’

When Automated Simulations attends the West Coast Computer Faire in 1980, Freeman meets his future wife and collaborator, Anne Westfall, who is in the neighbouring booth demoing a TRS-80 surveying program for Morton Technologies. He convinces her to join his company in the summer of that year. After various run-ins with Connelley over D&D content slipped into the design of Apshai, along with other matters, on Thanksgiving Day, 1981 the two leave Automated Simulations and later form game development house Free Fall Associates, along with Paul Reiche III. At their old digs, Connelley brings in some venture capitalists to raise funds, and there is a shift of focus as new management officially adopts Epyx as the new company name, with a desire to develop more arcade-like action-oriented fare.

Epyx Jumps to Success with Jumpman

Largely self-taught programmer Randy Glover supplies just that kind of action in his first professionally released game Jumpman, a spectacular entry into the platform gaming genre published by Epyx in 1983. Marketing Veep Bob Botch knows he has a hit on his hands: while demonstrating the usual Epyx RPGs in a rented condo off the beaten path at Winter CES ’83 in Vegas, every chance he gets he slips Jumpman into the drive as purchase reps get more and more excited by it. By the end of the show, Botch as a pile of orders for the action game, and Epyx has jumped in a new direction.

Click button to play Jumpman on the good old Commodore 64

The player takes the role of the character Jupiter Jumpman, running around Jupiter Headquarters in an attempt to defuse bombs littered about by the dastardly Alienators. With three difficulty levels featuring 30 different screens each, the gameplay is fast and addictive, with some levels sporting almost diabolical design. If players are finding moving Jumpman around the levels difficult (or are impatient to get moving), they can access 8 different settings that adjust the speed at which the on-screen character moves. And a randomizing function is also included, preventing gamers from knowing which screen will be next. The game is a success, selling around 40,000 units. Jumpman is followed by the sequel Jumpman Junior in 1983, which jumps onto consoles with a version for ColecoVision in 1984.

As Epyx shifts more towards action-oriented game play, and Connelly feels more and more pressures of management pulling him away from actual software development, he leaves the company he helped found, opting to start up his own software development firm called The Connelley Group. As a guide to the changing nature of its games,  Epyx utilizes symbols on its packaging and catalogs to help gamers gauge how the various games emphasize action, strategy or whatever combination of the two… along with any educational value, of course. Having investors in common, Epyx bolsters its personnel roster by merging with Starpath, called Arcadia until forced to change their name with Emerson’s release of their Arcadia 2001 game unit. Starpath is the inventor of 1982’s Supercharger for the Atari 2600, a device for greatly expanding the memory of the 2600 while playing games stored on cassette tapes, playable through any cassette player. Possibly the best-known game for the Supercharger is Escape From the Mindmaster, an early 3D first-person maze game by Dennis Caswell. Moving over from his position as vice president of marketing and corporate communications at Coleco, industry veteran Michael C. Katz is named the new president and CEO of Epyx.

Epyx Lights the Flame with Summer Games

In late 1983, Olympic fever is building through the U.S. as Los Angeles prepares to host the Olympic Summer Games the next year. At the same time, Epyx is under pressure to produce a hit. Scott Nelson, one of the former Starpath programmers, had created a decathlon game for the Supercharger called Sweat!, but when the company merges with Epyx the project is shelved. Although this Atari 2600 game provides little in the way of actual program code, its subject matter is the impetus for Epyx’s sports extravaganza Summer Games. The generic title is purposeful: Atari is the official licensee for the ’84 Summer Olympics, so Epyx must walk on eggshells, avoiding too many allusions to the Olympic games in their sports extravaganza. This project is chosen as a way of getting the new programming team from Starpath all working on the different sections required in the game. It is written in 100 percent assembler machine language, and the lead programmer is Stephen Landrum, accompanied by Randy Glover, Jon Leupp, Brian McGhie, Stephen Murdry, and Scott Nelson. The idea of a dedicated artwork team is championed within Epyx by graphic artist Michael Kosaka, who starts with the company in 1984. Thus is Summer Games the first game at Epyx to assign an artist full-time from the start of the project, in this case Erin Murphy. From then on in they are used in the development of every game, along with a sound designer.

This is the tape version of Summer Games for C64, so make yourself a sandwich (and eat it) while it loads

There are eight Olympic events presented in Summer Games, including the pole vault, diving and skeet shooting, along with an impressive opening ceremony with the lighting of the Olympic torch. Each section features its own control method, with either frantic joystick waggling or complex timing moves. The various sports are all presented in loving detail, and Summer Games is one of the earlier games providing two-player simultaneous action on one computer. Up to eight people can play, and options include the chance to practice a single event, compete in a number of specified contests or going up against the full roster of competitions. A large selection of countries is available, each accompanied by their flag and a musical sample of their national anthems. The best times are saved as world records, providing motivation to keep practicing. Even though the game development tools must be built from the ground up, Summer Games is completed in under six months, and it goes on to become a huge success with over 200,000 units sold. The Games series become a major franchise for the company, followed by Summer Games II and then Winter Games in 1985.

Again, tape version of Winter Games for C64, so go shovel snow in the driveway while it loads

The latter is again contracted out to Bob Ogdon and Action Graphics, doing most of the work on it over a nine-month development time. The wide range of music in the game is composed and programmed by David Thiel; your ears might also remember his wonderful work on the audio for Gottlieb’s popular arcade game Q*bert. Released in the fall, Winter Games goes on to sell 200,000 copies just by the end of the year… and Epyx as a whole posts close to $20 million in revenue for the year. Next comes World Games in 1986, due to its nature an understandable worldwide hit for Epyx, selling between 400,000 – 500,000 copies.

Click button to play California Games on the Atari Lynx handheld

California Games, the most successful of the Games games, arrives in 1987, eventually becoming a million-seller for the company. As that game flies out the door, even Epyx president Gilbert Freeman lends a hand boxing copies on the production line to help meet the intense demand. California Games is then followed by California Games II. Also in 1988 comes The Games: Summer Edition, an Olympian effort requiring the use of 17 programmers, eight artists, two musicians and five technical writers to produce versions of the game for different platforms, all at the same time. This is followed by The Games: Winter Edition; both are graphical revamps of the original Summer and Winter Games and both now have official Olympic Games licensing. In 2009, gnarly dudes and duceces can pole vault back to the 80’s with graphical revamps of Summer Games, Winter Games and California Games, all made by Magnusoft Deutschland GmbH and put out for the Android mobile platform and Windows by Epyx Deutschland.

Doing the Impossible with Epyx Impossible Mission

Jumping back earlier in Epyx history, and perhaps building on their experience with the Jumpman platform games, Epyx releases Impossible Mission in 1984, quite possibly the greatest platform game ever created. Brought into Epyx via the Starpath acquisition, designer Dennis Caswell is inspired by the hit movie WarGames while making the game over a ten month development cycle. It charges the player with running around a huge underground complex in the guise of an acrobatic secret agent, attempting to put a halt to evil Professor Elvin Atombender’s plans for worldwide nuclear destruction. While traveling up and down elevators searching the various pieces equipment scattered about the place, our hero must avoid the deadly robots populating the rooms who are out to fry him.

Cassette version of Impossible Mission on C64, so go watch an entire James Bond movie while it loads

The robots are all amusingly different in attitude and competence, with about 90 different personality patterns and varying abilities all randomized in various combinations each time the game is loaded. Some of the mechanical guards race at you instantly firing electric death, some see you but lack the ability to fire and/or move, while still others can barely get their heads out of their RS-232 ports to notice you’re even there. Computer consoles are scattered about, which when accessed can disable the robots for a few short moments, or reset the elevators in a room. The game gives you a real-time countdown of six hours to collect the hidden puzzle pieces and put them together with your pocket computer, and every time the on-screen agent dies 10 minutes is deducted from the clock. If time runs out, Elvin dispatches the world with an evil cackle. There are also two rooms where the player can engage in a Simon-type game, following a pattern of colours and sounds to earn more lift inits or robot snooze codes.

Every aspect of this game gels amazingly: the unprecedented character animation of the lead character as he runs and does flying flips over his adversaries, the diabolical construction of the various rooms, the various traits of the killer (or not so much) robots, and the atmospheric sound effects. Caswell is responsible for nearly every aspect of the game, from design to programming, graphics and sound… although one particular aural piece of the program is not his: the standout speech synthesis done for the game is handled by Electronic Speech Systems of Berkeley, California. The quality of the voices heard in the game doesn’t quite live up to Caswell’s expectations. However, it still has an amazing effect on the overall feel of the game, with the mad Professor issuing the now-famous ominous welcome at the start of the game, “Another visitor. Stay awhile…..staaaaay forever!”, as well as an occasional command to his metal pants army, “Destroy him, my robots”. And of course, our hero’s agonizing scream of terror when he falls down a shaft, which makes me jump out of my chair the first time I hear it.

The only problem is that Impossible Mission truly lives up to its name, with the puzzle component generally regarded as the hardest bit of gaming ever devised. There are dozens of randomized pieces of the puzzle to be found, all of which must be arranged in order by getting flipped horizontally or vertically, making for a huge amount of possibilities. A call can be made to headquarters for help, but only at the expense of two minutes of clock time. Due to time and memory constraints, some planned aspects of the game have to be jettisoned… such as the idea of the player having the ability to reprogram the robots to help his cause, and a final puzzle when Atombender’s control room is breached, which when solved would initiate the ending animation ultimately shown.

The steep difficulty of the game and its puzzle aspect might go some way of explaining why Impossible Mission isn’t as huge a hit as expected by Epyx in the U.S., only selling around 40,000 units. The game fares much better overseas, where it wins multiple Game of the Year awards. An inferior sequel, Impossible Mission II, follows in 1988 featuring an easier puzzle component but messier graphics. Impossible Mission 2025 is made in 1994 by Microprose’s MPS labs in the UK, for the Commodore Amiga and CD-32 platforms. While you’re STILL dealing with evil Atombender, and he’s STILL ensconced in a well-fortified complex guarded by lethal robots, and you’re STILL trying to find pieces of a puzzle you have to assemble to defeat him, the game does feature a twist in that you can choose between different characters to play as: a robot, a gymnast named Tasha, or soldier Felix Fly. Also included in the game is the complete version of the original. Owners of the Nintendo Switch console users get an updated version of the game (with original C64 version, and re-skinned version thereof) when Impossible Mission infiltrates their system in 2019, made by System 3 Software.

Epyx and Atari Make a Dream in the Handy

At its prime, Epyx employs 200 people and is making 9 to 10 million dollars annually. Its best-selling product is the Fast Load cartridge, which speeds up the painfully slow loading process of the C64 1541 floppy disk drive fivefold, and sells around 350,000 units. The company also picks up some licensing deals from Mattel, after that company exits the video game and computer industry in early 1984. Barbie, G.I. Joe and Hot Wheels are positioned as pseudo-educational games under Epyx’s Computer Activity Toys line.

Click button to play G.I. Joe on the good old Commodore 64

Heading into the final stretch of the 80’s, product sales are failing to meet company projections. The C64 is dropping off the scope as a gaming platform, and a hardware project called Handy is draining resources,. It is designed by Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, coming from the Amiga computer development team at Commodore. Handy is to be the world’s first colour handheld game device but is proving to be an elongated drag on Epyx, with two years and a reported $8 million sunk into its development. Needle and Mical leverage their other big invention to use for the Handy project – using an Amiga 2000 computer as part of the development environment for the handheld.

Besides the expenses Epyx is incurring for this project, another problem is that its games are some of the most pirated computer titles around, with practically everyone with a C64 playing Summer Games and Impossible Mission but few actually paying for the privilege. Amid a lack of funds and little ability to actually manufacture the revolutionary handheld game system at scale, the Handy project is still debuted behind closed doors at the Winter CES in January of 1989; some of those privileged few who got a look must have been from Atari, as Handy is eventually sold to that company, on the verge of the 1989 Summer CES. The deal also makes Atari a part owner of Epyx. Announcing the colour handheld system as the PCES or Portable Color Entertainment System at the Summer CES , Atari eventually renames the system as the Lynx. Meanwhile, Epyx reorganizes, dropping the distribution part of the company to focus on game development for consoles. They also lay off 85% of their workforce, along with the departure of Mical, Needle and company head David Morse.

The new name of Atari’s handheld device highlights the fact that up to eight of the devices can be linked together via a cable, for head-to-head play. It also sports a 3 1/2-inch colour LCD screen with a resolution of 160×102 pixels, capable of displaying 16 colours at a time out of a palette of 4,096. Inside the case also resides a 16mHz 65C02 processor. Lynx sees a limited rollout, first hitting the New York City area on September 1, 1989. In the early part of 1990, the system begins selling in five more markets: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston. It is available nationally through 1990. Atari wisely packs a translation of hit Epyx game California Games in with the system. While technically superior to the recently released Nintendo Gameboy portable game system, the $179.99 Lynx and its games lineup ultimately fail to compete against Nintendo’s juggernaut, even after a price slash down to $129.99 for Atari’s handheld in the early part of 1992.

Click button to play the great Atari arcade game Rampart on the Atari Lynx

Meanwhile, Epyx has been struggling. In 1988 they report that they will no longer publish games and scale down to a development house. In September of 1989, the same month as the initial release of the Lynx, Epyx starts laying off most of it staff. It later files for bankruptcy. The company struggles out of receivership long enough to port a few games to the PC, but eventually, the remains of the company are sold to Bridgestone Multimedia, specializing in Christian media products. This company, in turn, sells the major Epyx software rights to Atari Corp., who then ALSO go out of business. It appears that Hasbro, picking over the corpse of Atari in early 1998, has gained the Epyx game rights.

Epyx Dragonriders of Pern: Game of Threads

One personal favourite of the Epyx games I feel I have to single out here before I close this entry is Dragonriders of Pern, released in 1983. Based on the seminal fantasy novels by Anne McCaffrey, the game is a stunning mix of political intrigue, diplomacy, strategy, and action. Assuming the role of Bendon Weyr, the player must forge alliances with a picky bunch or neighbouring kingdoms, carefully tailoring the amount of his aggressiveness or sniveling to suit the other leader across the negotiation table. Interspersed with this political chicanery is the occasional aerial battle against a shower of threads, not the most frightening of computer game adversaries ever created but who still provide a workout for your firebreathing charges. All of which is accompanied by a wonderful musical soundtrack. Produced right in the thick of the battle for the creative vision of Epyx, the designers of Dragonriders are The Connelley Group, founder Jim Connelley’s gang of programmers who have left the company, and who prefer the strategy in “action-strategy” more than the action part, but remain associated as game contractors. Dragonriders is not a commercial success, proving the bean-counters right on at least one point. A sequel game for the C64 is commissioned by Epyx for release in 1984, titled Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, based on the McCaffrey novel of the same name. Announced at the 1985 Winter CES, the plug is eventually pulled on this endeavor, with programmer John W.S. Marvin having around 1/3 of the game finished. As for the original Dragonriders of Pern, I feel if more people had noticed the game, and if the Epyx marketing team had gotten behind the product a little more aggressively, this game typifies the type of epicness we could have looked forward to from Epyx.  

Click button to play the great Dragonriders of Pern on the good old Commodore 64