Exidy
Encyclopedia
Exidy was one of the largest creators of arcade video games during the early period of video games, from 1974 until at least 1986 (when Chiller
was released ). The company was founded by H.R."Pete" Kauffman. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics."
Some of the notable games released by Exidy included Circus
, Death Race
, Star Fire
, Venture, Pepper II, Mouse Trap, Victory, Targ
, and Spectar
. Star Fire appeared in the 1980 film Midnight Madness, while Mouse Trap was the subject of a song on the 1982 Pac-Man Fever
album. Also produced but never given as wide a release was the ultra rare puzzle game Hard Hat, the completed but unreleased Kreeper Krawlers, and the prototype of rather mysterious origins Teeter Torture.
Beginning in 1983, Exidy released a series of light gun
games, the first and most well-known of which was Crossbow
. These presented an unusual twist to the genre
: the goal is to protect character
s walking through the screen by shooting down bullet
s and other things which are trying to kill the characters. These games were also the first to feature fully digitized sound
for all sound effect
s and music
(more advanced than other games up until the 16-bit generation). Other "C" series games include Cheyenne
, Combat, Crackshot, Clay Pigeon, and Chiller
. Chief designer for these games was Larry Hutcherson. Exidy also made two rarely-seen motion cabinet games with vector graphics called Vertigo and Top Gunner. Chief game designer for this game was Vic Tolomei.
Another somewhat successful game from Exidy was a driving game named Top Secret. This game featured a spy car with advanced weaponry on a mission inside the Soviet Union to destroy a heavily-guarded Top Secret super weapon. Game designers for this game were Vic Tolomei, Larry Hutcherson and Ken Nicholson
.
One of Exidy's efforts aimed at trivia lovers during the 1980s was the quiz game Fax, a multi-level game housed in a large wooden cabinet that stood about 4 feet high and looked nothing like other video games of the time period. Much like the 2000s hit game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, players were shown a series of questions with four possible answers. A point value "clock" ran down to zero after answers were shown, meaning players answering quicker earned more points for their correct answers. (Incorrect answers incurred no penalty.)
Under the leadership of visionary Paul Terrell
of Byte Shop fame, Exidy made a brief foray into the personal computer
market, with the Exidy Sorcerer
in 1978. The Sorcerer was a modified S-100 bus
based machine, but lacked the internal expansion system common to other S-100 systems. It made do with an S-100 expansion card-edge that could connect to an external S-100 expansion cage. The Sorcerer also featured an advanced (for the era) text display that was capable of 64 characters per line, when most systems supported only 40 characters. Oddly, the Sorcerer did not support sound, color, or in some respects, graphics, which seems at odds with the company's video game background; however the characters it displayed were programmable by the user. The system was never very popular in North America, but found a following in Australia and Europe, notably Belgium. Exidy licensed the Sorcerer computer and its software to a Texas-based startup called Dynasty Computer Corporation in 1979. It was relabeled and sold by Dynasty as the Dynasty Smart-Alec.
In 2006 it was announced that Mean Hamster Software
acquired rights to develop new Exidy arcade games.
In 2007, the MAME website announced that H.R. Kaufmann had released the first of what would become a sizable group of Exidy games downloadable for free, non-commercial use, adding Circus
to the already-released Teeter Torture. By 2011, with the help of Reinhard Stompe, the list of ROM
images included Circus, Robot Bowl, Car Polo, Side Trak, Ripcord, Fire One, Crash, Star Fire
and its unreleased upgrade Star Fire II, Targ
, Spectar
, Hard Hat, Victory, Teeter Torture, Fax, and Top Gunner. The ROM images were cleared only for non-commercial use and may be downloaded from the MAME website after the user acknowledges the terms of usage.
Chiller (video game)
Chiller is an Exidy light gun arcade game released in 1986. An unlicensed port was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 by American Game Cartridges, with the option of using either the standard controller or the NES Zapper. The player takes on the role of an unseen torturer who...
was released ). The company was founded by H.R."Pete" Kauffman. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics."
Some of the notable games released by Exidy included Circus
Circus (video game)
is an arcade game released by Exidy in 1977. The game is an arranged version of Breakout, where the player controls a seesaw and clown in order to destroy all of the targets in the level...
, Death Race
Death Race (1976 game)
Death Race is a controversial arcade game, released by Exidy in 1976. While not the first violent video game to appear, it was the first video game to inspire a great deal of protest and controversy in the United States.-Overview:...
, Star Fire
Star Fire
"Star fire" redirects here. For the process by which stars shine see nuclear fusion.Star Fire, released 1979, is considered to be a groundbreaking shoot 'em up arcade game by Exidy that brought a number of new innovations to the market; including being of the first to use a sit-down...
, Venture, Pepper II, Mouse Trap, Victory, Targ
Targ (video game)
-Description:The locale is described by the game cabinet as "The Crystal City": it is a simple 9x9 grid of roads demarcated by rectangular buildings. The player, piloting the Wummel, which looks like a small green car, maneuvers through the maze trying to shoot enemies and avoid collisions. Most...
, and Spectar
Spectar
Spectar is an arcade game released by Exidy depicting vehicular combat in a future world. The original game was released in November 1980. ROM revision 3 was released in April 1981. ROM revision 2 was for internal use only at Exidy and never installed into any video game cabinet. Spectar was a...
. Star Fire appeared in the 1980 film Midnight Madness, while Mouse Trap was the subject of a song on the 1982 Pac-Man Fever
Pac-Man Fever (album)
Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 concept album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album. Each song on the album is about a different classic arcade game, and uses sound effects from that game. The album was released as an LP, a cassette, an 8-track tape, and later...
album. Also produced but never given as wide a release was the ultra rare puzzle game Hard Hat, the completed but unreleased Kreeper Krawlers, and the prototype of rather mysterious origins Teeter Torture.
Beginning in 1983, Exidy released a series of light gun
Light gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games.Modern screen-based light guns work by building a sensor into the gun itself, and the on-screen target emit light rather than the gun...
games, the first and most well-known of which was Crossbow
Crossbow (video game)
Crossbow is a video arcade game released by Exidy in 1983. It was later published by Absolute Entertainment for the Commodore 64, DOS and by Atari for the 2600, 7800 and XE Game System starting in 1987.-Description:...
. These presented an unusual twist to the genre
Computer and video game genres
Video game genres are used to categorize video games based on their gameplay interaction rather than visual or narrative differences. A video game genre is defined by a set of gameplay challenges. They are classified independent of their setting or game-world content, unlike other works of fiction...
: the goal is to protect character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s walking through the screen by shooting down bullet
Bullet
A bullet is a projectile propelled by a firearm, sling, or air gun. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the intended target by impact and penetration...
s and other things which are trying to kill the characters. These games were also the first to feature fully digitized sound
Digital audio
Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...
for all sound effect
Sound effect
For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
s and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
(more advanced than other games up until the 16-bit generation). Other "C" series games include Cheyenne
Cheyenne (video game)
-Summary:In this western style shooting game, the player had to guide and protect "Buster Badshot" through various scenes of danger that take place in the old west, using the light gun. As well as keeping the character alive, the player had to kill the wanted bandits for each level...
, Combat, Crackshot, Clay Pigeon, and Chiller
Chiller (video game)
Chiller is an Exidy light gun arcade game released in 1986. An unlicensed port was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 by American Game Cartridges, with the option of using either the standard controller or the NES Zapper. The player takes on the role of an unseen torturer who...
. Chief designer for these games was Larry Hutcherson. Exidy also made two rarely-seen motion cabinet games with vector graphics called Vertigo and Top Gunner. Chief game designer for this game was Vic Tolomei.
Another somewhat successful game from Exidy was a driving game named Top Secret. This game featured a spy car with advanced weaponry on a mission inside the Soviet Union to destroy a heavily-guarded Top Secret super weapon. Game designers for this game were Vic Tolomei, Larry Hutcherson and Ken Nicholson
Ken Nicholson
-Career:Nicholson is a video game developer and Windows graphics pioneer. He was the founder of GamePC Consortium and inventor of the technology used by Microsoft as the basis for Windows' DirectX graphics....
.
One of Exidy's efforts aimed at trivia lovers during the 1980s was the quiz game Fax, a multi-level game housed in a large wooden cabinet that stood about 4 feet high and looked nothing like other video games of the time period. Much like the 2000s hit game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, players were shown a series of questions with four possible answers. A point value "clock" ran down to zero after answers were shown, meaning players answering quicker earned more points for their correct answers. (Incorrect answers incurred no penalty.)
Under the leadership of visionary Paul Terrell
Paul Terrell
Paul Terrell is the founder of the Byte Shop, one of the first personal computer retailers. He started the store in December 1975 in Mountain View, California.-Byte Shop and Apple:...
of Byte Shop fame, Exidy made a brief foray into the personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
market, with the Exidy Sorcerer
Exidy Sorcerer
The Sorcerer was one of the early home computer systems, released in 1978 by the videogame company, Exidy. It was comparatively advanced when released, especially when compared to the contemporary more commercially-orientated Commodore PET and TRS-80, but due to a number of problems including a...
in 1978. The Sorcerer was a modified S-100 bus
S-100 bus
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983 , was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer...
based machine, but lacked the internal expansion system common to other S-100 systems. It made do with an S-100 expansion card-edge that could connect to an external S-100 expansion cage. The Sorcerer also featured an advanced (for the era) text display that was capable of 64 characters per line, when most systems supported only 40 characters. Oddly, the Sorcerer did not support sound, color, or in some respects, graphics, which seems at odds with the company's video game background; however the characters it displayed were programmable by the user. The system was never very popular in North America, but found a following in Australia and Europe, notably Belgium. Exidy licensed the Sorcerer computer and its software to a Texas-based startup called Dynasty Computer Corporation in 1979. It was relabeled and sold by Dynasty as the Dynasty Smart-Alec.
In 2006 it was announced that Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software, Inc. is a video game developer founded by John Swiderski in 1985. Mean Hamster Software created several games for the Atari 5200 from 1999-2004. They then created Myst for Windows Mobile in 2005, and after the release of Riven: The Sequel to Myst for Pocket PC in 2006, Mean...
acquired rights to develop new Exidy arcade games.
In 2007, the MAME website announced that H.R. Kaufmann had released the first of what would become a sizable group of Exidy games downloadable for free, non-commercial use, adding Circus
Circus (video game)
is an arcade game released by Exidy in 1977. The game is an arranged version of Breakout, where the player controls a seesaw and clown in order to destroy all of the targets in the level...
to the already-released Teeter Torture. By 2011, with the help of Reinhard Stompe, the list of ROM
Rom
ROM, Rom, or rom is an abbreviation and name that may refer to:-In computers and mathematics:* Read-only memory, a type of storage media which is used in computers and other electronic devices....
images included Circus, Robot Bowl, Car Polo, Side Trak, Ripcord, Fire One, Crash, Star Fire
Star Fire
"Star fire" redirects here. For the process by which stars shine see nuclear fusion.Star Fire, released 1979, is considered to be a groundbreaking shoot 'em up arcade game by Exidy that brought a number of new innovations to the market; including being of the first to use a sit-down...
and its unreleased upgrade Star Fire II, Targ
Targ (video game)
-Description:The locale is described by the game cabinet as "The Crystal City": it is a simple 9x9 grid of roads demarcated by rectangular buildings. The player, piloting the Wummel, which looks like a small green car, maneuvers through the maze trying to shoot enemies and avoid collisions. Most...
, Spectar
Spectar
Spectar is an arcade game released by Exidy depicting vehicular combat in a future world. The original game was released in November 1980. ROM revision 3 was released in April 1981. ROM revision 2 was for internal use only at Exidy and never installed into any video game cabinet. Spectar was a...
, Hard Hat, Victory, Teeter Torture, Fax, and Top Gunner. The ROM images were cleared only for non-commercial use and may be downloaded from the MAME website after the user acknowledges the terms of usage.
Arcade titles
- Alley Rally (1975)
- Destruction Derby (1975)
- Death Race (1976)
- Robot Bowl (1977)
- Score (1977)
- Super Death Chase (1977)
- CircusCircus (video game)is an arcade game released by Exidy in 1977. The game is an arranged version of Breakout, where the player controls a seesaw and clown in order to destroy all of the targets in the level...
(1977) - Car Polo (1977)
- Attack (1977)
- Football (1978)
- Ripcord (1979)
- Kreepy Krawlers (1979 Unreleased prototype)
- Side Trak (1979)
- Crash (1979)
- Fire One! (1979)
- TargTarg (video game)-Description:The locale is described by the game cabinet as "The Crystal City": it is a simple 9x9 grid of roads demarcated by rectangular buildings. The player, piloting the Wummel, which looks like a small green car, maneuvers through the maze trying to shoot enemies and avoid collisions. Most...
(1980) - Star FireStar Fire"Star fire" redirects here. For the process by which stars shine see nuclear fusion.Star Fire, released 1979, is considered to be a groundbreaking shoot 'em up arcade game by Exidy that brought a number of new innovations to the market; including being of the first to use a sit-down...
(1980) - Sheriff (1979, licensed from NintendoNintendois a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
; released as Bandido in 1980) - SpectarSpectarSpectar is an arcade game released by Exidy depicting vehicular combat in a future world. The original game was released in November 1980. ROM revision 3 was released in April 1981. ROM revision 2 was for internal use only at Exidy and never installed into any video game cabinet. Spectar was a...
(1980) - Mouse Trap (1981)
- VentureVentureVenture may refer to:* VENTURE NOTC, the Canadian Naval Officer Training Centre based in CFB Esquimalt, British ColumbiaIn automobiles:* Chevrolet Venture, a General Motors Corporation minivan.* VentureOne, a concept car by Venture Vehicles...
(1981) - Pepper II (1982)
- Victory (1982)
- Teeter Torture (1982 Unreleased prototype)
- Hard Hat (1982 Limited release)
- CrossbowCrossbow (video game)Crossbow is a video arcade game released by Exidy in 1983. It was later published by Absolute Entertainment for the Commodore 64, DOS and by Atari for the 2600, 7800 and XE Game System starting in 1987.-Description:...
(1983) - Fax (1983)
- Catch 22 (1983)
- Astro ChaseAstro ChaseAstro Chase is a scrolling shoot 'em up game, licensed by First Star Software to Exidy games for release as an arcade game. The game was originally released by First Star Software in 1982, on December 7th. The player is an astronaut who pilots a saucer-shaped fighter ship against aliens bent on...
(1984 Max-A-Flex System) - Flip and Flop (1984 Max-A-Flex System)
- Bristles (1984 Max-A-Flex System)
- Boulder DashBoulder DashBoulder Dash, originally released in 1984 for Atari 8-bit computers, is a series of computer games released for the Apple II, MSX, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision home computers, and later ported to the NES, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, PC, Amstrad CPC, Amiga and many other platforms...
(1984 Max-A-Flex System) - CheyenneCheyenne (video game)-Summary:In this western style shooting game, the player had to guide and protect "Buster Badshot" through various scenes of danger that take place in the old west, using the light gun. As well as keeping the character alive, the player had to kill the wanted bandits for each level...
(1984) - Combat (1985)
- Vertigo (1985 Limited release)
- Top Gunner (1986)
- Top Secret (1986)
- Clay Pigeon (1986)
- ChillerChiller (video game)Chiller is an Exidy light gun arcade game released in 1986. An unlicensed port was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 by American Game Cartridges, with the option of using either the standard controller or the NES Zapper. The player takes on the role of an unseen torturer who...
(1986) - Crack Shot (1987)
- Hit N Miss (1987)
- Rough Ranger (1988)
- Showdown (1988)
- Who DunitWho DunitWho Dunit was an Exidy light gun arcade game released in 1988.-Summary:In this shooting game, the player was to guide a character through a mysterious mansion to find a key to open a trunk in the attic. Using the light gun, the player had to guide and protect this character from dangers that range...
(1989)
External links
- The Dot Eaters Article featuring a history of Death Race and Exidy