Troy Lyndon
Encyclopedia
Troy A. Lyndon is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG). After more than 20 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
, which was acquired by Activision
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
and Merrill Lynch
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
Troy A. Lyndon (born November 29, 1964 in New York, NY) is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG). After more than 20 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
, which was acquired by Activision
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
and Merrill Lynch
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
Troy A. Lyndon (born November 29, 1964 in New York, NY) is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG). After more than 20 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
, which was acquired by Activision
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
and Merrill Lynch
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
Early life
Troy Lyndon's mother is Jacquie Edelen, a homemaker. His father is David Lyndon, now retired as a professor, was a former Marine, and Director of the Navy's Aegis Program for RCA and Seasparrow Program Director for Raytheon Corporation. Adopted by David at age 6, he followed David's engineering footsteps completing his first 5 nationally published games before the age of 20. He attended Moorpark CollegeMoorpark College
Moorpark College is a California state college located on a property reclining on a hill in Moorpark, a town in Ventura County, California. It was established in 1967 and as of 2006, had an enrollment of 16,580 students and 175 full-time faculty members....
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
Career
At age 13, Troy Lyndon developed and sold his first video game professionally, titled Space Voyager for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Encouraged by his childhood friend, David Jennings, he followed with two additional games titled Great Wave, Space Quest and Conqueror also for the TRS-80.He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
Datasoft
Datasoft, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher founded in 1980 by Pat Ketchum. Based out of Chatsworth, California, Datasoft ported games from arcade systems to personal computers and acquired licenses for games from famous movies and TV shows....
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
GameStar
GameStar is a monthly released PC computer game magazine, published by the IDG Entertainment Media GmbH in Germany. In 2008 it had an average monthly circulation of 250,000 copies and is therefore the best sold PC computer game magazine in Europe. It is also being published in Hungary, the Czech...
, which was acquired by Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing is a British 1985 computer game for 8-bit home computers released by Activision and later re-released by Mastertronic for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.-Gameplay:...
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe created by writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The character first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered, anthropomorphic, "funny...
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
Madden Football
Due to the success of Monday Night Football on the PC, Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
Christian Media projects
After reading a book by Bob BufordBob Buford
Bob Buford is a cable-TV pioneer, social entrepreneur, author, and venture philanthropist. He co-founded Leadership Network in 1984, became founding chairman in 1988 of what was initially called The Peter F...
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is an organization started by Billy Graham in 1950. The main focus of the BGEA is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible...
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR is a type of image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically-captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles...
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
Tim LaHaye
Timothy F. LaHaye is an American evangelical Christian minister, author, and speaker. He is best known for the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-wrote with Jerry B. Jenkins. He has written over 50 books, both fiction and non-fiction.-Early life:LaHaye was born in Detroit,...
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a Christian real-time strategy game developed and published by Inspired Media Entertainment for Microsoft Windows. It was released on November 7, 2006...
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
Awards
Lyndon and Knox were recognized when awarded the Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & YoungErnst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
and Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
John Smedley (developer)
John Smedley was a computer game programmer, Product Development Director and is now President of Sony Online Entertainment since 2002.Smedley was involved with the creation and development of the original EverQuest and was co-founder of Verant Interactive, Inc., which became Sony Online...
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
Troy A. Lyndon (born November 29, 1964 in New York, NY) is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG). After more than 20 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
Early life
Troy Lyndon's mother is Jacquie Edelen, a homemaker. His father is David Lyndon, now retired as a professor, was a former Marine, and Director of the Navy's Aegis Program for RCA and Seasparrow Program Director for Raytheon Corporation. Adopted by David at age 6, he followed David's engineering footsteps completing his first 5 nationally published games before the age of 20. He attended Moorpark CollegeMoorpark College
Moorpark College is a California state college located on a property reclining on a hill in Moorpark, a town in Ventura County, California. It was established in 1967 and as of 2006, had an enrollment of 16,580 students and 175 full-time faculty members....
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
Career
At age 13, Troy Lyndon developed and sold his first video game professionally, titled Space Voyager for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Encouraged by his childhood friend, David Jennings, he followed with two additional games titled Great Wave, Space Quest and Conqueror also for the TRS-80.He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
Datasoft
Datasoft, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher founded in 1980 by Pat Ketchum. Based out of Chatsworth, California, Datasoft ported games from arcade systems to personal computers and acquired licenses for games from famous movies and TV shows....
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
GameStar
GameStar is a monthly released PC computer game magazine, published by the IDG Entertainment Media GmbH in Germany. In 2008 it had an average monthly circulation of 250,000 copies and is therefore the best sold PC computer game magazine in Europe. It is also being published in Hungary, the Czech...
, which was acquired by Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing is a British 1985 computer game for 8-bit home computers released by Activision and later re-released by Mastertronic for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.-Gameplay:...
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe created by writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The character first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered, anthropomorphic, "funny...
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
Madden Football
Due to the success of Monday Night Football on the PC, Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
Christian Media projects
After reading a book by Bob BufordBob Buford
Bob Buford is a cable-TV pioneer, social entrepreneur, author, and venture philanthropist. He co-founded Leadership Network in 1984, became founding chairman in 1988 of what was initially called The Peter F...
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is an organization started by Billy Graham in 1950. The main focus of the BGEA is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible...
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR is a type of image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically-captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles...
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
Tim LaHaye
Timothy F. LaHaye is an American evangelical Christian minister, author, and speaker. He is best known for the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-wrote with Jerry B. Jenkins. He has written over 50 books, both fiction and non-fiction.-Early life:LaHaye was born in Detroit,...
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a Christian real-time strategy game developed and published by Inspired Media Entertainment for Microsoft Windows. It was released on November 7, 2006...
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
Awards
Lyndon and Knox were recognized when awarded the Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & YoungErnst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
and Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
John Smedley (developer)
John Smedley was a computer game programmer, Product Development Director and is now President of Sony Online Entertainment since 2002.Smedley was involved with the creation and development of the original EverQuest and was co-founder of Verant Interactive, Inc., which became Sony Online...
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
Troy A. Lyndon (born November 29, 1964 in New York, NY) is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG). After more than 20 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
from 1998–2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games "with a purpose".
Early life
Troy Lyndon's mother is Jacquie Edelen, a homemaker. His father is David Lyndon, now retired as a professor, was a former Marine, and Director of the Navy's Aegis Program for RCA and Seasparrow Program Director for Raytheon Corporation. Adopted by David at age 6, he followed David's engineering footsteps completing his first 5 nationally published games before the age of 20. He attended Moorpark CollegeMoorpark College
Moorpark College is a California state college located on a property reclining on a hill in Moorpark, a town in Ventura County, California. It was established in 1967 and as of 2006, had an enrollment of 16,580 students and 175 full-time faculty members....
where he majored in Business Administration, but left college early to pursue more opportunities during the watershed years of the video game industry.
Career
At age 13, Troy Lyndon developed and sold his first video game professionally, titled Space Voyager for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Encouraged by his childhood friend, David Jennings, he followed with two additional games titled Great Wave, Space Quest and Conqueror also for the TRS-80.He co-authored Atari to Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur. He left to pursue video game development full-time.
Working under contract for Datasoft
Datasoft
Datasoft, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher founded in 1980 by Pat Ketchum. Based out of Chatsworth, California, Datasoft ported games from arcade systems to personal computers and acquired licenses for games from famous movies and TV shows....
, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
of Lost Tomb and developed from scratch the Commodore 64 version of Mr. Do!, consumer versions of coin-op arcade games.
Hired by GameStar
GameStar
GameStar is a monthly released PC computer game magazine, published by the IDG Entertainment Media GmbH in Germany. In 2008 it had an average monthly circulation of 250,000 copies and is therefore the best sold PC computer game magazine in Europe. It is also being published in Hungary, the Czech...
, which was acquired by Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing is a British 1985 computer game for 8-bit home computers released by Activision and later re-released by Mastertronic for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.-Gameplay:...
, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. He also produced the game version of Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe created by writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The character first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered, anthropomorphic, "funny...
.
Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.
Lyndon then started creating original games with co-developer, Michael Knox. They signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured several technical innovations: it supported every current graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes), and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio played through the PC's internal speaker.
Madden Football
Due to the success of Monday Night Football on the PC, Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons (a friend of Lyndon's who had never developed a professional software product before), but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed graphics. Lyndon and Knox embedded everything they had learned in developing two previous football games into Madden with countless hours with programmer Simmons describing how to make computer animated objects appear as though they were as smart as humans in determining how to play each of the different positions played by football players in real life. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch.
After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage).
Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.
Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.
Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, an education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenagers and adults. Secondly, Lyndon produced an motion picture; "Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend", which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. As a results of Corel's departure from the video game industry, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.
Christian Media projects
After reading a book by Bob BufordBob Buford
Bob Buford is a cable-TV pioneer, social entrepreneur, author, and venture philanthropist. He co-founded Leadership Network in 1984, became founding chairman in 1988 of what was initially called The Peter F...
called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
. Originally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...
, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is an organization started by Billy Graham in 1950. The main focus of the BGEA is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible...
.
Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, whether it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television. However, Lyndon is the Inventor of this Patented technology. http://www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.
iLumina is the first interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Its features include QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR is a type of image file format developed by Apple Inc. for QuickTime. It allows the creation and viewing of photographically-captured panoramas and the exploration of objects through images taken at multiple viewing angles...
, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible.
Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of a Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye
Tim LaHaye
Timothy F. LaHaye is an American evangelical Christian minister, author, and speaker. He is best known for the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction, which he co-wrote with Jerry B. Jenkins. He has written over 50 books, both fiction and non-fiction.-Early life:LaHaye was born in Detroit,...
and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND
Left Behind
Left Behind is a series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, dealing with Christian dispensationalist End Times: pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological viewpoint of the end of the world. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation...
novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a Christian real-time strategy game developed and published by Inspired Media Entertainment for Microsoft Windows. It was released on November 7, 2006...
has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time, although it was released amidst tremendous controversy.
In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained its corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.
Awards
Lyndon and Knox were recognized when awarded the Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & YoungErnst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
and Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer)
John Smedley (developer)
John Smedley was a computer game programmer, Product Development Director and is now President of Sony Online Entertainment since 2002.Smedley was involved with the creation and development of the original EverQuest and was co-founder of Verant Interactive, Inc., which became Sony Online...
, current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others. Products produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.
External links
