was a pioneering
Arcade Game Developer that had its heyday in the era of
Vector Display games. While other companies released games based on
Raster Display s, early in their history, Cinematronics and
Atari released vector-display games, which offered a distinctive look and a greater graphic capability (at the time), at the cost of being only black and white.
Cinematronics Inc. was founded in
1975 by Jim Pearce, Dennis Parte and Gary Garrison in El Cajon, California, although early on Parte and Garrison sold their shares to
Tom "Papa" Stroud . Cinematronics' first game, ''
Flipper Ball '', released in
1976 , was fairly unsuccessful. The company would not be widely noticed until
Larry Rosenthal was brought on board one year later.
Rosenthal, a student of
MIT , had written his master's
Thesis on ''
Spacewar '' and wanted to create a version of the computer game that could be placed in
Arcades . Rosenthal had created a
Processor that was powerful enough to run a proper version of ''Spacewar'' and yet inexpensive to produce. He named his
TTL -based board "Vectorbeam". After building a prototype, he shopped the machine around to various game companies, looking for a distributor. Rosenthal demanded a 50/50 share of the profits, a figure that caused nearly all companies to pass on the deal.
At this same time Cinematronics was looking for their next game. The timing was perfect for the two: Cinematronics was running out of funds and looking for any deal to land a new game and Rosenthal was selling a game but insisted on a ridiculously high profit share. The deal was made and the game was released as ''
Space Wars ''.
''Space Wars'' was the first arcade game to utilize black & white
Vector Graphics , which enabled it to display sharp, crisp images. ''Space Wars'' had graphics which were far more detailed than the
Raster displays of the time. Cinematronics shipped over 30,000 units and was a top seller in
1978 .
Rosenthal, feeling that he was still not receiving enough money for his innovations, left Cinematronics. When he attempted to take his "Vectorbeam" technology with him, Pierce and Stroud sued. The men came to an agreement outside of court with Rosenthal selling his technology to Cinematronics.
With the "Vectorbeam" board under their control, Cinematronics released a series of vector graphic arcade games including ''
Starhawk '', ''
Warrior '' the first one-on-one fighting game, ''
Sundance '' and ''
Tail Gunner ''.
Cinematronics experimented with color overlays on some of their games. In '' through the streets fighting
Tank s and
Helicopter s.
Cinematronics created ''
Cosmic Chasm '', a color vector game. Other games were developed based on the same hardware system (based on
Motorola's 68000 chip) but were never released, including a
3D color vector game.
In
1983 Cinematronics was responsible for releasing ''
Dragon's Lair ,'' one of the earliest
Laserdisc -based arcade games. During the time ''Dragon's Lair'' was being created, Cinematronics filled for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In order to finish the project they partnered with Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later renamed
RDI Video Systems ), who later tried to sell a home version of the laser-disc machine. While RDI's home console, the
Halcyon , was a failure, the Dragon's Lair arcade was a huge success. Cinematronics followed it up with the similar
Sci-fi -themed laserdisc game, ''
Space Ace ''.
In about '' game in the 1990's.
About
1984 , Cinematronics started releasing games which used
Raster Display , such as ''
Express Delivery '' and other raster games based on a new hardware platform called the ''
Cinemat System '', which was designed to be reusable with replaceable software, control panels, and cabinet artwork.
About
1987 , Cinematronics was acquired by the Leland Corporation and continued to make arcade and PC game software. Ultimately, they were sold to
Maxis in
1997 to develop the unreleased ''
Crucible '' (after developing ''
Full Tilt! Pinball '') and were last seen making ''
Jack Nicklaus 4 '' for
Accolade in 1997.
The Space Cadet table from ''Full Tilt!'' has been bundled with
Microsoft Windows ever since the
Windows 95 Plus! pack was released.
