ICOM simulations
| ICOM Simulations, Inc.
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | March 4th 1981 |
| resolution | February 14, 1998 |
| Reason for dissolution | Restructuring by the owner |
| Seat | Wheeling (USA) |
| management | Death Zipnick (President, 1981–1991) Dennis Defensor (President & CEO, 1991–1993) |
| Number of employees | 25 (1989) 45 (1991) |
| Branch | Software development, computer games |
ICOM Simulations was a software company based in Wheeling , Illinois in the United States from 1981 through the 1990s. The company produced some of the earliest point-and-click adventure games and pioneered the release of multimedia games on CD-ROM.
In addition to its main business as a third party developer, especially for the TuboGrafx-16, the American version of the PC engine , ICOM also launched numerous of its own game titles. The so-called MacVenture Adventures, including above all Shadowgate and the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series developed in full motion video , became more well known .
history
TMQ software and ICOM simulations
The company was founded by Tod Zipnick in March 1981 under the name TMQ Software, an abbreviation for "Trademark of Quality". In the first few years TMQ only appeared as a contract developer for early game consoles such as the Panasonic JR-200 or for ports for Atarisoft .
When Apple Computer launched the Macintosh in January 1984 , the company was very focused on that system. Tod Zipnick and his team were excited about the idea of a mouse- controlled graphical user interface. This also wanted to revolutionize the control of computer games. An adventure game was planned in which commands were to be entered using the mouse via a point-and-click interface. The text inputs that were unavoidable in Adventures and their interpretation via a parser should be completely eliminated. Similar approaches had already taken place in Japan in 1983 at T&E Soft Corporation , which had developed an interface with cursor control for the FM-7 from Fujitsu , and in 1984 the first point-and-click adventure was with Enchanted Scepters from Silicon Beach Software for the Apple Macintosh. However, these precursors remained largely unknown. The control options were still too limited and the graphics too simple for the games to stand out from classic text adventures .
ICOM Simulations, with its MacVenture engine and the first Adventure Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True developed on its basis, then succeeded in laying the foundation for the new game genre in 1985. Three more MacVenture point-and-click adventures followed: Uninvited 1986, Shadowgate 1987 and the continuation of the first title Déjà Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas 1988. Initially each for Apple Macintosh, but then gradually as ports the other systems common at the time. From 1987 at the latest, when Lucasfilm Games, which later LucasArts decided to use comparable controls with its Maniac Mansion , point-and-click adventures were able to displace text adventures within a few years.
The MacVenture engine was so directly based on the "Macintosh System Software", the early Mac OS , that some of the tools created for it as system-related software also met with interest outside of the game industry, such as the TMON debugger programmed in assembler by Waldemar Horwat or the application launcher called OnCue .
At the beginning of the 1990s, ICOM Simulations recognized the advantages of the cross-platform development of games with a high multimedia content for CD-ROM and, in its series Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, consistently used the new technology for all platforms with intensive use of full motion video technology Medium. The first part of the Sherlock Holmes series was considered to be the first interactive multimedia game on CD-ROM for PC in 1991.
However, Tom Zipnik, the company's founder and until recently the largest shareholder, died on July 5, 1991 at the age of 35 as a result of his Hodgkin lymphoma . ICOM Simulations brought a successor to Shadowgate , the commercially most successful MacVenture adventure, to the market in early 1993 under the title Beyond Shadowgate for the TurboGrafx-16. Just a few months later, in May 1993, Viacom bought the company .
Viacom New Media
After Viacom Interactive Media was founded in Chicago in June 1994 by Viacom managers Sumner Redstone and Frank Biondi, all software activities of the group were divided into two areas. In Viacom New Media , responsible for the development of CD-ROM and cartridge titles and in Viacom Interactive Services with a focus on online services and Internet TV. The former ICOM Simulations was merged into the Viacom New Media business unit . Dennis Defensor, who took over the management of ICOM after the death of the founder and initially also assumed the position of Senior Vice President at Viacom New Media, left the company in the same year.
Immediately after its takeover, the ICOM team released another adventure game called Dracula Unleashed , which technically follows on from the Sherlock Holmes series. In the following years, however, the development concentrated exclusively on the exploitation of TV rights of the Viacom group, especially the cartoon characters Bugs Bunny , Rocko from Rocko's modern life and Beavis and Butt-Head of the Nickelodeon and MTV channels .
successor
Rabid Entertainment
In 1996 Viacom renamed the area around the former ICOM Simulations to Rabit Entertainment, Inc. and spun it off as an independent company from the group in the spring of 1997. However, this was not followed by a new beginning, rather the company was dissolved by 1998.
Infinite Ventures
An independent company called Infinite Ventures, Inc. , founded in 1997 by a former employee of Viacom New Media, succeeded in acquiring the rights to the former ICOM games from Rabid Entertainment before it was dissolved. With the support of former employees from the original development team, the three episodes of the series Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective were revised and brought out as an interactive DVD with significantly improved quality. This was followed by visually and technically significantly improved ports of the MacVenture Adventures for the Game Boy Color and Windows Mobile . However, between 2007 and 2008, Infinite Ventures also ceased operations.
Zojoi
David Marsh, a former developer of ICOM Simulations, who had advised Infinite Ventures on the purchase of the rights in 1998, was finally able to secure a rights package with ICOM classics himself in January 2012. On March 5, 2012, he founded Zojoi, LLC with Karl Roelofs, another ICOM veteran . , which has since dealt with remakes and upgrades of previous titles.
In autumn 2012 Zojoi started two crowdfunding campaigns on the Kickstarter platform , one for the further porting of the Sherlock Holmes series and another for financing an improved and expanded remake of Shadowgate . The Sherlock Holmes campaign was unsuccessful, but the three cases from the first part of the Sherlock Holmes series appeared as a mobile app at the end of 2012 . The amount raised for Shadowgate via Kickstarter exceeded the intended target, but was well below the successes of the game projects of Tim Schafer , Brian Fargo and Jordan Weisman, which were celebrated with great public attention around the same time . For the appearance of the remake in August 2014, Zojoi published the original version of the game again via the Steam distribution platform and followed up with the other MacVenture adventures in the original design of the 1980s in January 2015. In 2019 Zojoi launched another adventure, Argonus and the Gods of Stone .
Games
- ↑ Publisher of the first publication (later ports and remakes were partly published by ICOM itself, partly by new publishers)
- ↑ Platform of the first publication (without possibly later porting)
- ↑ a b c d The game was released for the US TurboGrafx CD , i.e. for TurboGrafx-16 with the external CD drive available as an add-on. However, the devices were identical in construction to the Japanese PC engine and its add-on CD-ROM². The game can be played on all variants of the console.
- ↑ a b The game was released for the US TurboGrafx-16 . In contrast to the otherwise identical PC engine, the connection contacts of the HuCard memory cards were assigned differently from region to region ( regional code ). The game published on card in the USA was not compatible with the Japanese PC engine.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Rabid Entertainment. In: Trademark Status & Document Retrieval. United States Patent and Trademark Office, March 29, 1998, accessed October 22, 2013 .
- ^ A b Scripps Howard News Service: Office Computer Games Can Be Waste Of Time Or Good Training. In: Chicago Tribune. July 16, 1989, accessed October 22, 2013 .
- ↑ TMON. The Long View. In: RetroMacComputing blog basalgangster.macgui.com. March 28, 2010, accessed October 22, 2013 .
- ^ Paul Snively: Debugging Techniques and TMON Review . In: MacTutor . tape 1 , no. 10 ( online ).
- ↑ In it Adler: 20 Years of Computer Software. 1985: Schoolwork suffers. In: Darin Adler's personal web pages. Retrieved October 22, 2013 .
- ↑ Viacom creates Interactive Media Group. EBSCOhost Connection , June 13, 1994, accessed November 7, 2013 (quoted from Broadcasting & Cable, Vol. 124 Issue 24, p48).
- ^ Viacom New Media. In: Company. MobyGames , accessed November 5, 2013 .
- ↑ John Batelle: Viacom Doesn't Suck. In: Wired . April 1995, accessed November 7, 2013 .
- ↑ Dennis Defensor: Profile overview. In: LinkedIn . Retrieved November 5, 2013 .