A Company Run by Teenagers

Unfortunately nothing to show you this week. I have been painting and just finished my concept for the current theme for The Artist Challenge. It doesn’t publish until the 21st. Although, I do have something I hope you might enjoy seeing and reading- that I’ve never told you:

Before I started working in television (right out of college) I took a job with 3 engineers. The 4 of us made up a Research and Development company specializing in microcomputer systems. Our focus was designing hand-held computer games that were popular in the early ’80’s. We did pretty well.

The boys hired me to do photorealistic images of what the actual game might look like. They’d take my drawing and their prototypes to toy companies, like Coleco, Mattel, Milton Bradley, and make their presentation.My drawings for our prototypes. On left you can see the actual product with the drawing.
We ALSO had a back burner project that was originally called the “Fantasy Machine.’ It was an interactive game. We used a Dungeon and Dragon’s storyline because it was the popular fantasy of the day. The Original Game
Basically the player could make several choices in the game and a spool of film would reel back and forth to the chosen destination. Now as silly as that may sound, you need to understand- the world had never seen an interactive game before and our game was great! But- none of the toy companies would even give us the time of day. They said it would never fly and it was too expensive to produce.

Didn’t stop us for a second but we knew we had to make it slicker; Thus the birth of Dragon's Lair.

First we needed to hire an animator. We wanted the characters to be rich and alive like nothing the public had ever seen in a computer game before.

Just so happened that Don Bluth, one of Disney’s top animators, had left Disney and attempted to start his own company. He was failing miserably. Fortunate for us, Don was right in our budget range!

Then to our amazement, a ‘brand new company’ called Pioneer was willing to make us a ‘brand new thing’ called a ‘laser disk’. This was exceptionally cool because laser technology was something most people only knew from Star Wars movies. (And we realized real quick a laser disk was much better than our twirling film rolls!)
So, we gathered all parites and created the prototype arcade game. We took Dragon's Lair to a big convention in Chicago. By 6 pm the first day we were on the National News. Dan Rather actually did a segment on us. He referred to us as a company ‘run by teenagers‘. (He was basing that on our appearance at the time.) BUT suddenly, ‘Coleco, Mattel, Milton Bradley’ were now throwing million dollar checks our way for the game rights.

My boss gleefully accepted one contract. We ended up closing our doors about 9 months later. We couldn’t meet the orders. Big business was not something we were ready for. Dan Rather’s comment ‘of a company run by teenagers’ was truer than he knew.

One of the engineers (Tim) and myself (Yes we were celebrating and toasted - but Tim definitely looks it!)
Dragon’s Lair and Dirk the Daring were my introduction as an artist in business world. And you know- as I think back on it now, I wouldn’t trade the experience or all the laughter we shared for anything.
Vikki

Please visit the Red Chair Gallery (I finally got it updated!) and The Artist Challenge.

**BTW- If there’s any Game collectors: I’m going to be selling the following on eBay:
-Dragon’s Lair Disk Player (made by Pioneer / has our RDI Video Systems logo on side),
-Original Dragon’s Lair Laser Disk,-used in the Arcade,
-Original Thayer’s Quest Laser Disk (our last game),
-Animation face model sheet for Dirk the Daring from Bluth Studios
Best offer.