Big Five Software

Big Five Software (a.k.a. Big 5 Software) was an American video game developer and publisher in the first half of the 1980s founded by Bill Hogue and Jeff Konyu.[1][2] The company developed games for the Tandy TRS-80 and later the Atari 8-bit family. Most of its TRS-80 games were clones of arcade games, such as Galaxy Invasion (Galaxian), Super Nova (Asteroids), Defense Command (Missile Command), and Meteor Mission II (Lunar Rescue).[3] Big Five also sold an Atari joystick interface called TRISSTICK which was popular with TRS-80 owners.[4]

For the present-day Big Five software companies, see Big Tech.
Big Five Software
IndustryVideo games
Founded1980
Headquarters
Van Nuys, California
,
US
Key people
Bill Hogue
Jeff Konyu
ProductsMiner 2049er
Bounty Bob Strikes Back!
Websitebigfivesoftware.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 14 September 2019)

The company's biggest release came after moving away from the black and white TRS-80. The ten stage platform game Miner 2049er, designed and programmed by Bill Hogue for the Atari 8-bit family,[5] was a commercial and critical success. It shipped on a custom 16 kilobyte ROM cartridge (compared to standard 8 KB Atari 8-bit cartridges) and the game was ported to other computers and consoles. Miner 2049er was awarded "Electronic Game of the Year" in the 1984 Arkie Awards,[6] among other accolades for the game and Hogue.

A planned sequel, Scraper Caper, was advertised, but cancelled. A sequel, Bounty Bob Strikes Back! was published in 1985 after which Hogue stopped developing games and Big Five ramped down. In 2001,[lower-alpha 1] he released a free, custom emulation of the Atari 8-bit versions of Miner 2049er and Bounty Bob Strikes Back! for Microsoft Windows.[8]

Games

TRS-80

Atari 8-bit

Unreleased
  • Meteor Mission (1980)[5]
  • Scraper Caper (Atari 8-bit, circa 1983). It was mentioned in some magazine ads for Miner 2049er.[9]

Notes
  1. The first version of the emulator, published in 2001, contains the "20010720" timestamp on its "Help/About..." window.[7]

References
  1. "Big Five Software". TRS-80.org. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  2. Giles, Robert H., ed. (28 March 1982). "Call them 'microteens'". Democrat and Chronicle. Vol. 3, no. 13. Rochester, NY: Gannet Co. Inc. pp. 1F, 7F – via Newspapers.com.
  3. Hawken, Kieren (2016). Jones, Darran (ed.). "Big Five Software". Retro Gamer. No. 157. Bournemouth, UK: Imagine Publishing. pp. 70–75. ISSN 1742-3155.
  4. Reed, Matthew. "TRISSTICK". TRS-80.org.
  5. "The Company". Big Five Software. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  6. Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (January 1984). "Arcade Alley: The Arcade Awards, Part 1". Video. Vol. 7, no. 10. Reese Communications. pp. 40–42. ISSN 0147-8907.
  7. Hogue, Bill. "Big Five Software - Emulator". Big Five Software. Archived from the original on 9 September 2001.
  8. Hogue, Bill (18 January 2007) [First published in 2001]. "Big Five Software - Emulator". Big Five Software. Archived from the original on 14 September 2019.
  9. "Scraper Caper advertisement". archive.org. 1983.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.