Gordo 106

David Brevik at GDC 2016. He, along with Erich and Max Schaefer, were responsible for the development of Gordo 106 on the Atari Lynx.

David Brevik was first introduced to the video game industry during his childhood with the Atari VCS that his father Colin brought into their household and with the Apple II Plus microcomputer one of his teachers kept at his classroom for use with his students, with some of his favorite video games being fantasy-themed titles such as Atari's Adventure and On-Line Systems' Wizard and the Princess, as he was a fan of the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.[7] In 1979, his father brought home the Apple II Plus computer and Brevik began to garner interest in developing games, learning by himself how to write code and refining his skills, eventually managing to create small programs during his high school period and started having aspirations to devote himself making games as a career.[7][8] After graduating from college, Brevik desired a job in creating games professionally and eventually enlisted help of a recruiter who came back with an offer to him from FM Waves, a clip art developer co-founded by Efraim Wyeth and Mike Sigal who began to transition themselves into a game development company and needed a programmer for their first project and as such, he joined the company along with brothers Erich and Max Schaefer in 1991.[1][7][8][9]

Erich and Max Schaefer are self-taught artists who were first introduced to video games with a Pong clone console brought by their parents to keep them entertained until their interest on the system dwindled.[7][8] Both brothers were also introduced to the Apple II Plus began pirating games from their local friends and also exchanging pirated games as well with them, playing titles such as Sir-Tech's Wizardry and the Ultima franchise, eventually becoming fans of Dungeons & Dragons.[7] Later on, the Schaefer brothers were introduced to the Macintosh and due to their exposure with programs like Adobe Photoshop, both had an idea of establishing a desktop publishing company called Desktop Heroes alongside Craig Sarachene, who shared the same interest as them, while Erich eventually wrote an action game titled Death Balls.[7] However the label ceased to exists once the team joined FM Waves to develop clip art before the company focused on the video game market instead with Gordo 106 for Atari Corporation on the Lynx.[7][8][9]

Gordo 106 was developed late in the lifecycle of the Lynx and failed to recoup its investment due to a low install base.

Gordo 106 was conceived by Wyeth after a meeting with Jack Tramiel, who told them if his company could develop a game and after agreeing to do so, Wyeth came up with twelve potential ideas for a game in three days, proceeded to create various proposals in order to showcase them at Atari Corp. and after they chose a proposal entitled The Emancipation of Gordo 106: The Mutated Lab Monkey, Wyeth told Erich to draw art from scratch for the game while also hiring Brevik to program due to his interest in making a professional gaming product and along with Max, the three began working on the project.[1][7][8][9] The team sought to create a character with unique movement, as Wyeth was a fan of Spider-Man, which would later influence the idea of playing as a monkey in the game.[7] Brevik handled the programming aspect during development despite not having experience making professional games, importing the artwork drawn by the Schaefer brothers into a playable form, who had free rein when creating the stages and characters respectively, with Sigal being impressed with their work.[7]

Despite development going smoothly, FM Waves ran into financial troubles due to the expenditure invested on the project and the lack of additional funds from Atari themselves, who were also financially struggling and it would eventually lead to the departure of both Brevik and Sigal from the company, leaving the remaining team unable to finish their work on the project as a result of these events.[7][8][9] The company would later be rebrand as Tenth Planet Software, now solely focusing on game development, and recruited Joe Jared to finish work on the project after Brevik departed from the team.[1][7] James Hampton acted as both producer and designer of the project prior to his role with Alien vs Predator on the Atari Jaguar, although he is not credited as such in the credits of the game.[2] Composer Alex Rudis was also involved during the production of the project and created the music for it, serving as one of his last compositions for the Lynx before resigning from Atari.[10][11] Gordo 106 was released in 1993, late into the life span of the Lynx and became the first commercially released game to be created by Brevik and the Schaefer brothers.[3][4][7][8][12] Due to the low install base of the system and Atari focusing their resources on the Jaguar, the game failed to recoup its investment and eventually Tenth Planet closed its doors.[7][13][14]

A remake of Gordo 106 for the Super Nintendo was in development by Atomic Games, a new development company that was established by the Schaefer brothers, after obtaining the intellectual property from Wyeth and was planned to be published by DTMC.[7] However progress on the remake was slow and despite being showcased at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1994,[24] development was cancelled after DTMC went out of business.[7]