Robert A. Whitehead(born November 1, 1953) is an Americanvideo game designerandprogrammer.While working forAtari, Inc.he wrote two of the nineAtari Video Computer Systemlaunch titles:BlackjackandStar Ship.After leaving Atari, he cofounded third party video game developerActivision,thenAccolade.He left the video game industry in the mid-1980s.
Career
editWhitehead attendedSan Jose State Universityand received aBSin Mathematics.[1]
Whitehead worked forAtari, Inc.in the late 1970s developing games for the Video Computer System (later renamed to theAtari 2600). He developed several games, including a VCS implementation ofchess,a feat many other programmers considered impossible for the system.[1]He and his co-workersDavid Crane,Larry Kaplan,andAlan Millerbecame informally known as the "Gang of Four", a group of developers who felt inadequately compensated for their work despite being collectively responsible for 60 percent of the company's profits from VCS cartridge sales.[2]
Whitehead is sometimes credited as co-author, together with the rest of the Gang of Four, of the operating system for theAtari 400/800 computers.[a]It has been however clarified both by Al Miller[7]and by Whitehead himself[citation needed]that he was not involved in the OS development, although he took part in developing applications for the computers.
Eventually the Gang of Four, disgruntled by the management's decline to provide more recognition and fair compensation to the developers, decided to leave Atari and start their own business. Whitehead together with Miller, Crane and Kaplan co-foundedActivision,the first third-party video game developer, in October 1979.[1]
There, with others, he created a VCS development system with an integrateddebuggerandminicomputer-hostedassembler.It was used for most of Activision's VCS titles. He also developed a "venetian blinds" animation technique: analgorithmthat horizontally reused and vertically interlacedspritesseveral times while rendering each frame, to give the illusion that the system had more than the maximum number of sprites allowed by the hardware.
In 1984, he and other founders of Activision became disillusioned with their company.[citation needed]Theirstockhad dwindled in value and morale was low. They thought that diversification to thehome computermarket — such as with theCommodore 64— was the key to success. He left Activision with Alan Miller (another co-founder of Activision), and they foundedAccolade.Soon after, Whitehead left thevideo game industryfor good.[1]
Whitehead left in order to "give back to God and spend time with 'the fam'". After leaving Accolade, Whitehead says he helped with "low income families, getting non-profit religious start-ups going, [and] spending time in the garden."[1]
In a 2005 interview,[8]Whitehead said of the contemporary state of the industry:
Too dark and derivative for my taste. The console and computer gaming business is too narrowly defined by the 14 [year old] male mentality and all his not-so-honorable fantasies. It's being driven by what has worked and afraid of what a 10 million dollar development bust will entail. It has lost its moral compass.[1]
Games
editAtari 2600
edit- Home Run(Atari)
- Football(Atari)
- Blackjack(Atari)
- Casino(Atari)
- Star Ship(Atari)
- Video Chess(Atari)
- Bo xing(Activision)
- Stampede(Activision)
- Chopper Command(Activision)
- Private Eye(Activision)
- Skiing(Activision)
- Sky Jinks(Activision)
- Venetian Blinds(Activision)[9]
Commodore 64
edit- 4th & Inches(Accolade)
- HardBall!(Accolade)[10]
Notes
editReferences
edit- ^abcdefInterview with Bob Whiteheadfrom DigitPress
- ^Flemming, Jeffrey (July 30, 2007)."The History Of Activision".Gamasutra.Archivedfrom the original on August 19, 2019.RetrievedSeptember 27,2019.
- ^"Operating System sources".XL Addendum - Atari Home Computer System - Operating System Manual - Supplement to ATARI 400/800 Technical Reference Notes(PDF).Atari, Inc.1984. OS listing p.1.RetrievedSeptember 27,2019.
- ^Thomasson, Michael (n.d.)."INTERVIEW - David Crane".Good Deal Games.
There is a period at Atari when there were no games coming from Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, Bob Whitehead, and myself. As the most senior designers at Atari we were tasked with creating the 800 operating system. This group, plus two others, wrote the entire operating system in about 8 months.
- ^Kindig, Randy; Savetz, Kevin; Arnold, Brad (February 25, 2016) [Conducted October 23, 2015]."ANTIC Interview 136 - David Crane, Pitfall!, Atari 400/800 OS".ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast(Podcast). Event occurs at 15:56.RetrievedSeptember 27,2019.
You know we had a - I guess that we had the four of us - Larry Kaplan, Al Miller, Bob Whitehead and myself; we had a couple of contractors who were brought in who had done communications with hard drives and things, floppy disks, things like that.
- ^Decuir, Joe(May 6, 2019) [Recorded May 5, 2019].Atari 800 Series Computers: 40 Years.Vintage Computer Festival East 2019. Event occurs at 1:12:36.Archivedfrom the original on December 14, 2021.RetrievedSeptember 27,2019.
BIOS Software: Al Miller, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Bob Whitehead & Howard Bornstein
{{cite AV media}}:CS1 maint: location (link) - ^Saunders, Glenn (1997). "Tape 08 - David Crane, Al Miller".Stella at 20 - An Atari 2600 Retrospective.Event occurs at 4:45.RetrievedSeptember 27,2019.
So there's this one year period where Atari actually took its most productive VCS programmers and put them on the 400/800 computer. I'd say most productive with the exception of Bob [Whitehead] - Bob continued to work on VCS carts.
- ^Digital Press Interviews
- ^"Atari Compendium".
- ^"Atari Compendium".