With the video game industry being relatively young, we're lucky to have most of its contributors still alive. Still, we have lost some great innovators over the years. Here's a tribute thread to the late game developers.
Willy Higinbotham (1910-1994)
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There's some debate as to what constitutes the first video game (A.S. Douglas' 1952 tic tac toe game on the EDSAC seems the mostly likely to me now) but Higinbotham's Tennis for Two in 1958 is still hugely significant pre-dating Pong my many years.
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Gunpei Yokoi (1941-1997)
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Yokoi's impact on Nintendo and gaming in general was huge. He was the engineer behind most of Nintendo's consoles, the creator of cross-shaped d-pad style controller, the producer on Miyamoto's early arcade games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., and head of the R&D1 development team which created Metroid and many others.
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Dan Bunten/Danielle Bunten Berry (1949-1998)
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Bunten was a pioneer in early home computer gaming with titles like the multiplayer strategy game M.U.L.E and the strategy/exploration game The Seven Cities of Gold. His 1988 RTS Modem Wars was one of the first games playable over a modem.
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Silas Warner (1949-2004)
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Founder of Muse Software, Warner is arguably the creator of the stealth action genre with Castle Wolfenstein, the game which also inspired id's later FPS. He also did RobotWar, a mix of robot building and strategy. His company also made the classic Space Taxi although I think he only developed the audio part of that game. I also find it interesting that he was one of the people working on that cancelled Super Mario game for CD-i.
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Shinya Nishigashi (1962-2004)
Nishigashi was the producer of Climax action-adventure games like Landstalker and Dark Savior. He later became president of the Climax Graphics development team later renamed Crazy Games.
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Bruce Carver (1948-2005)
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Carver founded Access Software and created war themed action classics like Beach Head and Raid Over Moscow which were quite advanced at the time mixing different perspectives. He later went on the start the Tex Murphy series of adventure games although I don't think he was heavily involved with its sequels. He was also a huge contributor to golf video games with the Leader Board and Links series'.
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Richard Joseph (1953-2007)
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Joseph was one of the great game music composers, particularly on the C64 and Amiga. He made music for Barbarian, Defender of the Crown, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer '98, Moonstone, and many others.
Dale Disharoon (? - 2008)
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Disharoon is best known for some of Telarium's computer games like Below the Root and Alice in Wonderland which combined platform action with menu based graphic adventures. I found this link interesting as it hints at the possibility of a new game. http://community.livejournal.com/ber...mers/3370.html
So, let's discuss these people and their contributions, and of course add any I missed.
