The Crossbow Home Video Game
Geoffrey the Giraffe and the Tale of Two Cheeks
I’ve been in the video game industry for 40+ years, starting in 1979. The first video game system I developed games for was the Atari 2600. My first two 2600 games were Space Jockey, for U.S. Games, and Donkey Kong, for Coleco. Upon their completion, I decided I wanted to work with the best game developers in the world, at a company called Activision.
At the time, Activision was the premier game publisher on the Atari. I joined the company in 1982, opening the company’s first remote design facility (the Eastern Design Center), in Glen Rock, New Jersey. At Activision, I developed a number of hit titles, including Keystone Kapers, Pressure Cooker, and for the Commodore 64, Garry Kitchen’s Game Maker.
Unfortunately, in 1984, the Atari 2600 business crashed and burned (a story for another day). As a result, in 1985, I, along with the rest of the Eastern Design Center, left Activision. We started a small, independent game development studio, and, within a short period of time, launched a new game publisher, Absolute Entertainment. In 1986, we published our first game on the Commodore 64, F-18 Hornet, under our new publishing brand.
Exidy’s Crossbow Arcade Game (1988)
One of our next titles at Absolute Entertainment was a home version of the Exidy…
