The Software Toolworks
3DO Games
| Game | Region | Code | Type | Developer | Publisher | Release Date | Local Title | Rarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20th Century Video Almanac | NA | Non-game, Edutainment | The Software Toolworks | The Software Toolworks | 1993 | 1 | ||
| Oceans Below | NA | Non-game, Edutainment | Amazing Media | The Software Toolworks | 1995 | 1 | ||
| Oceans Below | JP | FZ-SJ2752 | Non-game, Edutainment | Amazing Media | The Software Toolworks | 1995 | オーシャンズ・ビロウ | 1 |
| San Diego Zoo Presents: The Animals! | NA | Non-game, Edutainment | Arnowitz Studios | The Software Toolworks | 1993 | 1 | ||
| Space Shuttle | EU | Edutainment, Shooter | Amazing Media | The Software Toolworks | 1994 | 1 | ||
| Space Shuttle | NA | Edutainment, Shooter | Amazing Media | The Software Toolworks | 1994 | 1 | ||
| Space Shuttle | KR | GDT-GA161 | Edutainment, Shooter | Amazing Media | The Software Toolworks | 1994 | 스페이스 셔틀 | 1 |
Overview
Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox company
The Software Toolworks (commonly abbreviated as Toolworks) was an American software and video game developer based in Novato, California. The company was founded by Walt Bilofsky in 1980 out of his Sherman Oaks garage, which he converted into an office, to develop software for the Heathkit H89 microcomputer. It quickly expanded into video games, releasing Airport and MyChess in 1980; other notable games include Chessmaster 2000, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, and Mario Is Missing!. Toolworks merged with its distributor, Software Country, in 1986 and, after going public in 1988, acquired IntelliCreations, DS Technologies, and Mindscape. By 1994, Toolworks employed 600 people and had a revenue of Template:US$. In May that year, it was acquired by Pearson plc for Template:US$, which converted it to bear the Mindscape identity by November.
History
Early years (1979–1982)
The Software Toolworks was founded by programmer Walt Bilofsky, who, after studying at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses, as a programmer for RAND Corporation, and as a consultant.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="LA Times 1984">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1979, he acquired and assembled a Heathkit H89 microcomputer; he found that the microcomputer lacked important software and thus began developing new software and ports of his own, including a fullscreen editor and a compiler for the C programming language entitled C/80, the latter based on Ron Cain's public-domain compiler Small-C.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref name="LA Times 1984" /> Bilofsky subsequently contacted the Heath Company, which made the Heathkit series of microcomputers, to have it market his software and, in response, was told that the operating system and the BASIC programming language Heathkit microcomputers came with were sufficient.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> He instead turned to advertise his software in BUSS, a Heathkit hobbyist newsletter, starting in 1980, quickly receiving orders for his software.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Bilofsky eventually adopted the name "The Software Toolworks", using it publicly for the first time with an advertisement submitted to the magazine Byte in June 1980.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> He converted his garage in Sherman Oaks, California, in a two-room office, outfitting it with disk duplicator, shelving, and a shipping area.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> This office was later relocated into a garden shed.<ref name="WaPo 1984">Template:Cite news</ref> By the end of the year, Toolworks had entered the video game business, having published Airport, an air traffic control game by Jim Gillogly, and MyChess, a chess game by Dave Kittinger.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> This continued in 1981, with Robert Wesson developing a clone of Pac-Man, the game Munchkin, and a port of Invaders for the H89, and Bilofksy adapting the artificial intelligence psychiatrist ELIZA.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Other early non-game software included the spreadsheet editor Zencalc (later replaced by MyCalc), the text editor PIE, the text formatting application TEXT, and the spelling checker SPELL.<ref name="LA Times 1984" /><ref name="WaPo 1984" />
One of Toolworks' major releases was a port of Adventure, a text adventure game developed by William Crowther in 1975 and later expanded by Don Woods.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Gillogly made Bilofsky aware of the game and, by 1982, was able to get the game running on an H89 using Bilofsky's C/80 compiler.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Although the game was in the public domain, Bilofsky decided to release an official version with the approval of Crowther and Woods.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> This version was expanded so that, at the end of the game, the player is admitted into a fictional "Wizards' Guild" and given a password that could be posted to Toolworks in return for a "Certificate of Wizardness", underwritten by Crowther and Woods, and signed with the Toolworks corporate seal, the only time this seal was used.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The game was released in 1982 and came with a manual packaged in a Ziploc bag.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" />
Expansion (1983–1987)
In 1983, Toolworks was joined by Joe Abrams, Bilofsky's cousin.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> That same year, the company moved into a proper, three-room office on the 11th floor of a Sherman Oaks bank building, opposite of the Sherman Oaks Galleria.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref name="LA Times 1984" /> This move was made possible by Toolworks' growing sales, and by this time, its products were sold through more than 50 Heathkit stores, and it had released a total of 40 products by 1984.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> That year, distributor Software Country and its manager, Les Crane, licensed Toolworks' versions of Adventure and ELIZA for a software compilation disk titled Golden Oldies Vol I, which was released the following year.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Subsequently, Crane agreed with Abrams that Software Country would market a chess game developed by Toolworks; for this project, Toolworks brought on Mike Duffy, who had ported MyChess to IBM PC and PCjr, and the team developed Chessmaster 2000.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Crane stepped up the marketing efforts for the game, paying Template:US$ for the cover photo.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Bilofsky described this change as the "emphatic end of the Ziploc bag era".<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Chessmaster 2000 was released in 1986 and sold 100,000 copies within seven months.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Building from this success, Toolworks and Software Country merged in October 1986, with Toolworks as the surviving entity.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref name="10-K 1988">Template:Cite web</ref> The merged company then bought Priority Software Packaging, a disk duplication and software packaging company, the following November.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref name="10-K 1988" />
Following the merger, Crane conceived a typing application in which the user would be guided by Mavis Beacon, a fictional typing instructor who would correct the user's mistakes.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The product, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, was developed by Bilofsky, Duffy and Norman Worthington from Bilofsky's home in six months, with Duffy often working more than 140 hours per week.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The team aimed at making the application more fun to keep users engaged, thus it incorporated large quantities of text it deemed interesting, generated mistake analyses, and made it visually appealing.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Renée L'Espérance, a Haitian woman whom Crane and Abrams had met at a Saks Fifth Avenue store, was contracted to represent Mavis Beacon.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Due to her darker skin, several stores initially refused to sell the application when it was released in 1987.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This changed when a positive review of the application published in The New York Times generated much demand, restoring all of Toolworks' usual distribution channels within two weeks.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" />
As a public company and under Pearson (1987–1994)
In February 1987, Toolworks signed a distribution deal with Electronic Arts (expanded for distribution in Europe in July), which required Toolworks to port each new game to Apple II, Apple III, Apple IIGS, Macintosh, PCjr, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amiga and IBM PC computers, of which in colored and monochrome versions for the latter.<ref name="10-K 1988" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Each team member at the company was tasked with developing one of the ports but the undertaking eventually proved a financial strain and Toolworks ran out of funds by the end of 1987.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> To raise new capital, the company became a public company in January 1988, through a reverse merger with Deseret-Western Venture Capital, an existing public shell corporation registered in Utah.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> By June 1988, Toolworks had 45 employees.<ref name="10-K 1988" /> Shortly thereafter, the company acquired developers IntelliCreations (of Chatsworth, California) in August 1988 and DS Technologies (of West Chicago, Illinois) in February 1989.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref name="LA Times 1988">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> With the acquisition of IntelliCreations, Toolworks announced that it would move its headquarters to Chatsworth.<ref name="LA Times 1988" /> Toolworks also agreed with manufacturer Vendex to have Toolworks' games included with Vendex's machines.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Life & Death, a surgery simulation game was released in 1988.<ref>Opinion: A matter of Life & Death</ref> In 1989, the company released Beyond the Black Hole, a stereoscopic 3-D arcade game that came with 3-D glasses.<ref name="atkin198912">Template:Cite magazine</ref> By 1989, Chessmaster games and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing had collectively sold 750,000 through retail and licensing deals.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Looking to get a hold of a development license for Nintendo platforms, which were difficult to obtain, Toolworks acquired Mindscape, an existing license holder based in Northbrook, Illinois, in March 1990.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Using Mindscape's license, Toolworks released a follow-up to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing focused on piano teaching: Miracle Piano Teaching System.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The application came with a physical pressure-sensitive keyboard, which Toolworks had ordered 100,000 of.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The required quantity was overestimated and many keyboards were damaged in transit, causing high financial losses for Toolworks.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> In April 1990, Elizabeth Barker became the president and chief operating officer (COO) of Toolworks, succeeding Crane (who remained chairman and chief executive officer) in the president role, and was succeeded herself in both roles by Robert Lloyd in November 1990.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In September 1990, Toolworks moved from Chatsworth to Novato.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
While in talks with Japanese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in Japan, the chief executive officer of Philips introduced Abrams to CD-ROM drives; CD-ROM discs could store high capacities of data but drives for them were uncommon in households at the time.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Developer LucasArts had completed three CD-ROM games but struggled to sell them.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> In 1992, Toolworks licensed the games from LucasArts and had them distributed with new PCs by the Japanese OEMs.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> Within one month, this led to more sales of these games than LucasArts had achieved in the two years prior.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> The period from 1992-1993 saw the release of several titles: Star Wars Chess,<ref name="DHGFv2i7">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Mario's Time Machine,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Mario's Early Years!,<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Legend,<ref name=prerelease>Template:Cite magazine</ref> San Diego Zoo Presents: The Animals!,<ref name="SanZooAnimals-PRN">Template:Cite web</ref> and the PC version of Ultimate Domain.<ref name="carter199408">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Toolworks continued to grow further, to 600 employees by 1994, when it was generating annual revenues of Template:US$.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /> That May, the company was acquired by British media company Pearson plc for Template:US$.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Shortly thereafter, by November, Toolworks had assumed the Mindscape moniker for all of its operations, which is considered the end of Toolworks.<ref name="Retro Gamer 198" /><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Games
- Airport (1980)
- Mychess (1980)
- ELIZA (1981)
- Munchkin (1981)
- Adventure (1982)
- Golden Oldies: Volume 1 - Computer Software Classics (1985)
- Chessmaster 2000 (1986)
- Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! (1987)
- The Fidelity Chessmaster 2100 (1988)
- Life & Death (1988)
- The Hunt for Red October (1988)
- Cribbage King / Gin King (1989)
- Beyond the Black Hole (1989)
- The Chessmaster (1989)
- Bruce Lee Lives (1989)
- Orb-3D (1990)
- The Games People Play: Gin ∙ Cribbage ∙ Checkers ∙ Backgammon (1990)
- Life & Death II: The Brain (1990)
- Miracle Piano Teaching System (1990)
- The Big Deal (1991)
- The Chessmaster 3000 (1991)
- Mario is Missing! (1992)
- Mario's Early Years: Fun With Letters (1993)
- Capitol Hill (1993)
- The Chessmaster 4000 Turbo (1993)
- Star Wars Chess (1993)
- Mario's Time Machine (1993)
- MegaRace (1993)
- Mario's Early Years: Fun with Numbers (1994)
- Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! for Kids (1994)
- Mario's Early Years: Preschool Fun (1994)
- Ultimate Domain (1994)
- Evasive Action (1994)
- Maniac Sports (1994)
- Space Shuttle (1994)
- Al Unser Jr.'s Road to the Top (1994)
- NCAA Football (1994)