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The Blue Sky Rangers is a group of Intellivision game programmers who previously worked for
Intellivision Lives! website
Article at The Dot Eaters
about The Blue Sky Rangers and the Intellivision Video game development companies Video game programmers Intellivision {{videogame-company-stub
The Blue Sky Rangers is a group of Intellivision game programmers who previously worked for Mattel
Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...
in the early 1980s.
When the Intellivision first came out in 1978, its games were all developed by an outside firm, APh Technological Consulting
The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel, Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. I ...
. Realizing that potential profits are much greater with first party software
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
, Mattel formed its own in-house software development group. The original five members of that Intellivision team were manager Gabriel Baum, Don Daglow
Don Daglow (born circa 1953) is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game ''Utopia'' for Intellivision in 1 ...
, Rick Levine, Mike Minkoff and John Sohl. Levine and Minkoff (a long-time Mattel Toys veteran) both came over from the hand-held Mattel games engineering team. To keep these and later programmers (the Mattel team peaked at 110 people in 1983) from being hired away by rival Atari, their identity and work location was kept a closely guarded secret.
In 1982, ''TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program listings information as well as entertainment and television-related news.
The company sold its print magazine division, TV Guide Magazine LLC, in 2008.
Corpora ...
'' published an article about Intellivision's secret programming team. The writer of the article wanted to come up with some group name other than "The Application Software Programmers," so he came up with the name "The Blue Sky Rangers." This was based on the programming group's "Blue Sky Meetings," which were a series of brainstorming sessions for new game ideas.
This name stuck and the programmers were (and still are) collectively referred to as the Blue Sky Rangers. One of the early programmers, Keith Robinson, re-acquired the rights to Intellivision in recent years and the Blue Sky Rangers' games are now available on a variety of computers and video game platforms, as well as mobile phones. Rights are currently held by Tommy Tallarico.
Members
*Don Daglow
Don Daglow (born circa 1953) is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game ''Utopia'' for Intellivision in 1 ...
* Eddie Dombrower
* Connie Goldman
* Rick Koenig
* Dave Warhol
See also
*M Network
M Network was a video game division of Mattel that, in the 1980s, produced games in cartridge format for the Atari 2600 video game system.
History
In the early 1980s, Mattel's Intellivision video game console was a direct competitor to Atar ...
References
External links
Intellivision Lives! website
Article at The Dot Eaters
about The Blue Sky Rangers and the Intellivision Video game development companies Video game programmers Intellivision {{videogame-company-stub