video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer.
They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ...
from
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...
,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...
that produced graphics and application software and games for the
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...
,
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...
,
Atari 8-bit
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the ...
'' series, arcade-style games like ''
Spy's Demise
''Spy's Demise'' is an action game written by Alan Zeldin for the Apple II and published by Penguin Software in 1982. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, TI-99/4A, and Vector-06c. The game contains a puzzle which at the time ...
'', and
role-playing video game
A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...
The company was founded in 1978 by Mark Pelczarski as "MP Software" with its first product, a graphics program called ''Magic Paintbrush''. It evolved to "Co-op Software" as part of a sister company, Micro Co-op, then adopted the name "Penguin Software" in 1981 when software publishing became the primary focus. Like many other home computer publishers at the time, Penguin Software openly credited the developers of their games on boxes and title screens; developers that were often not direct employees of Penguin Software but rather independent designers that were paid royalties by Penguin Software for the games that sold.
Penguin Software's core products were its graphics programs that were among the industry best-sellers of the early 1980s. ''The Complete Graphics System'', first published in 1981, was a set of drawing and 3D graphics editing programs for the Apple II by founder Mark Pelczarski. ''Special Effects'', co-written by Pelczarski and
David Lubar
David Lubar (born March 16, 1954) is an author of numerous books for teens. He is also a video game programmer, who programmed ''Super Breakout'' for the Game Boy and ''Frogger'' for both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. He ...
later the same year, helped establish the company's slogan, "''the graphics people''". In early 1982, Pelczarski, Lubar, and Chris Jochumson created ''The Graphics Magician'', which would define the next several years of the company's evolution. ''Graphics Magician'' was aimed toward developers or anyone wanting to be a developer, allowing any programmer to create animations for arcade-style games and compact graphic images for adventure games and educational software.
Developers began submitting their own creations written in part with ''Graphics Magician'' to Penguin Software for publication. Those that were accepted were polished and published and the authors were paid royalties on sales. These included the first two games published by Penguin Software, the animated game ''Pie Man'' by Eagle Berns and Michael Kosaka, and the adventure game ''
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the ...
'' written by Antonia Antiochia. Many other publishers of software for the Apple II also licensed ''The Graphics Magician'' for their products, as there was no fee for the license; the only requirement was a credit line that ''Graphics Magician'' software was used in the product, which served as advertising for more sales of the Penguin Software graphics tools.
One of the other widely touted aspects of Penguin Software's titles was that they deliberately stopped using
copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.
Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
, thus making it easier to back up their programs. Pelczarski sent a letter to many computer magazines to describe his position, which asked that users of their software not abuse their trust.
As software sales expanded into book stores, Penguin Software was confronted by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.infringement of their name. Fearing that the legal costs of a
lawsuit
-
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
could have decimated his company, even in the case of an eventual victory, Pelczarski phased in a new name "Polarware" in 1986, eventually ending the "Penguin Software"
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...
.
Since the Apple II, Macintosh, IBM, Commodore, and Atari computers all had varying graphics capabilities and different processors, releasing a software title for each different brand of computer usually involved programming it again from scratch for each platform. Penguin Software/Polarware began focusing on cross-platform ideas that would allow them to release games simultaneously on different systems without the lengthy re-programming process. The compact images from ''Graphics Magician'' could be used across platforms, and an adventure game development and deployment language called ''Comprehend'' was created to be system independent and was used for several releases. Also using ''Graphics Magician'' across platforms and with a portable design, the first three titles in the ''Adventures Around the World'' geography game series were released. However a similar idea called '' Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego'' reached the market a few months sooner and doomed the Penguin Software series.
In 1987 Polarware was purchased by four employees, Jeffrey (JJ) Jay, Steve Greene, Peg Smith, and Trish Glenn. This new team produced the children's software series written by Brian A. Rice, ''The Electric Crayon'', a simple electronic coloring book. In 1988, Polarware was acquired by Merit Software and the Polarware name soon disappeared.
Legacy
As Merit Software moved on to newer products, rights to the old software title were bought back from the remains of Polarware, and many of those titles were subsequently released as
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...
to bring them out of
Abandonware
Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available.
Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the ...
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...
variant of the ''Comprehend''
engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...
to port these games to modern platforms.recomprehend by Ryan Mallon on
github.com
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuo ...