Interview with Bob Jacob, co-founder of Cinemaware

[esteban]

Interview: Bob Jacob On The Cinemaware Era
by Matt Barton

Even if you aren't interested in Cinemaware's overall history, you might be interested in the bits about TG-16:

What drew you to the Amiga? Did that platform's steady decline hurt Cinemaware?

BJ: I was drawn to it because, graphically, it was superior to anything else in the world. I really thought it was going to be a successful hardware platform. It had a limited success here in the U.S.; it was more successful in Europe. Probably the majority of Cinemaware games on the Amiga were sold in Europe.

Commodore was a notoriously badly managed company. If the Amiga had taken off it would have been great for us, but it never did. We were late as a company making the move to the PC.

What really killed Cinemaware was that I made the decision to sell 20% of the company to NEC. It sounds great to have this great Japanese partner. The problem is, NEC came out with the Turbo-Grafx 16.

Movies aren't the only inspiration for Cinemeware games; television also played a role. Can you tell us about the TV Sports games?

BJ: What could be more natural than doing sports games based on TV? One of the things that really hurt us was trying to bring TV Sports Football over to the PC; it was a complete disaster.

The problem, of course, is that these statements are not explored with follow-up questions. We need clarification! It was my (possibly mistaken) understanding that Cinemaware was in a dire financial situation...before any deal with NEC.

NOTE: If you are a lazy sod, you might want to watch the video interview (anti-TG16 comment at 9:55). Our host is goofy, but the video is well done and entertaining.

[exodus]

yeah, we ran a transcript of this on gamasutra, and I was burning for a followup! bah!

[esteban]

yeah, we ran a transcript of this on gamasutra, and I was burning for a followup! bah!

I know

I meant to include the link!

I'll fix that. :