Everything about Exidy totally explained
Exidy was one of the largest creators of
arcade video games during the early period of
video games, from
1974-
1983. The company was founded by H.R."Pete" Kaufman. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics."
Some of the notable games released by Exidy included
Circus,
Death Race,
Star Fire,
Venture,
Pepper II,
Mouse Trap,
Targ, and
Spectar.
Star Fire was prominently featured in the 1980 film
Midnight Madness, while
Mouse Trap was the subject of a song on the 1982
Pac-Man Fever album. Many Exidy games can be played today on personal computers using
MAME arcade emulation software.
Exidy was most famous for its
light gun games, beginning with the game
Crossbow. These presented an unusual twist to the
genre, where the goal is to protect
characters walking through the screen by shooting down
bullets and other things which are trying to kill the characters. These games were also the first to feature fully
digitized sound, for all
sound effects and for
music (far more advanced than any other games up until the
16-bit generation). The most (in)famous game today from this series is the game
Chiller. Other "C" series games include Cheyenne, Combat, Crackshot and Clay Pigeon. Chief designer for these games were
Larry Hutcherson.
Exidy also made a rarely-seen motion cabinet game with vector graphics called Vertigo. Chief game designer for this game was
Vic Tolomei.
Another somewhat successful game from Exidy was a driving game named
Top Secret. This game featured a spy car with advanced weaponry on a mission inside the Soviet Union to destroy a heavily-guarded Top Secret super weapon. Game designers for this game were
Vic Tolomei,
Larry Hutcherson and
Ken Nicholson
Exidy made a brief foray into the
home computer market, with the
Exidy Sorcerer. The Sorcerer was a modified
S-100 bus based machine, but lacked the internal expansion system common to other S-100 systems. The Sorcerer also featured an advanced (for the era) text display that was capable of 64 characters per line, when most systems supported only 40 characters. Oddly, the Sorcerer didn't support sound, color, or in some respects, graphics, which seems at odds with the company's video game background. The system was never very popular in North America, but found a following in Europe, notably Belgium.
In 2006 it was announced that
Mean Hamster Software acquired rights to develop new Exidy games.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Exidy'.
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