Howard Scott Warshaw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Howard Scott Warshaw is a former game designer who worked for Atari in the early 1980s, where he designed and programmed the games Yars' Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the infamous flop, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. He has also written two books as well as produced and directed three documentaries.
Warshaw's first success, Yars' Revenge, first started as an Atari 2600 adaptation of the arcade game Star Castle. However, as limitations became clear, Warshaw re-adapted the concept into a new game involving mutated houseflies defending their world against an alien attacker. The game was a major success and is still regarded as one of the best games made for the Atari 2600. This led Warshaw to be picked as the designer of the game adaptation of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was also a commercial success and was critically acclaimed at the time.
It was his success on Raiders that led to Warshaw being chosen to design and program the ill-fated Atari 2600 adaptation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Problems began early as he was only given five weeks to go from concept to finished product. Although the game was finished on time it was poorly received and seen as being confusing and frustrating. Atari took a major financial loss on the project, which combined with other poor business decisions and conditions, led to the company being divided and sold within two years. During this time, Warshaw developed and finished another game called Saboteur, which was then re-adapted into a game based on the television series The A-Team. However, Atari was dismantled before either version could be released.
Following the collapse of Atari, Warshaw wrote two books. The first, The Complete Book of PAN, is a guide to the card game of the same name. In the second, Conquering College, Warshaw discusses his techniques toward academic success, referred to as RASABIC (Read Ahead, Stay Ahead, Be In Class) which enabled him to graduate early and save one full year's tuition. Later, he studied video production, and released the documentary From There to Here: Scenes of Passage., a chronicle of the American immigration of two Russian women from the same family, one in 1912 and the other in 1978. Subsequently he went on to produce the multi-part documentary Once Upon Atari, a collection of interviews and stories of employees and designers at Atari during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 2004 classic video game enthusiasts were able to produce cartridges of Saboteur for sale at game expos. It debuted at PhillyClassic 5 where Warshaw was at hand to bless the distribution and even autograph the cartridges. That year Atari also released the Atari Flashback system that includes fifteen Atari 2600 and five Atari 7800 titles, including Saboteur.
In his games, Warshaw is also known for always leaving his initials as an Easter Egg. Along with this, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the player can find a "Yar;" and in E.T., the player can find both a "Yar" and an "Indy."; in Yar's Revenge, if the player stays on the "mean streak" while the base is exploding, HSWWSH (his initials forwards and backwards) appear on the screen - and end the game.
