FTL Games
| division of Software Heaven Inc. | |
| Industry | Computer and video games |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Founder | Wayne Holder |
| Defunct | 1996 (approx.) |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, California, United States |
|
Area served
|
worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Wayne Holder (Founder), Bruce Webster, Doug Bell |
| Products |
SunDog: Frozen Legacy Dungeon Master |
| Parent | Software Heaven Inc. |
| Website | www.ftlgames.com (offline, existed in the mid 90s) |
FTL Games (Faster Than Light) was the video game development division of Software Heaven Inc. FTL created several popular video games in the 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the company's small size, FTL products were consistently number-one sellers and received the highest critical acclaim and industry awards.
FTL was founded by Wayne Holder in 1982. Holder started Software Heaven and FTL as its game division after founding Oasis Systems, which specialized in spell checking software. He hired Bruce Webster, with whom he graduated from high school, to head FTL. After Webster left FTL in 1984, Doug Bell joined FTL and served as the Technical Director until FTL ceased operations in 1996.
FTL released several games throughout its relatively short history. Surprisingly, most went on to become best sellers and some even set new standards for games of their genres.
Holder and Webster co-designed FTL's first game, SunDog: Frozen Legacy, a space trading game. It was released first for the Apple II in March 1984. Webster did most of the programming for the Apple II version, but resigned from FTL after the release of version 2.0. Doug Bell, Andy Jaros and Michael Newton significantly enhanced the game's graphics when porting the game to the Atari ST, releasing it in late 1985. SunDog became the best selling game on the Atari ST during the system's first year, and garnered lavish critical acclaim.
The packaging cover art was designed and illustrated by David R. Darrow.
All of FTL's subsequent games contain at least one subtle reference to Sundog.
Oids, an arcade game, was one of FTL's minor releases. The original Atari ST version was created by Dan Hewitt who did both the graphics and all of the programming. It received little attention with a later conversion to the Apple Macintosh, but received 5 Stars on MacWorld 1990. However the original Atari ST release received rave reviews in the UK, where it remains a cult favourite. Later, after FTL ceased operations, an updated authorized shareware version of Oids for the Macintosh was developed and released by Kirk Baker. It was however eclipsed by the release of FTL's next game.
...
Wikipedia