Laura Nikolich

Laura Nikolich is a game designer and programmer who worked for Parker Brothers in the early 1980s where she developed the 1982 Atari 2600 game Spider-Man.

Laura Nikolich
OccupationComputer programmer
Video game designer
Notable work
Spider-Man (Atari 2600)

Education

Laura Nikolich graduated in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering technology from University of South Florida. She learned assembly language, which she used for pager technology at Motorola. Real-time programming in assembly language gave her skills useful for the emerging video games industry.[1]

Career

Laura Nikolich was the fifth programmer hired at Parker Brothers in 1981 and the fourth hired for Atari 2600 devlopment.[1] Nikolich worked alone for six months on the first Spider-Man games. Working with the limitations of the system, she designed it as a vertically scrolling game,[1] which was challenging to create.[2] Spider-Man came out in 1982 and was a commercial success.[2]

After Spider-Man, Nikolich developed a Care Bears game, which was never released.[3][4][5] The game was dropped because, according to Nikolich, “marketing didn’t know what they wanted”.[5] Nikolich was proudest of her work on Care Bears because of its technical challenges.[4] Her work on manipulating the sprites made the design more lively and impressed people.[4]

Works
  • Spider-Man, Atari 2600, Parker Brothers (1982)
  • Frogger II: ThreeeDeep!, ColecoVision, Parker Brothers (1984)

Unreleased
  • Care Bears, Atari 2600, Parker Brothers (1983)
  • Orbit, ColecoVision, Parker Brothers (1983)

References
  1. Stilphen, Scott. "Laura Nikolich interview". Atari Compendium. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  2. Campbell, Colin. "The story of the first Spider-Man game". Polygon. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  3. "Care Bears". Atari Protos. Atari Protos. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  4. "Laura Nikolich". Atari Women. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  5. "Atari Mania: Care Bears". Atari Mania. Atari Mania. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
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