MicroGraphic Image

MicroGraphicImage was founded by former employees of Games by Apollo, one of the companies that had overproduced games for the Atari 2600, creating a glut of cheap games. In the pre-Christmas market of 1983, the company became insolvent, with several games still in development for a number of platforms, including the Atari 400/800. Three former programmers from Games by Apollo: Tim Martin, Robert Barber, and Cash Foley, subsequently formed MicroGraphicImage. Martin had been previously worked on games for the Atari 2600 and Foley developed for the Atari 8-bit family.[1] When Games by Apollo went into insolvency, Martin and Barber developed a game entitled Halloween, based on the movie.[2] The contract funded the founding of MicroGraphicImage. The game was released by Wizard Video Games during the video game crash of 1983 and sold poorly.

Martin and Barber's expertise was with the Atari 2600,[1] and they were dissatisfied with the money being made through contract game development. Their strategy was to utilize the contract programming to leverage the funding of a software publishing company. Cash Foley joined as a technical specialist with Atari and Apple computer programming. At the January 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, they developed a relationship with Gary Carlson, one of the founders of Broderbund. In early 1983, MicroGraphicImage developed games under contract for Broderbund, Parker Brothers, and CBS Electronics, while developing Spelunker for themselves.

Martin and Barber had been developing the Spelunker game design for some time, but it went beyond the specifications for the Atari 2600. Martin was responsible for "game logic", Foley developed the graphic engine and Game Level Editor, and Barber was the graphic designer and Level Editor.

As Spelunker was Martin's original idea and he programmed the game logic, the game was issued with his name as the lead game developer, with the intention to alternate this role for subsequent games.[1] However, the short lifespan of the company meant that this did not happen.

In 1984, they turned publication over to Broderbund and made a version of the game for Commodore 64, very similar to the original.

Although MicroGraphicImage was able to maintain a steady stream of contract work, the company was not profitable due to the overheads of financial business focus going into publishing. The game recession that started in the winter of 1982 deteriorated, and it was very difficult to find distributors to take games, especially from small publishers. Eventually, MicroGraphicImage ran out of money and ceased operations. Martin continued working with Broderbund on a business level and was able recover all debt through NES and Coin-op versions of Spelunker.

Martin and Foley continued to work together, including at an Amiga publishing company called Inovatronics. Eventually, Martin was a co-founder of the Internet provider, Internet America. As of 2007, Foley was working at Perot Systems.