Big Five Software

For the present-day Big Five software companies, see Big Tech.
Big Five Software
IndustryVideo games
Founded1980
Headquarters
Van Nuys, California
,
US
Key people
Bill Hogue
Jeff Konyu
ProductsMiner 2049er
Bounty Bob Strikes Back!
Websitebigfivesoftware.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 14 September 2019)

Big Five Software (a.k.a. Big 5 Software) was an American video game developer and publisher in the first half of the 1980s founded by Bill Hogue and Jeff Konyu.[1][2] The company developed games for the Tandy TRS-80 and later Atari 8-bit computers. Most of its TRS-80 games were clones of arcade video games, such as Galaxy Invasion (Galaxian), Super Nova (Asteroids), Defense Command (Missile Command), and Meteor Mission II (Lunar Rescue).[3] Big Five also sold an Atari joystick interface called TRISSTICK which was popular with TRS-80 owners.[4]

The company's biggest release came after moving away from the black and white TRS-80. The ten stage platform game Miner 2049er, designed and programmed by Bill Hogue for Atari 8-bit computers,[5] was a commercial and critical success. It shipped on a custom 16 kilobyte ROM cartridge (compared to standard 8 KB Atari 8-bit cartridges) and the game was ported to other computers and consoles. Miner 2049er was awarded "Electronic Game of the Year" in the 1984 Arkie Awards,[6] among other accolades for the game and Hogue.

A planned sequel, Scraper Caper, was advertised, but cancelled. A sequel, Bounty Bob Strikes Back! was published in 1985 after which Hogue stopped developing games and Big Five ramped down. In 2001,[a] he released a free, custom emulation of the Atari 8-bit versions of Miner 2049er and Bounty Bob Strikes Back! for Microsoft Windows.[8]

Games

See also: Category:Big Five Software games

TRS-80

Atari 8-bit

Unreleased

  • Meteor Mission (1980)[5]
  • Scraper Caper (Atari 8-bit, circa 1983). It was mentioned in some magazine ads for Miner 2049er.[9]

Notes

  1. ^ The first version of the emulator, published in 2001, contains the "20010720" timestamp on its "Help/About..." window.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Big Five Software". TRS-80.org. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  2. ^ Giles, Robert H., ed. (28 March 1982). "Call them 'microteens'". Democrat and Chronicle. Vol. 3, no. 13. Rochester, NY: Gannet Co. Inc. pp. 1F, 7F – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ Hawken, Kieren (2016). Jones, Darran (ed.). "Big Five Software". Retro Gamer. No. 157. Bournemouth, UK: Imagine Publishing. pp. 70–75. ISSN 1742-3155.
  4. ^ Reed, Matthew. "TRISSTICK". TRS-80.org.
  5. ^ a b "The Company". Big Five Software. Archived from the original on 2016-03-30. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  6. ^ Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (January 1984). "Arcade Alley: The Arcade Awards, Part 1". Video. Vol. 7, no. 10. Reese Communications. pp. 40–42. ISSN 0147-8907.
  7. ^ Hogue, Bill. "Big Five Software - Emulator". Big Five Software. Archived from the original on 9 September 2001.
  8. ^ Hogue, Bill (18 January 2007) [First published in 2001]. "Big Five Software - Emulator". Big Five Software. Archived from the original on 14 September 2019.
  9. ^ "Scraper Caper advertisement". archive.org. 1983.