Klove Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Guys, another question for you. I'm sort of under the opinion that all Telesys games were contracted out the 3rd party developers. "Any take on this?" I know that Alex Leavens was contracted to do some work. However, I'm a bit curious about Jim Rupp and Don Ruffcorn. Looking at pictures of the Telesys offices, I can't help but believe that the company itself could not of been comprised of more than 5-10 full time employees at best. ??? - Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRV Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Steve Wyatt was Director of Operations at Telesys and was also with Atari and Activision. From his 2002 CGE keynote: "It was a lot of fun even being from the Activision programmers to being with all these independent programmers that were coming into Telesys all the time with games." (7:53) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 That makes sense. I wonder what games they did for other companies? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klove Posted January 12, 2016 Author Share Posted January 12, 2016 CRV... Thank You SO Much for that snippet, I really do think Telesys was just a barren shell of a company. That I can tell, Jack Woodman and Richard Taylor were both from GRT Records, back in the late 70's. Anyone else care to comment or ? - Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRV Posted January 12, 2016 Share Posted January 12, 2016 Here's an article about Telesys. Don Ruffcorn is referred to as a "freelance programmer." http://azcentral.newspapers.com/newspage/121667755/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Psionic Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 CRV... Thank You SO Much for that snippet, I really do think Telesys was just a barren shell of a company. That I can tell, Jack Woodman and Richard Taylor were both from GRT Records, back in the late 70's. Anyone else care to comment or ? - Ken This would seem to make sense. Although in an interview with Billboard in January of '83 (in which he touched on his experience in the music industry) Telesys president Richard Taylor claimed that "Telesys has in-house game designers as well as outside sub-contractors. We like to combine the two because it keeps the guys fresh. Generally, the very creative guys tend not to do well in-house." That last comment was probably directed at Alex Leavens, who was described to me by a fellow programmer as "a talented guy, but not the most stable individual". As you may know, Alex passed away over a decade ago of causes unknown. I spoke with Don Ruffcorn a few years back, but his memory wasn't so good and he wasn't able to tell me much of anything meaningful about his time working for Telesys beyond explaining the origins of the 'Donyo' nickname that was used for the programmer credit on Cosmic Creeps. As I recall, he told me this was apparently a nickname given to him by a babysitter he had as a child. I've never been able to track down Jim Rupp. He did a couple of games for the Commodore 64 after Telesys. He programmed a game for Tronix called Motocross (not to be confused with Motocross Racer by Xonox/K-tel, a similar game). Tronix was located in Ingewood, CA and appears to have been another company that was merely a publisher for games from independent developers. http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=5017&d=18 Rupp also worked on Mind Pursuit by Datasoft, which was developed by a company called Pacific Softech. He was credited on that title along with three other designers. http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=9931&d=18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Have you tried linkedin? https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/f?keywords=Jim+Rupp&orig=GLHD&pageKey=psettings-manage-email-address-summary&rsid=&trkInfo=tarId%3A1486586202371&trk=global_header&search=Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Psionic Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Have you tried linkedin? https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/f?keywords=Jim+Rupp&orig=GLHD&pageKey=psettings-manage-email-address-summary&rsid=&trkInfo=tarId%3A1486586202371&trk=global_header&search=Search I haven't been able to devote any time to searching for people lately. I have enough loose ends that need to be tied up as it is. LinkedIn is a decent way to find people, although the downside is that there's no easy way to contact them directly unless you're connected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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