Mountain King Studios (formerly known as Cygnus Studios ) is a computer game company located in Chicago , Illinois . It was founded by game programmer / game designer Scott Host. In addition to the development of Raptor: Call of the Shadows , Cygnus also collaborated with Apogee Software on a number of their games. Some members of the company split to form Rogue Entertainment , while the company itself was renamed "Mountain King Studios".
12-476: The company started with their former name "Cygnus Studios". After completing their first ever game Galactix , Scott Miller of Apogee Software sent a letter to the leading developer, Scott Host. In response Host contacted him and made an agreement to work with Apogee. After some work on the short-lived RPG The Second Sword , Cygnus Studios and Apogee worked on a vertical-scrolling shooter called "Mercenary 2029" as its working title and then renamed Raptor: Call of
24-522: A Role playing game and use the Shadowcaster engine, but the project was cancelled. Strife was briefly under development and was to be published by id Software ; after a few months and during a dispute between some developers and Scott Host, it was cancelled. It was later finished by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity in 1996. After renaming themselves "Mountain King Studios",
36-538: A Wang 2200 while living in Australia . He wrote several MS-DOS games that circulated widely on BBS file bases: Computer Quiz , Astronomy Quiz , BASIC Quiz , Beyond the Titanic , Supernova , Kingdom of Kroz , Word Whiz , Trek Trivia . Miller started as game programmer , but now handled primary business duties of 3D Realms, as well as producing and co-designing all third-party games associated with
48-541: The DMX sound library for their game Doom . By December 1994, members of the company Jim Molinets, Rich Fleider and Tim Neveu went against Scott Host and left Cygnus to form their own company Rogue Entertainment . After this, Cygnus relocated back to their old place in Chicago and renamed themselves "Mountain King Studios". By 2008, the president of Blitwise Productions, Michael P. Welch met up with Scott Host. Raptor: Call of
60-507: The Shadows was Welch's favorite game on the PC and he proposed to Host to port it on the iPhone platform. Using the original source code, lead programmer Ben Moreno programmed the game on a Macintosh computer. The port took 1.5 years to make. Before Raptor: Call of the Shadows was in development, Cygnus Studios had worked on a game titled The Second Sword for Apogee Software , which was to be
72-412: The Shadows . Cygnus also helped Apogee with some of their other games under the name "Cygnus Multimedia Productions" including Duke Nukem II , Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold , Hocus Pocus and Realms of Chaos . id Software was intrigued by the company's progress and convinced them to relocate to Texas by their office and work with them. Paul Radek, who worked on the audio for Raptor, provided id
84-523: The company tried to develop a 3D RPG titled Mantra , but this was also cancelled in favor of the Demonstar game. Scott Miller (entrepreneur) Scott Miller (born 1961) is an American video game designer, programmer, and entrepreneur best known for founding Apogee Software , Ltd. (which later became 3D Realms ) in 1987. Starting with the Kroz series for MS-DOS from that year, Miller pioneered
96-427: The company, including Wolfenstein 3D , Raptor: Call of the Shadows , Terminal Velocity , Max Payne and Prey . He created the method of game distribution where one episode of a game is released freely as shareware , and the follow-up episodes are sold through the company. The free episode is the carrot-on-a-stick; an advertisement to purchase the remaining, commercial episodes. Kingdom of Kroz , in 1987,
108-526: The concept of giving away the first game in a trilogy—distributed freely as shareware—with the opportunity to purchase the remaining two episodes. This method became the standard distribution method for Apogee. Competitors such as Epic MegaGames later adopted the same business model. Growing up, Miller lived with his father, Boyd Miller, an engineer at NASA who worked on the Apollo and Gemini programs. Miller began writing video games in 1975 on
120-570: Was a strong proponent of studio independence, and of studios and publishers creating original brands rather than licensing brands from other media sources. GameSpot named Miller as number 14 in their listing of the Most Influential People in Computer Gaming of All Time. In 1997, Computer Gaming World ranked him as number 14 on the list of the Most Influential People of All Time in computer gaming for originating
132-742: Was a success enabling id Software to become an independent studio. Miller was later instrumental in the formation of publisher Gathering of Developers in 1998. He later helped found the Radar Group. Miller was a professional writer in the 1980s, having co-authored a book on video games, Shootout: Zap the Video Games , and writing a weekly column for The Dallas Morning News for four years (1982–1985), titled "Video Vision" (later changed to "Computer Fun"). He also wrote for COMPUTE! 's PC and PCjr and other magazines. From 2006 to 2008, Miller maintained an industry blog, www.GameMatters.com, where he
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#1732791548087144-495: Was the first game to use this method, which Miller refers to as the "Apogee Model." Upon success with this model with the seven Kroz episodes, Miller left his full-time job in early 1990s and devoted full efforts into growing Apogee. It was at this time that Miller contacted key members at Softdisk (a monthly software magazine delivered on floppy disks to subscribers) who later formed id Software , and convinced them to make Commander Keen to be released through Apogee. The series
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