The invention
1988, near Rotherham, in England, two young guys, Dave Crummack and Craig Galley. Craig remembers: « Dave and I "invented" it, I use the term loosely because it is very derivative of reversi, etc. We started out with the concept of designing a board game that would work better on a computer than on a traditional board. We played in the evenings over a period of several weeks with paper pieces on a chess board tweaking the rules, but it kept coming back to the same simple set of rules, spread 1 square, twinning the piece, or jump 1 square, without twinning, and capture (or infect) the nearly pieces. Once the game was put on the computer it was easy to see it worked well, control of the board could change very rapidly and often came down to setting yourself up correctly for the last few moves.
The AI in the original versions we wrote was very primitive doing a very simple traditional tree search for the move resulting in the best outcome, it only looked ahead a couple of moves and given the nature of the game that is not far enough. »
In this way the company "Wise Owl Software" got a game with the rules of the future Ataxx, and it was called Infection. Craig remembers: « Adding the blank squares (blocks) was done later as a suggestion by Wise Owl to give the game more variety. » and: « Dave worked for Wise Owl and I was freelancing from school, Dave is 1 year older than I am. We were friends for years and gre up programming together, hence my involvement in the project while still at school. »
Infection was programed on three platforms, Amiga, Commodore 64 et Atari ST.
Infection, a game not commercially relesead
As it is not specialised in games (from 1991, it only only makes educational software for children), "Wise Owl Software" sold the rights of his game to "Virgin Mastertronic" of the UK, (Portobello Road, Notting Hill Gate, London), and Dave and Craig still work on their game. Andrew Wright, the product manager says : « Some further work on the AI was done by our in-house development team and I commisoned David Whittaker, a well known independant computer musician to write the soundtrack. Both the AI and the music were then integrated into the game by Wise Owl. »
In 1989, with Dave and Craig, Mark Incley (programming) and David Whittaker (sounds) released Infection on Amiga, Spectrum (Sinclair), Amstrad CPC, PC, Commodore 64 and Atari ST. No one was commercially released. However, at the end of the nineties, Mark Incley put two ones available on Internet, the Spectrum one (below image) and the Amstrad one.
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I called the first version : and the 3 available ones : Follow the links to know more. |
Infection, the Amiga (above) Spectrum (bottom left) and Amstrad (bottom right) versions
(here with parameters for 4 players)
From Infection to Ataxx
In 1989-1990, the parent company, the US "Virgin Mastertronic" saw the game and was so excited about it that the launch of Infection on the budget label was... cancelled! And the US Company converted Infection in two games:
- as it had just acquired rights for Spot, a character used by 7up in the US to advertise their soft drink, Infection became Spot, for PC, for Nintendo 8 bits NES and for the Nintendo Gameboy. See our pages Spot (Dos) and Spot (Gameboy).
- by a relationship with Leland Corporation, the rights were licensed, and Infection became Ataxx, an Arcade game.
In 1992, Virgin Interactive and Trilobyte included in the 7th Guest CD-Rom game an Ataxx called Microscope, or Show of Infection, which also came from Infection (see our Microscope page). Then many other games were created from these models Spot-Ataxx-Microscope, however without using the original code of the Infection.
Graeme Devine (who then managed Quake, for Id-Software) was the manager of the versions of Spot and "7th Guest" (and then "11th hour", for an Hexxagon game).
Elsewhere, after Wise Owl worked with Virgin, everyone left and the company went under. Dave and Craig had to use a lawyer to contest Vigin's rights to the game. Not a lot of fun. But they did learn to read legal contracts better though...
So the time passed, and now we may consider that Infection-Ataxx-Spot-Blobs-Boogers-Attax-etc is in the public domain... and that the most used name is "Ataxx"...
The first to be called Ataxx
In 1990 The Leland Corporation introduced an arcade game called Ataxx. The small, black cabinet presented a very large, colourful marquee having several red and blue "blobs". The 2 player game used small track balls for choosing where you wanted to place your blob pieces.
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With more gore, but nothing new in the rules, it had big similitaries with the game Infection, including graphics and sound.
Others informations and photos on our page about the Leland Ataxx, and also on our page about the Windows emulation, Mame Leland Ataxx.
And the two inventors ?
Dave Crummack and Craig Galley were forgotten when Infection became Ataxx and Spot. After the creation of this site, I need 3 years to find the existence of, at first, Infection (thanks to Mark Incley !) and then (thanks to Andrew Wright !) the Wise Owl Software and the two video fans who played in the evenings, moving pieces and infecting the opponent...
They continued on the same way, pursuing video game careers. They both moved to Austin, USA. In 2000, Dave Crummack is Director of Product Development for "Acclaim Studios Austin" and Craig Galley is Technical Director and Co-founder of "Inevitable Entertainment, Inc". Inevitable ? Was'nt Ataxx inevitable, for mixing reversi and checkers ?
Bonus. From the site panglott.blogspot.fr two photos of a board game of Leland ataxx :
Alain Beyrand, with participation of Dave Crummack, Craig Galley, Mark Incley and Andrew Wright
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