Cinematronics was a pioneering console and arcade game developer that had its heyday in the era of vector display games. While other companies released games based on raster displays, early in their history, Cinematronics and Atari released vector-display games, which offered a distinctive look and a greater graphic capability (at the time), at the cost of being only black and white.

Cinematronics experimented with color overlays on some of their games. In Star Castle, the overlay gave color to several elements of the game with fixed positions. In Armor Attack , the overlay was itself a part of the game: the overlay was a top-down view of a small set of city streets, and the player drove a jeep through the streets fighting tanks and helicopters.

Cinematronics created Cosmic Chasm , a color vector game. Other games were developed based on the same hardware system (based on Motorola's 68000 chip) but were never released, including a 3D color vector game.

About 1984, Cinematronics started releasing games which used raster display , such as Express Delivery . It was followed by other raster games.

Cinematronics was also responsible for releasing Dragon's Lair, the world's first laserdisc-based arcade game. It also manufactured its sequel, Space Ace.

Games

• Alley Master (1988)
• Armor Attack (1980)
• Baseball The Season II (1987)
• Boxing Bugs (1981)
• Brix (1983)
• Cerberus (1985)
• Cosmic Chasm (1983)
• Danger Zone (1986)
• (year unknown)
• Dragon's Lair (1983)
• Embargo (1977)
• Express Delivery (1984)
• Flipper Ball (1976)
• Freeze (1982)
• Hovercraft (1983)
• Jack the Giantkiller (1982)
• Mayhem 2002 (1985)
• Power Play (1985)
• Redline Racer (1986)
• Rip Off (1980) A cocktail version was also manufactured under license by Centuri
• Solar Quest (1981)
• Space Ace (1984)
• Space Wars (1977)
• Star Castle (1980)
• Starhawk (1977)
• Sundance (1979)
• Tail Gunner (1979)
• Tailgunner II 1980 This was a cockpit version was otherwise the same as the original Tailgunner. It was made under license by Exidy.
• War of the Worlds (1982)
• World Series - The Season (1985)
• World Series Baseball (1984)
• Zzyzzyxx (1982)

External link

• Cinemtronics entry on the KLOV