FTL Games

FTL Games (Faster Than Light) was the video game development division of Software Heaven Inc.[?]. FTL created several popular video games in the 1980s and early 1990s. Despite their small size, FTL products were consistently number-one sellers and received the highest critical acclaim and industry awards[?].

FTL was founded by Wayne Holder[?] in 1982. Holder started Software Heaven and FTL as its game division after founding Oasis Systems[?] which specialized in spell checking software. He hired Bruce Webster[?], with whom he graduated from high school in 1971, to head FTL.

Table of contents 1 The Games 1.1 SunDog 1.2 Oids 1.3 Dungeon Master 1.4 Chaos Strikes Back 1.5 Dungeon Master II 2 External Links

The Games FTL released several games throughout its relatively short history. Surprisingly, most went on to become best sellers and some even set new standards for games of their genre.

SunDog

Holder and Webster co-designed FTL's first game, SunDog: Frozen Legacy, a space trading game. It was released first for the Apple II in March 1984. Webster did most of the programming for the Apple II version, but resigned from FTL after the release of version 2.0 due to programming burn out.

SunDog was later released for the Atari ST in 1986 and became that system's best selling software for that year and garnered lavish critical acclaim. Doug Bell[?], Andy Jaros[?] and Mike Newton[?] ported the game to the Atari ST.

Oids

Oids[?], an arcade game, was one of FTL's minor releases. It received little attention as it was released only on one platform, the Apple Macintosh. It was quickly eclipsed by the release of FTL's next game.

Dungeon Master

Dungeon Master, a fantasy role-playing game, was released in 1987 for the Atari ST and went on to become the ST's best selling product of all time. It was eventually ported to over a dozen platforms in six languages. It received too many awards to list here, but it received the first ever Special Award for Artistic Achievement from Computer Gaming World[?] when it was initially released.

Chaos Strikes Back

A Dungeon Master sequel, Chaos Strikes Back[?], was released in 1989 for most platforms, but notably excluding a PC version. It uses the same engine as Dungeon Master but features new creatures[?] and graphics.

Dungeon Master II

Dungeon Master II: THe Legend of Skullkeep[?] was the best-selling game of the week when it was released in Japan in December 1993. It was later released in the US and Europe in 1995 and 1996 by Interplay Productions[?].

External Links

• http://www.2nu.com/ Wayne Holder's web site
• http://www.bfwa.com/ Bruce Webster's web site
• http://dmweb.free.fr/FTLGames.htm An unofficial FTL Games webs site with information on FTL's people, their games, awards and downloads of various versions of the games.