Originally an Atari employee, Carol Shaw is said to be the first female video game designer (for her unreleased Polo game in 1978, and 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe game in 1979). Later she joined Activision, where she programmed her best known game, River Raid. According to the manual of River Raid, she is also a “scholar in the field of Computer Science.”
With Keith Brewster she worked on the Atari Basic Reference Manual.
Carol Shaw left Activision in 1984 after designing Happy Trails for the Intellivision and River Raid for the Atari 800 and Atari 5200. Her other credits include Checkers in 1981 and 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe in 1980 for the Atari 2600. She also worked on Super Breakout. Shaw lives in California, and is now retired and married to Ralph Merkle, a researcher in nanotechnology.
Famous quotes containing the words carol and/or shaw:
“In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)