Games By Apollo - Market Presence

Market Presence

Spacechase went on to become Apollo's best selling title. Apollo also marketed Spacechase with an offer to make customized or ‘monogrammed’ versions of Spacechase. Fewer than 10 were sold, and several were given to press including Electronic Games magazine co-founder Arnie Katz.

PM Magazine came to Apollo's offices to film a segment on Apollo and Spacechase, with Leeza Gibbons doing the interview. The segment included Ed Salvo making a customized Spacechase for Leeza Gibbons. This involved changing the 3 shapes in the explosion graphic to her initials. When her ship died Leeza's initials appeared. Those programmers interviewed were Dan Oliver (Space Cavern), Steve Stringfellow (Lochjaw) and Ernie Runyon (Lost Luggage).

Space Cavern, a semi-clone of Galaxian, was the first scrolling 2600 game and is considered today a minor classic by many. It was created after Pat flew Ed Salvo out to the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas to see Imagic's new game Demon Attack. Pat had been very impressed and wanted one just like it. He gave programmer Dan Oliver the game play and specifications for Space Cavern without identifying where he got the idea, and Space Cavern became Apollo's third game.

Apollo in turn attended the June, 1982 CES in Chicago with a booth of their own, which included the obligatory hiring of models to demonstrate its games. Shortly after, they hired Cyndy Spence, formerly of Atari, as advertising director. She in turn brought in well known advertising agency Benton & Bowles as Apollo's advertising firm.

Also of note was Lochjaw, a Pac-Man clone that involved sharks. The movie studio MCA threatened to sue Apollo because of what they felt was an infringement on their copyright for the movie Jaws. Because of limited funding, Pat decided not to fight it changed the title of their game to Shark Attack. The Lochjaw version had a very short shelf life, and is extremely rare as a result.

By the end of 1982, Apollo also moved into designing games for the Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and Intellivision. However none of these games made it into production before Apollo closed its doors in late 1983.