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@DavidBFox @LucasfilmGames @ILMxLAB There is a great story there. Lucas sold all video rights to Atari, but Parker Bros. claimed it because sister co. Kenner had rights to make Star Wars "toys and games." Do "video games" count as "games?" Nobody thought about this detail in 76/77 when they wrote the contract. 1/?
@DavidBFox @LucasfilmGames @ILMxLAB One problem: Parker Bros. never developed a video game before. Parker's engineers reverse-engineered the Atari VCS and planned to hire developers to fill their now-empty electronic games dept. Lucas sent Ed Catmull and head of Lucas Licensing to check out the facility. 2/?
@DavidBFox @LucasfilmGames @ILMxLAB Parker panicked: the video game dept. cubicles were empty. So, they put dumb terminals on all the desks (not even plugged in). They pulled workers off the assembly line, dressed them in white lab coats (!!!!), and told them to sit and pretend to work on the terminals. 3/?
@DavidBFox @LucasfilmGames @ILMxLAB The ruse worked! Lucas granted Parker Bros. the rights to make Star Wars games for home consoles while Atari made Star Wars arcade games. 1981's "The Empire Strikes Back" for Atari VCS (by Rex Bradford and Sam Kjellman) was the first licensed Star Wars game. 4/4
