Looking back at General Computer Corp.

When you think of influential companies in the arcade industry from the 80’s, you might not have GCC come to mind right at first, unless you are a classic game buff. But whether you know about GCC or not, they did play an important albeit somewhat brief role in the arcade industry back in the 80’s and the talent they had on-board was even coveted by the mighty Activision. Most of GCC’s history runs with Atari Corp as they developed a number of games for their home consoles (GCC even developed the Atari 7800), but they also developed a couple of arcade titles including Food Fight and a vector game called Quantum. The most significant contribution they made to the arcade gaming industry however was Ms. Pac-Man. They got their start making a mod of Missile Command called Super Missile Attack and they would later modify Pac-Man to create what became Ms. Pac-Man (it was actually called Crazy Otto at first, they approached Midway with the idea who bought it and made it into Ms. Pac-Man and later Namco would receive the rights of the game as GCC and Midway looked to avoid a legal battle).

In case you are interested in seeing what went on behind the scenes at GCC, one of guys who worked at GCC has a photo album online that covers a variety of events that went on at GCC, from flag pole meetings to parties, conventions and more. Apparently this photo album has been online for the past few years but only now are we hearing about it thanks to GameSetWatch and Rotheblog.When it comes to their titles, I have played a number of GCC developed titles on the Atari 7800 but I have never seen an arcade version of Food Fight or Quantum (supposedly only 500 of these were made so they are fairly rare and it is highly sought after by collectors) so I can’t say much about those although I would like to play them. Also at the next California Extreme their third and unreleased arcade title Nightmare will be making an appearance to the public for the first time, I believe. Nightmare is the game that is probably pictured above at GCC’s arcade development station (the one with the TRON controls)

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