Re: whereabouts of Larry Rosenthal

> Has anyone ever tried tracking him down to interview him? There
> are about 180 Larry Rosenthals doing a Yahoo search. One appears
> to work for Sierra Systems in Oakland, and there is a listing
> for one in La Mesa. After Vectorbeam and Cine merged, I don't
> know if he moved down there or not.
>
> I'm mostly curious about prototype Vectorbeam games (obviously..)

  I sent him some e-mail a couple years ago when I first got Star Castle
running on my PC. I first sent a message to verify that I had the right
guy before I started talking about stuff. I had asked if he was the
Larry Rosenthal who had worked for Cinematronics or Vectorbeam. His
response was that "yes, he was the one who OWNED vectorbeam. What do
you want?" I sent a second message describing a little of what was
going on and he never wrote back again.
  I've also heard from people that Larry doesn't have very fond memorys
of those days. Everyone I've talked to indicated that Larry didn't make
out like a bandit (as the history on Zonn's page tells it) but that he
was more like fucked-up-the-ass-with-no-lube by Cinematronics. He wasn't
getting much for holding the pattents on the hardware or writing Space
War, so he took all the documentation (thereby screwing Cinematronics) and
formed Vectorbeam. I don't recall if there was a lawsuit involved, but
when Vectorbeam went under, Cinematronics bought the remains for a song
leaving Larry with not much for all his efforts. One source said that
while Cinematronics bought Vectorbeam (or something to that effect) it
was the owners of Cinematronics that bought the pattents from Larry. This
allowed them to personally collect royalties while Cinematronics was
going down the shitter.
  Sources.... Hmmm I gained some of this from people on the net, but the
most important parts were obtained or at least supported through talking
to Tim Skelly and Scott Boden - both of whom were paid poorly by
Cinematronics for writing... well you know...
  As for prototype games, Scott said he might have some old roms lying
around somewhere for one or 2 things. He either couldn't find them or
didn't look real hard :-) He's busy now being the owner of his own
company on the west coast. Tim doesn't have any roms. And I don't think
Larry has anything at all, as it would only serve to rimind him of a time
he'd rather forget.
  BTW, Tim and Scott have both seen early versions of our emulator and were
amused. They also appreciate the fact that people still love and play their
games.

SeeYa,

-- 
 ___   __   _   _  _
|   \ /  \ | | | || |       phkahler@oakland.edu     Engineer/Programmer
|  _/| || || |_| || |__     " What makes someone care so much?
|_|  |_||_| \___/ |____)      for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H.