Robinson Technologies
| Private | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founder | Seth Able Robinson |
| Headquarters | Hiroshima, Japan |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products |
Legend of the Red Dragon Dink Smallwood Growtopia |
Robinson Technologies is a Japanese video game development company founded and run by Seth Able Robinson. The company was founded in 1989, when Robinson created the BBS door game, Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD). He currently operates the company with the help of his wife, Akiko Robinson, in Hiroshima, Japan. Notable games developed by Robinson include Legend of the Red Dragon, Dink Smallwood, and Growtopia.[1][2]
Company history
Legend of the Red Dragon
In 1989, at the age of 14, Seth Robinson created a game for his Amiga-based BBS that he called Legend of the Red Dragon, or simply LORD for short. The game was not immediately popular, but it took off after he ported it to the PC. Originally only featuring text-based menus and fighting, the game allowed for early multiplayer RPG play before the advent of MMORPGs. It allowed for multiple players (if the BBS had enough phone lines) to play at once. Later, the game would feature a form of graphical menus using RIPTerm.
IGMs, or In Game Modules (a form of modding), were a popular addition to LORD. They allowed for others to add onto the game and customize it in any way they wanted. In fact, many IGMs were their own encapsulated game. However, some IGMs were written to be cheating devices, allowing players to grief other players, to give themselves money and gems, and alter forest and player fights.
Seth Robinson sold the rights to LORD to Metropolis Gameport in 1998.
Planets: TEOS
The second video game released by Robinson is another text-based game, Planets: The Exploration of Space. Commonly referred to as Planets: TEOS, it was a space trading game, which had players flying to various kinds of planets, buying, selling, and trading items in order to make money. The game even allowed fights that were very similar in style to LORD, allowing players to attack others when they were offline. Players could also attack planets in order to take control of them.
The game featured two sides, the "Alliance" and the "Maraken". Players could join and fight for either side. Players could even own planets for whichever side they belonged to. However, they could also play independently and even start their own "guilds" called cartels. The game had a notable Star Trek influence, including references to the Borg and characters from the different Star Trek shows.
Seth Robinson sold the rights to Planets: TEOS to Metropolis Gameport in 1998.
New World
In various releases of Planets: TEOS, a game that Robinson had been working on was advertised. This game, New World, would never see release, due to events that were never made public. Instead, another of Robinson's games inherited the name, Legend of the Red Dragon II: New World. Fans wanted a new game from Robinson and wanted New World as well, so he released the official sequel to his original hit, Legend of the Red Dragon.
This game is completely different than the original Red Dragon, with many differences. Instead of a text based menu concept, the game was changed to an ANSI-based graphical map concept. Players controlled a smiley face-like character that could roam around, much like modern MMORPGs. The game was never as successful as the original Red Dragon, but it did gather a cult following.
Seth Robinson sold the rights to LORD II to Metropolis Gameport in 1998.
Dink Smallwood
In 1997, Robinson Technologies released an adventure/RPG title by the name of Dink Smallwood. This was an effort made by Seth Robinson to move away from BBS door games and into something more profitable. The title featured an isometric view and had a comedic focus.[3]
In an attempt to keep the game's player-base active longer, Robinson took the idea of IGMs from Legend of the Red Dragon and created "D-Mods," an add-on feature where players could create their own adventure for others to explore. Anyone could create D-Mods and distribute them as they wished.
On 17 October, 1999, Robinson Technologies released the game to the public for free, and now it can be downloaded without charge from their website. On 16 December, 2011, a new version of Dink Smallwood called Dink Smallwood HD was released for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows XP/Vista/7, webOS, and Mac OS X.[4][3]
Teenage Lawnmower
A 3D action/simulation/interactive story game, where players mowed lawns to make money to support their family. It was an Independent Games Festival finalist at GDC 2003.
Dungeon Scroll
A spelling game with a dungeon RPG theme. Players spelled words from letters they were given to deal damage to enemies they run into within the dungeon. It was an Independent Games Festival finalist at GDC 2004.
Funeral Quest
A multiplayer Flash game, players take the on the role of running their own funeral parlor.
Growtopia
An independent server-run sandbox MMO game, where players can chat, farm, add friends, game-in-the-game, trade, and build worlds. [5] It is currently one of the most successful games by Robinson Technologies and Hamumu Software.[6]
Co-developed with Mike Hommel of Hamumu Software, and other developers developing and designing some of the items, the game has more than 15 million accounts (as of April 2016) and more than 300 million worlds (as of April 2016). The game also had a number of 64,000 online players at the same time (as of March 2016). The iOS version was released shortly after the Android version in December 2012. A PC Windows and Mac beta version was also released in July 2013.
Other projects
Since the creation of Robinson Technologies, Seth Robinson has worked on many games and various programs. After the release of Dink Smallwood, he has worked on many ports of games to cellular phones and various games for several websites. Some of the phone ports he has worked on include Duke Nukem and Guitar Hero III Mobile.[2]
In a January 2006 news post on his website, Seth Robinson alluded to working on a brand new game or two.
In October of the same year, the company unveiled the NovaShell game creation system, the technology powering their next game. NovaShell is available on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux under a zlib/libpng-style license.
References
- ↑ Micek, Gregory; Robinson, Seth (2004-12-05). "A Sitdown With Seth Able Robinson". diygames.com. DIY Games. Archived from the original on May 6, 2006. Retrieved 2015.
- 1 2 "Robinson Technologies". ign.com. Ziff Davis, LLC. Retrieved 2015.
- 1 2 Gidari, Cameron (24 August 2014). "A Criminally Underrated Game About A Pig Farmer". Kotaku. Allure Media. Retrieved May 2015.
- ↑ Dink Smallwood HD official webpage on rtsoft.com
- ↑ http://growtopiagame.com
- ↑ Gilmour, James (4 January 2013). "Tree-punching sandbox platformer Growtopia taking root on Android and iOS next week". Pocket Gamer. Steel Media Limited. Retrieved May 2015.