California Pacific Computer Co.
The California Pacific Computer Co. is a now defunct publisher for computer games. They had the motto "Top of the Orchard Software".
Description[edit]
Located in Davis, California, they came into contact with the Ultima series in 1980, when Richard Garriott's boss at the time sent them a copy of Akalabeth. They were impressed and made a deal with Garriott to publish the game for him, selling 30,000 copies, netting Garriott $150,000 at $5 a copy. Since Garriott already had a contract with them, he offered them his next game during that same year, Ultima (later rebranded as Ultima I) on the Apple II, for publishing. California Pacific did this as well, selling over 50,000 copies of it.
However, when developing Ultima II, Garriott's idea of putting a cloth map into each game box proved to be too expensive for California Pacific and they didn't renew the contract. So Garriott went to Sierra for the next game. Shortly later, in 1983, California Pacific went bankrupt and Garriott bought back the rights to the games.
Potfolio of Games[edit]
Besides Akalabeth and Ultima I, California Pacific published the following games:
- Apple-oids by Tom Luhrs (1980)
- Super Invader by M. Hata (1980), later renamed to Cosmos Mission
- Bill Budge's Space Album (1980), a collection of four games
- Fender Bender
- Trilogy of Games by Bill Budge (1980): Night Driver, Pinball, Space War
- 3-D Game Tool by Bill Budge (1981)
- Brainteaser Boulevard by Chuck Bueche (1982), a Frogger clone
- Lady Tut by Greggy (1983)
Gallery[edit]
Top of the Orchard
