Rob Powers

History

• DUMP: "How lucky is this guy Rob? Get this: even before there was such a thing as a video game system he got to play video games. Why? Because his dad (John) bought old Pong game consoles for spare parts (for what we have no idea) and so Rob got to play those things. Guess who was the most popular kid in the neighborhood? When he wasn't playing at home he was sliding quarters into machines at a local arcade. This extra curricular activity didn't hinder his becoming an Eagle Scout and winning a merit badge for Asteroids. As a kid, Rob became a 'gopher' for the newly formed Computer Games Developer Conference when it was just a handful of geeks meeting in a Sheraton conference room. Rubbing elbows with the likes of Chris Crawford sealed Rob's fate: he went to college to study computer science so he could make games instead of playing them. During college, Rob worked summers at The Learning Company, Epyx Computer Games and Sega as a game tester (tough job but somebody had to do it). A fond memory for Rob was getting to test an early alpha version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog. After graduating with a computer science degree, Rob went to work for Sega's technical support group helping to launch a title for the Sega CD. Then, it was on to Atari's Jaguar group to help produce a game for the Jaguar Virtual Reality goggles, which is probably what the Atari management wore while their ship was heading to Davy Jones' locker. Rob jumped just in time and landed at Westwood Studios in Las Vegas where he helped produce their Lands of Lore series. But, computer graphics was in his blood so he left his final paycheck at Caesar's Palace, sold his house and returned to the Bay area (with his wife and two kids) to study computer graphics which is what got him roped into doing the art for Star Trux LX. This is not the end. Rob's life is being serialized for HBO – just the Caesar's Palace part." -from here.
• Hired as a tester by SoA from June 1990 to Sept 1990, testing SMS and early MD games. Was rehired June 1991 to September 1991 (was June-September an SoA hiring schedule? Like their version of "holiday hire"?) for the same. Was again rehired August 92 as a Software Engineer doing technical support for developers, and assisting them with dev/hardware stuff. Was also part of the art tools team for Jurassic Park (MCD).

CartridgeCulture (talk) 04:34, 13 November 2021 (EST)