Laura Nikolich | |
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Occupation(s) | Computer programmer Video game designer |
Notable work | Spider-Man (Atari 2600) |
Laura Nikolich is a game designer and programmer who worked for Parker Brothers in the early 1980s where she was the sole developer for the 1982 Atari 2600 game Spider-Man and programmed the ColecoVision version of Frogger II: ThreeeDeep!.
Laura Nikolich graduated in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in engineering technology from University of South Florida. She learned assembly language, which she used for pager technology at Motorola. Real-time programming in assembly language gave her skills useful for the emerging video game industry.[1]
Laura Nikolich was the fifth programmer hired at Parker Brothers in 1981 and the fourth hired for Atari 2600 development.[1] Nikolich worked alone for six months on the first game based on Spider-Man. Working with the limitations of the system, she designed it as a vertically scrolling game,[1] which was challenging to create.[2] Spider-Man was released in 1982, promoted through television commercials, and was a success.[2]
After Spider-Man, Nikolich developed a Care Bears game, which was never released.[3][4][5] The game was dropped because, according to Nikolich, “marketing didn’t know what they wanted”.[5] Nikolich was proudest of her work on Care Bears because of its technical challenges.[4] Her work on manipulating the sprites made the design more lively and impressed people.[4]