Ron Gilbert
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Ron Gilbert is a computer game designer and programmer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games.
Gilbert grew up in a small town in Oregon as the son of a college physics professor. While in high school, Gilbert taught himself assembly language programming and devoted much of his time to developing his talents as a computer programmer.
Gilbert began his professional career in 1983 while he was still a college student by writing a program named Graphics Basic with Tom McFarlane. They sold the program to a San Francisco Bay Area company named HESware. Impressed by his work, HESware offered Gilbert a job. He spent about half a year at HESware, programming action games for the Commodore 64 (C64). None of them were ever released; the company went out of business. Shortly thereafter, Gilbert joined Lucasfilm Games, which later became LucasArts. There he earned his living by doing C64 ports of Lucasfilm Atari 800 games.
In 1985 he got the opportunity to develop his own game for LucasArts about a dark Victorian mansion populated by a mad scientist, his slightly retarded offspring and strange aliens. Ron Gilbert and Lucasfilm artist Gary Winnick had come up with this idea during several chats, and they saw the time fit to present it to the management.
Gilbert programmed a scripting language that was named after the project it had been written for, the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, better known as SCUMM.
Maniac Mansion was released in 1986 and was an incredible success. SCUMM proved to be the perfect technical frame for an adventure game. Gilbert created many successful graphic adventure games with his engine at LucasArts, including the classic The Secret of Monkey Island, until he left to start Humongous Entertainment with LucasArt's Shelley Day.
While at Humongous Entertainment, Gilbert was responsible for games such as Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam and the Backyard Sports series. Gilbert was also the founder of Cavedog Entertainment and the producer of Total Annihilation.
External links
- GrumpyGamer.com, Gilbert's weblog (http://www.grumpygamer.com/)
- MobyGames' extensive rap sheet on Gilbert (http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId=1363/)
- Buy A Car For Ron Gilbert (http://car4ron.com), A fan site for donating money to Ron Gilbertde:Ron Gilbert