MicroIllusions


MicroIllusions, based in Granada Hills, California was a computer game developer and publisher of the home computer era. MicroIllusions, as a company, was a strong supporter of the Commodore Amiga and typically released titles on that platform before porting it to others. Activision cancelled them as an affiliated publisher after a year of signing them up. The company went out of business in or about 1990.

General

The company impact has been summed up as, "During MicroIllusion’s brief existence they produced some visionary software that, like so much else that came out of the Amiga scene, gave the world an imperfect glimpse of its multimedia future. That’s as true of Photon Paint, the progenitor of photographic-quality visual editors like Adobe Photoshop, as it is of Music-X, a forerunner of easy-to-use music packages like GarageBand."

Founding

According to The Digital Antiquarian, "The seeds of MicroIllusions were planted during one day’s idle conversation when Steinert complained to David Joiner that, while the Amiga supposedly had speech synthesis built into its operating system, he had never actually heard his machines talk;.. He proved as good as his word within a few hours. Impressed, Steinert asked if he could sell the new program in his store for a straight 50/50 split. Given his circumstances, Joiner was hardly in a position to quibble. When the program sold well, Steinert decided to get into Amiga software development in earnest with the help of his wunderkind."

Applications

Faery Tale Adventure II: Halls of the Dead, sometimes credited to MicroIllusions, was completed by The Dreamers Guild, Inc. for various platforms.