Rob Fulop is a game programmer who created two of the Atari 2600's biggest hits: the port of arcade game Missile Command for Atari and 1982's Demon Attack, which won Electronic Gaming Monthly's Game of the Year award. While at Atari, Fulop also ported Night Driver to the 2600 and Space Invaders to the Atari 8-bit family. Fulop graduated from the University of California, Berkley in 1978 with a degree in electrical engineering, he was hired by Atari's coin-op divsion where he worked on sound design for a Superman pinball machine, and then transferred to the home division after the release of the Atari 2600, creating arcade ports for the newly-released console as well as the company's family of 8-bit computers. on 17th of July 1981, a group of employees from Atari's home console division including Fulop quit their jobs to form their own company, Imagic, urged on by the success of the ex-Atari employees who formed Activision and the lack of credit they were receiving for their work at Atari. Fulop developed the studio's debut game, Demon Attack, which went on to become one of the best selling 2600 games of all time. After finishing working on Cosmic Ark in 1982, Fulop traveled to Hungary to visit relative, during his visit he met Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik's Cube, which inspired him to create a two-player puzzle game as he felt the genre was under-represented at the time, in six weeks, he'd designed CubiColor, however, Imagic decided against publishing the game due to their belief that a puzzle game wouldn't sell well enough, Fulop later released the game via newsletters, about a 100 copies are known to exist. Fulop was later hired by Nolan Bushnell's company Axlon as part of their NEMO team,Fulop created Night Trap for the system, however, due to the console's cancellation the game was shelved and later released on the Sega CD. The game famously caused controversy upon its release due to its portrayal of violence against women, and was heavily criticized in the 1993 congressional hearings on video games alongside Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers, this, alongside negative reactions from his friends and family, caused Fulop to be concerned about the messages video games were sending out to children,this, in turn, inspired Fulop's next game, which he decided would be so cute and "sissy" that no one could claim had a harmful effect on youth. The end result was 1995's Dogz: Your computer Pet, which was released by PF Magic, a company he co-founded.The game proved to be popular and kickstarted the Petz franchise of pet simulation video games. Fulton later created Max Magic for the Philips CD-I, the game consisted of a fortune teller and magician who would perform magic tricks with the aid the player, who'd presumably use it to perform a magic show, Fulop worked with Max Mavenon the game, who authored the tricks and recorded some of the voices. PF Magic was acquired by The Learning Company in May 1998. and in March 2001, Ubisoft acquired the entertainment division of The Learning Company, and with it the rights to the Petz franchise.
Personal life
Fulop plays poker semi-professionally, competing in various high limitpoker games in northern California. In January 2004, Fulop went to Las Vegas to visit Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak, while there, he wrote a humorous guest column for Bluff, a poker magazine,about his trip there and his stay at Esfandiari's house, the piece was well received, leading to Fulop writing a semi-regular column for the magazine. In 2015, Rob Fulop joined the indie rock band Bourbon Therapy, based out of Oakland, California, as the pianist/keyboardist. Bourbon Therapy released their second album, Hymnals and Hangovers, featuring Fulop on piano and keyboard, on September 9th, 2016. As of 2020, Fulop is no longer a member of Bourbon Therapy.
