Tronix
8295 South LaCienega Blvd
Inglewood, CA 90301
USA

Year Founded: 1982
Year Defunct: 1984


Tronix produced several 8-bit games like Juice! and published other programs as well.


Taken from: The Arti Haroutunian interview. By ROM Magazine, Issue 5 (April-May, 1984), Page 8.

Arti was responsible for programming KID GRID and JUICE for the Atari (originally) and he converted it to the C64. He's employed by TRONIX Publishing Inc. a rather well known American computer games company.

About Tronix:
Tronix was started in September of 1982 by a gentleman by the name of John Reece.

Q. How long did it take you to program 'Kid Grid'?
A. It took me two months.
Q. And what assembler did you use?
A. The Assembler/Editor by ATARI.
Q. How long did it take you to program 'Juice'?
A. Juice took me four and a half months long, because Juice originally started out as a totally different game. I don't really like to sit down and define a game right down to the last detail and then find out the game, once coded, is boring. So I come up with a basic idea and start coding it, adding features as I code.

With Juice I hit lots of dead ends.I would come up with a program like Basketball, but when I see a program isn't going anywhere I have to drop the past two weeks of work and retrace my steps, going back to the base I had which was the playfield of Juice. Then take it again from there. Designing new characters, new action and all those things.
Q. I noticed that Juice had more complicated graphics then Kid Grid. Was this because you spent more time in the designing of it?
A. Well,commercial programming for me was a whole new field. I started out with a text adventure, then I got my ATARI and Kid Grid was my first major graphic work. Being my first venture into graphics in general and after looking at Kid Grid I wanted to do something better then it, more graphically demanding. The next original piece of work I do on th ATARI or any machine would be even more graphically better then Juice.
...
Q. What direction do you see computer games going?
A. The days of where a single programmer can write a game in a couple of months and make a big hit out of it, those days are numbered. The reason for this is because most machines now come with 64K and soon to be 128K therefore, lots of people are going to start wanting games of this size. We're going to get to the point where 64K machine language games are standard and any one person in any appreciable amount of time cannot write a good 64K program. This means programs are going to be collaberated efforts between two, three, four,or a whole group of programmers. So I think the days of a single office are going to come to an end and producing software will become like producing any other product, one person cannot do it anymore. More people will have to pool their time and their talents to put applications and games together.