History Nugget: General Computer Corporation
General Computer Corp.: The second-party developer that time forgot
Of all the second- and third-party game (and hardware) developers, none had a history as unusual as General Computer Corporation (or GCC). Founded by Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran, this company got its start in the game industry by selling illegal enhancement kits to arcade operators for games such as Missile Command and Pac-Man. Two game publishers got wind of their activities: Atari and Bally/Midway.
Following a lawsuit by Atari that ended up in an out-of-court settlement, GCC received $50,000 per month for 2 years to develop games for Atari. GCC took Atari's offer to heart and ended up developing such games as Food Fight, Battlezone 2600, Centipede 2600, Ms. Pac-Man 2600,,, as well as half of the Atari 5200 releases and most of the Atari 7800 catalog.
GCC also developed the hardware for what was to become the Atari 7800, in one of the numerous twists of fate that changed videogame history forever: one of the reasons why the Nintendo Famicom (aka the NES) was not distributed by Atari in the US in 1983-84, despite heavy negotiations between Atari and Nintendo, was that the 7800 was being developed at the time.
However, Atari was not the only game publisher to notice GCC's early enhancement kits. Bally/Midway, who was then the US distributor for Namco's Pac-Man, also took legal action against GCC. Macrae and Curran once more settled out of court, and GCC ended up making official enhancement boards for Bally/Midway, most notably creating one of the most successful videogame sequels of all time: Ms. Pac-Man. Rather than create Ms. Pac-Man from scratch, GCC took the original Pac-Man game and added enhancements such as bouncing fruits, the replacement of Clyde by Sue and new color schemes and patterns for the mazes. (And yes, this does mean that Ms. Pac-Man on the 2600 was actually ported by the game's creators!)
Today, GCC is still in business, although it got out of the videogame market long ago. It now makes laser printers and you can visit its website at gccprinters.com (click on the “About GCC” link, followed by the Company History button, and you'll see that it is indeed the same company).
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