A couple weeks ago, I found a stack of 5200 and 2600 manuals at a thrift store. I was looking through them tonight, and I noticed this line on the back of the Spike's Peak (2600) manual: "Game programmed by the creative designers at BECK-TECH." I'd never heard that name before and was mildly curious.

Then the next manual I picked up happened to be for the 5200 version of Pitfall, where I saw this:



Suddenly I'd gone from never having heard of BECK-TECH before to seeing them credited twice, on two different games published by different companies for different consoles. Very interesting.

I haven't had the chance to look through the rest of my manuals for references to BECK-TECH yet, but a very quick 'net search turned up this interview with Matt Reichert. He mentions that he once traveled to Beck Tech in Berkeley where he saw an in-development version of Up 'N' Down for the 2600. That was published by Sega, which brings a third publisher into the equation.

Moby Games credits Beck-Tech with one game, "The Ford Simulator." I know nothing of this game.

And that's all I have so far. Now my curiosity is piqued. Anybody here know what Beck-Tech was? What other games did they work on? Are they still around? And why haven't I heard of them before? If they made that many games, you'd think their name would turn up more often.