MicroIllusions

MicroIllusions, based in Granada Hills, California was a computer game developer and publisher of the home computer era (late 1970s to early 1990s). 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 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

 * Photon Paint 1.0 (2D painting with 3D generation) (1987) Amiga
 * Photon Video: Cel Animator (animation) (1988) Amiga
 * Transport Controller (animation) (1988) Amiga
 * Photon Paint 2.0 (2D painting with 3D generation) (1989) Amiga / Mac
 * Edit Decision List Processor (film/video production) (1989) Amiga
 * Genesis: The Third Day (3D landscape generation) (1991) Amiga

Games

 * Ebonstar (1988), Amiga, created by the Dreamers Guild
 * Romantic Encounters at the Dome (1987) Amiga, DOS, Macintosh
 * Faery Tale Adventure (1987) Amiga and Commodore 64 (C64), DOS, Sega Mega Drive
 * Fire Power (1989) Amiga, Atari ST, C64, DOS
 * Craps Academy (1988) Europe-only release, Amiga
 * Questmaster 1: Prism of Heheutotol (a.k.a. Dondra: A New Beginning) (1988) C64, DOS (Apple II version by Spectrum Holobyte)
 * Laser Squad (published, 1988) Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum
 * Dr. Plummet's House of Flux (1989)

Faery Tale Adventure II: Halls of the Dead (1997), sometimes credited to MicroIllusions, was completed by The Dreamers Guild, Inc. for various platforms.