Leland Corporation

The Leland Corporation was a manufacturer of several arcade video games in the 1980s and early 1990s. Notable among these were Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp in 1991, the long-anticipated follow up to the hugely successful Dragon's Lair from 1983 and Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road, which spawned an expansion and two sequels at Leland's successor company Midway Games (Off Road Challenge and Offroad Thunder) in addition to 1990's Pig Out. The company was formed when Tradewest purchased the ailing Cinematronics in 1987. John Rowe, (co-founder and President of Tradewest) became the President of the new Leland Corporation and guided the reorganization and technology evolution which led to a number of popular video games which were positioned to transition into the new market of home systems including, Nintendo NES and Sega Genesis and game boy. Leland was itself purchased in 1994 by WMS Industries. At this point the Leland and Tradewest brands were phased out but much of the staff and all of the facilities continued to be used by WMS and later Midway Games. John Rowe became the vice-chairman and director of product development for the new company.