game company . for the prehistoric creature see trilobite . this article needs additional citations for verification . please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . august 2008 learn how and when to remove this template message trilobyte inc. industry computer and video games founded 1990 headquarters medford oregon usa key people graeme devine founder rob landeros founder ceo john fricker cto charlie mchenry coo products video games website www.trilobytegames.com accessed 2011 05 24 www.tbyte.com 1996 2001 archived version 2001 05 06 trilobyte is a computer game developer founded in december 1990 by graeme devine and rob landeros . they are well known in the computer game industry for the 7th guest and the 11th hour games and to a lesser extent for clandestiny and other titles . the company was recently reformed by co founder rob landeros with some of its original titles being re released . contents 1 logo 2 history 2.1 the 7th guest 2.2 the 11th hour 2.3 subsequent projects 2.4 closing 2.5 relaunch 2.6 the 7th guest 3 3 released games 4 unreleased games 5 references 6 external links logo edit the official company logo consists of a trilobite superimposed on a pyramid . the design for the logo went through many changes from the simple to celebrating holidays on their webpage now defunct . the logo pictured here is from a mirror of the old official company page and is more elaborate than versions seen within the games themselves . history edit the 7th guest edit the company is most famous for creating the pc game the 7th guest one of the first computer games for cd rom . most of the footage for the game was filmed with a us 35 000 budget super vhs cameras and blue butcher paper as a background that would later be removed to help insert the actors in the game a process called chromakey or bluescreen . the game was a puzzle solving game similar in style to myst . however most of the puzzles in the 7th guest were based on versions of real puzzles invented by people such as max bezzel while the puzzles in myst were largely fantasy based . unlike myst which used static screens the 7th guest was the first game to use full rendered 3d animation and navigation . for the time it had state of the art graphics by rob landeros robert stein iii gene bodio alan iglesias midi music by the fat man and a full fledged story by established author matthew j. costello . during planning a sequel was already being considered in anticipation of success . the final version of the 7th guest was released in 1993 . 60 000 copies were snapped up overnight and a bevy of requests for reorders arrived days later . when the game was released some cd rom manufacturers registered up to a 300 percent increase in sales for cd rom drives . citation needed overall the game proved to be a turning point in cd rom based technology . bill gates called the 7th guest the new standard in interactive entertainment . 1 if not for the popularity of the 7th guest and myst a similar styled adventure game the cd rom would not have been as popular and would have taken longer to gain a foothold in the marketplace . citation needed the 11th hour edit the 11th hour was released in the fall of 1995 after missing its original release date by more than a year . it was one of the first games to support 16 bit color . graphically the game was superb for the time . it featured detailed environments and fluid motion . however the game drew criticism for several reasons . the game was released in dos when windows 95 had already been out for some time . the company was flooded with callers trying to get the game to run on their machines . the game still used midi for music instead of cd audio . in addition the gameplay was not well received by some by whom with players getting angry at the puzzles and riddles they had to solve ranging from abstract logic to anagrams . despite the massive amount of pre orders from vendors sales ended up being far below the expected amount and the game did not recover its production costs a key factor in the company s financial downfall . subsequent projects edit the next projects for trilobyte were published by trilobyte itself . clandestiny with gameplay similar to the previous the 7th guest and the 11th hour though using cel animated cartoon video rather than live action and uncle henry s playhouse a re packaging of a number of the puzzles and games from the 7th guest the 11th hour and clandestiny . however neither of them did well commercially and they are not well known . it has been reported that the relationship between landeros and devine became so strained that they last spoke to each other at a board meeting in november 1996 . 2 after clandestiny the company effectively took two different internal directions . landeros led a project called tender loving care while devine started a massively multiplayer project millennium . tender loving care starring john hurt often referred to simply as tlc was completed in 1998 . about the same time red orb entertainment a division of br derbund signed on to publish two titles on devine s side of the company assault a top down multiplayer action game and extreme racing a racing game which ran on a shared game engine . red orb was also publishing the games riven and prince of persia 3d at the time . assault was later renamed extreme warfare and changed from top down to a first person perspective . extreme racing was likewise retitled baja 1000 racing and attached to a score international racing license . both games made appearances at the electronic entertainment expo e3 trade show that year . closing edit the learning company purchased br derbund in 1998 . the learning company then canceled many of the current red orb game projects and trilobyte . with both eggs in the red orb basket it was unable to find new publishers for the titles and cut payroll on september 15 1998 . 3 4 however the company stayed afloat for several more months in the hopes of being acquired by midway games . the company closed in early 1999 after being evicted from its office and not hearing any further news from midway games . a third part of the 7th guest series not developed by and unknown to trilobyte was rumored to be in development using the unreal engine . only a few screen shots of this canceled game exist with few details existing about it except for a proposed introduction storyline . later rob landeros also developed a proposal for another first person sequel in the 7th guest series the collector . relaunch edit in november 2010 trilobyte was resurrected . the 7th guest was relaunched for the iphone and ipad in december 2010 . in april 2011 the 7th guest infection a stand alone version of the popular microscope puzzle from the original 7th guest was released for ipad . the 7th guest 3 edit on halloween 2013 trilobyte launched a kickstarter campaign for the 7th guest 3 the collector which failed to meet its funding target of 435 000 . 5 another crowdfunding campaign was started at crowdtilt with a smaller goal of 65 000 to build the first story of the haunted mansion 6 but that too failed and the 7th guest 3 was officially cancelled in june 2014 . 7 released games edit the 7th guest the first title released by trilobyte software . it sold over 2 million copies making more than us 50 million for the company in the 1990s . it was re released for iphone and ipad in december 2010 and re released for pc by dotemu in february 2012 as an updated version to be fully compatible with windows xp vista and windows 7 . 8 it was also re released for pc by gog in a smaller package . 9 on march 13 2012 the 7th guest for macintosh was released on the mac app store . the 11th hour the sequel to the 7th guest . many production problems and release date slipped by a year resulted in lost profits and sales of only 1.7 million units . this game was also re released in february 2012 for pc by both dotemu and gog . clandestiny a cel animated child friendly puzzle game . it sold only 2500 copies in the united states bringing in a profit of just us 500 000 . the game is currently available in the mac app store and published by grl games 10 uncle henry s playhouse a compilation of some of the puzzles from the 7th guest the 11th hour and clandestiny . it sold 27 copies in the united states and 127 worldwide . 11 the 7th guest infection a stand alone version of the microscope puzzle from the original release of the 7th guest which was excluded from the re released iphone and ipad versions due to technical issues . released as an app for ipad in april 2011 . unreleased games edit cybernet little is known about this game but the fat man has listed on his website that he composed the music for this game . 12 dog eat dog an office politics simulator . at a cost of over us 800 000 it was scrapped halfway through production . tender loving care rob landeros r rated psychological thriller interactive movie . it would later be produced by rob landeros new company aftermath media and released by funsoft in europe to critical acclaim in germany under the name die versuchung . the dvd rom version was distributed in the u.s. by digital leisure and the dvd video version distributed by dvd international . the 7th guest iii a highly rendered and media rich game where the house would be back to its original form and all forms of media were to be controlled by satan . us 500 000 went into production . only a few highly rendered screen shots were created before landeros canceled the project . extreme warfare graeme devine s online top down perspective 3d tank game originally named assault . red orb entertainment was sold to the learning company who had no interest in the project and canceled development funding . baja racing originally called extreme racing . it was shelved due to the lack of development personnel as already meager resources were assigned to extreme warfare . the 13th soul a 3rd person real time game inside the stauf mansion . a few rendered rooms were all that were made . the sale of virgin interactive killed the project . trojan planet a role playing game set in a parallel universe where all the world is trojans . the company went under shortly after the concept arose . the 7th guest iii 3rd version another version in which the town was abandoned and tad the young boy from the 7th guest was grown up and a writer coming back to stop stauf . the company went under shortly after the concept arose . the 7th guest iii the collector a completely new version of 7th guest iii where the events took place in a german museum rather than the house . lack of funding and interest by the producer lunny interactive caused it to be shelved . trilobyte has been seeking crowdfunding for a different concept bearing a similar title . 6 references edit wolf mark j.p. 2007 the video game explosion a history from pong to playstation and beyond