BETWEEN MY MORE EXTENSIVE ARTICLES, I’VE DECIDED TO DO A FEW SHORTER ARTICLES ON SOME OF THE EARLIEST ON-LINE SYSTEM (SIERRA ON-LINE) NON-ADVENTURE TITLES. WHILE ON-LINE SYSTEMS IS KNOWN FOR ITS EARLY HI-RES ADVENTURE GAMES, THE COMPANY PUBLISHED A MYRIAD OF TITLES IN ITS FIRST COUPLE OF YEARS. RANGING FROM SPORTS AND TABLETOP GAMES TO FAST-PACED ACTION TITLES INSPIRED BY THE POPULAR VIDEO ARCADE GAMES OF THE TIME.
When Ken and Roberta Williams had completed the development of their first game, Mystery House, in the summer of 1980, Roberta took out a full-page ad in Micro 6502 magazine. To offer more than just Mystery House, two other titles, Skeet Shoot and Trap Shoot, both developed by a third party, were also featured. While Skeet shoot and Trap shoot quickly faded away, the company’s portfolio rapidly expanded with a multitude of new titles added over the next couple of years, one of the titles being Hi-Res Cribbage by Warren Schwader.
After the release of Myster House and while developing Wizard and the Princess, a tape copy of inspiring programmer Warren Schwader’s Apple II Cribbage game reached Ken Williams. While Ken was very much focused on the company’s second and very ambitious adventure title he was still keen to add multiple different genres to his company’s portfolio. Impressed with Schwader’s use of assembly language and the utilization of the Apple II’s Hi-Res graphics mode, Ken contacted Schwader and made a deal for On-Line Systems to market and sell his cribbage game. The game was retitled Hi-Res Cribbage to fit in with the company’s other Hi-Res titles. The game was released in early 1981, now on floppy disk, and sold around 2.000 copies, making it quite rare today.
Warren Schwader’s 1980 apple II cassette game Cribbage found its way to Ken Williams of On-Line Systems. Williams impressed by the game published it as Hi-Res Cribbage on floppy for the Apple II in 1981. The Apple II version was the only version to be released
Hi-Res Cribbage for the Apple II allowed one player to play against the computer in a traditional game of cribbage. Cribbage was derived from an earlier game by Sir John Suckling in 1600’s England. The game, today, plays just like it did 400 years ago
Schwader had been an amateur programmer since 1977, learning BASIC and slowly becoming proficient in assembly language on the Apple II. In 1980 he had completed his Cribbage game of which he sold a few hundred cassette copies, one of those copies somehow reached Ken Williams all the way out in California, Schwader, at the time lived in Wisconsin. Schwader became On-Line systems’ “first” hire when hired by Ken in 1981 (Ken’s brother John became a part of the company in 1980).
Schwader went on the create one of the most beloved action games for the Apple II, Threshold, which I’ll cover in an upcoming short article.
Cribbage can at first seem quite complicated and maybe even unfamiliar therefore an introduction to Hi-Res Cribbage was published in the first On-Line Letter in June of 1981. The On-Line Letter was On-Line Systems’ own channel to its customers and software users, providing information on products and answering inquiries. The On-Line Letter turned into the Sierra Newsletter in 1987 and into The Sierra Magazine in 1989 before becoming InterAction in 1991.
Schwader stayed with On-Line Systems (later Sierra On-Line) until 1993 and worked on all three volumes of Hoyle: Official Book of Games in the early ’90s alongside another fan-favorite, Jones in the Fast Lane.
Sources: Hackers by Steven Levy, Halcyon Days, Moby Games, InfoWorld, Softtalk
Retro365 
Merely for the sake of trivia, hired between John and Warren were our office manager (who I *think* was named Paula) and myself.
Hi Eric
Thank you so much for commenting.
That’s interesting. I’ll need to revise some of my articles I see:)
You worked on Time Zone, as a programmer, right? Were you hired by On-Line as a programmer? did you work on other titles as well?
Thanks for your time.
Best
Ernst
Let me first correct myself. “Paula” was actually Jean Brown. I was after her then Warren and Terry Pierce, but I don’t recall the exact order.
With the help of Ken and some helpful folks at Apple, I worked mostly on the copy protection. The guts of Time Zone were reworked after I left so I don’t think much of what I did initially made it into the final product.
Let me correct myself first. “Paula” was actually Jean Brown. Next was me, then Warren and Terry Pierce but I forgot the order.
I did mostly copy protection work. Shortly after I left, much of the guts of Time Zone were reworked, so I’m not sure how much of my code made it into the final product.
Thanks for the invaluable insight, so much appreciated.