John Podlasek

John Podlasek started in the industry back in '89 for NEC's TurboGrafx-16 system. He did hotline phone work, then became the 'game software specialist' (fancy term for working in development and marketing). Decided not to join the short-lived T.T.I. / Turbo Duo company based in LA that started after NEC sold TG-16 to Hudson Soft, and stayed in Chicago to do freelance work for them.

After they went out of business he joined ICOM Simulations, which later became Viacom New Media. Did lots of testing, and then managed the internal testing group (software side). Started producing software in '95 with the Beavis & Butt-head trivia game, 'Wiener Takes All'. Viacom New Media was then closed by Viacom corporate in '97.

He then went to Blue Byte Software's U.S. office (which at the time was based out of Germany) in the Chicago suburbs. Worked on 'Incubation: Time is Running Out' which won a bunch of PC turn-based strategy game awards. Also worked on a 3D tennis game called, 'Game, Set, Match', and worked on the first 1/2 of Settlers 3. Blue Byte then moved their U.S. office down to Austin, TX, and he turned down the offer to relocate.

Then he worked at 3Com’s main Chicago office as a software consultant for about 7 months on their modem software. Decided to get back into entertainment software and went to TerraGlyph Interactive to do kid's titles. He worked with publisher Hasbro Interactive, and shipped a PC game called 'Clue Jr' on a tight deadline for them. Also did some work on a CatDog game that never materialized. TerraGlyph was then having financial issues (they closed a year later), so he left and went to Midway Games in 2000.

He's been at Midway now for 7 years now, and it's one of the best places he's worked. For the last 6 years he's worked as the producer on Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance (‘02), Deception (‘04) and Armageddon (‘06). The titles have sold almost 7 million units worldwide, and been well received by fans and press.