Jerry W. Jewell
Moby ID: 333766
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Jerry Jewell entered the computer industry at age 26 when he took out a personal loan and purchased an Apple II computer. He spent countless hours of home study. He even took an assembly language class from Apple's Andy Hertzfeld before he knew what assembly language meant.
Jerry soon took a job as Sales Manager for the Sacramento Computerland store, It is in the store where he met Nasir Gebelli. The two wrote the first graphical editor for the Apple II aptly named, E-Z Draw. Jerry formed Sirius Software with Computerland owner Terry Bradley. Jerry marketed the E-Z Draw by traveling to computer stores throughout California and placing the product on the shelves on a consignment basis. All of the products sold through. Following rapidly on the heels of E-Z Draw, Nasir wrote two games, Both Barrels and Space Eggs. Of the two, Space Eggs was a huge hit and quickly sold over 10,000 copies. As Nasir cranked out new games, Sirius Software went from garage to apartment to office to 18,000 square foot building.
At the West Coast Computer Faire Steve Wozniak stopped by the Sirius booth to express his appreciation of the Sirius products and shortly after that Apple Computer, Inc purchased over $1 Million worth of Sirius Products to distribute to the Apple dealer network. Few of them ever made it to the stores. Most were stolen by Apple's own employees.
A number of authors signed on with Sirius between 1981 and 1984. Including Mark Turmell, David Lubar, Tim Wilson, Tom Mornini, Tony Ngo, Chuck Sommerville, Larry Miller, Dan Thompson, and many others.
In 3 years Sirius developed and marketed over 160 products worldwide and was doing a lively 3.5 million a year. Sirius developed games for the IBM PC, Apple II, Commodor 64 and VIC 20, Atari VCS, 400/800 and several other brands.
The home computer videogame market collapsed in 1984 taking with it Sirius, Atari, Commodore and most other videogame companies.
Sirirus' own bankruptcy attorney absconded with all of the money that was supposed to be used for reorganization. The attorney went to jail several years later for embezzlement. But the confusion surrounding the disappearance of the money split up many of the friendships between Jerry and the programmers.
Among the products brought to market were Space Eggs, Both Barrels, Repton, Cyber Strike, Phantoms Five, Lemmings, Snake Byte, Kabul Spy, Dark Forest, Sneakers, Orbitron, and others.
After years as an Apple dealer and owner of a web hosting company Jerry left the computer side of the business to work with his hands and to work with kids. Jerry now designs and builds animatronics for haunted houses and theme parks through his company, SkullTroniX. Jerry's products won the Best Product award at the Transworld show for 2009 and his products continue to win awards nationwide.
Jerry also runs an educational non-profit whose goals are to instill teamwork and leadership skills in teens, The Jewell Performing Arts Center, Inc. produces the nation's only haunted house school. SCARYU.
In the ScaryU program teens build and run a commercial haunted house as a business. With a meager $3K per year budget and 1600 square feet the teens have twice won awards for having the Best Haunted House in the USA.
You can contact Jerry through SkullTroniX.com or ScaryU.com
Jerry is now 59 years old, married and has a 24 year old daughter, Kathryn.
Credited on 4 games
Lemmings (1982, Apple II) | Designed by |
Dark Forest (1981, Apple II) | Original game design by |
Cyber Strike (1980, Apple II) | Documentation by |
Phantoms Five (1980, Apple II) | Documentation by |
Frequent Collaborators
People- 2 games with Nasir Gebelli
- 2 games with Terri Kenney
- 2 games with Janet Lopez
- 1 game with Dan Thompson
- 1 game with Tom Mornini
- 1 game with Andre F. Griffin
- 1 game with Terry E. Bradley
Companies
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