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Rob Fulop (born 1959) is an American game programmer who created two of the Atari 2600's biggest hits: the port of arcade game Missile Command and 1982's Demon Attack, which won Electronic Games Arkie Awards. While at Atari, Fulop also ported Night Driver to the 2600 and Space Invaders to the Atari 8-bit computers.
After graduating, Fulop went back to Atari, he was hired to work in the company's home division where he created arcade ports for Atari's newly released 2600 console as well as the company's family of 8-bit computers.
After creating the Atari 8-bit port of Space Invaders, which was criticized due to its changing of certain elements of the arcade original, such as the removal of shields, Fulop developed a port of Missile Command for the Atari 2600, which was a commercial success. As a christmas bonus that year, he only received a coupon for a free turkey. Chagrined by the feeling of being unappreciated by Atari for his work on the game, Fulop decided to leave the company.
After finishing working on Cosmic Ark in 1982, Fulop traveled to Hungary to visit relatives. During his visit he met Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik's Cube, which inspired him to create a two-player puzzle game as he felt the genre was under-represented at the time. In six weeks, he'd designed CubiColor; however, Imagic decided against publishing the game due to their belief that a puzzle game would not sell well enough. Fulop later released the game via newsletters. About 100 copies are known to exist.
Shortly before Imagic was set to go public, the Video Game Crash of 1983 occurred, causing the company to withdraw its IPO. Fulop left the company soon after.
Fulop was later hired by Nolan Bushnell's company Axlon as part of their Control-Vision team. Fulop created Night Trap for the NEMO console system, however, due to its cancellation the game was shelved and later released on the Sega CD. The game famously caused controversy upon its release due to its portrayal of violence against women, and was heavily criticized in the 1993 congressional hearings on video games alongside Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers, this, alongside negative reactions from his friends and family, caused Fulop to be concerned about the messages video games were sending out to children, this, in turn, inspired Fulop's next game, which he decided would be so cute and "sissy" that no one could claim had a harmful effect on youth. The end result was 1995's Dogz: Your computer Pet, which was released by PF.Magic, a company he co-founded. The game proved to be popular and kickstarted the Petz franchise of pet simulation video games.
Fulop later worked on Max Magic for the Philips CD-I, the game consisted of a fortune teller and magician who would perform magic tricks with the aid the player, who'd presumably use it to perform a magic show, Fulop worked with Max Maven on the game, who authored the tricks and recorded some of the voices.
PF.Magic was acquired by The Learning Company in May 1998. and in March 2001, Ubisoft acquired the entertainment division of The Learning Company, and with it the rights to the Petz franchise.
In October, Fulop, who had previously suffered from a heart attack in 2005, began experiencing chest pains and had to have a heart operation. He informed his team leader that he would need some time off to undergo the operation; Fulop was terminated from the team nine days later and from the company altogether soon after the operation, he sued the company for violating the Fair Employment and Housing Act alleging that it had discriminated against him on the basis of age and disability.
Fulop is an amateur Jazz and Ragtime pianist; in 2015, he joined the indie rock band Bourbon Therapy, based out of Oakland, California, as the pianist/keyboardist. Bourbon Therapy released their second album, Hymnals and Hangovers, featuring Fulop on piano and keyboard, on September 9, 2016. As of 2020, Fulop is no longer a member of this band. Rob married his wife, Becky Fulop, in 2016.
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