Troy Lyndon

Troy Lyndon
Troy Lyndon
	Troy Lyndon, April 1993
Born	Troy Alan Lyndon; November 29, 1964 (age 59); New York, NY
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Chairman, Missionary, Inventor
Spouse	Robilyn Lyndon (m. 1998)
Website	Troy Lyndon in LinkedIn]

Troy A. Lyndon (b. November 29, 1964 in New York, NY) is the Chairman & CEO of Left Behind Games Inc., dba Inspired Media Entertainment, a small publicly traded company (OTCBB: LFBG).

Biography

Troy Lyndon's mother is Jacquie Edelen, a homemaker. His father is David Lyndon, now retired as a professor and former Marine, Aegis Program Director for RCA and Seasparrow Program Director for Raytheon Corporation. Adopted by David was he was just 6 years old, he followed his engineering footsteps. Originally offered good money by VCE Corporation and other air defense contractors to follow his father's career path, Lyndon found that the video games industry paid better. And after successfully publishing his first 5 games before the age of 20, Lyndon dropped out of Moorpark College (majoring in business adminisration) to pursue video game development full-time. After more than 15 years of success in the video game industry, Lyndon became a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ from 1998-2003, returning full-time thereafter to develop video games 'with a purpose'.

The Early Years (1978-1981)

At age 13, Troy Lyndon developed and sold his first video game professionally, titled "Space Voyager" for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Encouraged by his childhood friend, David Jennings, he followed with two additional games titled "Great Wave" and "Space Quest" also for the TRS-80. Over the next few years as Lyndon pursued academic interests, he continued developing by co-authoring Atari to Commodore 64 game conversions of "Time Runner", "Snokie" and "Flak" with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur.

Converting Coin-op Games Home (1984-1985)

Working under contract for Datasoft, Lyndon completed development of the Commodore 64 of "Lost Tomb" and developed from scratch, the Commodore 64 version of "Mr. Do!", bringing coin-op games from the arcade home for consumers.

Introduction to Sports Games (1985-1986)

Hired by GameStar, which was acquired by Activision, Lyndon started by developing simulated sprite drivers for the Macintosh version of Star League Baseball. Programming for GameStar continued even after the Activision acquisition while Lyndon went on to develop Star Rank Boxing, GBA 2-on-2 Basketball and portions of GFL 3D Football. At this time, George Lucas had completed his movie Return of the Jedi and he began work on a new movie, for which Lyndon was the Activision whiz-kid developer called to the task. That movie was Howard the Duck, which has gone on to become one of the worst box office failures of all time. Lyndon believes more games were sold than VHS copies of the movie.

Bringing more Coin-op Games Home (1987-1989)

Branching out on his own, Lyndon signed a 15 title deal with Capcom to bring numerous coin-op games home to the Commodore 64 and new IBM PC platforms. Games included Street Fighter, Sarge, Speed Rumbler, Hat Trick, 1942, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Side Arms, and Tiger Road. Obvioulsy more work than one could do, Lyndon became the co-founder of Pacific Dataworks International with Christopher T. Riggs.

Biggest Sports Game (1989-1990)

Seeking greater satisfaction by creating original games, Lyndon then sought out to create original games with co-developer, Michael A. Knox. The two signed an agreement with DataEast to develop ABC's Monday Night Football and Dream Team Basketball for the PC. Monday Night Football was recognized as one of the best sports games of the year by nomination from the Software Publishers' Association, and it featured two innovative firsts never before seen in PC games including support for every graphics card (Hercules Monochrome, CGA, EGA, VGA and 256 color VGA color modes) and it was only the second PC game to include digitized audio that could play through the PC's internal speaker.

First 3D John Madden Football Game (1990-1992)

Due to the success and development effort of Monday Night Football on the PC, Electronic Arts sought out Lyndon and his partner Knox to develop a football game which became the first 3D Madden Football game ever developed. Lyndon originally opposed the idea of a 3D game by his lead programmer, Jim Simmons, but empowered him to create the display engine if he could meet certain timeline deadlines, while Steve Quinn developed quality graphics at lightning speed. Because this had been Lyndon and Knox's third football game, the game logic was implemented in record time. Lyndon credits Electronic Arts' producer Richard Hilleman for his countless hours spent with Simmons bug-testing and refining the game which was developed on the new Sega Genesis platform in record time; 6 months in-time for the product launch. And Simmons, a high-school buddy of Lyndon's, proved to be a smart pick having never previously developed a game or professional software project before. Lyndon openly has fond memories of his development team which created the most successful sports game franchise in video game history.

Innovator of Live-Action characters in Video Games (1991-1993)

After Madden Football's success, Lyndon and Knox with programmer Jim Simmons went on to create the first NHL Hockey video game for the Sega Genesis platform. Utilizing green-screen video capturing equipment, Lyndon and his developers went on to create technologies to rotoscope real-life imagery of NHL characters directly into characters which appeared in video games. As a result, Lyndon built the video game industry's first dedicated filming studio (sound stage). As a result, NHL was heralded as the first game to implement fluid movement of real-life hockey player motion.

Co-founder and President of North America's largest independent video game development company (1989-1993)

Over 5 years, Knox and Lyndon grew their development company, Park Place Productions, to 130 employees with several separate divisions, including Game Development, Publishing and Testing, servicing at peak 14 publishers while making 45 games at once.

Inc. Magazine's Entrepeneur of the Year Award Recipient (1993)

Recognized for their accomplishments in building a successful video game company with a dynamic and tremendous staff, Lyndon and Knox were recognized when awarded the Inc. Magazine Entrepeneur of the Year Award by Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch. Former employees from Park Place Productions include John Smedley (Developer), current President of Sony Online, Chris Whaley (Red Zone Interactive) and others... Products Produced under Lyndon's supervision included Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Kawasaki for GameTek Inc., Madden Football and NHL Hockey for Electronic Arts, Mohammad Ali Boxing, Magic Johnson Basketball and David Robinson Basketball for Virgin Games, NFL Football for Konami, Quarterback Club Football for Acclaim, ESPN Baseball for Sony, Batman and numerous others.

CD-ROM Technology Innovator (1993-1994)

Lyndon left the video games industry for a brief stint to develop CD-ROM productivity products for Computer Associates including Simply House, Stanley's Complete Book of Home Repair and Improvement and Simply Vacation, the first database driven travel-agent custom vacation software product ever developed. Both products were also innovative in terms of content size. They were also two of the first 10 CD-ROM titles ever to include Intel's Indeo full-screen video playback technology.

New Innovations of Live-Action characters in Video Games (1994-1997)

Returning to work exclusively under contract with Corel Corporation, Lyndon built a second generation filming studio (sound stage) for the game industry. The first game was Where in the World is Madison Jaxx, a monumental sized education game on five CD-ROMs intended to teach geography to teenages and adults. Secondly, Lyndon Produced the most ambitious interactive motion picture ever made; Arthur, the King, the Sword, the Legend which included more than 5 hours of film featuring more than 60 actors and actresses and a first-time green-screen implementation of horse motion (from a polo field) into a video game. Due to cut-backs resulting from Corel's purchase of WordPerfect, nunerous development companies were shut-down when Corel chose to exit the consumer software business. As a result of Lyndon's exclusive agreement, other interactive motion pictures included Sinbad, Sargasso: Sea of Fear, Atlantis and Mind Traveler were never finished or released.

Executive Producer of Multimedia Development for the Jesus Film Project (1998-2003)

After reading a book by Bob Buford called Half Time, Lyndon left the video games industry for a few years to serve with the Jesus Film Project, the largest missionary organization of Campus Crusade for Christ. Orginally starting by fixing computers, Lyndon was quickly moved into multimedia development by completing improvements to the Jesus Film DVD Internet Game. Shortly thereafter, Lyndon started Jesus Technologies where he completed numerous projects for Campus Crusade and other ministries, including a new version of the Missions Atlas Project, The Jesus Film CD-ROM in Arabic, the Jesus: Fact or Fiction DVD, the Jesus Film Kiosk, the Outreach CD Project, an InTouch Ministries CD-ROM and the Evangelism Toolbox CD-ROM for Campus Crusade for Christ, in association with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Inventor of Interactive Television Patent (2000)

Back to his developing roots, Lyndon embarked on the development of a technology to allow consumers to click on items of interest in a video stream, wheather it be a fancy car or a nice sweater. This innovation has not yet been developed for mainstream interactive television, but clearly our world is moving in this direction. For more information, view a video which talks about this technology at www.multimediabible.com/ti.mov.

Developer of the world's first Interative Bible and Encyclopedia Suite (2002)

Aside from the first, iLumina has become known as the highest quality interactive Bible and encyclopedia suite ever created. Developed by a team of more than 30 developers, Lyndon was engaged with only 9 months remaining in the project schedule to manage all of the interactive programming which had not started. Beginning from scratch, Lyndon achieved this goal despite content delivery delays of more than 6 months. Innovative QuickTime VR, full-screen video animation, and a fully interactive verse-by-verse first graphical view of the New Living Translation Bible are just a few of its innovative features.

Designer and Publisher of the First Widely Distributed Christian Video Game (2006)

Starting in 2002, Lyndon began development of the first bid-budget, high-quality Christian video game based upon the popular LEFT BEHIND brand of novels, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The LEFT BEHIND novels have sold more than 65 million copies through publisher Tyndale House Publishers. LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces has gone on to sell more than 70,000 copies and has become the most widely distributed Christian video game of all time.

Public Company CEO (2006-Present)

In an effort to raise the necessary capital to launch the first widely distributed Christian video game, Left Behind Games Inc. went public in February 2006. Although it has retained it's corporate name, the company now does business as Inspired Media Entertainment.

Religious views

Lyndon is a Christian moderate who believes care for others should be expressed and is more important than differences of opinions. He believes in mainstream Christian theology. But when it comes to Eschatology, Lyndon believes people should prepare for the worst and hope for the best. In other words, because everyone will someday pass away, Lyndon believes there is no time like the present to make things right with God. Because whether or not the end of the world comes tomorrow or not, the end of our lives could come at any moment and we should be ready. For more information, go to: http://www.dontbeleftbehind.com/pages/knowing-god.html.

Lyndon admits he falls short of God's perfect standard. But in his life, he has taken time out to speak with and give to the poor on the street; food, money and Bibles. He has worked in food banks and now supports his local church.

References

External links

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