Howard Scott Warshaw

Later, he studied video production and released the documentary From There to Here: Scenes of Passage, a chronicle of the American immigration of two Russian women from the same family, one in 1920 and the other in 1980.

Howard Scott Warshaw (born July 30, 1957), also known as HSW, is an American psychotherapist and former game designer.

Subsequently, he went on to produce the multi-part documentary Once Upon Atari, a collection of interviews and stories of employees and designers at Atari during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He worked at Atari, Inc. in the early 1980s, where he designed and programmed the Atari 2600 games Yars' Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Warshaw has written four books, and produced and directed three documentaries.

Warshaw was "Colorado-born, Jersey-raised, and New Orleans-schooled."

He attended Tulane University, where he received a bachelor's degree with a double major in Math and Economics.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and received a scholarship for his graduate work in Computer Science.

One year later, he received his master's degree in Computer Engineering.

After graduation, he was hired at Hewlett-Packard as a multi-terminal systems engineer.

Feeling unfulfilled, he began looking for another job.

In 1981, he was hired at Atari, Inc.

Warshaw's first success, Yars' Revenge, had been conceived as an Atari 2600 adaptation of the arcade game Star Castle.

However, as limitations became clear, Warshaw re-adapted the concept into a new game involving mutated houseflies defending their world against an alien attacker.

The game's working title was Time Freeze.

Playtesting by Atari found that the game was popular with women.

The game was a major success and is still regarded as one of the best games made for the Atari 2600.

This led Warshaw to be chosen to design the game adaptation of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was also a critically acclaimed commercial success.

His success on Raiders likewise made him designer and programmer of the ill-fated Atari 2600 adaptation of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Problems began early as he was only given five weeks to go from concept to finished product.

Warshaw was assisted by Jerome Domurat, a graphics designer at Atari.

Although the game was finished on time, it was poorly received and seen as confusing and frustrating.

Atari took a major financial loss on the project which, combined with the company's other poor business decisions and the video game crash of 1983, led to the company being divided and sold within two years.

During this time, Warshaw developed and almost finished another game called Saboteur.

He left the company before it was completed.

It was then re-adapted into a game based on the television series The A-Team but this also remained unfinished.

Atari dismantled before either version could be released.

In 2004 classic video game enthusiasts produced cartridges of Saboteur for sale at game expos.

It debuted at PhillyClassic 5 where Warshaw appeared to bless the distribution and autograph the cartridges.

That year Atari released the Atari Flashback system that includes fifteen Atari 2600 and five Atari 7800 games, including Saboteur.

Warshaw always left his initials as a video game Easter egg.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the player can find a "Yar".

In E.T., the player can find both a "Yar" and an "Indy".

In Yars' Revenge, sometimes the enemy will launch itself out of its protective shield at the player; with a well-timed shot, the player can destroy the enemy instead of just avoiding it.

In 2005, he also produced and directed the documentary Vice & Consent, focusing on members of the BDSM scene in San Francisco.

This documentary was adopted by Santa Clara University as part of their Human Sexuality program, where Warshaw lectures regularly.

In the 2014 movie Atari: Game Over he is quoted as saying that each of his games had more than 1 million copies sold.

Following the collapse of Atari, Warshaw wrote two books.

The first, The Complete Book of PAN, is a guide to the card game of PAN.

In the second, Conquering College, Warshaw discusses his techniques toward academic success, referred to as RASABIC (Read Ahead, Stay Ahead, Be In Class) which enabled him to graduate early and save one full year's tuition.