Mike Albaugh talked at the 1999 CA Extreme show, and
mentioned a few of his games from the late 70's. One was Captain
Seahawk, which was basically a straight
port of a 2600 game... One of the corporate guys decided instead of
letting the programmers come up with game ideas, he'd tell them what
to make. He said he wanted a version of game 7 from Air Sea Battle since
it was a popular part of the 2600 game. Mike told him that it's fun
to play at home but wouldn't work in the arcade. Mike had to make the
arcade game anyway. So, he did a straight port, and as he expected nobody
was interested in playing it in the arcade. It tested very poorly.
Management decided to let the programmers design the games after
that...