Carla Meninsky | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer,programmer,lawyer |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Employer(s) | Atari, Inc. Electronic Arts |
| Known for | Indy 500,Dodge 'Em |
Carla Meninsky is a former video game designer and programmer active during the early years of theAtari VCS.[1]Along withCarol Shaw (creator of3-D Tic-Tac-Toe andRiver Raid), Meninsky was one of three female engineers atAtari, Inc. to develop video game cartridges.[2]She later became an intellectual property lawyer.
Meninsky's mother was a programmer and Carla learned programming in high school, but she switched frommathematics toneuropsychology andbrain modelling atStanford University. Given her artistic bent, Meninsky was particularly interested in vision and eventually veered back toward programming and a lifelong dream of creatinganimation tools.[3]
She began her college career at Stanford studying math but eventually switched to psychology because it sounded more exciting.[3] She learned basicFortran in high school from her mother, who was a programmer, and through this built an interest in computer animation.[3]
Meninsky joined Atari after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in psychology.
For theAtari 2600 she wrote the racing gamesIndy 500 andDodge 'Em (similar to the 1979Head On coin-op from Sega), a 1981 port of Atari'sWarlords, and the 2600 version ofStar Raiders (originally designed byDoug Neubauer for theAtari 8-bit computers).[3] She later worked on a port ofTempest that was never released, but prototypes exist.[4]
Meninsky worked forElectronic Arts (EA) and other game publishers and eventually started her own successful contract programming company. In the course of writing contracts and seeingintellectual property rights being ignored by some companies, she became interested in intellectual property law.[3]Meninsky graduated fromGeorge Washington University Law School and now practices intellectual property law.[5] As anEPIC Public Interest Opportunities Program Fellow, Meninsky testified before theU.S. Senate in 2002.[6]
Meninsky, Carla."Locked Out: The New Hazards of Reverse Engineering".The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law Vol. XXI Summer 2003 No. 4. Retrieved2015-05-23.
