ABSTRACT
John was working with Activision to port Pitfall Harry to Windows 3.1 for Christmas '94. One of the problems they encountered involved the 320 x 200 graphics standard called ModeX, which was used by many DOS games at the time, including DOOM and Pitfall Harry. While Activision was trying to figure out how to port Pitfall Harry and still access ModeX, Laney saved the day by introducing St. John to a secret, undocumented Windows API called KillGDI. It was a disaster, and a very public one, at that. St. John remembers seeing Wall Street Journal article about how Disney had spoiled Christmas for children everywhere. St. John was never invited or required to attend any of the Disney meetings, but Segal was not so lucky. Even though nobody got fired, the humiliation and frustration he experienced caused St. John to seek a better solution, which included far more rigorous testing standards and a more fool-proof solution to Windows game development.
