LAURANT WEILL
How did you get started in the videogame industry?
Well, at first, it was like many other people: I was interested in the computers that were coming out at the time. I’d already been building electronic devices such as home-made alarms and I enjoyed creating stuff. But it was when I was doing my military service around 1982 that I tried to take things up a level.
What did you do?
I created my own computer from scratch with two other crazy guys – this big, one-by-one metre thing where all the components were wired individually. I have to say, we created something unique, a great 16-bit computer, but when we took it to a French manufacturer called Thomson, the boss wasn’t interested. I guess, we were like 18 to 20 years old and you can imagine what he was thinking. But he said something that I have remembered all my life. He said ‘No thank you. We don’t trust in 16-bit computers. We believe the market is going to stay 8-bit for many years’. And then eight months later, there was the Macintosh and, later, the Amiga and the Atari ST. Our machine was more powerful than the Mac at the time but we just found nobody to make it.
How did you respond?
I gave up on the idea and I created a computer shop with a friend in Paris instead. And that was great. At the time computer shops were more than shops. They were really a place where everybody gathered, exchanging ideas and programs. It was very exciting and challenging. Then one day, I found a magazine and there was a small article, like five lines, saying there was a company in England building a new computer based on the 6502 chip. This was Tangerine which was creating the Oric. The following day, I took a plane to England and I went to see the people at Tangerine, signing an exclusive contract with them to become the official Oric distributor in France.
Did the Oric sell well?
Yes, it did and, as well as selling other’s people’s applications and games, I started to publish software written by myself and people who were visiting the shop. That’s why I created Loriciel in September 1983, joined by a
