B" (aka Inca Curse, published in 1981). It was followed by "Adventure C" (aka Ship of Doom, published in 1982) and "Adventure D" (aka Espionage Island, published in 1982). Each were highly successful on the Sinclair ZX81, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad formats. After completing his degree in 1985, Cecil decided to continue his career in game development and became director of Artic Computing. When Artic closed down, he established Paragon Programming (1986), a game development company working with major British publisher U.S. Gold. In 1987 he left development and moved into publishing as Software Development Manager for U.S. Gold. One year later he was approached by Activision and was offered the position of manager of their European development studio. Noirin Carmody, who would become his wife, was general manager at Activision, where she was responsible for establishing the Sierra name in Europe. Managing director of Revolution Software In 1989, when Cecil was still working at Activison, he decided to set up his own development studio. He contacted Tony Warriner, who had worked with him at Artic Computing and Paragon Programming, and Warriner brought in a fellow programmer, David Sykes. Together with Noirin Carmody, his then-partner and General Manager at Activision UK, they founded Revolution Software (March 1990). The company was originally located in Hull, but moved to York in 1994. Besides becoming Revolution's managing director, Cecil would focus from the start on writing and design. At that time the graphic adventure genre was dominated by LucasArts and Sierra On-Line, and they wanted to create something in between, an adventure game that didn't take itself too seriously, but did have a serious story. For Revolution's first title, Cecil conceived with others an innovative game engine, called Virtual Theatre, and the engine itself was designed by Tony Warriner. The result was Lure of the Temptress (1992), and though it was their first product, it became one of the successful games that would follow. For the second title, Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), often referred to as a cult classic, Cecil contacted comic book artist Dave Gibbons. He had met Gibbons when he was still at Activision, and he admired Gibbons's work on Watchmen. Gibbons became involved in the design of the game, and their collaboration would inspire Cecil's next move. The divergence of and distinction between film and video games is one of Cecil's pet subjects, and his interest in cinematic techniques