California, Santa Cruz. Pondsmith got his start in amateur game design in the early 1980s, designing a game for himself called Imperial Star as a result of trying to improve the combat system of Traveller. According to Pondsmith, there was not much to do in the area of video game design in the early 1980s due largely to the constraints of available technology. Most of the games released by CPCC were for Apple II machines. However, he was familiar with pen and paper games, which he played at the time, and became interested in paper game design. Thanks to his side-job in typesetting, he had access to very modern (for the time) computers with advanced software used in book and magazine layout. Taking advantage of this access, he wrote a game called Mekton, a mecha game based on Japanese manga books he had stumbled upon in the past. Due to the interest his work on paper games generated, game design consumed his graphic design career (although he continued designing and laying out most of the R. Talsorian Games' books). Early role-playing games The first game Pondsmith designed from the ground up was Mekton, a mecha game with heavy manga and anime influences, released in 1984. Pondsmith admitted that he was mostly basing his work on the Mobile Suit Gundam manga written in Japanese, which he had acquired. Not understanding the text, he inaccurately recreated the world dynamics purely from the imagery of the comic books. The game's first public testing occurred at a local convention. The initial public release of Mekton focused on its battle mechanics with no roleplaying elements at all; this made it a pure tactical war-game. The success of Mekton proved to Pondsmith that he could make a living out of game design, and he founded the company R. Talsorian Games (RTG) in 1985. In 1986, Mekton was re-released as a proper roleplaying game with Pondsmith and Mike Jones credited as authors. In 1987, RTG released another of Pondsmith's games inspired by Japanese manga, Teenagers from Outer Space, (RPGA Gamer's Choice Award). In 1987, Pondsmith released Mekton II, a new edition of the system, featuring mechanics based on the Interlock System, later used with slight modifications in the Cyberpunk line. Teenagers from Outer Space was re-released with significant changes to the mechanics in 1989. Games such as Cyberpunk (later Cyberpunk 2020) and Cyberpunk V3 were translated into