Atari (1978–1981)
While studying in university, Fulop got an internship in Atari's coin-op division where he worked on sound design for a Superman pinball machine[3] and developed an editor to be used for generating sound effects for other pinball machines.
After graduating, Fulop went back to Atari. He was hired to work in the company's home division where he created arcade ports for Atari's newly released 2600 console as well as the company's family of 8-bit computers.[1][4][5]
After creating the Atari 8-bit port of Space Invaders, which was criticized due to its changing of certain elements of the arcade original, such as the removal of shields, Fulop developed a port of Missile Command for the Atari 2600, which was a commercial success. As a christmas bonus that year, he only received a coupon for a free turkey. Chagrined by the feeling of being unappreciated by Atari for his work on the game, Fulop decided to leave the company.[1][5]
Imagic (1981–1983)
On July 17, 1981, a group of employees from Atari's home console division including Fulop quit their jobs to form their own company, Imagic, urged on by the success of the ex-Atari employees who formed Activision and the lack of credit they were receiving for their work at Atari. Fulop developed the studio's debut game, Demon Attack, which went on to become one of the best selling 2600 games of all time.[6]
After finishing working on Cosmic Ark in 1982, Fulop traveled to Hungary to visit relatives. During his visit he met Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik's Cube, which inspired him to create a two-player puzzle game as he felt the genre was under-represented at the time. In six weeks, he'd designed CubiColor; however, Imagic decided against publishing the game due to their belief that a puzzle game would not sell well enough. Fulop later released the game via newsletters. About 100 copies are known to exist.[7]
Shortly before Imagic was set to go public, the Video Game Crash of 1983 occurred, causing the company to withdraw its IPO. Fulop left the company soon after.[1]
Post-Video Game Crash Career (1983–1998)
After a brief stint doing freelance development for Parker Brothers, Fulop started work on a game called Actionauts for the 2600 independently. The game, which was about programming a tiny robot so that it would be capable of navigating itself out of a maze, had its development shifted to the Commodore 64 due to the dwindling popularity of the 2600 and the game concept being more suitable for a computer rather than a console. He got a development deal from Simon & Schuster to publish the game; however, they left the software business before the project could be realized. Fulop then decided to release the game as freeware via a bulletin board players could connect to in order to download the game. Commodore was excited by the manner in which the game was being released, so they decided to publish an article about the game which included the bulletin board's phone number, but a different number was mistakenly printed in the article, leading to thousands of calls being placed to the wrong number.[1][4][8]
Fulop was later hired by Nolan Bushnell's company Axlon as part of their
Zynga (2008)
In August 2008, Fulop joined American social game developer Zynga as an independent contractor until September, when he became a full time employee.
In October, Fulop, who had previously suffered from a heart attack in 2005, began experiencing chest pains and had to have a heart operation. He informed his team leader that he would need some time off to undergo the operation; Fulop was terminated from the team nine days later and from the company altogether soon after the operation, he sued the company for violating the Fair Employment and Housing Act alleging that it had discriminated against him on the basis of age and disability.[14]
