David Shepperd is an American software professional. Throughout his career, he has worked as a programmer (among other positions) at Atari Games, Tengen, Midway, and Time Warner Interactive. In 1974, Shepperd played Nutting Associates’ Computer Space, the first commercially released video arcade game, and was inspired to design his very own at home. Though his first attempt produced only a single sprite that could simply move around a television screen, he found much more success a year later when Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) released the Altair 8800, one of the first home computers to use a microprocessor. Shepperd purchased a basic kit with 1K of static memory and cobbled together peripherals from previously discarded projects, completing several simple games programmed using banks of switches on the front of the computer. He later connected an electric typewriter keyboard and created two basic controllers with knobs. In 1976, Shepperd saw an advertisement for microprocessor programmers from Atari, and his experience with the Altair 8800 landed him the position. As only the second programmer to be hired, Shepperd worked on a variety of games; his first was the simple baseball game Flyball. Shepperd’s first breakout success came from Night Driver, the very first driving game played from a first-person perspective, which also served to show the incredible potential of using microprocessors in video games. Shepperd continued to work for Atari until 2003, designing games such as Starship 1, Asteroids Deluxe, and Hard Drivin’.,