Yaquinto

"Yaquinto Publications was the wargame publishing arm of the Robert Yaquinto Printing Company of Dallas, Texas (founded in 1961). In March 1979 Robert Yaquinto hired Steve Peek and S. Craig Taylor, both experienced wargame designers with several famous titles in their resumes. Their goal was to rapidly create a first class wargame company.

Yaquinto brought several innovations to the industry, largely because of they operated within a well-established printing company, with its attending expertise. Yaquinto was notable for its use of extra thick cardboard for the counters in its games, making them easier to handle. The most unusual innovation by Yaquinto was their series of Album Games. These games were packaged using the jackets for double vinyl record albums. The jacket often opened to reveal the mapboard printed within, the components contained in the two pockets of the jacket where, in normal use, one would find the vinyl record. Zip closing bags were provided to hold the components of the game.

While concentrating on wargames for most of its history, the company also branched to the more mainstream areas of board games. For instance, Neck and Neck (a horse-racing game), Market Madness (a stock market game) and Dallas (a game based on the Dallas television show) were all published by Yaquinto.

Possibly the most successful of Yaquinto's games was Ironclads. This was a simulation of combat between the first armored ships (Ironclads) in the American Civil War. This game was well regarded in its time, and has stood the test of time.

One of the more distinctive offerings by Yaquinto was Swashbuckler. This game simulated one-on-one swordplay. A lighter treatment than the typical wargame, it might best be thought of as a role-play of a film as opposed to actually simulating swordplay.

Yaquinto were the first publishers of the highly successful The Sword and the Flame wargame rules.

Yaquinto Publications was also the publisher of early works by game designer James M. Day, specifically titles Panzer, 88, and Armor. Panzer, as well as the rest of these games (that were based on the same game system), were ground breaking for their time both as boardgames and as wargame titles and led at least in part to the detailed derivatives that produced later computer-based simulations.

In the early 1980s, the company attempted to expand into the then-lucrative role-playing games market, releasing three ranges of products: Man, Myth & Magic (1982), a Roman-themed fantasy RPG, Pirates and Plunder (1982), a pirate RPG, and Timeship (1983), a time-travel RPG.

In 1979, the impact of personal computers on simulation gaming was too far over the horizon for the founders to see how the market would shift against this style of gaming. Along with several other companies started contemporaneously, Yaquinto only survived a handful of years. By 1983 it had closed its doors, though the printing company continued.

In 2006 the company was acquired by Cartamundi, a leading playing card manufacturer, for their card and speciality printing expertise.

Related Microbadges:
Yaquinto fan"

Source: Wikipedia, "Yaquinto_Publications", available under the CC-BY-SA License.