Bill Williams (May 29, 1960 – May 28, 1998) was an American video game designer, programmer, composer, and author born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder. According to a medical encyclopedia Williams consulted when he was 12, people with cystic fibrosis weren't expected to live past the age of 13. and write two theological works.
Williams died from cystic fibrosis in 1998, at the age of 37.
Game design
Bill Williams's first published game was the vertically scrolling Salmon Run for the Atari 8-bit computers, published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1982. The player controls a salmon traveling upriver to mate while jumping waterfalls and avoiding bears and other obstacles.
He then wrote two games for Synapse Software: Necromancer (1982) and Alley Cat (1983). Alley Cat was begun by another programmer, John Harris, In 1984, Synapse published the stress reduction package Relax, combining a sensor headband and minigames providing biofeedback. The software was a collaboration between Williams and fellow Synapse game designer Kelly Jones (who wrote the 1983 Atari 8-bit game Drelbs).
Williams then moved to the Amiga, designing and programming Mind Walker. It was published by Commodore in 1986 as one of the earliest releases for the new computer. He followed that game with Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon (1987), and Pioneer Plague (1988). Pioneer Plague was the first Amiga game to make full use of the difficult to work with Hold-And-Modify mode for the in-game graphics. His final game for the platform was Knights of the Crystallion (1990):