The company struggled to stay afloat and in 1977 Garrison sold his share to mortgage broker Ralph Clarke.

[3][4] Space Wars was first shown at the Amusement and Music Operators of America show in October 1977, but Cinematronics was not ready to produce it.

They brought in manufacturing expert Ken Beuck who had worked at Atari Inc. and salesman Bill Cravens to help sell the game.

Cinematronics retained a licensing agreement to create games using Larry Rosenthal's patents for his vector hardware, but was deprived on the knowledge to do so.

Skelly arrived at Cinematronics after Rosenthal had left and developed their first new game after the departure, with the help of technical engineers Dennis Halverson and Rob Patton.

[13] The company did not release any product that year, but debuted Tim Skelly's first game for them, Starhawk (1979), at the Amusement Trade Expo (ATE) in January 1979.

They later gained a landmark judgement in video game copyright when they halted the sale of illegal copies of Star Castle (1980).

He was then hired by Sega/Gremlin, who was also developing vector games, inciting Cinematronics to sue Gremlin and Skelly personally over alleged theft of trade secrets.

[11] The company moved into a newly built 78,000 sq ft facility on 1841 Friendship Drive in El Cajon in June 1981.

[24] After releasing the last game developed by Skelly for them, Armor Attack (1981), Cinematronics struggled to find new product to fill their factory.

Scott Boden developed Solar Quest (1981) to fill a slot after Star Castle’s production had ceased but failed to find the same success.

World Series was a huge technological leap and a significant hit for the company after the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games.

None of their follow-up products from World Series were nearly as successful and the company remained in Chapter 11 bankruptcy – reportedly the longest in the history of California.

In bringing vector graphics to the coin-op industry with Space Wars, Cinematronics helped to inaugurate an entirely different type of arcade game.

Developments in 3D-based vector hardware, as in Atari's Battlezone, also provided the technological basis for some of the earliest games with three-dimensional graphics in the arcade.

Cinematronics’ other major innovation, the Laserdisc game in Dragon’s Lair, has been seen as a landmark moment in the evolution of multimedia.

Subsequent versions of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace were ported and converted to various home systems in the 1980s and 1990s, though they did not contain the Cinematronics branding.

Star Castle, Armor Attack, and World Series: The Season have been considered among the best arcade games of all time.

Tim Skelly was asked to sign a legally binding agreement to give the rights to his games developed at Cinematronics to Midway.