In August 1987, Apple announced HyperCard, a new type of middleware for the Macintosh that made it possible for anyone to create a polished application combining text, graphics, and hyperlinks. One of the first companies to embrace HyperCard was Activision, the well-known game publisher, which released Focal Point and Business Class, two business productivity tools created by Danny Goodman, who also authored the first definitive book on HyperCard.

But why would a company known for games like Pitfall! on the Atari VCS and Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64 get into business software for the Macintosh? The answer to that question requires looking back at the early history of Activision and the company’s struggles to stay afloat after the collapse of its original home video game cartridge business.

On August 11, 1987, Apple announced the release of HyperCard at the opening of the Boston Macworld Expo. In modern parlance, HyperCard was a type of middleware. It was software that allowed users to create Macintosh applications without having to understand the underlying operating system or traditional programming languages–both of which had been substantial barriers to entry for potential third-party developers.

At its core, HyperCard was a relational database management program. But the way it related data was through the use of hyperlinks. Today, we know hyperlinks as the glue that holds the World Wide Web together. Of course, the first web browser was still several years away when HyperCard debuted in 1987. So the commercial application of hyperlinks–something that had been around in academic computing circles since the late 1960s–was big news among the late 1980s tech press.