Before Westwood Studios became famous for Dune II, Command & Conquer, Lands of Lore, and some of the most influential computer games of the 1990s, it was a much smaller Las Vegas company taking contract jobs, converting games between machines, and learning how to squeeze ambitious ideas into hardware with severe limitations.
Marco Herrera arrived during that formative period.
A University of Nevada, Las Vegas graduate in computer science and mathematics, Herrera joined Westwood Associates in 1988, when the company founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle was still only a few years old. His role eventually placed him at the center of Westwood’s expansion onto Nintendo and Sega hardware. Herrera later described himself as a video game developer and architect who specialized in Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Commodore, and IBM PC systems. More importantly, he says he created code libraries for those platforms and managed Westwood’s Nintendo and Sega game development and production.
His surviving game credits are relatively short when compared with developers who remained in the video game business for decades. Yet that short list includes an unusual cross section of Westwood’s early history: an Atari arcade conversion, a Pac-Man game, two very different versions of DragonStrike, and one of the more ambitious role-playing games released for the Sega Genesis.
Herrera’s career offers a look at the kind of technical work that helped turn Westwood from a small contract developer into one of the best-known studios of its generation.
Westwood Associates Before Command & Conquer
Brett Sperry and Louis Castle founded Westwood Associates in Las Vegas in 1985. The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong National Museum of Play describes the company’s earliest business as contract work, including the conversion of 8-bit games to newer 16-bit systems. Westwood gradually moved from those jobs toward original development, eventually producing titles such as Eye of the Beholder, Dune II, and The Legend of Kyrandia.
Herrera entered that company in 1988. MobyGames’ biographical record states that he graduated from UNLV with degrees in computer science and mathematics that year and led Nintendo and Sega development at Westwood from 1988 through 1991. Herrera’s own career chronology places him at Westwood from 1988 through 1992.
Those dates put him inside Westwood during an important transition. The company was still doing the kind of conversion and contract work that had helped sustain it during its early years, but its projects were becoming more ambitious. The technical problem was rarely as simple as copying a game from one machine to another. Every platform had different processors, memory limitations, graphics capabilities, controllers, sound hardware, and development environments.
Herrera’s own description of his work helps explain why his contribution extended beyond the titles carrying his name. He says he developed Westwood’s NES and Sega Genesis libraries and development tools, while also managing artists and musicians working on the platforms. That meant creating reusable technology that could support more than one individual game.
Bringing Vindicators From the Arcade to the NES
One of Herrera’s earliest documented console projects was Vindicators, Atari Games’ futuristic tank combat game.
The original arcade version arrived in 1988 and put players inside heavily armed tanks moving through enemy installations while constantly balancing fuel, weapons, speed, and defensive upgrades. When the game moved to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Westwood Associates handled the conversion for Tengen, Atari Games’ home console subsidiary. MobyGames identifies the American NES release as a November 1989 Tengen publication ported by Westwood Associates.
Herrera remembered the project from the programmer’s side. Atari Games delivered the arcade machine and its source code to Westwood’s office, he recalled, and Westwood produced an NES version within a few months. He specifically remembered the mathematics and physics required for features such as self-tracking missiles.
Preserved credit information supports his account. PixelatedArcade lists Herrera as the NES programmer, Joseph B. Hewitt IV as lead artist, Paul S. Mudra as arranger, and Glenn Sperry in special thanks. Arcade-History also identifies Herrera as programmer and says its staff evidence comes from the ROM dump. MobyGames similarly records him as programmer, although it marks the credit as uncredited.
That distinction is important. A developer can be historically responsible for a game without having received a prominent credit visible to players at the time. In Herrera’s case, the combination of his own testimony and surviving game data leaves strong evidence that he programmed Westwood’s NES conversion of Vindicators.
The project also placed him in the middle of an unusual chapter of Nintendo history. Tengen released Vindicators as part of its unlicensed NES line, recognizable today by the company’s distinctive black cartridges.
Pac-Mania and a Three-Person Development Team
Herrera’s next Tengen project brought an even more famous arcade character to the NES.
Pac-Mania had reinvented Namco’s maze formula by presenting the action from a raised isometric perspective and allowing Pac-Man to jump over ghosts. When Westwood handled the NES conversion, Herrera later remembered it as his second published Tengen title. Like Vindicators, the process began with Atari Games delivering the arcade material and source code to Westwood.
The surviving NES credits show just how small the core team was.
Herrera handled programming. Joseph B. Hewitt IV produced the graphics. Paul S. Mudra handled music and sound, with Andrew Bagdanov receiving special thanks. Both MobyGames and PixelatedArcade preserve essentially the same credit information, while extracted NES staff data maintained by the Game Developer Research Institute also identifies Herrera as the programmer.
The small team is an important reminder of what console development could look like around 1990. A recognizable commercial release based on one of the most famous properties in video game history could be brought to a major home console by only a handful of people.
For Herrera, Pac-Mania also demonstrated the value of the development infrastructure he was building at Westwood. The company was no longer approaching every new console title without a foundation. Herrera says he had created the NES libraries and tools that Westwood could use across projects, allowing the company to build institutional knowledge on the hardware rather than beginning completely from scratch every time.
DragonStrike and the Challenge of 3D on the Commodore 64
Herrera’s work was not limited to the NES.
In 1990 Strategic Simulations published Westwood’s DragonStrike, an unusual attempt to turn the world of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons into something resembling a fantasy flight simulator. Instead of piloting a fighter aircraft, the player rode a dragon through aerial combat in the Dragonlance setting.
Contemporary coverage in Computer Gaming World identified Westwood Associates as the developer and listed versions for IBM-compatible computers, Amiga, and Commodore 64.
Herrera specifically identifies the Commodore 64 edition among his major software projects. He described DragonStrike as a three-dimensional mathematical challenge and recalled that performing the required calculations on an 8-bit system demanded 16-bit mathematics for its 3D functions.
That work came during an era when developers routinely had to invent around the weaknesses of the machine in front of them. The Commodore 64 had been introduced in 1982. By the time DragonStrike appeared, programmers were attempting to reproduce game concepts that were increasingly designed with more powerful computers in mind.
The Commodore 64 edition is documented as a 1990 Westwood Associates release, while preservation sources note that its visual implementation differed from the computer version running on more capable hardware.
For Herrera, the project was another example of programming as adaptation. The goal was not simply to reproduce code line by line. It was to preserve the experience of flying a dragon through a fantasy battlefield while working within whatever the destination hardware could actually accomplish.
The Other DragonStrike
Herrera’s connection to DragonStrike becomes more complicated because there are two substantially different games carrying the name.
The 1990 computer editions were built around the idea of a first-person dragon flight simulator. Two years later, DragonStrike appeared on the NES as a very different game. Instead of attempting to reproduce the computer title’s presentation directly, the NES version used a top-down perspective and transformed the concept into a free-roaming action shooter. Preservation research describes the change as a response to the differences between the NES and the computer hardware on which the earlier game had been built.
Herrera was involved here as well.
The NES credits identify Louis Castle and Marc Cram as designers, David R. Dettmer and Marco Herrera as programmers, Joseph B. Hewitt IV as artist, Frank Klepacki as musician, and Paul S. Mudra on sound effects. The cartridge was released in the United States in July 1992, with Westwood Associates identified as developer.
This is an important distinction in documenting Herrera’s career. His personal project history specifically discusses his work on the Commodore 64 version of the earlier DragonStrike, while surviving NES credits independently identify him as one of the programmers of the later Nintendo game.
Rather than representing one confused credit repeated by different databases, the evidence points to Herrera working on two distinct interpretations of DragonStrike. One was part of the 1990 computer project. The other was the substantially redesigned NES adaptation released in 1992.
Turning Dungeons & Dragons Into Software
Another 1992 release connected Herrera to one of Westwood’s most ambitious console role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun for the Sega Genesis.
The game placed a party of adventurers in the Hollow World of Mystara and mixed several different forms of play. Exploration took place across a large outdoor world, combat outside used a different system, and dungeons shifted into a first-person perspective reminiscent of Westwood’s work on Eye of the Beholder.
Surviving credits identify the game as designed and developed by Westwood Associates. Louis Castle served as principal designer, while Christopher Yates, Leroy Wing, Marco Herrera, Ethan Grimes, and Castle are listed as programmers. Paul Mudra, Frank Klepacki, and Dwight Kenichi Okahara handled music, with artists Aaron Powell, Ren Olsen, and Louise Sandoval contributing to the visuals.
Years later, Castle provided a particularly revealing memory of Herrera’s work on the project.
Speaking to Retro Gamer, Castle recalled that programmers Chris Yates and Marco Herrera were not themselves regular Dungeons & Dragons or role-playing game players. That created an unusual programming challenge. Tabletop Dungeons & Dragons rules are interpreted by a human Dungeon Master who can make judgment calls when circumstances become complicated. A computer cannot improvise in the same manner. Every permitted action, restriction, calculation, and exception has to be translated into rules the machine can execute. Castle remembered that converting those tabletop systems, including the nuances of the Hollow World setting, was difficult.
The anecdote provides something that a credits screen cannot. It shows Herrera working through one of the fundamental problems of early computer role-playing games: how to transform a flexible tabletop rules system into exact software.
That challenge became even greater on a console. Warriors of the Eternal Sun had to make a complicated Dungeons & Dragons experience understandable through a Genesis controller while fitting its characters, maps, statistics, combat systems, graphics, music, and saved-game information into the limitations of a cartridge.
The result remains one of the more unusual Dungeons & Dragons games of its period, combining a large overworld with turn-based outdoor combat and real-time first-person dungeon fighting.
The Programmer Behind the Tools
Herrera’s four commonly cataloged video game credits only tell part of his Westwood story.
His own account emphasizes architecture, tools, and reusable technology. He describes himself as a specialist across Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Commodore, and IBM PC systems and says he created code libraries for those products. He also states that he managed Nintendo and Sega video game development and production at Westwood.
That type of work is easy to overlook when reconstructing video game history from finished products. Databases naturally organize history around individual releases. A programmer who creates an internal library, tool, or development system may affect several games without receiving a separate public credit for the underlying technology.
In Herrera’s case, his personal account suggests that his significance at Westwood was broader than four game titles. He helped establish the technical foundation from which other artists, musicians, designers, and programmers could work on Nintendo and Sega hardware.
His documented collaborators show the same network appearing repeatedly. Joseph B. Hewitt IV worked on the graphics for Vindicators, Pac-Mania, and the NES DragonStrike. Paul Mudra appears across the same early Westwood circle in music, sound, and development roles. Louis Castle worked with Herrera on the Dungeons & Dragons projects. Frank Klepacki, who would later become closely associated with Westwood’s music, appears on DragonStrike and Warriors of the Eternal Sun.
These were small teams developing the skills and technology that Westwood would carry into the 1990s.
Leaving Video Games for Other Kinds of Software
Herrera did not remain a conventional video game developer after Westwood.
His career chronology places him at Lockheed Martin Environmental Sciences from 1992 to 1994, where he says he worked in data science and visualization on systems designed to identify suspicious laboratory data associated with Environmental Protection Agency work. He then entered the pawn and retail technology business, spending roughly twelve years with Camco, SuperPawn, and related technology ventures.
In a 2026 interview, Herrera summarized the unusual progression himself. He recalled earning his computer science and mathematics degree, working as a computer scientist, developing video games as a Nintendo and Sega developer, and then spending twelve years in the pawn industry.
At SuperPawn he eventually became a senior technology executive. His own project history describes the development of PRIMA, an enterprise system combining pawn, retail, inventory, manufacturing, accounting, and online commerce. By the early 2000s, a Microsoft case study quoted Herrera as SuperPawn’s chief information officer while describing the company’s integration of its physical stores with online inventory and Commerce Server technology.
The field changed, but the underlying pattern was recognizable. Herrera had moved from building reusable tools for game consoles to designing larger systems that connected databases, retail locations, networks, websites, and business processes.
From Video Games to Casino Technology
Herrera eventually returned to a different meaning of the word gaming.
In 2006 he joined Bally Technologies and moved to Nice, France, to work with the company’s MCC casino management systems business. By 2011, industry reporting identified him as a Bally vice president and managing director with responsibility for international operations. Following Bally’s acquisition by Scientific Games, a 2015 Scientific Games announcement appointed Herrera vice president and managing director of gaming for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
He later became president of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for electronic table game company Interblock. In September 2024 he was appointed chief executive officer of DR Gaming Technology, where the company specifically cited his experience managing casino systems, international businesses, and technology organizations.
Herrera remained in that position until September 2026, when DRGT announced that Koen De Wispelaere would succeed him as chief executive. The company thanked Herrera for his work during the preceding two years and for sharing his management systems experience with the organization.
By then, nearly four decades separated the young programmer working on an NES tank game from the international technology executive.
Why Marco Herrera Matters to Video Game History
Marco Herrera is not usually one of the first names mentioned when the history of Westwood is told.
Brett Sperry and Louis Castle understandably dominate the story as the company’s founders. Later histories often move quickly toward Eye of the Beholder, Dune II, The Legend of Kyrandia, and Command & Conquer, the titles that transformed Westwood into an internationally recognized studio.
Herrera belongs to the chapter before that transformation was complete.
He worked during the years when Westwood was learning new hardware, fulfilling contracts, translating arcade games to home consoles, experimenting with 3D mathematics on limited machines, and turning complicated tabletop rules into software. His work on Vindicators and Pac-Mania helped establish Westwood on the NES. His involvement with DragonStrike crossed both computer and console development. His programming credit on Warriors of the Eternal Sun placed him inside one of Westwood’s most ambitious early Sega projects.
Perhaps most significantly, Herrera says he created the libraries and development tools Westwood used for Nintendo and Sega production. Those tools are less visible than a cartridge on a collector’s shelf, but they were part of the infrastructure that allowed a young studio to move confidently between platforms.
His story therefore illustrates something larger about video game history. Famous studios are rarely built only by the people whose names eventually become famous. They are built by programmers, artists, musicians, designers, testers, and technical specialists who solve problems while the company is still discovering what it can become.
Before Westwood commanded armies in Command & Conquer, it had to learn how to make a tank’s missile track an enemy on the NES, how to preserve Pac-Mania on different hardware, how to make a dragon fly on a Commodore 64, and how to persuade a Sega Genesis to understand the rules of Dungeons & Dragons.
Marco Herrera was one of the programmers helping it learn.
Sources & Further Reading
Herrera, Marco. “Biography.” Marco Herrera. Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.marcoherrera.com/biography/
Herrera, Marco. “Projects.” Marco Herrera. Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.marcoherrera.com/projects/
ReelMetrics. “S05E04: DRGT with Marco Herrera.” ReelCast. 2026. https://www.reelmetrics.com/s05e04-drgt-with-marco-herrera
Mason, Graeme. “The Making of Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun.” Retro Gamer, no. 235 (2022). https://pocketmags.com/retro-gamer-magazine/issue-235/articles/the-making-of-dungeons-dragons
MobyGames. “Marco Herrera.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/person/199335/marco-herrera/
MobyGames. “Pac-Mania: Credits, NES.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/8756/pac-mania/credits/nes/
MobyGames. “Vindicators: Credits, NES.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/16766/vindicators/credits/nes/
MobyGames. “DragonStrike: Credits, NES.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/21958/dragonstrike/credits/nes/
MobyGames. “Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun: Credits, Genesis.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/14149/dungeons-dragons-warriors-of-the-eternal-sun/credits/genesis/
MobyGames. “DragonStrike.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/21958/dragonstrike/
MobyGames. “Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.mobygames.com/game/14149/dungeons-dragons-warriors-of-the-eternal-sun/
Game Developer Research Institute. “NES Staff Data.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/User%3AIdrougge/Staff
PixelatedArcade. “Marco Herrera.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.pixelatedarcade.com/people/marco-herrera
PixelatedArcade. “Pac-Mania.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.pixelatedarcade.com/games/pac-mania
PixelatedArcade. “Vindicators.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.pixelatedarcade.com/games/vindicators
Arcade-History. “Vindicators, Model TGN-012-VN.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.arcade-history.com/game/55786/vindicators-model-tgn-012-vn
Arcade-History. “Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.arcade-history.com/game/70979/dungeons-and-dragons%3A-warriors-of-the-eternal-sun
Atari Computer Museum. “Pac-Mania, Nintendo Entertainment System.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://atari-computermuseum.de/nes_pa.htm
Atari Computer Museum. “Vindicators, Nintendo Entertainment System.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://atari-computermuseum.de/nes_vd.htm
Video Game Music Preservation Foundation. “Pac-Mania (NES).” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Pac-Mania_%28NES%29
Video Game Music Preservation Foundation. “DragonStrike (NES).” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=DragonStrike_%28NES%29
Universal Videogame List. “DragonStrike.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.uvlist.net/game-7506-Dragonstrike
NesCartDB. “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: DragonStrike.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://nescartdb.com/profile/view/1035/advanced-dungeons-dragons-dragonstrike
Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play. “Finding Aid to Lou Castle’s Westwood Studios Slide Collection, 1992–1995.” The Strong National Museum of Play. January 2014. https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2021/09/Finding-Aid-to-Lou-Castles-Westwood-Studios-slide-collection_052115.pdf
“DragonStrike.” Computer Gaming World, no. 77 (December 1990). https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_77.pdf
“DragonStrike.” Dragon, no. 161 (September 1990). https://pied.nu/dragon/files/Drmg161.pdf
Centre for Computing History. “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: DragonStrike.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/24096/Advanced-Dungeons-Dragons-DragonStrike/
Scientific Games. “Scientific Games Appoints Marco Herrera Vice President and Managing Director, Gaming, EMEA.” July 7, 2015. https://explore.lnw.com/media/kp3hqpfy/emea_trade_release__herrera__7_july_2015.pdf
Yogonet. “Bally Announced VP Marco Herrera to Assume New International Responsibilities.” January 12, 2011. https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2011/01/12/9527-bally-announced-vp-marco-herrera-to-assume-new-international-responsibilities
Casino Life Magazine. “We Listen and Build Trust.” 2014. https://www.casinolifemagazine.com/tags/bally-technologies-slot-machines-new-games-88-fortunes
G3. Interview with Marco Herrera. January 2013. https://g3newswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/G3Jan13-Yudu.pdf
G3. Interview with Marco Herrera. March 2016. https://www.g3newswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/G3March16Digital.pdf
G3. Scientific Games EMPOWER Conference Coverage. June 2016. https://www.g3newswire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/G3June16Digital.pdf
InterGame. “Interblock Appoints New EMEA President.” August 8, 2022. https://www.intergameonline.com/land-based-gaming/news/interblock-appoints-new-emea-president
Global Gaming Business Magazine. “Herrera to Head Interblock’s EMEA Divisions.” August 2022. https://ggbmagazine.com/articles/herrera-to-head-interblocks-emea-divisions/
Casino International. “DR Gaming Technology Appoints New CEO.” September 9, 2024. https://casinointernational-online.com/dr-gaming-technology-appoints-new-ceo/
Hollis, Richard. “DRGT Welcomes Marco Herrera as New CEO.” InterGame, September 9, 2024. https://www.intergameonline.com/casino/news/drgt-welcomes-marco-herrara-as-new-ceo
Yogonet. “DRGT: ‘Clarion Has Managed to Build Not Only the World’s Largest, but the Planet’s Premier Gaming Exhibition.’” December 17, 2024. https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2024/12/17/88878-drgt-34clarion-has-managed-to-build-not-only-the-worlds-largest-but-the-planets-premier-gaming-exhibition-34
Hollis, Richard. “De Wispelaere Appointed DRGT CEO.” InterGame, September 28, 2026. https://www.intergameonline.com/land-based-gaming/news/de-wispelaere-appointed-drgt-ceo