 |
A brief biography of the Accursed Toys founders. Updated 29 January 2026
The Accursed Toys Founders
Three people started Accursed Toys. We published our first computer game, Boppin', for the Amiga and PC in the early 90s. We moved onto the internet at the beginning of 1995 by founding the amazingly popular Happy Puppy Games Onramp (but with a totally original look unlike what they've done with it these days. You can see the original logo here).
Jennifer Diane Reitz was the motivating force behind the creation of Accursed Toys and Happy Puppy. She's been designing games for at least 15 years now. She started with her own versions of group FRP games. When she got a Commodore 64 in 1984, she began to design games for it. She even got a few of her concepts published by the pioneer game companies. Remember Pharoah's Revenge or the Game Maker Science Fiction Library? Those were her ideas and her art.
In 1985, Jennifer teamed up with Stephen P. Lepisto, a high school friend. They worked for themselves and for other companies as finances dictated. Stephen worked with the major names in the game software community. You'll find his name on products from LucasFilms, EA, Learning Company, EdMark and many others.
The Happy
Puppy Games OnRamp Founders in a posed, unnatural photo. Left to right: Stephen
P. Lepisto, Sandra Woodruff and Jennifer Diane Reitz. There's a
large
photo
too.
|
Happy Puppy started its own World Wide Web page on Valentine's Day 1995. The Internet community had apparently been waiting for their arrival. The Happy Puppy Games Onramp was literally an overnight success. We were getting 1000 hits a day within the first month online. In one year, it had grown to 525,000 hits a day and over 50,000 daily visitors. And, for a brief time, it was the largest site on the web in terms of traffic.
The AToys team sold their interest in Happy Puppy to Attitude Network in September of 1996 and have used the proceeds to help them develop new projects.
Stephen and Jennifer were enmeshed in the completion of a project they've had in development for over ten years, a never-ending FRP in the Japanese style, but in English. Unfortunately, life got in the way and Jennifer turned to creating online graphic novels (Unicorn Jelly, Pastel Defender Heliotrope, and To Save Her (a Unicorn Jelly Story) ) before going full-blown author on the FimFiction.net site as Chatoyance (over 15 novels and short stories).
Stephen and Jennifer also created and maintained the popular Japanese Anime and Manga site, Otakuworld, for many years. In fact, Otakuworld will have been online for over 30 years as of 2026.
Sandra started another games site with a few friends called KickAss Games but let that one go after several years. She then concentrated on bringing comedy back to radio. Sadly, Sandra passed away in December, 2025 after a short but brutal battle with colon cancer.
Eldenath quietly supports all of our projects by handling the business details so her partners can create new works.