Hmmmm....doesn't seem like a failure to me...
The Early Years (1978-1983)
At age 13, Troy Lyndon developed and sold his first video game professionally, titled Space Voyager for the Radio Shack TRS-80. Encouraged by his childhood friend, David Jennings, he followed with two additional games titled Great Wave, Space Quest and Conquerer also for the TRS-80. Over the next few years as Lyndon pursued academic interests, he continued developing by co-authoring Atari to Commodore 64 game conversions of Time Runner, Snokie and Flak with co-developers Scott Maxwell and Yves Lempereur.