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August 31, 1998

The latest and greatest version of the Giant List is here. One entry that has grown a few inches since last time is that of Synergistic founder Bob Clardy, who has an impressive list of credits spanning 1978 through 1998 (his entry would be much larger if it included all the edutainment and non-game software he created). In recent years, Synergistic was bought by Sierra, which was in turn bought by megacorporation Cendant, prompting Mr. Clardy to leave his own company in 1998. Add another Pac-Man clone to the pile: Neil Matson's Laserball was released for the TRS-80 in 1982. That's possibly the most misleading name for a Pac-Man imitator, especially next to Taxman, Robot Man, Monster Maze, and Munch Man. Neil currently works in the computer graphics industry. Bill Budge's title, as listed on his business card from Cyclone Studios, is "Software Engine-eer." NOTE: News updates will pause for two to three weeks while I move to another happy-go-lucky town. If you have new trivia or list additions, go ahead and send them, but a reply isn't guaranteed. I've also been toying with expanding the scope of the site to cover game history in general--not just the 8-bit era--and I'd like to hear opinions (the Giant List itself would still be 8-bit only, though).

August 26, 1998

Here's a bit of a shocker: Atari 800 Defender, possibly the slickest coin-op port for that computer, was actually written on an Apple II. In the words of programmer Steve Baker: I "memory mapped" the Atari in the same way that the Apple II hi-res tables were kept. I just had to "stuff" in the linear mapping for the Atari and play with the horiz offset a bit and voila: Defender for both platforms. To test it on the Atari, he burned EPROMs of the game. The Apple II version was released as Atarisoft Defender. Dr. Dobb's Journal has resurrected the great Programmers At Work collection of interviews as a CD-ROM. Written by Susan Lammers in the mid 1980s, it contains interviews with many great figures from the early days of home computing. Three game designers are included, most notably Bill Budge and the creator of Pac-Man. (I need to mention that the CD also features the full text of Halcyon Days, but costs about $11 more than the standalone version, with shipping. So there's a choice between the extra stuff and lower price.) Ms. Lammers, by the way, is one of the founders of Seattle-based edutainment company Headbone Interactive. Faint bits of rumor have been circulating that game design giant Bill Williams, creator of Necromancer, died recently. If anyone can confirm or deny this, please contact me. Earlier this decade, rumor had it that Castle Wolfenstein author Silas Warner had died in the 1980s, but this turned out to be false. Mr. Warner is still alive and well and in the game business.

August 17, 1998

Tim Ferris's Atom Smasher--an Asteroids-style game in which you shoot the electrons off of atoms of increasingly higher atomic number--has long been a favorite of Atari 800 owners. But the game was actually never released! Tim sent it to a number of publishers, all of whom passed, but that didn't stop them from circulating the game until it became a pirate staple. The "C.C.P." on the title screen stands for "Canyon Computer Products," Tim's business name. Additionally, the leaked version contains several bugs; a more polished version exists, but was never distributed. Tim's first Atari 800 game was Canyon Climber, which is incorrectly attributed to Steve Bjork in the current list (most likely, Steve was involved in a port). The game started life as a Donkey Kong knock-off until Datasoft asked him to modify the game to avoid legal troubles.

August 14, 1998

The full gameology of David Schroeder is finally coming together. In addition to the credits currently on the Giant List--which include Crisis Mountain and Dino Eggs--he did a set of three Apple II games packaged as Happy Birthday to You! which was published by Softdisk im 1990. Later he did some online games for the precursor of America Online: MasterWord and AppleLink Darts for the Apple II, and a conversion of MasterWord for the PC. He also lent a graphical hand to a trio of games, acting strictly as a contributing artist: War in Middle Earth (1989, AP2, Melbourne House), Rockford: The Arcade Game (1987, AMI, Arcadia), and Space Ranger (1987, AMI, Mastertronic). What's he up to now? He recently wrote a musical based on a 1929 play by Jean Giraudoux. Tom McWilliams, who authored Outpost for the Apple II (and the Apple II version of Law of the West) is probably having oodles of fun at his new company.

August 10, 1998

Apple ][ Game Programmer Reunion Wrap-Up It was astounding: most of the great Apple II game programming talent all in one place for one night only. Everyone from Nasir Gebelli to Bill Budge to Mark Turmell to Eric Hammond to Chuck Bueche (a.k.a. "Chuckles") reminiscing in the penthouse offices of ION Storm this past Saturday as part of a once-in-a-lifetime reunion thrown by Apple II trivia master John Romero. I talked to Dan Illowsky, now a consultant, and found out about Snack Attack II, an all but forgotten sequel to the Apple maze classic that was released ages ago--for the PC. I asked Jordan Mechner about the "insert the Karateka disk in upside down and the game plays upside down" trick, and found that Doug Carlston gave the go ahead even though it caused manufacturing costs to be noticibly higher. I talked to Andrew Greenberg--who's now a lawyer by the way--about the decision to use Apple Pascal for Wizardy and found that it was because P-code was much more space efficient than raw machine code. I talked to Chris Oberth, who's best known for Stern's Rescue coin-op, and picked up great information about the current arcade business. And that's how the evening went: one mind-blowing encounter after another. Ray Tobey (Skyfox) telling stories about Jim Nitchals. Steve Wozniak (Steve Wozniak!) responding to the question "What do you think of the Commodore 64?" Some non-Apple personalities were there as well, including Philip Price and Gary Gilbertson. I was floored by Phil's stories of procedural texture creation on a 12 MHz 80286, and greatly enjoyed Gary's philosophies of game music. Alternate Reality Online is going to be a stunner. Warren Robinett did Rocky's Boots for the Apple, but the subject often turned to Atari 2600 Adventure (I give credit to collector and Age of Empires graphics engine guy Matt Pritchard for having the forethought to bring an Adventure cart for him to sign). More than anything, it was wonderful to be able to attach faces to people I've only known via email or through their games. The egos were non-existent, and I met some genuinely nice people. The trivia and stories will undoubtedly reveal themselves in the coming weeks, but I can't close without commenting on the ION Storm architecture. Good grief, you go nuts with all the ladders and lofts and huge expanses of vertigo-inducing glass (this is the 54th floor, you must realize). Hats off to whoever cooked up that wacky amusement park of an office suite. All in all, a fantastic evening.

August 7, 1998

The Atari 800 version of Ron Rosen's popular Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory features an original song by Alternate Reality composer Gary Gilbertson (so naturally it also includes Philip Price's Advanced Music Processor code as well). Gilbertson fans should also give a listen to Datasoft's Monster Smash. You don't run across clones of post-classic titles for the Apple II very often, but here's one: Cross City (1986, Computing Age), written by Sam Hui, is an imitation of the City Connection coin-op. An authorized version of City Connection was produced for the NES in the late 80s, so Cross City beat it to the punch!

August 5, 1998

Steve Baker, who did the fantastic port of Defender for the Atari 800 and 5200, says he was working on a version of Stargate for the same systems. It reached the prototype stage, but was never released. According to Steve, "the graphics looked just like the coin-op" and, it "pushed the hardware to its limits." He kept a Stargate coin-op next to his development system, so he could do side-by-side comparisons of the two versions. Steve also did a bunch of other games, including Photar for the Apple II, and he's currently working on a PlayStation and Nintendo 64 title slated for Christmas 1999. There are some embarrassing botches in the History of Activision timeline at Activision's web site. They seem to think that Pitfall was released in 1980 and came out before Kaboom. Gotta love it!

August 3, 1998

Robert Woodhead, co-author of the great Wizardry role-playing game for the Apple II, wrote the popular Virex anti-virus package. It's somewhat surprising to see these controversies on 8-bit machines, but The Tetris Company asked coder Bill Kendrick to stop distributing his freeware Tetris-like game, Cooltris, which he wrote for the Atari 800 just a few years ago. Though different companies have been associated with the Tetris name over the years, The Tetris Company is currently in charge of licensing the rights to that famous puzzle-game. While doing some site reformatting, a newer version of the Giant List found its way home. Consider it a maintenance update, as it doesn't include the 40K of changes and additions that have accumulated.

July 27, 1998

Here's an interesting, if unsettling, story from the man behind Alternate Reality, Philip Price: About three years ago I was at CGDC and I was talking to two guys from Company X and one from Company Y. I told them a little about my history, such as how I created a multiplayer Star Trek game in the 1970s, and I talked a lot--long monologue--about one of my pet subjects:the philosophy of death in games. The person from Company Y was taping what I said. He then asked a strange question in the end: "So have you ever published this philosophy of death in games?" I told him honestly "No." Six months later one of the few articles in CGDA newsletter was by a guy whose bio said he started computer gaming by creating a multiplayer Star Trek game in the 1970's. His article was about the philosophy of death--almost word for word my speech. I always hoped it was a coincidence. I never remembered the guy's name, so maybe the one was unrelated to the other. The big Alternate Reality Online project is back in the hands of Mr. Price and musician Gary Gilbertson, after they parted ways with Monolith on friendly terms. Serious development is slated to begin shortly. This is a project to watch; the Price interview in Halcyon Days is my personal favorite and shows that he is a force to be reckoned with in game design.