Wadsworth Overcash

Hmm, I don't remember. We did use to playtest items before shipping, but the cycle of design-develop-ship-die was typically just a matter of weeks. If there was a revision, it was probably to add the intermissions. They were added at literally the last minute. P! II took me about six weeks to write, start to finish. Like Sea Dragon, somehow pirates got ahold of it before it got to market and flooded BBS's with the program before you could even buy it. On Sea Dragon, I spent four of the six weeks it took to write just on copy protection, to no avail. That's why I ultimately got out of the games business. P! II was fun to write. Glad you enjoyed it. --r

I'll never forget the day my wife told me she walked into Marks & Sparks and asked if they sold fanny packs... --r

That's what living in London for a couple of years will do to you. I still catch myself saying things like "mobile phone" and "postcode". I used to drive my coworkers nuts by my American pronunciation of words like "innovative". I found it easier to fit in by adopting the British version. Nowadays, my old dog brain sometimes won't let me revert to my old dog tricks. And don't get me started on Aluminium. --r

Okay, two scores. First screenshot shows the highest score I remember you can get. Due to the fact that I didn't ever anticipate anyone ever getting as high, the score rolls over at 256,000. (Actually, it pegs at 000,000 and you can't ever change it.) Second is my best of three real tries. In my defense: --r

Corvus was a hard disk, no? Dave Small's gadget was a 5 1/4" floppy system. It had a parallel interface as opposed to serial, so it was much faster (20x?). I didn't buy my first hard disk until I bought my Apple Lisa for Mac development. As I remember, the 5MB hard disk cost around $1000. What a steal. --r

I would, but...the skipping level trick also scores you lots of points. No one would ever believe my high score. --r

Thanks for the kind words. Sea Dragon was actually designed to be "finishable" after a lot of feedback from customers. Most people have told me that after time they could manage to get to the end, but not finish the level. You had to get into the final chamber with enough air to spare, which was the hard part. --r

I had one of the Axlon ramdisks. For awhile, it was the only way to do hardcore development on the 800 without your hair turning grey between compiles. You could use it for other things besides a ramdisk, sort of, with some fancy footwork. As I remember, it overlaid memory and you could use it as a poor man's paging system. Back in the day, I'd do anything to speed up development. I remember investing in one of Dave Small's parallel drive systems. Awesome speed increase (well, in its time) but it wasn't cheap. It used a card that plugged into one of the 800's memory slots and cantilevered out over the computer. With all of the power cords and ribbon cables, it looked vaguely Frankensteinian. --r

The intermissions were sort of an afterthought. I was running out of memory and wanted to do four, one after each level, but the first couple I did were fairly large. So, I ended up with four variations on the same basic theme. After level 4, the last one repeats. After the contest is over, I'll let you know how to skip levels so you can watch them all. For what it's worth. --r

How do you guys develop for the Atari nowadays? Do you use a cross-assembler, or do it directly in emulation? I have some source code I wouldn't mind re-entering and try to get running, but all I have is some 8-bit emulation software for my PC. And my old AMAC code is pretty heavily dependent on its features. Just curious. --r

Wow, where did you find that gem? You must be the ultimate packrat, to have saved a text file 20 years ago and kept it. Gosh, I couldn't tell you. I was a sysop for first the Atari forum, and then the Macintosh forum, about 8 or 9 years total. I don't think I paid for more than a couple of months before I was given sysop status, and then I had unlimited reign. I still had to pay Telenet surcharges for awhile, but then we got a local dedicated node (in Orlando, FL). Thanks for this. I'll file it away with the rest of my memorabilia. --r

Oh yes. His wife (Muffy) was a card too--it wouldn't suprize me if they had come up with the puns and gameplay together. It was actually a whole MP ROM on a NuBus card with a bunch of fast RAM. You could compile your Newtonscript and transfer it to the card in a couple of seconds. Sweet. Given to me. Eidetic (Blank, Berlyn & Co. back then) was an early adopter and we regularly got prototypes of future models for compatibility testing. Sometimes they were hardwired into an old case, and sometimes we got pre-production test units, like my 110. --r

Mike created Bubsy while he was working for Accolade (which was before we hooked up at Eidetic.) Mike is a pretty "distinct personality" in his own right. Bubsy was an attempt to build a franchise ala Sonic. After I left Eidetic, they produced the Syphon Filter series, a decent franchise in its own right. Great bunch of guys. Couldn't ask for a better straight man. I wrote Notion. I bought one of the first MessagePads and had been using it for awhile but something was missing and I couldn't put my finger on it. I had to justify carrying such a large brick around. I finally figured out that if I was going to carry the thing around, I needed it to make and carry lists. As early developers, we had Nubus cards that plugged into our Macs that gave us on-board development capability. Code, compile and run in an emulator window--sure beat the hell out of serial transfer cables. I have a prototype 110 that several people have offered me big bucks for. Apple used to make their protos using clear plastic to discourage employees from sneaking them out the building. My 110 is made with a smoky clear plastic--pretty cool. --r

Oh, and in the "It's A Small World" category: After I left Apple in '93, I was partners with Bubsy's creator (Mike Berlyn) and Marc Blank of Infocom fame in a little endeavor called "Eidetic, Inc." We wrote Apple Newton and video game software up in Bend, Oregon. Still one of my favorite places. I believe Mike and Marc still live in the area. --r