DanOliver

Sorry, I don't. To give you an idea of how much I know I had to Google Mindlink. I thought it was called Mind Controller. I didn't meet anyone who worked on the Mindlink, just the Product Manager who asked me to do something in a rush. He dumped a bunch of stuff on my desk. He hung around a lot and offered encouragement which helped. I think I had a reputation for getting something done fast. Might not be the best, but at least you'd get something. I'd just finished the instant assembler and that was like a secret weapon. On Wikipedia it says 2 games were developed Bionic Breakthrough & Mind Maze. Looking now at what I think Atari Proto probably has it right that Bionic Breakthrough would have been just to user test the Minlink. And it looks like the programmer spent too much time on the splash screen. A classic mistake I've seen made a few times on different projects. Splash screens, about boxes, easter egg initials should all be added toward the end if there's time imo. It is unfortunate the Mindlink was known for making faces sore...it's true but unfortunate. I did have to force myself to make smaller and smaller movements. After that it was comfortable and kind of fun. I think we strapped controllers around our legs and arms, so you'd have 4 controllers on you. I forget how that went, might have been just screwing around.

Thanks. I'm now learning Imagic may have redone more graphics than I realized. The explosion is probably the thing I'm most proud of in any game. One of the few things I can say was all mine. Not stolen from another game. If I did another VCS game it would have lots and lots of explosions.

I love post apocalyptic new beginning themes. Always have. It was fun being able to be in that story for the 7-12 months Final Legacy took. It's may fav theme by far.

I just got an email from Scott Stilphen, not sure if he's posting here...sorry I have the social skills of a rock except rocks have the advantage of not talking...or typing...and he brought this up. Here's my reply: I do have Robert Weatherby stuck clearly in my head talking, in my office, looking at the game, pad in hand taking notes, discussing a theme song. But I'm well aware of how memory works and I may have just replaced Brad with Robert. Hope not. Up until yesterday I'd forgotten Robert worked at Atari until I saw his LinkIn page and the memory got jogged. My brain is rebuilding these memories on the fly. Going to be mistakes. Hope you guys can track down the real deal. All these years I think the theme song to Star Trek NG sounds like Final Legacy and I always think of Robert. However, like I told Steve, the impression I have is Brad wasn't interested in Final Legacy for whatever reason. I don't think I had a lot of interaction with him. So maybe he just sent me some audio? Maybe only had time for some effects? I'm less than 99.9% sure now who did the music. I'm 100% sure I had nothing to do with the composition in any way. And I sure would have liked Brad to do the audio that's for sure. He was very highly respected as I remember.

Yes, that's it. I couldn'd find it, thanks. http://youtu.be/ywz8zZCU3fY OK, so those screens are a lot closer to Final Legacy than I remember. So maybe Chris had a lot more input on the design than I remember which sounds like me. The map screen and the scope screen, very similar. For sure Chris showed me the game and must have had a lot of ideas about what game I should do at least initially. I'm sure I came up with the post apocalyptic angle, which to me was the design. I think Chris wanted Submarine Commander but with more action. That's my impression. But when brainstorming a person isn't always aware where an idea actually came from. All ideas you like become your ideas and all rejected ideas must have been someone else's. It's not a fair process. I did think it strange my cart only said "Legacy". I thought "Final Legacy" was used earlier. I think I came up with "Legacy" pretty much right off, but remember distinctly who came up with "Final Legacy". Myself, Chirs and his friend and Product Manager who I can't remember his name, were talking about the name. Maybe the PM and Chris had already been talking about this, but there was some issue with Legacy...already used, too general to clear legal...anyway the PM came up with Final Legacy. Chris and I instantly liked it. Guess that happened later than I remember, after focus test. This was the same PM that asked me to do Telepathy. So it does make sense that a screen with Legacy would indeed be prerelease. That's weird. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE FIND THESE THINGS! Of cource as good as my memory is I probably gave someone my cart to down load? Seems like a few years back I ran into the collector thing and talked to some people about this. But in the database where Chris gets credit for programming and graphics...I don't think so. I don't remember Chris doing any programming at all on anything. Maybe I remember seeing him trying to program for a day or two on something and asking a lot of questions where we were in the warehouse. I kind of thought he was trying to learn programming because Atari was falling apart at that time. He really looked stressed at the keyboard. Pretty quick, like a day or two, he put his suit back on and went back to whatever VPs do. He must have been very good at it because he saved our butts many times. Certainly Final Legacy wouldn't have ever been done without Chris doing all those VP things. But I sure don't remember him working on Final Legacy. And no graphics. Sure hope I'm not mistaken, but I'm 99.9% sure. Robert Weatherby did the music score I believe. I'm not sure. It certainly was a standard thing to use icons to internationalize products at least in my little world. It was preferred to localizing text. Yes a poster. I'll try to take a pic and post. I assumed you'd gotten the image from the poster but have since seen that was the picture on a box. It's a cropped part of the poster. The poster would have been a give away to retailers. The one I have looks like from a production run. I assume Atari printed a bunch of them. I was very proud of the poster when they gave it to me. To think such a good artist created that for my game was very flattering. Probably my must prized game related possession because I've kept it and have never considered getting rid of it. But the production run may have been stuck in a warehouse when the Tramiels took over. Weird it never occurred to me to go to the warehouse, wherever the hell that was, and grab as much of the Final Legacy stuff as I could. Whoever gave me a copy may have gotten it from a warehouse, can't remember. Instead we were going thru 40 yard dumpsters pulling out office supplies and piling up $100k computer systems in our offices like packrats. I got so many staplers that in the past 30 years I've never had to reload a stapler. I just toss an empty stapler and use the next one. I don't do a lot of stapling, but geez. Staplers I save, games I leave. Weird. Freakin good staplers though, never jam. Warner may not have known disk about games but they knew their office supplies. I also still have boxes of staples just in case I run out of staplers. When the Tramiels took over it was a post apocalyptic world. Empty multi-story office buildings, warehouses with absolutely not a single person. The people just left. Then they just put everything into dumpsters. Millions of dollars of computer systems all sitting there still on. The dozen or so programmers left carried away as much as we could and stacked it like cord wood in our "new offices" and in the hallway. But the Tramiels pretty quickly got a handle on that.

Good luck with that. My guess is they ripped out the boards and stuffed the carts with cash to smuggle it back to SA. Just seemed really shady. They never wanted to even look at the game as I remember. Made my day. Thanks for the links. I just read the interview with Ernie Runyon which was great. Funny how these things jog my memory. I wasn't sure about the room for reverse engineering games, but seems right. I did take listing back to my desk and studied them. And the picture of Ernie...William Shatner? Has anyone here ever seen Ernie and William Shatner in the same room together? I haven't. Ernie said "I remember Dan had it roughest. I think he may have had a new-born at home" which made me laugh. I didn't have a new-born at home, but sounds like something I would say. I did have a fairly new wife who was freaking out at all the hours. And I lived 55 miles away so travel time didn't help. I remember talking to her on the phone one night, I was at Apollo, and she was really upset. This computer stuff was so new then people just had no frame of reference. She kind of gave me an ultimatum. I remember looking at my computer screen and had to make a choice. What I learned was never give a person an ultimatum, which I found useful in my next marriage which has been great. Ernie also said "I also remember coming in late one night to do some coding and happened upon a co-worker chasing a scantily-clad young lady around the production line. I was sworn to secrecy." HAD TO BE LARRY! Chasing, not catching, sounds like Larry. Ernie is right about not being a tight group. We were all in one large room, no walls, working 80 hours a week or more, and hardly knew anything about each other. Just total focus on the game. Not just the code, but the game. You lived in there. Everyone liked everyone, and I certainly enjoyed their company, but we just rarely had time. After Space Cavern and after reading the Forbes article about how other game programmers were being treated I did get to talk to people a bit more. And when I gave my 2 weeks notice Apollo made me stay so I basically sat around, so that was nice. But it's a weird thing programming. A very individual task.

Finding time is the only issue. I'm kind of obsessive so I can't really just dip my toe in. What I'm going to do is see if I could work a game into future projects. I was thinking of trying to track down Bob Hesler, my partner at VentureVision, and see if I can use the name. And then maybe do an Inner Space sequel. The Melody board is really mind blowing, I'm kind of thinking about the possibilities. BTW, I was 26 when I started at Apollo. I would have given my left nut to have any of these people do the packaging for Rescue Terra I. We found a guy who painted really great oil paintings of space nebula type stuff. But packaging is a different thing and we probably didn't pay him much. Of course in the end it didn't matter. The difference, which to me is kind of amazing, is the internet. Finding an artist in Dallas - Forth Worth was really hard. Finding one who could do packaging was just about impossible. Today, click, click, type, type, pages of great artists found around the world. I saw the reviews of my games. The Video Game Critic can eat my shorts. I hate honest reviews. It's been very nice to hear all the kind words, Makes me happy that people are getting some entertainment from what we did so long ago.

That's pretty cool. I don't know anything about hardware so it's all magic to me. Would the sprites be 1/3 as wide? Sounds like they would.

Posted there.

It would be a trip. Use a modern computer to program a VCS. I wonder how different it would be? I'm going to read your link now.

The 3.5" floppies were sweet. Like the pads on Star Trek. My first game was in Apple Basic, in Hi Res. Only white pixels, probably got higher res in B&W? I was knocking off arcade Asteroids. Ship at the bottom only moved left to right with a really bad pot stick. And asteroids falling down to be shot. Got too slow so I moved to 6502. I liked the Apple II a lot, used it a lot. But I don't really miss the machine. The 68000 and bit map graphics really turned my head. But the only machine I'd say I ever get nostalgic for is the VCS. I liked the graphics better than the Apple II. And the VCS had more personality imo. In a couple of days you could know every hardware register, every 6502 instruction, every cycle count. You'd personally store and read right from the metal. You were never talking thru an OS. It was just you and her. And to debug you'd stare at this totally jacked up scrambled screen to see what she was trying to tell you was wrong. Super simple but a total challenge to create something. Not seen anything close since.

YouTube comes thru. I think this was pretty good. Mine was an Apple II Plus.

Apple II Forever My first computer, $2200. Bought a 5.25" floppy for $500. In the winter I had to use a hair dyer to warm it up enough that it would start to read. Biggest purchase decision of my life. I'll never forget the sound of that floppy. Got to Google that.

I don't have a way to down load a cart. I'm pretty clueless with hardware. But all the production Final Legacy carts should be the same. I think 400/800/XL were all the same code. 5200 I think was different, but all in production would be the same. So all production dumps would be the same. As far as I know these serialized 12-15 copies are the only other ones out there. I probably made some copies for magazines. I don't think we even had testers. Handing out copies was a very scary thing so I wouldn't even give my mom a copy. If someone at AtariAge wants the ROM image I'd be happy to mail it to someone. But I'd like it back.

Thanks. I read the second thread and now kind of see I have to read the Chimera thread. So Batari created the Harmony and Melody boards? That just amazing. It would be cool to read an article on the project. Threads are good, but misses a lot I think. I've seen a lot of products created in companies with lots of resources and it looks to me like the Harmony project was really well done. And for someone to risk their own money...amazing. Specs look amazing too from a developer perspective. I have a lot more reading to do but if I ever get the time I'd love to program for it. Time is always the issue.

I never heard of programmers not getting paid back then. In those days game programmers were treated very well I thought. If you weren't you'd just go next door or start your own company. The shady stuff was stealing info. Like Apollo had someone from Atari willing to sell a 2600 manual, at least that's the story I was told. I heard they had lunch and the guy wanted $100K. There was a lot of paranoia that we didn't know about some secret registers that would allow us to do better games. I remember management asking me if I thought there were unknown registers. Don't ask me how a person would know about something unknown, I was never in management. I'd worked at Apollo for a couple of weeks and had already down loaded and studied at least a few games and figured if there were any more registers we'd find them that way. Who's talking to who type stuff. Worried about programmers leaving. Planting people at other game companies. None of it amounted to a hill of beans. They'd hear some company was doing XYZ game...so what? What are you going to do with that info? But mostly around bootlegged games. That could kill a company. Lot of fast money at stake so shortcuts are taken.

What's My Story? was PC and Mac game for kids. Edutainment deal. The irony of a Rescue Terra I selling for more now than pretty much VentureVision's entire gross revenue is not lost on me. But I can always say...at least it wasn't ET. Laser Gates went right to the discount table. Final Legacy too. Rescue Terra I didn't even make it that far. Our biggest, and maybe only sale, was to a couple of guys from South America who stopped by our CES booth at the close and offered to buy all we had with us. Couple of dozen. I have no idea what they wanted them for. My kid brother sold Rescue Terra I door to door. He said he sold all 12 but never sent us our cut. Kid brothers. I don't know what Bob did with the rest of them. I remember we spent a lot of time putting carts together and boxing them. When you have programmers boxing carts inside of writing code you know things aren't good. We had "sold" 10,000 carts to a distributor and we ordered the ROMs which took a few weeks. When we called the distributor back the guy no longer worked there, they were out of the games business. That was the crash. Third week of Oct 83. We knew the gold rush was over. We kept trying, went to CES in Jan 84. Saw Pat Roper sitting in the Apollo "booth" which was just a big empty space and a couple folding chairs in the middle with Pat sitting there. Guess he was trying to sell off whatever he could. Not a happy time. But Bob did teach me to play craps, and he was good at it. At one point we hooked up with some multi-level marketing people and they seemed pretty interest in the same way sharks are interested in things splashing around in the water. After a bit they became more interested in an application to help them track all the money. Apparently these things go fast but not for too long. They had stories of garbage cans full of letters, checks and cash that they couldn't get thru fast enough. No computers. They had to doing everything by hand. A $10 sale meant $1 went to one person, $0.50 to another and on and on. Like 7-10 cuts for every sale. It was a nightmare. A lot of those guys went to jail and multi-level marketing was outlawed only because they just couldn't do the accounting if a product sold a lot. They didn't pay people because they couldn't figure out how much and to who. So they wanted me to write an Apple II app which I did, pretty simple. But then they wanted to put me into hotels and keep moving me around while their scheme played out. They said it was common in their business so law enforcement couldn't find them. Apparently it was kind of up in the air as to whether or not these things are legal or not. Depends on how many levels deep and whether the product is real or not. Selling a 5 cent pen for $100 would be illegal. But selling a $50 Rescue Terra I they thought would be legal...probably...in most states. But why take the chance? Let's us put you into a hotel. Thanks, but no thanks boys.

Wife just asked "have you written any code since getting on that thing"? Fortunately I'm not the kind of man who is easily intimida...gotta go she just cam back

There are no other parts or disk version that I'm aware. I don't know of any. However, I didn't remember half the stuff until reading about all the info you guys have collected. It's jogged my memory. I don't remember ever doing concepts or prototypes, which is kind of strange now that I think about it. Well I do remember doing an hour glass where each grain of sand had it's own physics. I'm talking fake video game type physics, but looked good to me. I don't think it was ever in a game. At Atari I did write an instant assembler, precompiled header type tricks. I was given tours of other groups to see their games and it seemed like they had tons of concepts and prototypes. I remember seeing a pretty good, graphically anyways, fighting game like Mortal Kombat. I remember thinking, and probably saying, "that kind of game will never be popular". Sure had my finger on the pulse of the future. If it wasn't a shooter it wasn't a game. I still don't get fight games. I can go down to the corner bar and get into a fight. Very realistic, excellent audio. Space ship blasting creatures, now that's cool. I think every VCS game I started got released. Most barely got released, but released. I may hold the record for having written the last game the most companies ever released. Space Cavern...close by no cigar. Rescue Terra I...VentureVision bingo Laser Gates...Image...pretty close if not a bingo. Final Legacy...Atari...seems like a bingo to me. What's My Story?...Digital Pictures, maybe a bingo I don't have any old code around. Just a few carts. I sold my last 2600 at a yard sale about 10 years ago. I try not to live in the past...but all this is kind of different. It's like the future went to the past and is being used in the present. Kind of Steampunk, except real.

You guys are posting a lot of great info, like the current development stuff. I've got stuff I have to finish now but it is definitely bouncing around in my head. It will take me awhile to catch up. I'm trying to respond to all who ask. If I miss some question please point it out to me. I've very much enjoy reading all the history you guys have uncovered and happy to contribute where I can. Your main 2600 page, the image: That's from the Final Legacy poster...which I have framed. Artistic license? Apparently I was wrong about Imagic fixing the 1/2" long black scanline on the left side of the screen. I see on YouTube vids of Laser Gates they're still there. Makes me feel a little better. And someone ported Laser Gates to the 5200!!! That's amazing to me. It looks really godd on the video. Better shooting. Really nicely done. http://youtu.be/4OHyVSyXCYk That's a whole deal. Best group of engineers I ever worked with. Best bosses, best product managers. I've worked with some great groups, but Apple IIGS really stands out. Only place I ever worked where you bosses where the best programmers, Steve Glass and Fern Bachman. Harvey Lehtman who was the champion and I assume did tons of stuff I never heard about that allowed the rest of us to get out the GS.

Final Legacy was my first chance to have all the time I wanted, lots of hardware resources. No excuses. It was all my design, my programming, my graphics, music was done by Robert Weatherby I believe. And of course I'm sure lots of other people had suggestions I probably used. But to me Final Legacy was a kind of test. Am I a game designer? To me it proved I was never going to be a break through original game designer. Don't get me wrong, I've very proud of my work...I'm not a modest person. But there's a reality. I just couldn't see into the future, I didn't have the vision to do games on the systems that were coming. Maybe I just wasn't that into games so I didn't have enough source material to steal from. When the ST came along I found what I really liked to do, user interface stuff. Final Legacy stories... There aren't many. It was basically long hard work. I have little idea how long it took. I started at Atari 4/83 according to my resume and it was done maybe a month before the Tramiels took over. I was told the game was in manufacturing when the Tramiels took over and that some number had been produced. Maybe 8,000? I'm pretty sure someone gave me a copy which was very nice. Wikipedia says Tramiels took over 7/84 so FL must have been completed say 5/84. Probably started working on it a month or two after starting so I'd say 1 year, 5/83 to 5/84. Seems about right. I've always liked post apocalyptic stories, new beginings, do it right in 2.0 type deals. So the process is knowing what can be done on the hardware and melting the story idea into that. I kind of imagine myself inside the computer and everything is black, turned off. I can see the RAM, the hardware registers, the CPU. And I start turning on stuff to start building a world. The main map was first because I was learning the Atari computer and what it could do. The expanding/collapsing map was a simple trick which of course I thought was cool. Now when I look at the videos of people playing the game I'm like "why didn't I speed that up or have a preference for instant switching". It looks painfully slow. Just having a instant switch was a bit jarring so some transition helped, but come on. The screen with the green grid I was trying to steal arcade Battlezone. Loved that game, loved vector graphics. Shooting the incoming missiles was basically stealing from arcade Centipede. I loved when you lined up on the centipede and just whale away on the fire button blowing it to bits. This screen was also tweaked for the Atari Track Ball which they were looking for any game to support. Track ball worked well for the missiles, you could get into a rhythm and blow them away like a centipede. I would have liked to have stolen from Missile Command too, but I wanted perspective and Missile Command really only works in 2D. The torpedo view was I think pretty original, at least for me. I was proud of the clouds scrolling at different speeds, the light from explosions reflecting off the clouds. Now I wish I would have flashed the white in the clouds when the user got hit. I think Chris Horseman had done a submarine game for EMI before coming to Atari. Not sure. Seems like he talked about some submarine game a lot. I could be confusing things. I think he made it really realistic which seems like a good idea until you realize being on a sub is a pretty boring 99% of the time. Which Chris understood. So I wanted more action and didn't let too much reality get in the way. So the bow of the user's ship is suppose to look like a sub running on the surface where in theory it could move faster. The torpedos were gray to appear beneath the water. Focus tests and stealing from Atari... To focus test I made a cart for each tester. These are mostly kids found by a company that test all kinds of products. So I had to make like a 12-15 carts I think. EPROM in the cart which I had to burn. Video game industry was super paranoid about everything. And with good reason, we'd steal anything by almost any means. So I burned a unique serial number into each EPROM. The carts are sent to the kids to play for a week or so and then come in as a group to discuss the game. One of the kids said "why can't I blow up my own cities". Future game designer. That was like on a Friday. On monday morning someone, I think Eric, pops his head into my office and says "your game got ripped off". Within a week one of these kids, I assumed, had duplicated the EPROM and was handing out or selling copies and it had already come back to me. Small world. So someone got me a copy and I find the serial number. This was a world Chris Horseman excels at. Within a really short time he's got the storm troopers at the ready and formulating battle plan to make this kid dump a deuce in his shorts. The plan is to have some PI named "Mad Dog" go have a talk with the kid. I was in Chris's office when Mad Dog debriefed. To set the scene Mad Dog would be played by Joe Pesci should there ever be a movie. Mad Dog goes to the kid's house and tells mom that a game got lost and he was investigating. Mind you Mad Dog is telling this like a story...Mad Dog knows we're eating this up. So he gets into the house and asks if he can look through the kid's computer stuff just to make sure the missing game isn't there...you know, by total mistake. Part of the process is Mad Dog flicking thru the kid's floppies one at a time. Mad Dog wears several large rings... Joe Pesci. Mad Dog explains that the rings are strong magnets at which time Chris and I are consumed by laughter and Mad Dog knows he's collecting a bonus. There is justice and there is getting even. Getting even is always better. Mad Dog then tells the kid and mom that the carts were serialized and we know he was making duplicates. Deuce hits the shorts, mom switches from pro life to pro choice in a heart beat. Kid gives up everything. From his hidden porn stash to where the cart went. He'd given the cart to a dude working at HP who used HP equipment to down load the EPROM and make copies. Mad Dog wasn't involved in what happened to the HP dude and I have no knowledge of said dude's whereabouts today. I'm guessing a dozen suits showed up at HP and conveyed Atari's concerns. So, for the collectors out there. There are 12-15 of these. All were returned to me at Atari. Where they all went from there I have no idea except for one which I have. I attached a photo of my cart. The label was a white paper label hand written by me "LEGACY © ATARI 1983 Rev 5.3" and a stamp at the top in red which I can barely see "CONFIDENTIAL". I think they all had exactly the same text. But each ROM image would be different by at least a byte for the serial number. I don't remember which one was stolen so there would be more copies of at least one of these. Not sure how copies could be verified. I'm getting deja vu so maybe I've already posted this info? Interesting the cart says © 1983 and not 1984. Maybe I finished Final Legacy late 1983 and not 5/84? So maybe it took 7 months? Not sure. However me not knowing what year it was when I wrote it also sounds like me. How I got hired at Atari and how Final Legacy got started... After VentureVision folded and I sold Inner Space to Imagic I was still living in a trailer in Denton TX because I'd been going to N Texas State on the GI bill. Time to look for a job. I looked thru the game magazines and found a bunch of companies looking for programmers. This was kind of the apex of companies looking for people, just before the crash. All the companies seemed to be in CA. I interviewed with a bunch...the smaller the company the faster they repsonded to getting a resume. Very wild, all kinds of companies, all kinds of people. After a few weeks I was about to except a job I think in Sacramento for a company doing desktop computer games on floppies. Atari called. I'm like peeing. I go out and interview with Chris Horseman...I think he was younger than me. Youngest VP ever at Atari of which he was very proud and rightly so. He's talking a mile a minute about coming from EMI, about his sub game I think. He says he's starting an Advanced Games group at Atari which will have maybe 10 of the best developers in the world. He says he's talking to the dude that wrote Star Raiders which dropped my jaw because that's a mythic game. I assumed at the time that the creator of Star Radiers didn't work at Atari. So I'm like not really understanding why Chris is telling me all this...Space Cavern != Star Radiers...not even the same zip code. Chris then says something like "obviously you're not of that caliber"...and am back to reality..."but we're willing to take a chance on a couple of programmers that we think we could teach"...sign me the F up. I couldn''t believe my luck. First day at work it's me Chris and Ritta who was Chris's secretary (personal assistant). Chris was pretty new to Atrai but would never let on. Ritta actually knew everything. She takes me to a huge filing cabinet, flings open the doors and this thing is packed. She says "take whatever you want and if there's anything else you want just let me know and I'll get it". She said "want" not "need". And the way she said it I got the impression if I asked for a lap dance from William Shatner that Ritta would make it happen in a single phone call. There was only three things missing from the Advanced Games Group. 1. Group. 2. Advanced. 3. Games. I was kind of waiting for the A team to show up and start showing me their secrets, and tell me their lunch orders of course. But Chris wasn't interviewing anyone I could see. I start thinking about Final Legacy and studing the Atari 800 internals. I assume the idea of the sea theme came from Chris, he made have been trying to get me to make a certain game, I don't know. I did know it didn't work that way. You can't spec a game, it has to come from an indivual. I pretty quickly figured out why I'd been hired into the Advanced Games Group...they couldn't find anyone else. A VP must have at least one employee other than a personal assistant...I think that's a rule. The next hire was a hardware guy who knew nothing about games, didn't really want to know anything about games but I think needed a job to stay in the US. He was from England like Chris. He was a funny guy in a Black Adder way and did some good work on a Last Star Fighter arcade. Pretty soon Chris says the "group" is moving to new offices. A room in a coin op warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Forklifts, trucks, noise, flumes, the whole enchilada. I don't know the whole story but the impression I got is this is when Warner announced the first big loss, like $500 million which was a lot of money back then. I think Chris saw the crap storm on the horizon and hid us under a rock. I'll bet our budget went tiny real fast. Smart move Chris. When a company shuts down, which I have a great deal of experience, it's not fun. People just obsess and worry. No work gets done. Out in the warehouse I could just program. And that's where I got most of Final Legacy done. We did move back into a normal building at some point. And I think the group got one or two other people. Eric somebody and an artist working on a laser disc thing, or a music video, using the Twilight Zone song. As far as I know Final Legacy was the only game to come out of the Advanced Games Group and it barely got out.

Your tastes in games is exceptional. Thanks for your page. I'd forgotten about all the screens. I enjoyed playing it once I got used to the controller...which 8 hours a day will do for a person. The screens are of course all "inspired" by other games...but well stolen I think.

I think so. Kind of hard to remember. I know it was a last minute thing to help out the Product Manager. I know it was just suppose to be something so they could focus test the Mind Controller. I don't think they had anything that ran on the Mind Controller...maybe the hardware engineers had done some software for testing...they must have...so I must have been given that. I believe I just read a paddle port, there wasn't any special programming hardware wise. Anyways, I sure don't remember Telepathy taking very long. So maybe 3 weeks, but I don't think 4 weeks. 1-2 weeks probably. And the really weird thing is I was only working 8 hour days. The concept of working an 8 hour day was very alien while developing a game. It was the instant assembler system. Previously most of your time was spend waiting for a build and I'd spend that time thinking about features, coding tricks, letting previous lessons sink in. With instant turn around that time was removed along with the with the needed design time. We'd always considered waiting for builds to be "wasted" but I found out it was important. So after 8 hours, or even less, I'd run out of things to implement, out of ideas. So I'd have to go home and day dream about the game and hit it again the next day. It was very strange, very different.

Yes, this time travel is/was thing is difficult. I need to re-watch a few Dr Who's to see how it's done.

Random Terrain, thanks for the additional links I think I'm starting to understand. I had to read the stuff about the Melody Board a few times trying to get my brain to consider it being real. When I left the VCS 8K was the max and I'd heard about the Super Charger but that didn't seem viable. Melody has 8K of RAM...mind blowing. I was doing runtime explosions in RAM, I think I reserved like 8 or 10 bytes for the sprite. What could be done with 8K of RAM. That would free up page zero too, so faster instructions could allow all the sprites to be generated at runtime. Might be able to kick Demon Attack's ass. Wouldn't be a fair fight of course, but who likes fair fights? I've been search around for info on the Melody and Harmony boards and found some stuff. But kind of like you guys are interested in the past I'm interested in future which is or was your past. How does Dr Who keep this all straight? Any articles on who created Harmony? Behind the curtain stuff? To me that would be cool to read. Any links on the creation of Melody and Harmony? These are made one off as ordered? I'd love to see a video of one being made. Should I post this in the Harmony thread instead? Thanks