Leonard Tramiel Exclusive Text Interview - Great Commodore & Atari Insight

[Yak]

hey I do Twitter!

 

But it's usually just me telling the weird dream I had the other night, or posting pictures or videos of my sheep.

 

https://t.co/CRBXJpZHvM

 

Nothing that makes me seem particularly awesome

[+Sauron]

1 hour ago, Yak said:

hey I do Twitter!

 

But it's usually just me telling the weird dream I had the other night, or posting pictures or videos of my sheep.

 

https://t.co/CRBXJpZHvM

 

Nothing that makes me seem particularly awesome

It's probably a safe bet that many of us here already follow you on there. 

 

 

[+Stephen]

41 minutes ago, Yak said:

hey I do Twitter!

 

But it's usually just me telling the weird dream I had the other night, or posting pictures or videos of my sheep.

 

https://t.co/CRBXJpZHvM

 

Nothing that makes me seem particularly awesome

Very much looking forward to your next VLM!

[+cubanismo]

1 hour ago, Yak said:

Nothing that makes me seem particularly awesome

Ironically, the fact that that's all you use Twitter for makes you seem awesome.

[Lostdragon]

A few more... 

 

 

Steve Turner detailing his attempts to get corrections made to the Retrogamer Magazine Interview andan on  interview pulled after seeing Jane make claims about involvement with Graftgold. 

 

 

Jane bandwagon jumping and catching himself out on Twitter. 

 

That's not a 3DO M2 development kit board, it's a late retail model, kiosk board. 

 

 

When we contacted a lot of sites and YT channels etc and  presented the evidence they'd been duped by Jane, at best articles were pulled or correction statements added (a rare occurrence) at worst we got abusive replies claiming we had axes to grind with Jane and were engaged in hate speech, even though we stuck to his nonsense game claim and i worked with Industry legends A to Z nonsense. 

 

Gender was never discussed, let alone anything involving money. 

 

The vast majority simply ignored what was presented to them, blocked comments on YT. 

 

Which means Jane gains credibility as people put his name into a search engine, see him being interviewed by so many, listed on sites as coder for things like ST Ranarama and believe the claims to be true, why would they doubt it? 

 

 

Likes of Game Pro, Retrogamer, Gamestm magazines have a lot to answer for. 

 

 

Attempts were made at the time on newsgroups to put records straight, Jer Horwitz was the person who did the Game Pro interview

 

 

He was totally blindsided by Whittaker, going onto say... 

 

 

 

" I agree, though Andrew has a considerable record dating way before his Jaguar
days. People might be interested to know that their comments re: Andrew
Braybrook and Uridium/Paradroid also pertain to Mr. Whittaker... and also,
the game Dark Seed (advertised in some magazines recently) also was one of
his projects and has now been converted for the Sega-CD."

 

Whittaker had no involvement in Paradroid and Horwitz means Magnetron ?, Whittaker has always claimed he did an unspecified conversion of it, completely untrue. 

 

The Uridium talk, Steve Turner has since told us was Whittaker presenting an early Amiga demo, an associate of his had been working on and nothing more was ever seen of it. 

 

 

Dark Seed was a few days playtesting the Amiga version whilst at Mirage before the UK version shipped. 

 

 

Jer Horwitz

10/30/94

Just to share it: Andrew Whittaker is now officially working for Atari. He was lead coder and one of

 

Rebellion Developeme

11/1/94

to

> Andrew Whittaker is now officially working for Atari. He was lead coder

> andone of the driving forces behind Alien v. Predator,

Just to make this clear (and feel free to object, Andy, if you think
this isn't fair):

Andrew Whittaker wrote the alien (marine, predator, as appropriate) AI
code, and the code for the computers.

A programmer at Atari wrote part of the startup code.

Mike Beaton wrote everything else (graphics engine, HUD code, etc).
Calling either of them 'lead coder' isn't really fair.

-- dan @ Rebellion

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

There was also this infamous incident regarding AVP development.. 

 

 

Andrew Whittaker

3/2/95

to

In article <Z+94cZk....@delphi.com> Alan Caruana <icef...@delphi.com> writes:

>So if you are a programmer considering Jaguar development, what else
>is there to consider?? Jag sales are taking off like wildfire now,

Well minor little things to consider like getting paid, despite Atari promises
I still havent received any income from AVP sales..

I for one am not telling all my friends to sign up for the Jaguar, I want them
to be able to feed their families

Andrew Whittaker
Coder AVP

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travis Guy

3/9/95

to

I was asked by Don Thomas at Atari to post this here:

I was recently forwarded the following text from the Internet:

>>So if you are a programmer considering Jaguar development, what else
>>is there to consider?? Jag sales are taking off like wildfire now,

>Well minor little things to consider like getting paid, despite Atari
promises
>I still havent received any income from AVP sales..

>I for one am not telling all my friends to sign up for the Jaguar, I want
them
>to be able to feed their families

>Andrew Whittaker
>Coder AVP
 

For the record, I have forwarded this statement internally at Atari and it
was received with surprise and disappointment. Upon review of any and all
materials related to AvP and Andrew's relationship to that project, no one at
Atari believes the above statement to be true. In more blunt terms, the
statements relating to Atari owing Andrew money are untrue.

Atari has an obligation to protect Andrew's rights to privacy regarding his
personal matters, however, I felt I should respond to the public remarks on
the net as they were passed on to me.

-- Don Thomas
Atari Corporation

 

This came AFTER this... 

 

Andrew Whittaker

12/8/94

to

Dear all,
I want to clear up some confusion after reading this thread. There is
no argument between myself and Atari, neither did I criticise the machine,
in fact I am an ardent supporter of it. I left Atari simply because they
thought it cheaper to buy product from independants than to pay monthly
salaries to development teams in the UK.

There is no animosity between myself and Atari. I am not the sort of person
to bear a grudge. They made the decision on cost saving alone with no ill-
will between either party. I am of-course bitterly disappointed that I cannot
continue to do what I love doing with Atari but wish the machine well in the
future and it deserves to do well as you all deserve good games for your
money.
thank you for taking the time to read this.
--
Andrew Whittaker
Ardent Jaguar Fan

 

 

Decide for yourselves.. 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

 

 

[FAQ] Atari Jaguar Frequently-Asked Question

 

Andrew Whittaker

5/8/00

to

To update some of the stuff in that FAQ.

AvP really can be considered an Atari product rather than a Rebellion one. I
was intially asked to write AvP by Rebellion, but I had so much problem with
Rebellion, and Atari did too, I wrote the code as an Atari employee, and
stayed on at Atari after completion in a senior position. If you look at the
credits you will notice the Rebellion people are credited as Name
(Rebellion). The other programmer Mike Beaton, although on the Rebellion
payroll also had huge problems with Rebellion and relocated to Sunnyvale to
complete the project with me, and left Rebellion shortly after completion..
I wont go into the details of the difficulties Mike, myself and Atari had
with Rebellion, but that explains why you see those (Rebellion) comments
after peoples names. Much of the art also got retouched at Sunnyvale.

I saw mention of Artemis in the FAQ. That was intended to be an adventure
game, funded by an entrepeneur in Florida. He approached key jaguar
developers including myself to develop the title as a joint effort between
those developers with his money, but he never got beyond the talk stage,
being worried by what it really would cost in the real world to develop.

The information on the Jaguar being based on Loki is also interesting. As
many of you may know I made my career as a spectrum developer and sold many
chart titles on Spectrum. My team therefore were approached about Loki. It
wasnt just John spinning off into Jaguar with it, some of that technology
also found a home in a machine called the SAM Coupe, which was manufactured
and produced in the UK by MGT technologies (Bruce Gordon and Alan Miles,
both ex-sinclair staff also), it shared many interesting features with the
jaguar in terms of its video chip, but the machine sold very badly in Europe
and the company folded.

In terms of John M and his comments of the 68000 just controlling the
orchestra. In practice what many of us did with our titles was use the 68000
for AI and gameplay logic and have the custom chips driving the rendering to
screen and 3D code.

regards
Andrew Whittaker

 

 

Where to start? 

 

 

AVP was put out to contract to Rebellion, Whittaker only taken on by them when they expanded the team. 

 

John Maitheson disputes the Loki claims. 

 

Jane was never a KEY Jaguar developer.. 

 

 

Jane tells people he and Mike flew back to his parents house in the UK to complete AVP, here they both stayed in Sunnyvale until it was complete.. 

 

 

When you think a judge and various legal teams will be going through everything on this thread and much, much more, with Whittaker having signed to say the statements and accounts he's given are the truth... 

 

 

It makes your head spin. 

 

 

He lies, exaggerates and trips his own self up at every turn. 

[ThatGuyMike]

42 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

When you think a judge and various legal teams will be going through everything on this thread and much, much more, with Whittaker having signed to say the statements and accounts he's given are the truth... 

Personally my money is on Jane trying to bury their head in the sand to hide from the courts. The amount of evidence against the claims is overwhelming. I'd feel sorry for Jane if they hadnt personally caused major turmoil in my own life.

[+Biff Burgertime]

 

+1 for the endless pile of questions:
 

Why is Jane in black & white?

_{(from https://www.athenaworlds.com/meet-the-team)}

Edited August 18, 2021 by Buffalo Biff Burgertime
link

[JagChris]

Is he in a wife beater?

[Lostdragon]

15 hours ago, Yak said:

He must have tremendous skill at being able to talk himself up. He does appear to have been able to walk into some plum jobs along the line (assuming there is in fact a kernel of truth in that he worked at MGM, EA and Bullfrog, though not necessarily that he did all he claimed at those places). And yet he doesn't really seem to have produced much of anything in terms of tangible results, AvP apart. At least in gaming, can't speak to the side of things where he was Captain Littlegirlsocks who got his commercial pilot's license at age 20.

 

Somehow he manages to wring these endorsements out of people and convince them he's some kind of genius. It's really peculiar. And harmful, too, if upcoming devs look to him for industry expertise and guidance that just isn't there.

 

I think I find it all specifically weird because the scene he fixates on - Atari in the Jag era - is a place where I actually was, and I knew a lot of the people he talks about, and the story he tells about his central place in it all is so at odds with my actual lived experience that it makes my brain hurt.

 

But yeah, I too wonder how so many journos (and, it seems, business people too) have just bought into it all without checking out the facts. I guess the gift of the gab backed up with a few kernels of truth goes a long way. 

Chris Rowley did the majority of Data Entry on Ashes Of The Empire. 

 

Ranarama was published before Jane joined Graftgold, Rainbow Islands wasn't started until after he'd been fired (source Steve Turner), plus Telecomsoft Playtester, Richard Hewson never heard of any Jane or Andrew Whittaker. 

 

 

Dennis Hassabis was the co-creator of Theme Park, Mark Webley set up Bullfrog's conversions department and over saw the conversion of Theme Park to 10 formats. 

 

Ridley Scott did not as Whittaker claims in his interview with Retrogamer Magazine, have creative input on Jaguar AVP, why would he?, he was never overly enamored with the entire AVP concept ?

 

 

Stellar Trader was not as Jane claims, advertised in the likes of Computer And Videoganes, Popular Computing Weekly and Your Computer Magazines.. 

 

 

 

Jane Whittaker was not digitized for main character in Dark Seed, nor did he provide the voice talent, that was Mike Dawson, who actually visited Giger, Whittaker has bizzarely just taken Mike's claims and made them his own:

 

 

 

"By the way,” he adds. “Giger is truly a dark artist. I visited him in Zurich and the stuff you see in the movie Alien is toned down from his original work. What else? He had a shrunken head just sitting on his desk. And, when he gave us a tour of his place, he casually referred to one room as the place where his ex-lover had killed herself.”

The development of the game was difficult for the still-understaffed company, Dawson says. “Because we were so small, we had to do a lot, but we also got to do a lot. Just a few months in my first fulltime job, I was going to Europe to work with H.R. Giger. I went to international trade shows and shows here in the US. I got to write, design and help make games. In many ways, the job was a blast. But it was also tough. We were a start-up, and as such, we were constantly spending money while generating no income. There was intense pressure on all of us for a huge Christmas release of Darkseed, our main project.”

“I’d like to say that the game was in development for about a year, but I honestly can’t remember,” he notes. “Lots of work. Lots of pressure. Some silliness too. Again, I split my time between writing, designing, producing and a bit of acting.”

The acting in question was Dawson’s role as Darkseed’s main character. “This started out as a joke,” he comments. “I needed to get a concept document out on the game and was working on it until the last minute, as usual. I had put my name in for the main character as a placeholder �" and as an inside joke for the few of us at the company. I fully intended to come up with something else at some point. But when my boss saw it, he liked it and said we had to keep the name.”

“I was also digitized for the role of Mike Dawson. Yes, that’s me walking around, climbing stairs and, oh yeah, having an alien embryo inserted into my brain. I think this decision was made based primarily on money. If I played the part, we wouldn’t need to hire (and pay) a real actor. So, in between meetings, I would jump in front of a camera and pretend to have an alien come busting out of my head.”

 

 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/101991/Playing_Catch_Up_Darkseeds_Mike_Dawson.php

 

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyMike said:

Personally my money is on Jane trying to bury their head in the sand to hide from the courts. The amount of evidence against the claims is overwhelming. I'd feel sorry for Jane if they hadnt personally caused major turmoil in my own life.

A burial of one's head in the proverbial finely divided rock and mineral particles, is one thing, but the deliberate attempt to physically remove evidence, after telling people if they didn't believe his claims, to go and look, all the magazine proof was out there, we did, it wasn't.. 

 

 

What we did find was Perceptions went bankrupt, Next Generation magazine said Power Crystal wasn't a Zelda 64 Killer, it just took influences from Zelda.. 

 

And having follow up YT videos blocked in the UK:

 

 

https://t.co/qKCjEmLYS8?amp=1

 

 

Changing your account of being born a siamese twin, after birth certificate found and proving this to be an utter lie.. 

 

Changing your account about working for MicroProse after Wild Bill Stealey exposes you as a fraud... 

 

 

Is only going to make things a whole lot worse for Jane. 

 

At the very best, his solicitors will have to push for some mental health issue and the evidence the community has gathered will be used to establish a long term behavioral pattern. 

 

 

I feel zero sympathy for Jane or anyone else who lies to a community to suit their own agenda, the truth always comes out. 

 

 

[Yak]

Is there any confirmation at all that he worked on any 8-bit titles? To hear him talk about it he ought to have code in a great slew of titles across the Speccy and C64 but I've never seen a genuine example of an 8-bit game he was actually involved in. I'd be genuinely interested to see one.

[Lostdragon]

The Wireframe article where once again Jane claims he and Mike Beaton, left the USA to finish coding AVP.. 

 

Wireframe pulled the link on Twitter, but you can still download the magazine. 

 

 

https://t.co/zM2T4M5kK6?amp=1

 

 

Whittaker himself pulled the Power Crystal press he once promoted.. 

 

 

https://m.facebook.com/BlueSockStudios/photos/a.152238018821544/313805665998111/?type=3&theater

[ThatGuyMike]

20 minutes ago, Buffalo Biff Burgertime said:

 

+1 for the endless pile of questions:
 

Why is Jane in black & white?

_{(from https://www.athenaworlds.com/meet-the-team)}

Jane for some reason really likes to re-use photos.

Look at their photos of 'working' in their garden. Its been reused a handful of times, and the bugger even went and took the same photo in multiple angles. Now I dont know about anyone else here, but when I want to 'show off' that Im working on something neat, the pictures I use are of what is on my screen, not me posing for glamour shots with a laptop on my lap.

Theyve also re-used that Bullfrog business card photo, some 90s press photos, that Darkseed poster, instructibles design document, Atari team photo. Its like Janes never heard of a scanner.

[Lostdragon]

8 minutes ago, Yak said:

Is there any confirmation at all that he worked on any 8-bit titles? To hear him talk about it he ought to have code in a great slew of titles across the Speccy and C64 but I've never seen a genuine example of an 8-bit game he was actually involved in. I'd be genuinely interested to see one.

So far, this appears to be his sole and disastrous involvement.. 

 

He had a crack at minor roles on Flying Shark and literally screwed the pooch. 

 

 

There were no conversions of Morpheus, UK and French Press speculated it would appear on the ST. 

 

There is literally no physical evidence of Stellar Trader on the ZX81

 

No code, no adverts, no screenshots, no box art, nothing. 

 

 

 

[Yak]

Reading that Wireframe article: if he was finishing off AvP why would they have been using *prototype* Jaguars? Hardware was well final and stable by then.

 

And again the "beers with Sam Tramiel" thing comes up. Does that mean Sam came over *twice*, once to spirit him away to work for Atari when he was 16, and again when he was toiling to finish off AvP?

 

 

[Lostdragon]

6 minutes ago, Yak said:

Reading that Wireframe article: if he was finishing off AvP why would they have been using *prototype* Jaguars? Hardware was well final and stable by then.

 

And again the "beers with Sam Tramiel" thing comes up. Does that mean Sam came over *twice*, once to spirit him away to work for Atari when he was 16, and again when he was toiling to finish off AvP?

 

 

Before the line of communications went dead, it was being confirmed Sam Tramiel HAD met Whittaker's Dad at some point, here in the UK, but the next step was to find out exactly when and in what context. 

 

Purple Hampton has stated that when Sam met Mike and Jane during AVP development in the USA, it was obvious it was the first time Sam and Jane had met, so that's the Sam and Jack arriving at Jane's parents when Jane was a youth, knocked on the head. 

 

Leonard Tramiel also strongly disputed the claim Jane lived with the Tramiel family as a youth. 

 

 

I'll need to find it, but I swear Whittaker also talked of being in Peru during final stages of AVP development ?

 

He was so critical to the game being finished, Atari let him go to Disneykand, back to the UK,off to Peru ?

[Lostdragon]

Jaguar AVP didn't start the AVP Game Franchise, it followed SNES and GB AVP games, AVP in the Arcades by Capcom and Atari had the license for the Lynx game, which was well in development, before Rebellion even started on the Jaguar title, so that claim is utter bullshit. 

 

 

Whittaker also never shared a fricking thing on his A. I Routines for AVP, so lied to his own Twitter followers ?

[ThatGuyMike]

3 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Whittaker also never shared a fricking thing on his A. I Routines for AVP, so lied to his own Twitter followers ?

Put it on the list with the other lies on Twitter, the ones I remember as follows:

Power Crystal is in development
AvP 2 project is in development
Constant hate crimes (just take Janes word for it guys, even though nobody else ever sees it happen).
"Somebody asked me/told me/reminded me about X Y and Z so now I'll answer publicly to show how impressive I am" - Who is asking these questions?

[Lostdragon]

1 minute ago, ThatGuyMike said:

Put it on the list with the other lies on Twitter, the ones I remember as follows:

Power Crystal is in development
AvP 2 project is in development
Constant hate crimes (just take Janes word for it guys, even though nobody else ever sees it happen).
"Somebody asked me/told me/reminded me about X Y and Z so now I'll answer publicly to show how impressive I am" - Who is asking these questions?

Power Crystal (the reboot version, using assests and scripts from original) was, he told Andrew Rosa, in hands of a Major Publisher and being built using his new game engine, he couldn't name the publisher, show the game and nothing more was ever said on it ?

 

 

He promised his Twitter followers WEEKLY updates on his spirtual sucsessor to AVP, which he was coding on PC, Jaguar and Mobile Platforms, nothing more other than it was now a spare time project, was ever heard about it again, after the big Athena announcement. 

 

?

[Lostdragon]

Actually never mind not answering his Twitter followers when asked about his AVP A. I routines, he never answered anyone ?

 

 

Rebellion Developeme

11/11/94

to

davi...@aol.com writes:
> [...] The simulation excuse only goes so far. Rebellion (Dan) is
> verygood at making excuses (look at the Checked Flag posts.)

Why, thankyou.. <grin> I'd just like to point out at this stage that we
at Rebellion have never posted any of these 'excuses' (or whatever you
choose to call them) for 'deficiencies' in the gameplay; we're simply
giving out facts. How you choose to interpret the game is entirely up to
you.

Ask Andy Whittaker -- the AI code is his baby, after all, so he'd be the
one for the final word as to what exactly is going on there; I wouldn't
like to put words into his mouth.

-- dan @ Rebellion
 

Rebellion Developeme

11/15/94

to

davi...@aol.com writes:
> I have sent Andy an e-mail and he never responded. It would be nice to
> have someone at Rebellion clear these points up.

Unfortunately, as Andy wrote the AI code, he's the only person who
really knows how and why it works the way it does; we can't speak on his
behalf (doubly so now he's no longer working for us), so if you haven't
had an answer from him, you're unfortunately not going to get one at all.
Sorry about that.
-- dan @ Rebellion
 

Rebellion Developeme

11/16/94

to

Kel...@lilyn.demon.co.uk writes:
> Do I detect some bitterness between yourselves and Andy Whittaker?

> lately oneor two of your posts appear a tad less than sweet when
> referring toMr. Whittaker.

No; we're just being careful what we say, that's all -- having had posts
extolling his virtues, it seems only fair to back them up by ensuring the
credit for bits of AvP go where they're due.

-- dan @ Rebellion

[ThatGuyMike]

4 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Power Crystal (the reboot version, using assests and scripts from original) was, he told Andrew Rosa, in hands of a Major Publisher and being built using his new game engine, he couldn't name the publisher, show the game and nothing more was ever said on it ?

 

 

He promised his Twitter followers WEEKLY updates on his spirtual sucsessor to AVP, which he was coding on PC, Jaguar and Mobile Platforms, nothing more other than it was now a spare time project, was ever heard about it again, after the big Athena announcement. 

 

?

Jane was trying to hype up Power Crystal even when I was still working for them. Kept saying they had ownership and publisher interest.

Interestingly Jane was still trying to claim Athena was some revolutionary tech back then too. I could literally show everyone here exactly what Athena is. Heck, I even have that exact same warehouse scene Jane was using to publicly showcase the tech. Except my version has better lighting and actual HD video rather than some blurred screenshots.

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyMike said:

Jane was trying to hype up Power Crystal even when I was still working for them. Kept saying they had ownership and publisher interest.

Interestingly Jane was still trying to claim Athena was some revolutionary tech back then too. I could literally show everyone here exactly what Athena is. Heck, I even have that exact same warehouse scene Jane was using to publicly showcase the tech. Except my version has better lighting and actual HD video rather than some blurred screenshots.

Jane has always tried to distance Power Crystal from his earlier, hyped RPG Project with the equally ill-fated Springer Spaniel Software, Project Artemis, but look at the aspects which spring up with Jane to this very day. 

 

 

Like his AVP spirtual, which at one point he was talking of Crowd Funding.. it's annouced on multiple platforms before a single line of code is written. 

 

 

Whittaker places himself at head of this dream team of development talent, Whittaker going to focus on the A. I

 

 

 

There's  a BIG NAME involved, Fantasy Writer, but Whittaker can't say whom.. 

 

 

 

The project will produce a revolutionary piece of software... 

 

 

 

From:

 

https://www.atarimax.com/freenet/freenet_material/6.16and32-BitComputersSupportArea/8.OnlineMagazines/showarticle.php?506

 

Stalking One's Prey Andrew's next move was to post what would become a "career changing" (if not life changing) message to rec.games.video.atari asking if there were any Jag developers with programmer openings. With AvP as a huge success on the Jag, Andrew had numerous job and project offers. In the midst of all of these was a reply from Jon Taylor, an Orlando based computer engineer. Jon's career has taken him from Adventure International (creators of the "Scott Adams Graphics Adventure" series) eventually to Visionix Software (where he was doing low level device driver, graphics and sound development). Jon proposed a multinational development company, Springer Spaniel Software, a concept that Andrew found very appealing. The concept started moving towards reality in October 94 when Andrew and Jon began searching for members to fill out the ranks of the teams on both sides of the Atlantic. Only four weeks ago, a meeting was called in Orlando, Florida amongst 20 potential team members, Jon, and Andrew. It was from these 20 people, the English and American team members were selected. These people were artists, programmers, musicians, business personnel and other specialists. //// Going in for the Kill The business operations for Springer (distribution, legal operations, publishing, etc.) will be handled in England and New York (where they are in the process of setting up an office.) Meanwhile Andrew will be leading the development team which will be split between Orlando and England. The wonders of the Internet will allow the development teams to communicate and share information continuously. The development team's first project is what Andrew has defined as "a revolutionary, fantasy role-playing game" for the PC on CD ROM. It is slated to ship in the first quarter of 1996 and ports for the Atari Jaguar (Jon emphasized that he is a BIG Atari fan), Sony PSX and Sega Saturn are slated to follow in the second and third quarters of 96. Andrew has emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence, character interaction and superlative graphics. The projects name is presently "Artemis" but Jon and Andy wanted to emphasize that this titles shouldn't even be considered a working title yet. Right now, Andrew is leaning towards an orthogonal, overhead view RPG, but the gaming concept is still open to other (and multiple) interpretations. Furthermore, Andrew and Jon are negotiating with an unnamed fantasy author concerning the writing of a novella (which may or may not be part of a series) to bundle with the game, thereby developing the plot and description of the world in which it is set. In closing, Jon and Andrew wanted to express that development will be starting in earnest and with Andrew leading the development team, the future is looking rosy for their first project. 

 

 

 

Next time Whittaker pops up in public eye:

 

 

Preview of POWER CRYSTAL for M2 (Feb 6/97)
NEXT GENERATION MAGAZINE

Following the completion of Alien vs. Predator for Jaguar
, Andrew Whittaker left Rebellion (the company which
developed it) and joined John Taylor to form Springer
Spaniel Software, a new development outfit.

At that time, Whittaker had in his mind a new and, as he
saw it, revolutionary orthogonal RPG. The original
project name was Artemis. A PC version was expected
first with 32-bit console versions to follow, but when
3DO (which at the time still owned the M2 hardware
rights) extended some support, the project underwent a
transformation as did the company.

Whittaker became the managing director of a new
development team called Perceptions. The game itself
changed from an orthogonal design to a complete 3D
realm and the name was changed to Power Crystal.
Whittaker was completely floored by the M2’s hardware
(which at that time possessed only a single PPC 602 CPU
as compared to the dual processor set-up it now
possesses). “M2 really is the single finest piece of
hardware we’ve worked with. Its power will hit the world
of entertainment software like a tidal wave.” said
Whittaker. “To call it a quantum leap forward is such a
gross understatement that it does it injustice.”

At this point in time, Power Crystal is one of the few
known M2 projects being developed in the UK. 

 

 

 

 

Jane's ORIGINAL, now deleted comment on YT when i asked him about Project Artemis :

 

 

Jane Whittaker

On Power Crystal, it was in fact reviewed by a number of magazines, including Edge, although those reviews were never printed. Most magazines, as you know, have a significant lead time so they review ahead of time. 3DO had all the reviews pulled from publication once it was announced they were no longer going ahead with the hardware console. Yes, it did get top marks in the Edge review, I am really proud of that, although to this day really sad that the M2 console itself was scrapped. We had the reviewer from Edge visit us regularly in the office and I got to know him really well. (although it earned me the worst dressed developer award in Edge! but that is another story ) On Artemis, there is a misconception that it was an early version of Power Crystal. In fact, the two games are totally unrelated. Artemis never stretched beyond paper design for Jaguar CD and wasn’t actually a fantasy RPG. Artemis was open world exploration but in a modern setting. Actual production of Artemis was never started beyond initial concept ideas. Artemis actually was a joint idea with my friend Jon from New York, with Artemis being the working title as that was the name of his dog! So Project Artemis was always a bit of an in-joke.

 

 

Again note he is unable to actually NAME the Edge reviewer, as that's a lead that can be followed up. 

 

 

In issue 92 of GamesTM (Oct 17) t interview with Jane Whitaker, he states that Power Crystal was “finished and got 100% reviews in Edge and stuff like that”

 

EDGE score out of 10 ?

 

 

 

3 Seperate sources at Perceptions who worked on Power Crystal confirmed that:

 

 

 

“As for Power Crystal on the M2, the game was never finished. We had several parts of the game in development, such as the terrain system, some of the global commerce tracking and a parts of the UI. The artwork was also progressing but wasn’t even 10% done. It was a massive project and would have take a lot more time to complete than the time we spent on it before 3DO pulled the plug on the system.”

Stalking One's Prey

Andrew's next move was to post what would become a "career changing"
(if not life changing) message to rec.games.video.atari asking if
there were any Jag developers with programmer openings. With AvP as a
huge success on the Jag, Andrew had numerous job and project offers.

In the midst of all of these was a reply from Jon Taylor, an Orlando
based computer engineer. Jon's career has taken him from Adventure
International (creators of the "Scott Adams Graphics Adventure"
series) eventually to Visionix Software (where he was doing low level
device driver, graphics and sound development). Jon proposed a
multinational development company, Springer Spaniel Software, a
concept that Andrew found very appealing. The concept started moving
towards reality in October 94 when Andrew and Jon began searching for
members to fill out the ranks of the teams on both sides of the
Atlantic. Only four weeks ago, a meeting was called in Orlando,
Florida amongst 20 potential team members, Jon, and Andrew. It was
from these 20 people, the English and American team members were
selected. These people were artists, programmers, musicians, business
personnel and other specialists.


//// Going in for the Kill

The business operations for Springer (distribution, legal operations,
publishing, etc.) will be handled in England and New York (where they
are in the process of setting up an office.) Meanwhile Andrew will be
leading the development team which will be split between Orlando and
England. The wonders of the Internet will allow the development teams
to communicate and share information continuously.

The development team's first project is what Andrew has defined as "a
revolutionary, fantasy role-playing game" for the PC on CD ROM. It is
slated to ship in the first quarter of 1996 and ports for the Atari
Jaguar (Jon emphasized that he is a BIG Atari fan), Sony PSX and Sega
Saturn are slated to follow in the second and third quarters of 96.
Andrew has emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence,
character interaction and superlative graphics. The projects name is
presently "Artemis" but Jon and Andy wanted to emphasize that this
titles shouldn't even be considered a working title yet.

Right now, Andrew is leaning towards an orthogonal, overhead view RPG,
but the gaming concept is still open to other (and multiple)
interpretations. Furthermore, Andrew and Jon are negotiating with an
unnamed fantasy author concerning the writing of a novella (which may
or may not be part of a series) to bundle with the game, thereby
developing the plot and description of the world in which it is set.

In closing, Jon and Andrew wanted to express that development will be
starting in earnest and with Andrew leading the development team, the
future is looking rosy for their first project.

[Lostdragon]

This is what you get if you try and find online the copy of EDGE where it's detailed what they really said about Power Crystal 

 

 

https://archive.org/details/EDGE.N045.1997.05

 

 

Reader, Richard Johnson, wrote in expressing concerns over supposed real imagery of Power Crystal and the contrast between the eye candy screens and those featuring blocky, bland, cardboard looking imagery, sprite based trees.

Edge admitted they had used fake screens in E42 and E43

Power Crystal lacked the visual clout of Zelda 64

Perceptions had considerably less artistic resources than Nintendo..

And the version of Power Crystal they had seen, was running on an incomplete M2 development kit.

In the same issue, Silicon Dreams Andy Herse talked about M2 development, saying 3DO had updated the dev kits 3 times in the past 2 years, with a 4th Revision on the way.

This was May 1997

Perceptions went UNDER in February 1997

 

 

Jane is trying to deny evidence to the court. 

 

Little wonder, when it's night and day difference between the FAKE screens he provided and the ACTUAL in-game ones. 

 

 

On Twitter, Jane if course opted to use one of the fake screens to showcase it ?

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Lostdragon