Leonard Tramiel Exclusive Text Interview - Great Commodore & Atari Insight

[+MrUnwondering]

31 minutes ago, Stu11 said:

I'm glad I was able to help, you are most welcome.

 

Thank you!

Next Generation December 1997 page 188 would also be great scan to have

 

 

 

[Stu11]

1 hour ago, MrUnwondering said:

Thank you!

Next Generation December 1997 page 188 would also be great scan to have

 

 

 

Here you go ☺️

Edited August 22, 2021 by Stu11

[Stu11]

8 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Thanks are honestly all mine. 

 

I think after all Jane ran around telling Gamestm, Andrew Rosa etc about the Press at the time describing Power Crystal as a Zelda 64 beater, it being finished, reviewed and scoring 100% from multiple magazines, it's only fair people get to see the very context the magazine put it in. 

 

It was far from finished, Perceptions couldn't hope to compete with Nintendo in terms of artistic resources and it was only compared to Zelda 64 in later issues in terms of lacking the visual clout of the N64 title. 

 

People like Jane have to learn, trying to bury the truth, rather than admit you deliberately mislead people, simply doesn't work. 

 

History always catches up with you in the end. 

I totally agree with you and I think you are doing the right thing in exposing this guy, I was re-reading a lot of these Power Crystal promos and Whittaker tells some huge whoppers, like how he coded AVP seemingly on his own etc.  I would sure love to hear what his co-founders of Perceptions thought of him.  The number of people's lives this guy has ruined and messed with is unforgiveable imo.

 

 Anyway I've been able to scan the promo from Edge 43 and also the 2 page mini promo that appeared in Edge 42, this was the one that the person who wrote in to Edge in issue 45 mentioned.  Anyway here is the promo from Edge 43.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by Stu11

[Stu11]

And here is the 2 page new piece from Edge 42.  Hope these help. ☺️

[Lostdragon]

7 hours ago, Stu11 said:

I totally agree with you and I think you are doing the right thing in exposing this guy, I was re-reading a lot of these Power Crystal promos and Whittaker tells some huge whoppers, like how he coded AVP seemingly on his own etc.  I would sure love to hear what his co-founders of Perceptions thought of him.  The number of people's lives this guy has ruined and messed with is unforgiveable imo.

 

 Anyway I've been able to scan the promo from Edge 43 and also the 2 page mini promo that appeared in Edge 42, this was the one that the person who wrote in to Edge in issue 45 mentioned.  Anyway here is the promo from Edge 43.

 

These scans are superb and it's fantastic to see them back in the public domain so people with a genuine interest in Lost 3DO M2 titles, such as Power Crystal, can get a true, historical look at it. 

 

 

I genuinely DO wish things had been so different regarding the approaches both Jane and Jason Kingsley took, regarding talking about Jaguar AVP development, sadly both layered on the bullshit to such a degree, it's an absolute mare to piece together much. 

 

I've said it before and I will state it again, we could of learnt so much more if only more of the development team had come forward or were even approached with regards the Making Of.. for the Likes of Edge and Retrogamer Magazines. 

 

We have Kingsley, Whittaker, some interviews with the late Lance Lewis, some interviews with Purple Hampton... 

 

Soundbites from Dan McNamee... 

 

But so much more about the development process could of been learnt if Mike Beaton came forward, let alone the games artists.. 

 

Jeffrey Gatrall
Stuart Wilson
Toby Harrison-Banfield

 

 

But with so much fiasco now surrounding it, thanks to Kingsley and Whittaker, I can't see that ever happening. 

 

 

As for Power Crystal.. again, numerous sites and people covering the M2, I'm sure would of loved to of seen even rolling video footage of the game even in it's early state. 

 

I can appreciate everything might of been lost when Perceptions went under, Jane doesn't want to share the script documents he has, as he still hopes to revise it at some point. 

 

But there can be no justification for deliberately lying about it being 100% finished, that's unfair for starters to the team who worked on it, but never had the opportunity to finish it. 

 

 

The Zelda Beater and 100% scores is pure Whittaker Bullshit and just highlights the man's character or lack of. 

 

The Perceptions staff I spoke with, were brilliant. 

 

Not vindictive, bitter, looking to throw anyone under the bus, just polite, professional and totally honest. 

 

One was even kind enough to share art assets from the game with me, thus allowing a professional site to preserve them and do a proper write up. 

 

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2019/10/power-crystal-assets-3do-m2/

 

This could of been the approach Jane took with his time at E. A, MGM etc, giving the community any material he had, so it wasn't lost and giving an honest and open account of why games got canned. 

 

 

Jane made the choices he made, he had an opportunity each and everytime he was interviewed to correct the lies he said before, explain why he'd made them, but he didn't and here were are now, countering his efforts to hide these very magazine pages. 

[ThatGuyMike]

11 hours ago, Stu11 said:

 The number of people's lives this guy has ruined and messed with is unforgiveable imo.

Jane is actually the closest thing to evil that I think I'll ever meet in person. 

Not because of the lies and scams, those are run-of-the-mill a**hole moves. But because of how they operate.

Friendly on the outside, sympathetic to your struggles. Promises the things you want, pretends like theyre a friend, says exactly what you need to hear to get you to do what they want. All the while ready to publicly brand you a monster the moment you start questioning things. I wont say here how much damage Jane caused to my own personal life and how badly my career was stunted, but it was bad. It was traumatic and I still suffer from it mentally. The crazy thing is I wasnt even the worst off.

Jane is a monster through-and-through, and I'll always support the efforts to expose this fact. It saddens me that people still fall for Janes silver tongue and sob-stories.

[Yak]

The socks thing: apparently it's a statement about gender diversity and of support for people who are different. DEFINITELY NOT A FETISH.

 

Straight from the mouth of Anklesocks Littlegirlsocks. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/janerachelwhittaker_diversity-diversityandinclusion-inclusion-activity-6835960963636711424-nLVo

[ThatGuyMike]

6 hours ago, Yak said:

The socks thing: apparently it's a statement about gender diversity and of support for people who are different. DEFINITELY NOT A FETISH.

 

Straight from the mouth of Anklesocks Littlegirlsocks. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/janerachelwhittaker_diversity-diversityandinclusion-inclusion-activity-6835960963636711424-nLVo

And previously they were some sort of medical leg-support thing. And before that something about covering up burns?

 

Id bet cash-money Jane just morphed them into a gender thing so that any 'attacks' on their socks fetish suddenly become another hate-crime. Just using that diversity shield wherever they can.

 

I couldn't give a toss what someone's personal identity or fashion choices are, be whatever ans whoever you wanna be. What's creepy is how Jane tries to make other unwitting people a part of it. 

[Lostdragon]

On 8/21/2021 at 3:09 PM, MrUnwondering said:

It is very curious how he landed the job. Whittaker's interview in GamePro June '94 has him as author of a bunch of Amiga Graftgold games, Rainbow Islands, plus Darkseed and Midwinter 3. Presumably the Amiga focus to show deep experience with 68k.

Presumably also the peeps at Rebellion saw this article at the time.

This would be earlyish on in his tenure at Rebellion?

 

 

Steve Turner detailing how Jane landed the Graftgold gig might give you some idea. 

 

 

http://graftgold.blogspot.com/2019/09/i-have-not-blogged-for-six-months.html

 

  

I was usually a pretty good judge of people. Just look at where the Graftgold staff have ended up. I started off with Andrew Braybrook. Andrew was a professional programmer just like me so we understood each other. Yet he had a unique way of seeing things that added something different to his games. When Telecomsoft agreed to fund Graftgold I made the big decision to change from 2 people to a team of 8. I knew Dominic and John from Hewson and they had a proven record. I wanted staff to cover lots of skus, that seemed to be the way to go to get games in the charts. I already knew Gary Foreman as he worked outhouse on C64 Ranarama. He did a good job so thought it sensible to bring him in house. He only lived 15 miles away so would not have to relocate. I had a letter with a demo from David O'Connor. The spectrum game was really impressive. It was a platform game with a really smooth fast scroll that showed real technical ability. 

 

 

I also had a letter from Andrew Whittaker. He seemed to really know his stuff on the Z80. He impressed me at his interview with knowledge of Z80 interrupts and Spectrum techniques.  I needed an Amstrad programmer so decided to take him on as well. He was the only one that was a bad choice. Doubts arose when he had difficulty setting up the Amstrad CPC and seemed to be asking the others to for assistance all the time. I wanted to give him a fair chance so specified a sound routine for the Amstrad based on the logic of the C64 version and the specification of the AY sound chip. Most of the logic could just be ported and translated from 6502 to Z80. The instructions to send data to the chip would have to be recoded but the AY was much simpler. It was a task that anyone with a bit of Z80 should have found easy. It became obvious that he was not up to the job. In the end I had to admit I had made a big mistake.

 

 

Andrew was the only one not to pass the probationary period. I cannot remember using anything that he produced and had to take the Amstrad version over myself. I am amazed that now he claims to have been a programmer on not only Flying Shark but  many of our other games.  It is simply not true,  the only games the team were programming at the time were Flying Shark while I was finishing Magnetron and Andrew Braybrook was finishing Morpheus. Andrew Whittaker may have played some of these but  did not contribute to the programming. It just shows you that you cannot believe all people say about themselves on the internet or in magazine interviews. The credit should go to the people who deserve it. Dominic Robinson  did a superb job on the Spectrum version  and John Cumming did an excellent job on the graphics.

He seems to have a silver tongue at the interview stage and it's only once in employment, people discover he's not as he's advertised himself, by then it's too late. 

 

AVP was already behind schedule the original budget had been spent one of the first thing Purple Hampton did when he joined Atari, was getting Whittaker and Beaton paid. 

 

 

I doubt Rebellion had the time or money to try and recruit someone else to work on the A. I code for AVP and as I stated earlier when Whittaker left for the USA, they must of seen it as the situation having resolved itself. 

 

 

 

The other curious thing here in the Steve Whittaker quote the talk of Jane possibly having PLAYED Magnetron and Morpheus. 

 

 

We see the origins of how this minor degree of involvement a spot of playtesting perhaps, suddenly became Jane being responsible for their creation, cue the playtesting of Amiga Dark Seed, morphing into the saga of lies Jane created around it. 

 

 

More established behavior flaws if ever there was.. 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Yak]

He says he spent 40 years hiding away his "physical gender issues". However, photographs he himself publishes show that there is no visible physical manifestation whatsoever of these gender issues - he just looks like a normal bloke. So if these issues exist, they exist entirely within his pants, and at that point nobody knows or cares about them, so why the need to hide?

 

In fact the only manifestation that we DO see is the weird sock stuff, and that goes back years and years, and is constantly flaunted rather than "hidden away".

[justino]

If he was a conjoined Siamese twin as he claimed in the Retro Gamer interview and had numerous separation surgeries and coded in the hospital bed with his feet while his attached sister watched on and his dad was busy advertising and shipping the ZX81 game “Stellar Trader” all over the world it would be global news let alone national or local press. Back in the 80’s any surgery like this got coverage. I will bet £100 that no-one can find any article that proves any of these statements. 

[JustAGameDev]

28 minutes ago, Yak said:

He says he spent 40 years hiding away his "physical gender issues". However, photographs he himself publishes show that there is no visible physical manifestation whatsoever of these gender issues - he just looks like a normal bloke. So if these issues exist, they exist entirely within his pants, and at that point nobody knows or cares about them, so why the need to hide?

 

In fact the only manifestation that we DO see is the weird sock stuff, and that goes back years and years, and is constantly flaunted rather than "hidden away".

Whittaker always flaunts the sock thing, they would send random pictures in private chats to employee's and others including myself with a message asking "How do I look" it was a very awkward position to be in, and only after digging into Janes past it was clear it was more of a fetish then anything else.

[ThatGuyMike]

31 minutes ago, Yak said:

He says he spent 40 years hiding away his "physical gender issues". However, photographs he himself publishes show that there is no visible physical manifestation whatsoever of these gender issues - he just looks like a normal bloke. So if these issues exist, they exist entirely within his pants, and at that point nobody knows or cares about them, so why the need to hide?

 

In fact the only manifestation that we DO see is the weird sock stuff, and that goes back years and years, and is constantly flaunted rather than "hidden away".

Typical Jane self-victimising. Makes themselves look like a victim in order to garner sympathies from various demographics.

 

It used to be all about disabilities, then Jane shifted to LGBT+ demographics when that stopped working.

 

Now I'll state for the records here: I absolutely support anyone going through the struggles and hardships that come with being part of the LGBT+ groups. I wish the world wasn't the way it is, I wish everyone got equally rich lives regardless of background, sexuality, ethnicities etc. Same for people with disabilities (heck, my own wife is a wheelchair user). 

 

But Jane would just as easy accuse me of 'hate crimes' against them, because I happened to call out their Athena tech as complete BS several years ago, and then again recently. Given how I know Jane operates, I'm sure they're also accusing me of all manner of rediculous and monstrous things internally at Athena. Because Jane can't explain away why entire teams abandoned them before, they have to create ludicrous stories to frame themself as the ultimate victim.

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, Yak said:

He says he spent 40 years hiding away his "physical gender issues". However, photographs he himself publishes show that there is no visible physical manifestation whatsoever of these gender issues - he just looks like a normal bloke. So if these issues exist, they exist entirely within his pants, and at that point nobody knows or cares about them, so why the need to hide?

 

In fact the only manifestation that we DO see is the weird sock stuff, and that goes back years and years, and is constantly flaunted rather than "hidden away".

Looks like normal bloke when doing 'Press', for the BBC, Mirage, Graftgold, Atari and his local newspaper. 

 

No medical issues and these photos span a good number of years. 

 

Also, since he claims he was digitized for main character in Dark Seed tells Andrew Rosa that's him there in the brown corduroy trousers, if it was him, wouldn't the character be dressed in long girl's stockings? 

 

?

 

 

Can't pull myself singling him out over Gender issues etc, my dentist of over 20 years had a sex change would talk at length about the process, reasons for doing it, impact it had, sad to see her retire, but delighted she is now happy in her new self, landladies nephew currently undergoing the same, treated no differently than before. 

 

 

I just loathe plagiarizing, attention seeking, serial bullshit merchants, who abuse community interviews. 

 

Not done with Kingsley yet either, but that'll be a separate post. 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Just to balance this out.. 

 

Another Jason Kingsley interview, Eurogamer this time.. 

 

 

Atari

"Rebellion was started about 7 years ago by me and my brother Chris in the basement of our shared student house", Jason told us.

The company started out "doing a lot of early work on the Atari ST, Amiga, C64 etc.", but until recently they were probably best known for the original Aliens vs Predator game, which they designed for the now forgotten Atari Jaguar console.."

 

 

#That would of been better worded along lines of:

 

 

Doing SOME misc work on the ST, AMIGA and C64. 

 

Murder, Hunt For Red October, Trivial Pursuit, Blade Warrior and Captain Planet, between Jason and Chris. 

 

 

Thier role on  Jaguar AVP.. 

 

 

But not claiming Atari Star Raiders this time around is something at least. 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to him talking about PC AVP

 

 

"We were contracted by Fox Interactive on the basis that we were the first, and so far one of the few games developers capable of taking a movie licence and making a great game out of it, whilst maintaining the high concept of the film", Jason explained.

Fox's latest attempt at an Aliens game had been Alien Trilogy, a first person shooter that had tried to jump on the Doom bandwagon and fallen rather short. Now they wanted Rebellion to produce a new Aliens vs Predator game for the PC.

 

"Aliens Vs Predator wasn't so much a new version, but a complete re-working of the original concept of being able to play each of the main characters - something which Chris and I came up with initially. That is the key feature of the game, the fact that you can be any of the good or bad guys."

"Additionally only our 3D engine could cope with the running on floors and ceilings - no other engine could do that just yet, so there was design originality, atmosphere, and completely unique technology."

 

 

 

#Well that's the third time they dispute Purple Hampton claim of how and why the Atari team came up with the 3 seperate species campaign idea.. 

 

Jason wants sole ownership of it.. 

 

Funny, there was Jane saying he'd had a version of Jaguar AVP with the Xenomorphs doing exactly as described above, only it had to he cut due to lack of space on the cartridge, your not going to use the interview to call bullshit on that claim then Jason? 

 

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/rebellion

[+MrUnwondering]

Indeed, seems Whittaker's gender situation changes with the wind.

 

Mixed sex 'Siamese' twin, seperated in HULL around 1980. 'Chimera' twin, absorbing his twin prior to birth. 40-60 operations as a child. Born female from the waist down.

 

[gilsaluki]

He has aged pretty well.  Instead of Don Knotts and 'The Reluctant Astronaut', He could be called Leonard 'The Reluctant Technology Dude'.  Being he is retired at a fairly young age, I thinks he did okay in the sell off of Atari. 

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, MrUnwondering said:

Indeed, seems Whittaker's gender situation changes with the wind.

 

Mixed sex 'Siamese' twin, seperated in HULL around 1980. 'Chimera' twin, absorbing his twin prior to birth. 40-60 operations as a child. Born female from the waist down.

 

Bloody 'ell, who did Atari have on the pay role to spot Stellar Trader? 

 

 

Marshall Bravestarr and his eyes of the Hawk? ? 

 

 

We couldn't find it and we looked in the very publications Jane told us it was in. 

 

There's no evidence it existed, anywhere. 

 

 

 

Asteroids was Lyle Rains and Ed Logg ... 

 

Breakout was was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow.. 

 

 

Sam and Leonard shot down the mentored by Tramiel Family, Sam also shot down the VP of Atari claim. 

 

 

Even if AVP was the best selling Jaguar game, Jane never Co-Wrote it, just part of 2 UK/USA Teams. 

 

And Jane, having the best selling game on a console which only sold around 250,000 units at the highest estimates is not something that puts anyone on the team in the record books.. 

 

 

Not touching that getting up in the morning and putting on school uniform, only I'm not going to school stuff... 

[Lostdragon]

On 8/25/2021 at 11:14 AM, Yak said:

He says he spent 40 years hiding away his "physical gender issues". However, photographs he himself publishes show that there is no visible physical manifestation whatsoever of these gender issues - he just looks like a normal bloke. So if these issues exist, they exist entirely within his pants, and at that point nobody knows or cares about them, so why the need to hide?

 

In fact the only manifestation that we DO see is the weird sock stuff, and that goes back years and years, and is constantly flaunted rather than "hidden away".

Just some house keeping. 

 

 

So as stated earlier, Jane's medical issues meaning he has to wear tights, went out the window when talking to likes of Retrogamer Magazine and Andrew Rosa, they didn't prevent him lying about being dressed up and digitized for Dark Seed in his head. 

 

Jane tells his Twitter audience he's not an artist, thus making a further fool of himself telling all and sundry he did the graphics work on Amiga Dark Seed. 

 

 

And it's the Original The Sims he wants to take credit for. 

 

Well Will Wright has never once mentioned Andrew or Jane Whittaker. 

 

B. J West himself and the rest of the Maxis group he asked, who worked on The Sims hadn't either. 

 

 

Burden of proof once again on Jane to prove he had any involvement with the title, he's said misc A. I work, so where's the proof Jane? 

 

[Lostdragon]

At around the 2 minutes mark, Jane starts trying to educate Andrew Rosa on how Goldeneye ended up on the Nintendo 64,Jane talks of MGM agreeing to do a joint project with Nintendo for THE N64.. 

 

 

Now if Jane had done his groundwork, he'd of known Goldeneye was originally earmarked for the SNES and annouced as such in the press... 

 

It was the moved to the then Ultra 64.

 

It's often the little gaps in Jane's knowledge, especially when Jane is trying to educate an interviewer, that made a big difference. 

 

When red flags were raised, we started looking deeper into Jane's claims. 

 

How could someone in such a key position at MGM, an individual who was basically claiming sole responsibility for Goldeneye being signed to Nintendo, an individual who's nominated Rare, not be aware of the games development history? ?

 

 

Once you got a foot in the door with Jane's claims, they soon fell apart. 

 

Jane could also learn some moral compass tips from this individual, who's done the right thing and come clean about the Croc III (Argonaut) claim that gained traction at the time. 

 

 

 

Daniel Rasmussen26-08-2021 at 03:45

I was alerted to this article by rogerscameron95 who also goes by ccrogers15. He contacted me over Facebook about this a couple years ago to quash this rumor and I never got back to him or commented here so I feel like I should so people don’t finger him as being the one who made this up. Croc 3 Stone Of The Gobbos was not an official title by argonaut games.
Here’s the full story:
I was 25 years old when I originally published this rumor on assembler games. I was trying to gain attention for a title I was developing at the time which would have heavily been inspired by Croc. As a way of building interest for croc again, I made up this rumor to build hype so if I went forward with this croc inspired game, people would have interest in the game due to its similarities. It was a plan that was executed poorly (sorry, I was young and dumb). I was fresh out of college and had a major in game design and was going to basically take advantage of Croc and use it to my advantage for my game. I made up the croc stone of the Gobbos rumor on assembler games forums (now defunct) and rogerscameron95/ccrogers15, who was 16 or 17 at the time, believed it as he was just a kid and spread the rumor around. One of the places he spread it to was this site (unseen64) after he contacted the webmaster. He was young and didn’t know and I had lied about it and made him believe me. That image shown in the article was also made by me. It was a random castle model I took from some 3D model site and placed it on the ground and took a screenshot. The engine was literally Unity3D. I manipulated that kid into spreading my rumor for me as a way to build hype and I apologize. I came out to the kid later on and told him I made it up and he contacted me back in 2018 to dispell and come clean and I ignored him but here I am doing so. Why? Because I have terminal cancer and I want to make amends for alot of the people I wronged. I apologize.

So, TLDR: Croc 3 was NEVER in development by argonaut. I made it up. This entire article is a lie. I am coming clean so fans of croc can have closure. I’m sorry.

 

This is all YOU had to do Jane, be honest with the community, but you chose not to and that's why you find yourself in the spotlight, for reasons you'd rather not be. 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

On 7/1/2021 at 6:35 PM, Yak said:

That chap definitely seems to have his own unique views as to what went on back in the day.

 

I was somewhat surprised when one day on his Twitter he just randomly told the world that one of his mates had been a gameplay advisor to me when I was developing T2K.

 

 

Not sure if you've had a listen to this one Jeff, but around the 66:40 mark, Jane starts name dropping you, making out you've been mates for years, chat regularly... 

 

 

https://wafflingtaylors.rocks/2021/04/30/alien-vs-predator-with-jane-whittaker/

 

 

The sound is poor, but around the 70 mins mark, Whittaker claims not only Sam Tramiel at his parents house, but Sam's daughter and the head of Atari Europe.. 

 

So that story has been expanded on further still by Jane... 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Lostdragon

[sirlynxalot]

This sock thing is so bizarre.

[ThatGuyMike]

1 hour ago, sirlynxalot said:

This sock thing is so bizarre.

If it were only the sock thing I'd just call Jane a bit weird and move on.

 

I wish it were only the sock thing.

[sirlynxalot]

Lying and manipulation are bad, but the sock thing sticks out because its so idiosyncratic. And trying to mainstream it by saying its an homage to when the person was a child and forced to wear girls socks just makes me think of this classic The Who song about a mother forcing her son to wear girls clothing.

 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

2 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

Lying and manipulation are bad, but the sock thing sticks out because its so idiosyncratic. And trying to mainstream it by saying its an homage to when the person was a child and forced to wear girls socks just makes me think of this classic The Who song about a mother forcing her son to wear girls clothing.

 

 

 

Umm, the homage to being forced to wear girls socks as a child is only one of the more recent explanations Jane has come out with.. 

 

Earlier ones were not so palatable when he gave them to certain journalists who asked about that aspect of his personality and found the reasons he gave conflicted with what he'd told them originally 

 

 

They still used his as a source, refused to come forward and detail their experiences with him mind. 

 

And it's really something, even the socks aspect, Jane can't stick to one story.. 

 

He wears them as a homage to X and Y, he wears them due to medical issues,  he wears them to highlight diversity. 

 

 

I swear his defence team will point to all the examples covered in this thread, where Jane deviates from the original Ancedotes, expands on them, adds in extra people and extra explanations and somebody from the medical profession will say he's clearly suffering from an advanced form of... 

 

 

And that'll be that.