Anthony Rosbottom

Anthony has a rich and fascinating history across a variety of platforms. Naturally, his pixel skills on the Atari ST are what I found particularly interesting - he contributed to some of my fave games: Prophecy I: The Viking Child, Special Forces, Rock'n Roll, and Zone Warrior. In addition, he is credited with three games I have yet to showcase on AtariCrypt (shame on me), Butcher Hill, Combo Racer, and Xenophobe.

It was a pleasure chatting with this fellow Lancashire lad, and I was thoroughly captivated by his intriguing history. Of all his stories, I loved the one about the left-handed mouse! Unbelievable, and pretty silly when you look back on it, haha. Also, his casual visit to the job centre was a surreal moment that marked the beginning of his new 16-bit career. What a fantastic moment in time!

I want to express my gratitude to Anthony for taking time out of his busy schedule to chat. Not only that, but he kindly waded through a pile of old 'stuff' and found several photos I'm sure you'll love. I've thoroughly enjoyed this journey down memory lane; I hope you all enjoy the interview as much as I have.

If you'd like to read more interviews with other ST Legends, click here!

~ Anthony Rosbottom The Interview ~

Tell us a bit about yourself

Growing up as a kid in South Australia, I was obsessed with my Dad's Commodore 64. As a kid, I used to draw C64 character sprites on graph paper - then typed the pixel values into basic code to display them. Then he got an 8086 PC and I was intrigued by that machine because though the graphics were less colourful than the C64, the machine could run 3D games slightly better and I remember being wowed by early flight simulators.

Anyway, we emigrated to Preston, Lancashire when I was 17. I needed a job and my Dad suggested going to the job centre to see what they had going. The lady there asked me what skills I had and I answered "Gardening and drawing". She went into her filing cabinet and pulled out a job posting. It was a video game company in Preston looking for a graphic artist. I said to her "Sure, I'll give it a go".

So I went along to the interview not expecting much as I had no experience using computers to make game graphics. All I had to show was a portfolio of paper drawings. The company was called DMA Systems (not to be confused with DMA design of GTA fame) and they were just finishing off the Atari ST and Amiga ports of Airborne Ranger for Microprose. The company consisted of two coders. They had a graphic artist but he left near the end of Airborne Ranger so they were looking for a replacement.

After a fifteen-minute chat, I was told I had the job. Since then I've had the occasional gap in employment but I've generally made game graphics since that first job. I didn't think I'd be drawing graphics for a living!

Which game did you enjoy working on?

My favourite Atari ST game to work on was Rock n' Roll, published by Rainbow Arts. It was the first game I worked on where I did all the graphics. I helped finish a few bits of Butcher Hill before Rock n' Roll but this was the first game I was responsible for all the graphics.

The guys at Factor 5 did a great job with the original Amiga version and they included an Amiga mouse and Monitor in the front-end menu. For the ST version, I drew an Atari ST mouse and a colour monitor made for the Atari ST (I can't remember the model number).

AtariST Rock n' Roll was a great training ground for me. The game is like a top-down Marble Madness clone/homage. The player needs to find four different colour keys that match the four different colours of the gate used in the game. This was all straightforward on an Amiga with 32 colours but I only had 16 colours (well 15 colours and the transparent, black colour) to represent the four different colours of the gate, key combos, and the other graphics in the play area. Quite a challenge but satisfying when I got it all working in 16 colours.

This shot was taken during the development of Special Forces.

What do you think is your best work?

I think my best AtariST work was some of the front-end menu screens on Special Forces. It was my last AtariST project and I think I honed my 16-colour skills pretty well by then. My favourite AtariST work would have to be the high score input screen in Viking Child. A bit random but I just like how it turned out.

How did you find the industry?

DMA Systems was a subcontractor for Imagitec which is why I helped out on the graphics for Butcher Hill and how we got to do the Atari ST version of Rock n' Roll. I'm hazy on the details but partway through working on Rock n' Roll, Imagitec acquired DMA Systems and we moved from Preston to Mirfield, West Yorkshire to work in-house at Imagitec.

A few games later and after Prophecy: Viking Child was finished, myself and the two DMA coders, moved back to Preston to start our new studio, Sleepless Knights.

In those early days of the video game industry, particularly through the 16-bit era, there was a culture of either working late nights or drinking in pubs, peppered with outrageous parties a few times a year. Professional project management was in its infancy back then. Attempts were made to plan the projects but they were always a hectic rush at the end to finish.

A cheeky marketing shot from 1990, taken just before the release of Viking Child. While other developers were posing on their red Ferraris, this Fiat was the closest thing they had to a red Italian sports car! (Barry Leitch is top left, Anthony is top right, and Mark Fisher is on the bonnet)

Was the industry all that you had hoped?

Microprose was really good to work for. They didn't micromanage or ask for relentless demos like some publishers do today. The following story isn't directly related to Microprose but it wouldn't have happened if we, the Sleepless Knight team, hadn't visited the Microprose office in Tetbury for a meeting.

We planned to stay there overnight. We booked a room above a rowdy pub and in the evening got chatting to a Scottish guy. We explained how we were big fans of the Highlander film. He explained that he was an extra in the film and used to live in the nearest village to where the Scottish parts were filmed. We excitedly agreed to drive from Tetbury in the morning all the way to the Scottish Highlands to visit the castle and bridge used as locations at the start of Highlander. Which we did and loved it. We loved the Highlands so much that we had two more holidays up there after that.

Tell us about the programs you used.

For the first few years, I worked directly on the AtariST to do the game graphics. I used an art package called OCP Art Studio. It was mainly designed to do sprite animations and you could only work on one 64 by 64 pixel area of the screen at once. It was a bit convoluted to use it to draw whole screens like title pages, loading screens etc. but I got used to it.

Ironically what was harder to get used to was using a mouse on a computer. On my first day of work, they put me in front of an AtariST and the mouse was on the right-hand side of the machine (like they normally are). The trouble was, I am lefthanded for drawing and writing. It didn't occur to me to move the mouse to the left-hand side of the AtariST!

Instead, I drew bad graphics for two weeks while my brain re-wired circuits to my right hand. I thought I was about to get fired for not producing anything useable in my first two weeks but then luckily it all clicked and was, in hindsight,  a blessing. To this day I can use a PC mouse with my right hand and use a pen tablet with my left hand. Super useful and something I wouldn't have learnt if I had the common sense to move the AtariST to the left-hand side.

Mark Fisher's desk while working for Sleepless Knights.

What about the hardware?

I never owned an AtariST while I was working on AtariST games but a few years later, when I was working at Probe, they gave me an AtariST and monochrome monitor which I used to experiment with making dance music on.

As I'm sure you know, an AtariST running a copy of Cubase was the setup to have in the 1990s for music production because of its built-in MIDI ports. The musicians at Probe had moved onto PCs by mid-1990 so the Atari STs were sadly surplus to their requirements.

I sold that ST a little while later but did enjoy owning it.

Any fun tales to tell?

The last Atari ST game I worked on was Special Forces and the animated intro was created unusually. Well, the helicopter shots were. To get animation frames of the helicopter, we bought a toy helicopter and a black and white CCTV camera. The toy helicopter was plastered with gaudy stickers but more troubling was that it was one of those friction toys with wheels that you pushed along the floor.

We took the wheels and axle off the helicopter but I didn't have the time or the skill to cut off the large, plastic bulge on the helicopter body that housed the friction mechanism. So we left the large bulge and pretended it was some sort of surveillance radar housing. We took the stickers off the toy helicopter, painted it with grey primer and basically stop-frame animated the helicopter sliding along a desk, both towards the camera [that was taking black and white photos] and away from the camera.

I then took all the black and white, digitised photos of the helicopter, deleted the background, recoloured them and incorporated them into the animation. This was a convoluted process but it was 1991 before digital cameras were a thing.

"We spent the day at Hoghton Tower, having Keith's wife take some
'marketing photos' of us, for the upcoming release of Special Forces."

Final words...

I have a great fondness for the AtariST. When people find out I created graphics for 16-bit games, they assume I made the graphics on an Amiga and reduced the amount of colours for the AtariST. But back then, especially in the smaller development companies, the Amigas, which were about 25% more expensive than the equivalent ST (the amount of RAM), were reserved for coders working on Amiga versions and musicians who used its audio sample capabilities.

I didn't use an Amiga much at all. If there was a time near the end of a project, I'd jump on someone else's Amiga and increase the colours in the ST graphics. But I always had an AtariST on my desk which I used every day of my early career.

I stayed in video game development till 2021 but since then the industry has crashed and I've had to freelance in other industries. I'm looking into ways of breaking into the Indie game scene and making my own small games. For that, I'll need to dust off my old pixel art skills. I'll keep you posted on how I get on :)

https://anthonyrosbottom.artstation.com

Richard Davey

I'm always excited to meet people from the ST world, both past and present. I'm especially thrilled about this interview as it transported me back to the ST's later days, including my emulator years after migrating to the Apple Mac (PPC/1997).

So far, I've interviewed 16 incredible ST guys, which has been an absolute honour. So, let me present the 17th with great pleasure. Yep, it's Rich who you will know as the brains behind the Little Green Desktop! Not only that, but he's also the fella behind those cute visuals in Stario, a gorgeously cute (cough) Mario ripoff.

I found it interesting to discover his motives and passions for the Atari ST. He knows his games and favours some crackers too (do you remember me playing Color Clash?). Not only that, it was fascinating to discover how he came to love the demoscene and its culture. Hearing of his history concerning the MSX and Speccy +3 was fascinating. At least this lead the way to the mighty Atari ST and its Super Pack.

I found Richard kind and enthusiastic although I was shocked by his "modesty" regarding those pixel skills I admire so much. Especially when you consider the Calvin and Hobbes factor. My gratitude to Richard for his time and I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I have? Hey, after you've finished reading this, check out even more interviews?

Richard is featured within the Demozoo archives where you can view more of his excellent work.

 Richard Davey ~ The Interview 

Hello Richard, tell us all a bit about yourself

I was born in 1975 and for as long as I can remember, if we went around to friends or family and they had a computer or console. That would be me lost to the sirens' call of the devices :) We'd travel to the seaside on holiday, and I'd vanish into the arcades until my money was exhausted. Once it was so I'd just stand there mesmerized, watching others play. They were captivating to me in a way nothing else was.

To this day, I can remember visiting a friend who owned a BBC. He ran a program on it, which was an animated demo featuring dancing skeletons. They would take their heads off, roll them down their bony arms, and flick them back on again, all in time to music. I was enamoured that a computer could do this. I pestered my parents for a home computer. I didn't care which one. I just wanted one!

They relented and bought a Toshiba MSX. It had many wonderful games, including lots of Konami cartridges such as Antarctic Adventure, Hyper Rally, and Yie Ar Kung Fu. It also came with several books on BASIC programming, which I devoured. The first program I entered, I didn't realise you had to press RETURN at the end of each line, so I just moved the cursor down. Strangely enough, it didn't work :)

However, I didn't know any other kids who owned an MSX, and I was frustrated at being unable to swap games at school. So we "upgraded" to a Spectrum +3, with those crazy expensive disks. Of course, in retrospect, it wasn't an upgrade at all. The MSX is significantly more capable, with a great keyboard and some staggering games that load instantly thanks to the cartridge. The +3 was a technical step down, but the volume of games available to me exploded. Interestingly, MSX content is extremely collectable these days, with good-quality items going for hundreds! And I sold ours just to get a Speccy. Ahhh, the joy of hindsight.

It's a shame that no MSX photo was ever taken. At least we have a later capture with his Falcon!

Tell us about the years that followed

It was less than a year after getting the +3 when I started seeing the Atari ST appearing in anger in magazines like C+VG. To this day, I still remember the C+VG issue that had Xenon on the cover (issue 77, March 1988) and the screenshots inside of it. The graphics were like nothing I had ever seen before. A world apart from the Spectrum and even the MSX.

I knew I had to have one. I saved money from my paper rounds and odd jobs, and combined with a birthday, I took the bus into the city with my Mum one weekend, visited a large department store, and bought the Atari ST Super Pack. I carried it home on the bus, beaming from ear to ear. My life had changed forever.

The Super Pack came with a large bundle of games, including Xenon, Thundercats, Buggy Boy, and Ikari Warriors, all of which sucked-up hours of my life. It also came with a few real duffers like Chopper X and Road Wars! But even those were graphically way beyond the Spectrum I was used to.

Using a mouse was great, and I enjoyed the power of GEM and the loading speed from disk compared to tape. In August 1989, I bought issue 1 of ST Format, and the cover disk contained a demo of Bloodwych, GFA Basic, and what I thought was an amazing sampled sound demo: Stringray.

That, combined with menu disks from the likes of the Pompey Pirates, introduced me to the demoscene. It felt like the disks could hold so much content back then. In terms of actual bytes, of course, they couldn't, but if you look at it from the point of view of the variety of content you could fit on them, they were absolute gold mines.

Previously I had been all about playing games on the MSX and Spectrum, with a little artwork and coding - but the ST represented something different. A new computing era for me. Perhaps it was my age? Perhaps I was just mature enough to be able to explore the creative side of computing now? I was growing as a person, the ST was there, growing with me, showing me all of these great new avenues and communities I never even knew existed. And I dove head-first into it.

The power and versatility of the Atari ST must have been mindblowing at that time.
It eventually led to projects like Stario and many more throughout the 90s.

This is a games website, so what are your faves?

Like lots of gamers, I struggle to maintain a consistent list of favourites. Remembering one title sparks off the memory of another, and soon that list has grown beyond its original bounds. So instead, here are some games that sit very fondly in my mind for several different reasons:

• Buggy Boy - this came with my ST and I played it for hours! It's a superb racing game and one of those rare titles that I feel has aged well.
• Bloody Money - there's something addictive about this shooter. I think it's the slow pace, it's almost sedate in nature but dials up the challenge little by little.
• Turrican 2 - the raster sky effects! The music! The speed! That final level, when you're escaping the exploding thunderball in your spaceship! Just perfection.
• Dungeon Master - do I need a reason? It's Dungeon Master, for goodness sake!
• Oids - this game is sublime. A wonderful take on Thrust with a brilliant level editor and great animations. The way you can melt the poor oids with your thruster still makes me grin.
• Dynabusters+ - this PD game is a brilliant take on Bomberman with great sampled sounds.
• Flood - this sits alongside Captain Dynamo as one of those often overlooked but sublime to play platform games.
• Golden Axe - there aren't many arcade conversions I rate on the ST, but this is up there with the best of them.
• Hunter - definitely responsible for my love of sandbox gaming. Who can forget all of those great vehicles at your disposal?
• Nitro and Super Cars 2 - they are in the same camp of great overhead racing games. I like my cars to have guns, otherwise I'm just not interested.
• Special Forces - a tactical espionage/infiltration game from Microprose. I lost hours to this when I should have been doing my GCSEs!
• Robotz - if you own an ST, you know how great this PD game is.

Me - how odd that he didn't mention Stario ;)

Richard has great tastes and we share many favourite Atari ST games.

Let's talk about Stario and how this came about

I was talking to James (of Top Byte) one day, and he told me about this game he had been sent. It was a complete rip of the NES Mario Bros, right down to the graphics! He wanted to release it but knew he legally couldn't. I said I'd be happy to look at the graphics, and we took it from there.

I received a few disks and set about making sure it wasn't entirely Nintendo's pixels that Atari players would see on screen. I used Deluxe Paint ST because it was (and remains) my favourite art tool on the ST, although I actually did the graphics on my Falcon running under ST emulation. It was a real challenge to maintain the speed of the original, the sprites used dramatically limited bit planes. For all of them, I had 3 colours maximum I could use (from a fixed palette of 16).

Going legit...

I was a big Calvin and Hobbes fan, so I redrew Mario to look like a little pixel version of Calvin. The other creatures I modified as best I could. Strange spikey monsters, frogs, etc. You can tell I was losing steam when it came to the tiles? Because those are very similar to the Nintendo originals. All in all, it only took a few weeks to do. I shipped them back, and that was that.

I did have a little interaction with Adrian (the developer), via his Dad, who requested a few changes. But what you see in the final game is largely the first pass at it all.

Looking at it now, the graphics aren't very good. A real pixel artist could have done a much better job, even with the bitplane limitations. Thankfully, when people play it, they mostly focus on how fast and smooth it is - and because it feels responsive and moves well, they can forgive the amateur graphics.

Any regrets about making the change?

No, it would have been taking the piss to release it with the actual Mario graphics still in it! Plus, I don't think any magazines would have reviewed it. So it was sensible to change the graphics. I'm glad I found the old disks with the Mario graphics on, though, so they eventually got released anyway.

Top Byte/Top Dollar

I liked James (who ran Top Byte). He was an enthusiastic guy and had a knack for cultivating a good little community. That is what the Atari was all about at that point. The big commercial companies had left, and it was the grassroots communities that held it all together. I'd talk with him for ages over the phone.

On the downside, I never saw a penny for my work on the game :) So I've no idea how many copies it sold. I doubt it was big numbers, but it did review well, so likely a few hundred copies at least.

Me - I see you have a boxed version. Wanna donate it to the Crypt?

Rich - It sits proudly on my gaming shelf, where it will remain :)

 

Of course, I tried bribing Rich, but sadly, he had none of it. Damn!!

What about other games?

I've never done any serious commercial games. Although to be honest, I never tried to either. I was too fascinated by the PD and demo scene. Games were more just for creating and throwing out there fast, to share with friends, not for 'making money' with them.

Robert Annett, a friend from the Storm / STOS days, and I worked on a couple of games - with me on the graphics. We released Super Tet and Shockwave. He did most of the heavy lifting. I just pixel-pushed for them. Shockwave was a good Asteroids-style game and published as licenseware by New Age PDL, whom I traded disks with a lot at the time. Super Tet was released in 1992 and was a standard Tetris game, although even now, I still like the graphics I did for it. DPaint fills for the win.

Fun fact: the digitised face in the middle of the playfield is Sting. I didn't even like Sting's music, I just had his head on a disk for some reason, and it slotted in well.

I've also worked on other games over the years, including Dopewars, some graphics for Biohazard 2, and a strategy game called Outrider. I was clearly stealing other people's art there! The title screen is obviously a scan from White Dwarf magazine, which I then drew a logo over. And the lady on the credits screen was nicked from an art disk. The 3D intro was taken from the PC. I don't actually remember which game, but I stole the cockpit and 'mini-screens' animation - and then I coded the star field effect and the planet appeared.

The game itself was a fun little strategy title. I did the in-game graphics, which was a nice change of style. Small buildings, tanks, UI, etc. Again, it's not exactly great. I'm absolutely not a good artist! Even so, I enjoyed making it. If I remember correctly, the game was actually called Battle for the Stars. We renamed it to Outrider for Top Byte. There are other silly games, too, like Octopod and GoSub! I still have the graphics lurking around.

All images are kindly supplied by Rich. The middle two are of the unreleased game Blasto.

Tell us about the demos!

I adored the demoscene, and I still do. Storm was never a serious demo group. It was more just a collection of friends, both in school and people I traded disks with. We all used STOS and wanted to make demos with it. So, we did. There are only really two megademos to our name, and I use that term very loosely as the first one didn't even have a proper menu system!

The second demo, Cor Blimey, was mostly the work of Robert Annet and his older brother, who developed a number of the screens and compiled the whole thing together. There were a few STOS crews back then, such as the Radioactive Hedgehogs, and it was a fun rivalry. Although the release of the Misty and Missing Link extensions kind of put paid to that.

The demoscene was and still is all about the community. Sure, there were the technical challenges and one-upmanship, of course. Bragging rights were a big part. But I think most would agree it was the friendships built up and within the demo groups that endured long after the machines fell out of grace.

Storm pushed STOS quite well and Richard created the face image using Crackart (1999).

You appear to enjoy diskmags?

I loved disk magazines! I loved reading them, and I loved helping create them. The ST had loads of great mags: ST News, Maggie, Ledgers, Power Mag, STOSSER, Ictari, etc. They fascinated me, and I spent many a fun evening reading and writing for them.

I bought one of the first Atari Falcon 030s on the market. It was crazy expensive. I had worked for months to save up for it! Yet it was and remains the pinnacle of Atari home computing. I enjoyed many years with my Falcon, running the Falcon Owners Group, a big PD library, publishing a magazine, and squeezing every last drop of love out of that machine before the PC finally took over the world. I still have a Falcon today, which I recently renovated (recapped, new parts, etc) - but perhaps that's a story for another day?

The first 3 (maybe 4) issues of Falcon Update were printed. I've sent you issue 1 and some pics from 2 and 3, but I have not scanned the whole of issue 2. I did scan the whole of issue 3 but don't have the time to convert it to a PDF right now.

The diskmag used a magazine shell that I coded in GFA Basic 3 on my Falcon! I bet it would work on Hatari, might be worth trying. I worked with Anthony Jacques to create a Falcon-specific shell, which was based on the Windows 95 concept of using a start menu. It was nicely coded, lovely for the time - but sadly never used and never released. I did release the prototype shells years ago, but no actual magazine was made using it.

Me - I cannot wait for Rich to complete PDF issues 2 and 3!!

Again, I think it all comes back to the social aspect. I know I keep harping on about this, but for me, that is what made the ST and Falcon special. It wasn't the machines themselves (although that did play their part). It was the people I met while using them. Some of which I'm still in contact with today.

Richard is right, the ST/Falcon has an incredible community to this day!

I couldn't end without asking Rich questions about LGD

Ahhh, good old LGD :) I created the first version of the site back when emulation was really taking off. PaCifiST had been released, and I loved it! I still had most of my Atari disks and a few CDs or burned games, and I was working for an ISP, helping look after their servers and working on web development full-time. So it was the perfect marriage at the perfect time.

When it came to creating the site, I knew it had to look like GEM. I also had all of the Pompey, Automation, Medway, etc. disks available. So I stuck them on my PC in the office of the ISP I worked for and ran an FTP server. When I put the site live, it utterly saturated the bandwidth on our line! So I had to introduce some rate limits, but the ball had started rolling, and visitors to LGD spread like wildfire.

Lots of other ST sites were popping up at the time: Demonburps ST Emporium, Lunar Jetmans site, etc. It was fun to be part of all of this. Like the old community was coming back together again, this time via the web and emulation. I contacted the developer of PaCifST, and LGD became its official home. After which, we added WinSTon (one of my all-time favourite ST emulators), and it grew from there.

LGD itself went through a few variations over the years, adding in the games database, the magazine scans, the YM player music, the TOS ROMs, and more. You have to remember back then, most people were still connecting via dial-up, so a nice speedy site was important. It was a wonderful few years, and I met a lot of famous ST legends thanks to it. I'm pleased with the role it took in bringing the Atari ST back into the public consciousness. Plus, I still believe it did it elegantly, much more so than most other sites at the time :)

And yes, I really ought to get around to fixing it one day. I've gone into the ancient PHP code and had a look a few times over the years, but wow, it's really old. I mean decades old. And I've never justified the time it would take to redo it so it could run on a modern server. One day, perhaps...

An iconic moment and website for many of us back then. Much loved!!

What are you up to these days?

I run my own company, Photon Storm (named after the classic Jeff Minter ST game!), and my day job is the creation/maintenance of the game framework Phaser. This allows developers to create games in and for the browser, although you can take them out to Steam and mobile stores. It's open source, heavily inspired by my love of the Atari, the demoscene, and all things retro, and is financially supported by its great community.

It may be 4 decades later, but that excitement and thrill I got from computers and gaming back in the 80s has never left me. And I'm very happy that I can bring this to fresh new developers today. It's like everything has come full circle. I guess some things just never change :)

Rich - Photon Storm Ltd.

Tipbit: I collect ARC games and Photon Storm

is the only one I've left to buy! #spooky

One more thing...

Hey, before you go, how about some insider photos from Richard's years throughout the 90s? These photos are excellent but the PDF of Falcon Update is unbelievable. My gratitude to Rich for everything and thank you for taking the time to answer all my Qs over such a long period of time - we eventually got it done! :)

• The exclusive PDF download - Falcon Update issue #1 (including covers of issues 2/3)

Don't rush off just yet! Check out this final run of images kindly donated by Rich...

Richard's room at university was taken around 1993.

This photo was taken during his Falcon Update years - around 1994/95.

Check this out, the original Stario with that annoying Italian plumber Mario!

Now this is a cool image!

Does anyone remember this remarkable image?

Taken from issue 7 of Falcon Update.

Unreleased shell from FOG issue #10.

Simon Butler

Earlier this year I was fortunate to buy ARC's Defender II in mint condition and I shared a photograph of it on Twitter. Now, I'm not generally a fan of social media but it got many likes and even a response from none other than Simon Butler! Yep, the fella who designed much of the awesome graphics for this fantastic shooter. Not to mention many more ST games.

For me, talking to anyone from the 16-bit industry is always a surreal moment. Think about it, these are the people behind the games we bought and played. Not only that, but years later we get to meet and chat with these legends. It's weird, but a nice weird. ;-)

Simon worked on a number of games over the years and is credited for many Atari ST games: Addams Family, Gazza II, Platoon, and Star Breaker (I need to review these games!!). Wait, there are even more under his belt which I've already featured right here on AtariCrypt: 9 Lives, Elf and Badlands Pete. A mixed bag alright with one thing in common - awesome visuals!

Personally, I found Simon to be frank and straightforward, yet humble and possibly unaware of the joy he's provided with his pixels. I would like to thank Simon for kindly taking the time to chat and I hope y'all enjoy this interview?

Simon Butler - The Interview

Hello Simon, please tell us a little about yourself

I entered the games industry in 1983 almost as it began. Imagine software was in its infancy and my best friend Steve Cain was head of the art department there. He asked me to help on a project, Pedro’s Garden even though I had never done any game graphics before, but who had? I did two days of work and was paid a ridiculous amount of money. Regardless of my regular calling into the Imagine office to see friends, I never thought that this was going to be my career for the next forty years.

I made my way through the 8-bit days, working at independent development houses and finally found myself in-house at Ocean Software. While there, I honed my craft, such as it is until I got itchy feet and wanted to work on the 16-bit machines. At the time, this was not on the horizon for Ocean, so I quit and went to work with Steve Cain again at his new company Frames. It was here that I first encountered the Atari ST.

Was it fun working for Arc and Ocean?

It was just a job. It didn’t matter who I worked for, and the only real exception was that bigger studios gave you a more concrete sense of permanence, while smaller teams lived from day to day and the spectre of it all falling apart was always looming at the edges. I did my fair share of freelance work from the spare room in my house as this was par for the course for a solo pixel pusher. (I love that description, pixel pusher! -Steve)

Not the best game in the Atari ST's catalogue but the comical sprites are exceptional.

What software tools did you use?

I rarely sketched on paper by this point in my career as I found it almost as quick to simply doodle on the screen. So the software I used was Degas Elite which wasn't as powerful as the tools found on the Amiga, but it suited me. And I thought I was more than reasonably proficient at the time.

Did you enjoy creating back then?

I enjoyed creating the graphics for Nine Lives as I was given carte blanche to do what I wanted. Even though the project was less than amazing on release due to an appalling push scroll.

I loved every minute of working on the Addams Family, regardless of the main platform being the Snes, but I beavered away on my Atari ST at home and in the Ocean office like a madman. I had total freedom, and I just threw out sprites like there was no tomorrow. It was one of the very few occasions in my career where every day was an absolute joy. (This shows because the Atari ST game looks so beautiful - Steve)

Addams was fun from start to finish and I still have one or two examples of the work I did to this very day...

  
Yes, I had to ask him for proof!!! These two Addams Family animations are simply awesome.

Star Breaker is really cool. No?

I was still using Degas at that point. It was a title for ARC games and at that point I was working for Frames, another company formed by Steve Cain. I vaguely remember all manner of graphical restrictions on this one so unsurprisingly, I was less than happy with the finished product.

What happened with Gazza II?

This was a title I worked on for the laughingly names Active Minds. We were up against the clock from day one and the game design was virtually non-existent as such. We did the best we could while also working on Total Recall. It was one of the worst-managed companies I have experienced and that is saying something.

What involvement did you have with the underrated Platoon?

I did the design for Platoon while at Ocean. They sent me to London to watch a private viewing of the movie months before it was released! I did storyboards for every level and oversaw production on each version. It received good reviews at the time and is one of the titles I am most proud of being involved with.

Platoon is a really good game I thought. Must play it some more and get a review done!

What involvement did you have with Elf?

My involvement with Elf was merely the bitmaps between levels, so I can take no credit for the in-game graphics. They were certainly impressive, but I personally felt the game was lacking in certain areas, but others thought otherwise. Either way, it was yet another title on my CV.

What about your role in Defender II?

I was working on another title at the time and, through this project, I was somehow brought in to do a few bits on Defender Two. I have vague memories of doing spaceship animations, but whether they found their way into the game is anyone’s guess. I do know that the title screen is mine as I spent a lot of time trying to emulate the style used in the logo for a hair-metal band I liked back then. I was quite happy with the result.

Elf is an adventure of epic proportions although it appears not so for Simon!

Who inspired you?

There were pixel pushers I thought had done a sterling job on this title or that, but I never aspired to emulate them, nor did I feel I was in competition. As I said before, it was a job. I pushed pixels and if my art manager was happy and the salary cheque cleared every month then all was fine in the world of Simon Butler. A very mercenary view perhaps, but I had a family to provide for and artistic integrity doesn’t pay the bills.

Any funny tales to tell?

I have plenty of funny stories from my tenure in the industry, but any that might be ST related seems to have disappeared along with my hairline! (Yikes, I never expected that reply - Steve)

Badlands Pete. The visuals are marvellous and I love the tones with their dusky palette.

Do you still have that Atari ST?

I cannot recall how I managed to acquire my Atari ST that served me so well in my 16-bit freelance years but I do know that I sold it to a friend. These days, I have no old hardware as I am vehemently anti-old school.

I see them as dust hoarders that have no place in my life. As the years have mounted up I have slowly de-cluttered the parts of the house where I stored vinyl, cassette and CD albums, movies on VHS and DVD and what few things I have from “back in the day” are all stored digitally.

 

Any final words to share?

Since 1983 when I stumbled blindly into pixel pushing I have continued to do exactly the same thing, push pixels. I am still professionally involved in game development and, if truth be told, have taken time off from doing spot effects for my latest game in order to answer these questions. There have been highs and lows, but this whirlwind ride is something I never planned and would not have missed for the world.

I’m a gamer and a game creator and this is not only something I am eternally grateful for it is a badge of honour I will defend against the Johnny-come-lately types of the YouTube brigade who profess to be historians of my past. If anyone is playing anything from the ST era that bears my name I can only apologise.

We tried our best, but if it makes you smile, then we got it right. (Got it dead right I'd say - Steve)

Jon Garry

Jon Garry is the man behind one of the best and most liked alternatives of Pacman, H-Mec. The maze is still there but gone are those dozy ghosts in favour of a sinister AI that gave it a Lode Runner feel.

And it worked so well H-Mec appeared on an ST Action cover disk!

I think H-Mec was a hit because it was instantly playable and addictive. In fact, it is a simply great game and one that sported superb visuals & audio. Oh, and was exclusively available for the Atari STe!!

Yes, his first game and already he was making good use of the enhanced hardware - extra colours, Blitter, smooth scrolling and DMA audio. Later on, a sequel was released along with a new game called Oh No! Not More Radioactive Mineshafts. H-Mec II was basically more of that winning formula but his Mineshaft game was something new and much underrated with simple gameplay mechanics yet, immensely addictive. And I loved it.

I was eager to contact Jon for an interview and he agreed. Heck, he actually seemed giddy about the idea and was a pleasure to chat with, a great bloke. I was impressed to discover the part his Dad played in this - come on, he sold the family car! However, what was he thinking about games like Ghouls 'n Ghosts! Whaaaaat??

I'd like to thank Jon for being a great sport over the last few months and I hope y'all enjoy this interview!

- The Jon Garry Interview -

Hello Jon, tell us all about your hiSTory

My coding life began on the ZX Spectrum when I was about 8. Funnily enough, around 1982, my Dad sold the family car to buy us the computer and that's where I first got the coding bug. How he got that past Mum, I've no idea! He thought that computers were the future and bought it for us to play on. I cut my teeth learning to program and the first game we played was Manic Miner which had a huge impact on me. From the moment I saw it, heard it and played it I loved it. The colours, the sound, the humour, the obstacles, the names of the levels!

I think of Manic Miner as the "Sgt Pepper" of computer games so, 1982 was where my coding journey started. Whilst I loved this, I wanted to know how to make it myself. Fairly soon, I went from "Guess the number" to understanding screen coordinates, variables, algebra, sprites, etc. In short, I taught myself a lot of maths and, by the age of 10, I was able to make a platform game more like "Lode Runner" than Manic Miner, which never happened.

Christmas Day around 1989 I guess when we got our Atari STe, our brand new "16-bit" computer and we couldn't wait to plug it in! We were lucky that my Dad had a bonus from work and used that to buy us the STe. I think it's the most important present that I ever had, just because of the impact it had on my life. I can't thank them enough for that. They weren't flush with cash and used that bonus to treat us to an extra present.

By the time the Atari came, I understood BASIC and the maths behind games. This helped me move back into programming — wanting to make my own version of games I was seeing on the STFM and Amiga. I was used to only having BASIC on the Spectrum so it was strange to find you could choose your language on the ST.

I found STOS too slow so that was out of the window. By the same token, the effort needed to learn Assembly seemed huge. I didn't know C at the time and it seemed difficult to use the tools. However, when I came upon GFA Basic, I started coding. GFA was surprisingly fast on the Atari STe, probably not much slower than C.

In the meantime, I'd started to see what the STe could do on demo disks and more people were getting them. So, I was getting introduced to the idea that the Atari STe could — easily - have full-screen smooth scrolling, lots of action on the screen, digi-music, no borders and a 256 colour palette.

Hey Jon, you're in luck! Manic Miner has been released for the Atari ST (by Peter Jørgensen)

What games did you play?

I just didn't code all the time and still did lots of other non-computer things. I was — still am — a huge football fan and spent hours with friends playing Kick Off 2 and Player Manager. To this day I still think those games were almost perfect — simple, fun and once you'd got around the ridiculous speed of the games they were utterly addictive. I think our Mum and Dad must have bought tens of joysticks after we wrecked them lobbing the keeper!

I also loved playing Castle Master, Terry's Big Adventure, Xenon 2, Stunt Car Racer, Continental Circus, Toki, Millennium 2.2, Speedball 2, Mega Lo Mania, Wonderboy, Vroom, Giana Sisters to name a few!

I loved Ghouls N Ghosts and Ghost N Goblins on the arcade, but the ST ports were poor. Well, any game on the STFM just wasn't as smooth as the arcades, or in truth even compared to the Amiga. I thought they were the 'past' and basically were no good for arcade games and that the STe was the future. So, the combination of coding, watching demos and seeing the STe as the future paved the way for what would become H-Mec!

Tell us about H-Mec

From memory, the first 'application' I wrote was ProbeST which allowed you to 'rip' music and graphics from games. ProbeST was actually a great help in ripping music to use in the two H-Mec games! In terms of H-Mec, I think that technically it was quite impressive for its time. It couldn't run on the STFM, certainly not smoothly.

All the coding for H-Mec was in GFA Basic - a superb language at the time. It supported the Blitter chip which meant that I could use this chip to do full-screen smooth scrolling using about 20% (from memory) of the CPU. This meant that I could 'afford' 20% for digi-chip music and the rest for the rest of the game. To see that full-screen smooth scrolling with the music and the gameplay was quite something at the time.

So, you have a game that is smooth, great graphics, great music and is quite playable. I sent it off to a few PD libraries to share. I thought it was a good game, but didn't expect much more than a few decent reviews. Just after I posted the disks, we all went on a family holiday for a couple of weeks.

What happened next?

When I came back, I had about 30 letters waiting for me telling me how they'd loved the game on the ST Action cover disk... but I never sent it to ST Action! I was puzzled! So I went to our local newsagents and sat on the shelves was ST Action. As you'll know, ST Action was 'the' ST gaming magazine which always had commercial game demos on the cover disk but for that month it was H-Mec.

For anyone to remember this game after all these years is touching. It's hard to explain but something I created as a 17-year-old is still available on the internet and someone is asking about it.

My game competed with commercial games! The review said something like 'this game was too good to review so we put it on the cover disk!'. This was an STe-only, PD game on their cover disk and I was blown away. I got loads of letters from all over Europe and the UK for weeks afterwards which was brilliant!

Forget Pac Man, the ghosts here are brutal and never give up until you are dead meat!

Where did the name H-Mec come from?

From memory, it came from the noise of a dog barking in the local park I used to walk past to get the bus!
I remember hearing a dog bark, and it sounded like "H-Mec" and it stuck with me for some reason. It didn't mean anything as such but I guess to me at the time it also sounded slightly modern too! :)

So what about your other games?

H-Mec 2 was just adding some other ideas on really — the pointed traps and graphics. I'd gone to University to study Computer Science and I just didn't have time anymore. I think it was just added a few things like the spikes, updating the graphics and (rather primitive) AI. I had too many other things to do then!

Radioactive Mineshafts was a quick idea — it certainly didn't take long to write. I didn't think it was good enough to release as a full game (see the falling block graphics). The penguin character and the jumping action were the start of a platform game — remember, I was hugely influenced by Manic Miner - which didn't happen.

Funnily enough, I always thought it was a better game than H-Mec and in recent years when I've played, I still feel the same. I just think it was on the same disk as H-Mec 2 and was pretty much overlooked. A few years ago, I did think about porting it to phones as I think it would work where you could tilt the phone to control the penguin!

Which game are you most proud of?

Without a doubt, H-Mec. After I did my degree, I applied to do a Masters degree in Multimedia. I went for an interview with the Doctor who was running the course and his first question was "What is multimedia?". I spoke about graphics, music, animation, co-ordinating them as well as computer science aspects. Of course, it led to H-Mec and the magazine reviews. He was impressed by the reviews and we spent a lot of time talking about it. H-Mec got me a place on the course to my Master's degree, and basically kick-started my professional career. 

A few years later, I remember thinking it was quite an achievement to have written the game. Especially when I think about how much I'd taught myself. Remember, there was nothing in schools to teach kids anything about programming. I taught myself from magazines and library books — there was no internet! To go from ZX Spectrum basic to understanding blitter chips, CPU cycles, ripping music and spending months working on a game was really hard work. The reviews it received were astonishing and I am really proud of the work I did.

My Dad was right about computers being the future and both myself and my brother work in IT. If my Dad hadn't sold the Beetle or used his backpay differently, my life would have been different. So, H-Mec definitely is the one I'm most proud of — technically impressive, decent gameplay, great reviews and helped me enormously!

I see this screen a lot but it always makes me smile thinking about H Mec's "grilling" lol

Inspirations?

Demos were definitely a huge inspiration. Whilst H-Mec isn't a demo it shares some of their traits — the big palette, smooth scrolling, and the intro screen look like a demo disk. H-Mec was a platform game to start with, but it was just easier to do mazes rather than something like Rainbow Islands!

I'd say, on the whole, I am still proud of the work I did and it definitely surpassed any expectations I had!

Also, quite a few people did donate which was very kind and generous. I had enough to pay for a few nights out which was great! I also had quite a few football pennants from around Europe sent to me as 'thank yous' as well which was lovely. I had all of them up on my bedroom wall for many years after!

What was it like being a part of the ST scene?

I loved it! Whilst a lot of the Atari ST scene was done through posting disks, I was also a member of a very social ST Club in Oldham. This club was based at the Bowling Green in Hollinwood, eventually moving to the Lancaster Club in Failsworth and, every week, about 50+ people would turn up armed with STs, TVs and 4-way plug sockets! You'd have rooms, where each plug socket had a 4-way in and each socket on the 4-way had a 4-way in which had 4 ways in with all these ST's and TVs plugged in!

The club was very friendly and had a real mixed bag of members. People from 8 to 80, some were there just to play Kick Off 2 every week, others to swap games, others came to chat and others had connections to the Pompey Pirates and download games on a primitive internet. It was very, very social and was enormous fun. Just lots of people, of all ages and backgrounds, with an interest in the Atari ST coming together to chat and have a good time. Nowadays, it would all be on the internet and nowhere near as social. I do miss those days.

Through ProbeST and H-Mec, I got in touch with other people around Europe too - Germany and Finland in particular. The PD Libraries were great and I'd regularly swap disks with people who ran them. All this would be done on the internet today, but I think that it was more personal back then as you had to -write- to someone. Whether it was the club in Oldham or the letters to Europe I do feel privileged to have experienced it.

Jon and Sally?

In terms of the handles I had, I can't quite remember them, to be honest. I was obviously Jon, and Sally was our dog haha! I think the names were probably to make it look like lots of people had worked on the games but in reality, it was me coding and others did the music and graphics. Sadly, Sally the dog died although she did extremely well for an Irish Red Setter and lived till she was about 17.

Imagine yourself back in the day knowing people who had contact with the Pompey Pirates!

Did you make music with your STe?

Whilst I can play a bit on the keyboards and I can play the guitar, I never wrote music on the Atari. At University, I did do some sampled music for fun, but nothing decent. I was a big fan of "Count Zero" who I thought made the best Atari music. I loved his version of the end of Tubular Bells and it's no surprise it's used in everything I did!

Very creative!

At the time, I didn't consider making games to be particularly creative, but as I've got older I have a different perspective. In my teens, I thought being creative was about painting, films, playing music or drama, etc. Not programming. But when you write a game from scratch it's one of the most creative things you can do!

You start with a white screen and nothing happens. You then create a world — the visuals, the sound, what it looks like and the rules. And how each screen flows from one part of the game to another. It's a VERY creative process and when you play a good game, you can tell that someone has really thought about the whole experience.

I'd also written some other tools that kind of grew out of H-Mec as well. ProbeST, was well-received when it was pushed out to PD libraries. It was written by me and my friend Clover at the time. We had lots of ideas, but most didn't come to fruition. It's probably just like someone in a band — you start 500 songs and finish one!

Any unfinished games lurking in the attic?

No, but I started a football manager game and I thought if I could combine Championship Manager with the in-game graphics of "Football Manager" I used to play on the Spectrum, it would be a winner. Sadly, it never went anywhere but it did give me an appreciation of what's involved.

I honestly used to start a new game every week, but most of them didn't go far. Writing a game from end-to-end takes effort and determination and I fully respect anyone who's actually done it. It probably took the best part of a year from start to finish to do H-Mec. Obviously, I wasn't working on it all the time, but it's a real effort to make games.

As I've said, the Spectrum was an influence on me and a game that we loved was "Lords of Midnight" and the sequel "Doomdark's Revenge". I must have started 100 versions of these on the Atari but again, nothing came of it. As soon as you try to make a copy of a game, you really get to see what absolute geniuses people are.

This didn't make it to the top of Jon's list, but I thought this was a darn excellent 'hopper'

What happened after your STe days?

I went to University in 1993 and I didn't have the time anymore to write games. I moved away from home, I stopped going to the club and the letters became harder to keep up with. Still, I used my Atari to write code and essays for a couple of years until I had to get a PC - which again, my parents got for me. It had an astonishing 8MB DX processor (a good one at the time) and a hard drive.

However, compared to the Atari it was such a big, clunky, noisy, ugly machine that couldn't do a lot and the graphics and sound were TERRIBLE. Windows wasn't a patch on the GEM Desktop, but it felt like I had to move. I was learning languages like Pascal, Smalltalk, Assembly and Ada which weren't available on the ST. I was genuinely amazed that Windows was seen as the future at the time, as it was truly awful not to mention - unreliable and slow. The languages just didn't have the power of GFA Basic either!

However, in recent years as Windows improved and emulators appeared I started looking back at the games on Hatari. It really is great to go back and play the games I remember as a kid! Some haven't aged too well but I still get the buzz seeing the old classic games. However, I could never quite get H-Mec to work and maybe, part of me didn't want to be embarrassed by what a 17-year 'me' made!

But part of me wanted to see it and I saw your YouTube video. It's a peculiar feeling though. Remember, this is me in my mid-forties looking back at a game I wrote as a 17-year-old so you will be looking at yourself back in time. When I look at it, I am quite proud although I can see that 16/17/18-year-old boy in there. I can still see 'me' in the game and what I was thinking. I do think 'he/me' was a very good programmer - I'd hire him today!

What are you doing today?

Nowadays, I'm a professional programmer who pays the bills writing web applications and business software. I haven't written games for many years now, but I feel incredibly lucky to work as a programmer.

If you'd had asked me what I wanted to be as a 10-year-old, other than a footballer, I would have loved to have been a computer programmer. I think if you asked my parents, I bet they'd agree that selling that old VW Beetle was one of the best decisions they made!

This is a photo from around 1991 of Jon and his mate "Booze" playing Kick Off 2.

And Finally...

It's funny really, but when you got in touch it brought back a LOT of memories. I could have written a book! As I said, I was touched that you got in contact and it's quite something to think that something I did nearly 30 years ago is still available on the internet. I can absolutely guarantee that most people won't be able to say that! The fact you and others are preserving that slice of late 80s and early 90s culture should be applauded.

I've been very lucky in my life that my parents supported me and my brother, selling the family car, getting us the Spectrum and later the ST and the life it's given us. I feel very lucky to have been part of a wonderful scene in the late 80s/early 90s and met some fantastic people. I genuinely feel very honoured that you asked to do this interview and I send a very heartfelt "thank you" for bringing back many wonderful memories!

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This interview was a pleasure and Jon is a great bloke. Fancy reading more Atari ST interviews?