Bob Jacob - Interview Questions wanted.

[zapiy]

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[align=center:2lmx8xy2][size=120]Bob founded Cinemaware in 1985, Cinemaware's first title was the popular Defender of the Crown, a swashbuckling adventure featuring graphics that were considered extraordinary for the era, and became the hallmark of Cinemaware's games. Cinemaware went on to release a string of hits based on a classic category of movies.

A List of some of their games.

    Defender of the Crown (1986, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, NES, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, DOS, Macintosh)
    S.D.I. (1986, Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, DOS, Macintosh)
    The King of Chicago (1987, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Macintosh)
    Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon (1987, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS)
    The Three Stooges (1987, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Commodore 64, DOS, NES)
    Rocket Ranger (1988, Apple IIGS, Amiga, Commodore 64, DOS, NES)
    TV Sports: Football (1988, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS)
    Lords of the Rising Sun (1988, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS)
    It Came from the Desert (1989, Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, Turbo Grafx 16, DOS)
    The Kristal (1989, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS)
    TV Sports: Baseball (1989, Amiga)
    TV Sports: Basketball (1990, Amiga, DOS)
    Antheads: It Came from the Desert 2 (1990, Amiga)
    Wings (1990, Amiga)
    TV Sports: Boxing (1991, Amiga, DOS)

Their games generally debuted on the Amiga, and then ported to others, such as the Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC (running under DOS) and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Defender of the Crown is one of the most ported Cinemaware games.

It gives me great pleasure to bring you another chance to ask one of the great gaming icons from gaming past your burning questions.

Enjoy
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[TL]

Quite a few of their games came out on the PC Engine/TurboGrafx too like the TV Sports series and It Came From The Desert.

[Rogue Trooper]

Q)I seem to recal someone from the company (think it might have been the programmer of said game) writing into ACE Magazine in response to their poor scoring review of Lords Of The Rising Sun (Amiga i'd guess).Was this a common policy for your company, if/when you felt a game had been unfairly treated? and how much impact did reviews have on game sales?.

Q)It's been claimed that when S.D.I was in process of being ported to another format, it's release was delayed as the company had asked the programmer to add extra features and such needed extra time.So, is this claim true? if so:which format was it and what extra features did you ask for and why?

Q)How badly did piracy effect you on ST/Amiga as it seemed rife when i was an ST owner in UK at the time.

Q)Games like Rocket Ranger and It Came From The Desert were very much inspired by sci-fi films and comics of the 1950's etc, but did you go even further back, to silent film era (1920's) in terms of inspiration for your game Wings? as it's action sequences are very similar to those featured in the 1927 film of the same name and what about a personal fav.of mine, Aces High.

Also, did you look at real life accounts from serving WWI pilots, war reports that sort of thing?


Q)Setting a game in France during WWI, putting player in role of a airforce pilot, must have been incredibily challenging as the fighter plane technology was crude by todays standards to say the least (really in it's infancy) and the average life expectancy of a new pilot was just 3 weeks!!!.Did you ever have second thoughts about setting the game in such an era? (really glad you did though as game is legendary!).

Q)In terms of producing 'Cinema-esq' games on the 8/16 bit micros., who (if anyone) would you say your competition was? and did the ever make you 'up your game' (for example change a gameplay sequence) or do you feel you had that corner of the market to yourselves?.
(nearest i can think of is Iron Lord by Ubisoft which was a Defender Of The Crown variant, mimiced your cinema-esq screens, mini-games etc)


Q)Rocket Ranger had to be censored in Germany (all Nazi references removed etc) so plot had Aliens instead of Nazi's, but did you not think players might wonder why Aliens with space travel tech.would be using primitive WW2 rocket technology?.Basically was it a ruddy headache doing game for German market? lol.

Q)what happened to the MD/Genesis version of It Came From The Desert? i believe it was a very different game in terms of plot and gameplay, being more akin to an overhead shooter.Why the changes to game format and further canning of project?.

Q)Did you ever consider bringing any of your titles to MCD/Sega CD? I'd have thought it was the ideal platform:CD storage and MCD sprite hardware.....things like Wings etc would have been great.


Q)Were you aware of the impact It Came... had on other game designers? thinking of Command and Conquer:Red Alert's secret mission:It Came From red alert.

[Rogue Trooper]

Q) the PC CD ROM version of Defender Of The Crown was said to have had the gameplay untouched as a deliberate step, in order to see how the consumer reacted to having high-quality audio, added to existing gameplay, so player was treated to CD quality audio and a full soundtrack which had a narrator speaking in an 'Olde English' accent, which was hoped to make game more atmospheric, but was there ever any plans to do anything with the visual side, now you had extra storage avaiable?.Also, how did customers respond to the PC CD version? was far better sound a big enough incentive to purchase?.

Q)In most of the games on C64 i saw, you really seemed to be pushing the hardware (Sinbad, Defender Of The Crown and Rocket Ranger looked fantastic) so, what went wrong with The 3 Stooges? on the 1 hand it was technically great with speech, fantastic looking digitised pictures etc, but in-game, we were 'treated' to some very blocky sprites.

Q)Your games were sometimes refered to as 'nice graphics, shame about the gameplay' by the press, do you feel that was a little unfair? and which was the priority-the technical side (audio/visual) or just making a fun to play game?.

Only ask as i know many people gave up on Sinbad as the arcade sequences were very frustrating, 1 false move and that was it and also The 3 Stooges became too repetitive far too quickly.

Q)You seemed to very much 'respect' audio as a medium in so many of your games, with great effort being done to ensure the atmosphere created by it was just right, things like the radio music in IT Came From The Desert sounding like it was playing through a radio of that time period, how big a percentage do you feel the medium of audio played in capturing the atmosphere of what you wanted?.So many games from that era seemed to give the lions share of resources to the visual side of things.

[Rogue Trooper]

Q)would you be 'o.k' talking us through the rough patch where Cinemaware went under and you set up your own console development company, Acme Interactive' and how Mirrosoft struck a deal where Cinemaware name became property of Mirrorsoft (the UK Marketing company) and all development was to be carried out by Acme....and what happened not long after said deal.

I believe Rollerbabes was the 1st project under said deal, with PC version being worked on with Amiga version planned.How far along did work actually get? saw preview shots, looked rather promising...

Q)who did your fantastic magazine advert art work? (Loved S.D.I's, Sinbad's and defender Of The Crown's) and were you ever worried about the ahem 'nature' of them?.The sexist crowd had a bloody field day from what i recal, all women powerless in need of rescuing etc etc, mind you that lass on the Defender Of The crown, her ahem, assets bursting out of her frock etc, bet she was glad to be on the horse, must have killed her back walking about with a chest like that....

 

Q)Your various sub-games often seemed very influenced by the arcade Rocket ranger for example had you shooting down Nazi fighters in a very Space Harrier-esq sequence, Wings had a Zaxxon-esq sequence etc.Did your coders often try and get a mini-version of their fav.games into your productions?

[Rogue Trooper]

Q) How on earth did you cram so much into TV Sports Football (Amiga/ST)? A full blown football game, stacks of play, options etc, in-jokes (Rocket Ranger flys past the stadium etc) 2 plavers Vs each other, 2 Players VS the computer, superb visuals etc.

Q) A few magazines listed C64 versions of both SDI and Lords Of The Rising Sun.Do you know if work was ever started on either and how far along they got? (and why they were canned).Or was it just a case of one or both being little more than 'talked about' projects?.

Q) Amiga:Wings, It Came from The Desert and Antheads were (if my hazy memory serves me well) 1 Meg only.! Meg Amiga's were'nt that 'common place' in UK at time, did the possibilty of lost (UK) sales concern you? or did you hope the sheer quality of the games would be the incentive folks needed to buy extra memory?. (TV sports Basketball had extra Sound FX for 1 Meg owners as well i think..)


Q)Who came up with the brilliant adverts in TV Sports Basketball (Sewer's Beer, Club Ded-get buried on a desert island!, Psyke Shoes (The neurotics choice!), Slims Toad Hut:Home of the Froggie Flapjack! etc? very well done..

[TrekMD]

Q) A licensed version of Defender of the Crown is currently being developed for the Intellivision.  What was your reaction when you were first approached about this?  Were you aware of the active community of developers for retro consoles prior to that?

Q) Do you see any other Cinemaware games as games that could be released on Intellivision?

[zapiy]

Nice one guys, any others want to get in on this?

[Greyfox]

Q: For a long period, the Amiga always seemed to get the exclusives releases, than failed to appear on the Atari ST was there a marketing reason behind this?

Q: Why did 'it came from the Desert" never appear on the Atari ST, but was advertised? Or it's sequel?

Q: With been a huge force to be reckoning with back in the Amiga days, was there any games that were in the pipeline that never made the light of day, or ideas that where canned because of finances or changing trends forcing Cinemaware to abandon the unfinished projects?

Q: Will we ever see a back catalogue of Cinemaware make it to the new Gen PC's or consoles (especially PC) I understand Wings is set too , but games it came from the desert or rocket ranger or Sinbad or S.D.I. or the king of Chicago? or would any of these be up for consideration?

[TL]

GreyFox kind of beat me to it but I was going to ask - Why did they stop supporting the Atari ST?

Also:

Does he think they should have got in on the console market earlier and ported more games across to those machines?

How did they come about to developing PC Engine games?

[zapiy]

Sent

Q) Tell a little about you and how you got into the business?

Q) What was the first game you ever got involved in?

Q)I seem to recall someone from the company (think it might have been the programmer of said game) writing into ACE Magazine in response to their poor scoring review of Lords Of The Rising Sun (Amiga i'd guess).  Was this a common practice for your company, if/when you felt a game had been unfairly treated? and how much impact did reviews have on game sales?.

Q)It's been claimed that when S.D.I was in process of being ported to another format, it's release was delayed as the company had asked the programmer to add extra features and such needed extra time, is this claim true? if so: which format was it and what extra features did you ask for and why?

Q)How badly did piracy effect you on ST/Amiga as it seemed rife when i was an ST owner in UK at the time.

Q)Games like Rocket Ranger and It Came From The Desert were very much inspired by sci-fi films and comics of the 1950's etc, but did you go even further back, to silent film era (1920's) in terms of inspiration for your game Wings? as it's action sequences are very similar to those featured in the 1927 film of the same name and what about a personal favourite of mine, Aces High.

Also, did you look at real life accounts from serving WWI pilots, war reports that sort of thing?


Q)Setting a game in France during WWI, putting player in role of a airforce pilot, must have been incredibily challenging as the fighter plane technology was crude by todays standards to say the least (really in it's infancy) and the average life expectancy of a new pilot was just 3 weeks!!!.  Did you ever have second thoughts about setting the game in such an era? (really glad you did though as game is legendary!).

Q)In terms of producing 'Cinema-esq' games on the 8/16 bit micros., who (if anyone) would you say your competition was? and did the ever make you 'up your game' (for example change a gameplay sequence) or do you feel you had that corner of the market to yourselves?.
(nearest i can think of is Iron Lord by Ubisoft which was a Defender Of The Crown variant, mimiced your cinema-esq screens, mini-games etc)


Q)Rocket Ranger had to be censored in Germany (all Nazi references removed etc) so plot had Aliens instead of Nazi's, but did you not think players might wonder why Aliens with space travel tech would be using primative WW2 rocket technology?. Basically was it hard doing games for the German market?

Q)what happened to the MD/Genesis version of It Came From The Desert? i believe it was a very different game in terms of plot and gameplay, being more akin to an overhead shooter.Why the changes to game format and further canning of project?.

Q)Did you ever consider bringing any of your titles to MCD/Sega CD? I'd have thought it was the ideal platform CD storage and MCD sprite hardware.....things like Wings etc would have been great.


Q)Were you aware of the impact It Came... had on other game designers? thinking of Command and Conquer Red Alert's secret mission It Came From red alert.

Q) The PC CD ROM version of Defender Of The Crown was said to have had the gameplay untouched as a deliberate step, in order to see how the consumer reacted to having high-quality audio, added to existing gameplay, so player was treated to CD quality audio and a full soundtrack which had a narrator speaking in an 'Olde English' accent, which was hoped to make game more atmospheric, but was there ever any plans to do anything with the visual side, now you had extra storage avaiable?  Also, how did customers respond to the PC CD version? was far better sound a big enough incentive to purchase?.

Q)In most of the games on C64 i saw, you really seemed to be pushing the hardware (Sinbad, Defender Of The Crown and Rocket Ranger looked fantastic) so, what went wrong with The 3 Stooges? on the one hand it was technically great with speech, fantastic looking digitised pictures etc, but in-game, we were 'treated' to some very blocky sprites.

Q)Your games were sometimes refered to as 'nice graphics, shame about the gameplay' by the press, do you feel that was a little unfair? and which was the priority-the technical side (audio/visual) or just making a fun to play game?.

Only ask as i know many people gave up on Sinbad as the arcade sequences were very frustrating, one false move and that was it and also The 3 Stooges became too repetitive far too quickly.

Q)You seemed to very much 'respect' audio as a medium in so many of your games, with great effort being done to ensure the atmosphere created by it was just right, things like the radio music in IT Came From The Desert sounding like it was playing through a radio of that time period, how big a percentage do you feel the medium of audio played in capturing the atmosphere of what you wanted?.So many games from that era seemed to give the lions share of resources to the visual side of things.

Q)Would you be 'o.k' talking us through the rough patch where Cinemaware went under and you set up your own console development company, Acme Interactive' and how Mirrosoft struck a deal where Cinemaware name became property of Mirrorsoft (the UK Marketing company) and all development was to be carried out by Acme....and what happened not long after said deal.

I believe Rollerbabes was the 1st project under said deal, with PC version being worked on with Amiga version planned.How far along did work actually get? saw preview shots, looked rather promising...

Q)who did your fantastic magazine advert art work? (Loved S.D.I's, Sinbad's and defender Of The Crown's) and were you ever worried about the ahem 'nature' of them?.The sexist crowd had a bloody field day from what i recal, all women powerless in need of rescuing etc etc, mind you that lass on the Defender Of The crown, her ahem, assets bursting out of her frock etc, bet she was glad to be on the horse, must have killed her back walking about with a chest like that....


Q)Your various sub-games often seemed very influenced by the arcade Rocket ranger for example had you shooting down Nazi fighters in a very Space Harrier-esq sequence, Wings had a Zaxxon-esq sequence etc.Did your coders often try and get a mini-version of their fav.games into your productions?

Q) How on earth did you cram so much into TV Sports Football (Amiga/ST)? A full blown football game, stacks of play, options etc, in-jokes (Rocket Ranger flys past the stadium etc) 2 plavers Vs each other, 2 Players VS the computer, superb visuals etc.

Q) A few magazines listed C64 versions of both SDI and Lords Of The Rising Sun. Do you know if work was ever started on either and how far along they got? (and why they were canned).Or was it just a case of one or both being little more than 'talked about' projects?.

Q) Amiga:Wings, It Came from The Desert and Antheads were (if my hazy memory serves me well) 1 Meg only. 1 Meg Amiga's were'nt that 'common place' in UK at time, did the possibilty of lost (UK) sales concern you? or did you hope the sheer quality of the games would be the incentive folks needed to buy extra memory?. (TV sports Basketball had extra Sound FX for 1 Meg owners as well i think..)


Q)Who came up with the brilliant adverts in TV Sports Basketball (Sewer's Beer, Club Ded-get buried on a desert island!, Psyke Shoes (The neurotics choice!), Slims Toad Hut:Home of the Froggie Flapjack! etc? very well done..

Q) A licensed version of Defender of the Crown is currently being developed for the Intellivision.  What was your reaction when you were first approached about this?  Were you aware of the active community of developers for retro consoles prior to that?

Q) Do you see any other Cinemaware games as games that could be released on Intellivision?

Q: For a long period, the Amiga always seemed to get the exclusives releases, than failed to appear on the Atari ST was there a marketing reason behind this?

Q: Why did 'it came from the Desert" never appear on the Atari ST, but was advertised? Or it's sequel?

Q: With been a huge force to be reckoning with back in the Amiga days, was there any games that were in the pipeline that never made the light of day, or ideas that where canned because of finances or changing trends forcing Cinemaware to abandon the unfinished projects?

Q: Will we ever see a back catalogue of Cinemaware make it to the new Gen PC's or consoles (especially PC) I understand Wings is set too , but games it came from the desert or rocket ranger or Sinbad or S.D.I. or the king of Chicago? or would any of these be up for consideration?

Does he think they should have got in on the console market earlier and ported more games across to those machines?

How did they come about to developing PC Engine games?

Q)Did you ever do any work on the Konix Multisystem?

Q) Do you have any unreleased games lying around? If so would you release any of the code?

Q) What are you upto these days?

[Greyfox]

Really looking forward to how he will answer these questions , can't wait to read about it