Conversion ninja
Graphic artist Mark Potente worked on the Commodore 64 version
Can you describe how you got this particular job? were you working at Teque Software at the time?
I had been working at Teque/krisalis for a year or so before the work on Shadow Warriors [Ninja Gaiden’s name in Europe] for Ocean came up. It was quite different to previous games as there was more than one artist covering various disciplines.
what was your actual role on the game? You’re credited with ‘backdrops’, while mark Harrap and Jason wilson are credited with ‘sprites’.
I was in charge of the backgrounds for each stage. It was quite a challenge, taking the graphical quality of the arcade machine and reducing it down, whilst trying to keep the same feel and style. As I mentioned, it was normally one artist that covered the entire conversation, but due to the size of Shadow Warriors we split the workload.
Did you guys have access to the coin-op, and what did you think of it? Normally, the publisher gave us access to the arcade machine, sending one to the studio, but that didn’t happen this time. Instead we received a dump of graphic files which we converted so that they could be used with the C64 version. As for the game itself, I felt Shadow Warriors had enough variation to make it better than the average side-scrolling beat-’em-up.
Can you remember any drama during the development or was it a fairly smooth job?
The conversation went quite smoothly. I used OCP Art Studio to create the graphics and I recall it was the Atari ST version so I had access to a mouse, making it a lot easier. I enjoyed my time doing the backdrops. I loved the challenge of trying to create the images with a minimal palette.
The Commodore 64 version scored average marks when reviewed in the magazines of the day. what’s your personal assessment on how it turned out?
As with any arcade conversion back then, trying to get the feel and look of the arcade machine was always going to be difficult. I think what we achieved deserved the average scores it received – although I remember that the graphics did get a decent score!