Q & A MARK POTENTE We speak to the artist on Krisalis’ stab at bringing Rogue Trooper to the Amiga and Atari ST

Are you a fan of 2000 AD? yeah, i was a big fan of the early comics, i must have had the first few hundred. unfortunately, not realising the value of them, my brother and i took the front covers off them, hole punched them and put them in binders. there were later binned in a bedroom clear out.

Sad times! What was your involvement on the Rogue Trooper game? i worked on all the environments, comic cutscenes and loading screens. i must admit i loved doing the cutscenes rather than the in-game environments – we didn’t have any concept art for the in-game work, mainly relying on roughly-designed pen sketches.

What did you think of the character of Rogue Trooper?

i loved it, and the idea of his comrades as biochips was really cool. But the version we had in the game i always thought was too cartoony and the animation didn’t look tough enough. he filled a good part of the play area, which made the environments feel claustrophobic. i wasn’t a fan of the overly large hud.

How did the design of the game evolve? the idea was to create a puzzle platformer, in the same style as robocop, and a good majority of other games back then. the space harrier section was bolted on later, and this was probably created as we had done the space harrier game five years earlier and regurgitated the same code. that section was a bit jarring, but helped break up the side-on sections.

Who else worked on the game? david colledge was the only other main artist, he did the character animations and hud. peter harrap and John scott were responsible for the programming, doing the space harrier and side-scrolling sections respectively.

What did you think of the final game, and were there any elements you tried to get in but couldn’t? i was a bit disappointed that we didn’t do the licence more justice, the reviews as i recall reflected that. And with the backdrops, while i tried to make them as distinctive as possible. i was told to cut out some of the gore, especially from the research lab. initially there were a lot more dismembered bodies and blood-splattered walls.

Would you have liked to have tried a

Judge Dredd game? And why didn’t Krisalis attempt more 2000 AD games? i’m not sure why there were no more, the game received mediocre attention, maybe that had something to do with it. We were all big 2000 Ad fans at krisalis, so it would have been fun to work on other characters.