Readers’ Questions

Merman: What sort of hardware/ development system were you drawing with at Gottlieb? The Apple II initially and then there was a proprietary board and software, developed by Jun Yum and Jim Weisz respectively, based on the Intel 8080 chip, I believe. Mr Jenzie: As it’s one of my favourite films, how many times did you watch Krull for reference when you were working on the game? I did go and see it once and recall not being that entertained. I’m not sure if I went with the development team or my girlfriend but I do remember not being impressed… but you know, that movie has some hardcore fans who delight in cheesy or bad movies. Or maybe they think it’s great! Merman: Did you use a lot of reference material when you produced the graphics for Mad Planets? Back when I was working at the junior college, they had an actual observatory and put on these slideshows and laser shows. We had a lot of stock photos coming from the deep space missions to Jupiter and Saturn in the late Seventies and early Eighties that were sending back images that we’d never seen before. I still have some of them […] and I know I used them as reference material. Did anyone object to Q*bert swearing? Northway: That did happen! I got an email in the Nineties from a kid who told me when he was growing up in Arkansas, the game was taken out of the arcade because people complained Q*bert was swearing. It was an issue in certain sectors of this country! Mr Jenzie: In Exterminator, whose hands did you digitise for the game? They aren’t mine! They belong to Warren Davis, the programmer and game designer.