YOU ASK THE QUESTIONS

IVARF: Did Loriciel make any GX4000 games that ended up being cancelled?

We did three or four cartridges for the console but I don’t remember having begun any GX4000 games that didn’t get released. I remember that we had to buy an emulator, a hardware device that you had to plug in to program it. And I remember at the time there were a few hardware manufacturers that were coming to us as one of the main publishers because they needed software to launch the machine. Sometimes we would get paid in advance – I suspect that wasn’t the case with Amstrad though!

MR JENZIE: You had two tennis games in 1993: Davis Cup Tennis for the Mega Drive and International Tennis Tour on the SNES. Why did you name them differently?

We also had one that did very well on the Turbografx console. This was purely a licensing decision. We sold the rights to the Davis Cup licence to NEC because they felt it was strong in the US and Japan. So this was pure marketing from the licensee.

IVARF: Loriciel released Rally II for the Amstrad CPC in 1985 which was a fast, good-looking car game with big sprites. What were your thoughts when US Gold released Out Run for the Amstrad CPC?

In the videogame business, there is competition every day. It’s all about the way you move on, looking at what others are creating. We had a good relationship with US Gold. We worked on Skweek which we licensed to US Gold. I don’t think I met anyone who got furious or unhappy by a competitor launching a game that looked like another. Most of the companies were already copying existing games at that time – there were many different copies of Q*bert and Space Invaders.

It would have been strange to have been angry, that’s for sure.