DAVID’S LITTLE FRIEND
David’s fondest Computer & Video Games article involved an imaginary friend
■ “I did a preview of Little Computer People, the early life sim by the genius David Crane released on the C64 back in 1985. I chose to make it a ‘diary of an LCP’, so everything was from the little guy’s perspective looking out at the world from the other side of the TV screen. I shared it with David Crane who also really liked my treatment. He even sent me a development version where the LCP’S dog took a dump every minute or so leaving an ever-increasing number of doggy poos littered all over the house!”
Nineties. Which ones would you say you are most proud of?
I’m very proud of Aladdin for a number of reasons. The whole process had to be a well-oiled machine, and working with this incredible team, we had to learn how to work together quickly. David Perry had to hold fort in his office and people would check things in and out with him all the time. He would work 17-hour days, and people would sometimes sleep in the office. All the animation work, all the tools, and we designed the whole game in less than a week. Then we had to go through the focus group stuff with Disney, and then, for the first time ever, I think, we got Sega to approve the game in parallel at Sega Europe, America and Japan when it was normally done one after another, with Japan last. They even got people in Japan to come in during Golden Week, which is as big a holiday there as Christmas is, to test what I still feel is a cracking good game. We stayed friends and still talk to each other now, which shows what a great team we were. We even got a phone call from Jeffrey Katzenberg at the end to say, ‘Thank you very much for your fantastic work,’ which was a very classy thing for him to do. The other game I’m most proud of is Bombuzal, which I’d love to do as a mobile game one day.
David Bishop, thank you very much.