Robotron: 2084. Presented is an interview with the creator of the fantastic game from the mid 80s; regarding the design of enemies in the game, he has this to say: "Some of the most interesting and deadly aspects of the enemies were bugs caused by improperly terminated boundary conditions in the algorithms. Often these bugs produced behavior far more interesting and psychotic then anything I conceived of." There are many more interviews of classic game authors in the book which is the source for this interview, James Hague's Halcyon Days. (Link thanks to Glish.)
posted by moz on Aug 2, 2002 - 32 comments

The giant list of classic computer programmers takes you back to a time when one person could realistically author a computer game and have it published. Of course most of the people on this list will have worked on small teams to produce games, but the diversity of the games on these people's resumes is awesome. In particular, I notice Michael Cranford (responsible for The Bard's Tale I and II, the Centauri Alliance, and ports of Donkey Kong and Super Zaxxon) and Robert Woodhead (Wizardry 1-5). As an interesting sidenote, Robert Woodhead went on to Animeigo, a japanese animation publishing company in the US. What memories of these old sk00l games do you have?
posted by moz on Jul 6, 2001 - 34 comments