Commodore Magazine Interviews Epyx (1989)
They discuss the early days of computer game company.
from the August 1989 issue of Commodore Magazine
In the past I have covered a couple of Epyx games: Pitstop and Crush, Crumble, & Chomp!
All About EPYX
by John Jermaine
Last July I told you about Epyx’s Games line and how it evolved over the years, But there is much more to the Epyx story than just the Games line. Ten years ago, a small company called Automated Simulations started producing personal computer software, It was a small company by industry standards, but it was a group of dedicated people with some great ideas, That company is now called Epyx Inc, and ten years has changed both the computer software industry and the company. Epyx remains successful however, because they are still a group of dedicated people with great ideas, Here then is the rest of the story.
Jon Freeman, the creator of popular programs like Archon and Murder on the Zinderneuf, helped to get Automated Simulations officially off the ground. In 1977, he met Jim Connelley through his playing of Dungeons & Dragons™. Connelley purchased a Commodore PET computer and used it to keep track of monster statistics, hit points and other related stuff.
Six months later, Connelley was developing his first home computer game. When he started having trouble, Freeman offered to help him on the project (even though he knew next to nothing about computers). That first program, Star Fleet Orion, was a simple TRS-80 space shoot-’em-up game. Automated Simulations was created to market that product. The new company was officially founded in Jim Connelley’s dining room, and business was conducted out of Jim and Jon’s spare bedrooms.
Temple of Apshai was a multi-person collaboration, Freeman was largely responsible for the design of the game system, Connelley did most of the programming, and Jeff Johnson contributed many of the game’s features (the dungeon design, what monsters were present, the layout of the building, etc.), Johnson also came up with the title for the game. He claimed Apshai was the name of some obscure Egyptian god or goddess, Jon was busy while Temple of Apshai came together, so most of his contributions to the project were actually made over the phone.
Although Freeman liked the finished product, he didn’t approve of certain elements it contained. For example, Mithril (sometimes called “true silver”) illustrates his point. It is a magic metal that was invented by J.R.R. Tolkien for his book The Lord of The Rings. The term was “borrowed” by several fantasy role-playing games (including Dungeons & Dragons), and unfortunately, it also found its way into Temple of Apshai.
Freeman discovered this factor, and similar transgressions when it was too late to make the necessary changes. Jon would have preferred the name Electrum or Orichalcum in its place. These fanciful materials are fairly well known in history and were reputed to have magical powers. As Temple of Apshai was hitting the market, Freeman and Connelley had a series of business-related arguments. Jon and his wife Anne Westfall officially left the company on Thanksgiving day of 1981,
Bob Botch, formerly vice-president of marketing and development, recently left Epyx to form his own software development group, Botch had been with the company for many years and was happy to talk about the good old days.
John Jermaine: What do you remember “about the early days of the company?
Bob Botch: Jim Connelley founded Automated Simulations in 1979. He sold his first Dungeon & Dragons-type games to friends and through the mail. They decided these programs were pretty good, so they encouraged him to sell them in computer stores, And the company grew from there. It’s interesting to note that the packaging of that era consisted of placing a diskette and tiny user’s manual within a clear plastic bag, I hate to think what it costs to produce packaging and proper documentation today, Programs like Crush, Crumble, Chomp and _Temple of Apshai* firmly established Automated Simulations within the industry.
In 1982, Connelley sought out venture capital funding, and several companies agreed to provide the money. Shortly after receiving the good news, we changed the name of the company to Epyx. Our first choice was “Epic,” for the epic nature of our games, but that title already belonged to Epic Recordings. So we decided to take a high-tech approach and came up with the name Epyx.
Jermaine: Did you have specific goals at that time?
Botch: Our original plan was to become a major figure in the home computer software industry, I think the company has met this goal.
Jermaine: Tell me about some of your early software titles.
Botch: One funny story immediately comes to mind. I had been with the company for seven days and really didn’t know anything about computers. So the company decides to send me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (in January of ’83). Epyx was so small at the time that they couldn’t afford a hotel room. Instead, they rented a room in a condo for a week, somewhere off the beaten path. I also had to share it with the vice-president of sales.
Anyway, we were meeting with our first rep group at 9:00 a.m., and it was already 8:30 in the morning, My partner came over and said oh, by the way, here’s a new program I thought you should see before the meeting begins. I looked at this flat object, he had handed to me, and asked him what to do with it. He said you put it in that little slot over by the computer. I did that and asked him what to do next. He told me to turn on the switch, located on the backside of the unit, I did that and followed his loading instructions, but the game still didn’t work. We looked at each other this time because neither one of us knew what to do next. So I called the office, located a programmer who had come to work early, and asked him to walk me through the program, step by step. Now I was ready to demonstrate the game for our distributors.
We borrowed a big-screen television to give our people an impressive look at the new role-playing titles. But I displayed the other game every chance I got. Then the president of the company would come over, yell a lot and tell me to take the disk out. Whenever he left the room, I’d load the program in again. To make a long story short, we left that show with a ton of orders for Jumpman, the incredible new action game I had fallen in love with.
In case you haven’t heard of the program, it contains a neat little guy who climbs ladders, leaps to different platforms, avoids things coming at him, and so on. As we ate breakfast on the final day of the show, the vice-president of sales commented that I’d better get that thing in a box and sell it, or the boss would have my hide. Three weeks later, I had the packaging ready and we were shipping the product out the door, Jumpman (developed by Randy Glover) was definitely a departure from our traditional games and ushered in a new era, Incidentally, it was one of Epyx’s first big hits,
Jermaine: How did you market software at Epyx?
Botch: As you probably know, we took a different approach to marketing our software. I learned a lot during my first day on the job. I was sitting behind my desk, which was pretty empty because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing there, Someone came in, gave me a diskette, and said here you go. So I replied thank you, what is it? Oh, it’s a brand new game you have to figure out—give it a name and package it for shipment. It didn’t take me long to realize this is not the way to get a product to market.
So we gathered all the marketing and development people together and spent an afternoon brainstorming ideas and concepts. The feedback was absolutely incredible. Everyone had a say in the future plans of the company. Programs like Pitstop, Summer Games and California Games were born in this manner, And the procedure is still used today.
Jermaine: Speaking of Summer Games, did Epyx try to become a licensee of the 1984 Olympic team?
Botch: Late in ’83, shortly before the Winter Olympic Games took place, we thought about getting a license to develop an Olympic-style product. Obviously we were a little late for a winter game, since it takes us six to 12 months to create a program of this nature, so we concentrated on doing a Summer Olympics project. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that Atari had already become the official licensee of the 1984 Summer Olympics. This information put an end to our quest for the license, but we still wanted to do the program.
Jermaine: Where did the name Summer Games come from?
Botch: With Atari holding the Olympic license that year, we had to be careful not to step on their toes. This meant Epyx couldn’t use a title that directly referred to the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games. Summer Games was a strong title that kept us out of trouble.
Jermaine: What happened after Summer Games was released?
Botch: We made a lot of money. (He laughs.) Seriously, it was the beginning of our popular Games line, which has done very well over the years. The support of our followers convinced us to do Summer Games II, another multi-event program. Then Winter Games came along in 1986. World Games challenged the player to participate in traditional contests in many different lands, while California Games brought west-coast hobbies and pastimes to personal computers around the world.
After all of these products hit the market, we suddenly realized another Olympic year was fast approaching, We quickly started negotiations with the U.S. Olympic Committee and eventually worked out a deal. The Games: Summer and Winter Editions were the fruits of our labor.
Jermaine: In recent years, Epyx got the rights to Godzilla for The Movie Monster Game. Would you tell me about that experience?
Botch: In the beginning, The Movie Monster Game was slated to feature a selection of totally original creatures for the player to control. As the program evolved, however, we found ourselves developing a character which closely resembled Godzilla. Our people had reached a point where they had to make some quick decisions. Would it be to our advantage to license Godzilla for the game, and if we went this far, could we pick up the rights to other famous movie monsters for the program?
Research on the subject revealed that Godzilla is one of the most popular movie monsters in existence. A new Godzilla movie had been released in ’85, Dr. Pepper produced two commercials featuring the giant lizard, and toy makers are still manufacturing models of the creature. These were all good signs that the public was genuinely interested in the subject.
Negotiations for this property went well because we were far enough along with the project to show the licensing agent exactly what we wanted to do with their character, Our people even had a sample of the packaging art for his inspection. We also had another factor in our favor, The agent representing Soho Co, Ltd had been marketing the title for a long time. We came to an early agreement without encountering one major stumbling block.
Once the Godzilla contract was secured, We returned to the idea of licensing other famous movie monsters for the game. Unfortunately, every creature we were interested in was owned by a different company. There was no way we could put together a blanket deal for the rights to several of these creatures.
Jermaine: Did you have any negative thoughts on the matter?
Botch: Yes, we did. Epyx was very sensitive to the fact that Godzilla has traditionally been a bad monster. It destroys private property and occasionally eats or kills human beings. We were so concerned about public reaction to the project that we tested the Movie Monster Game concept on a group of parents. Some of these individuals gave us a negative response, but the majority of the adults accepted the material as a light-hearted spoof: There is no point in the program where people are actually eaten, or come to an equally terrible end. Epyx has always projected a positive software image, where any member of the family can use one of our products.
Jermaine: Did you consider licensing big name wrestlers for Championship Wrestling?
Botch: We did, but the negative factors of the issue outweighed the positive ones. If we licensed a character like Hulk Hogan, for example, we would be restricted in how he could look on the screen, and what he was capable of doing in the program. Two licensed names would increase our woes because both individuals would want top billing, and sooner or later, we’d have to determine which character was stronger than the other one. To keep things simple for our game designers and marketing people, Epyx decided to create totally new wrestlers for the program. After all, could incorporate any traits we could incorporate any traits we liked into original characters. Our programmers also had more room to be creative and didn’t have worry about the stipulations of a contract.
Impossible Mission also hit the market in 1984. It was the brainchild of Dennis Caswell, an innovative developer who helped pioneer the use of synthesized voice in computer games. Caswell is 32 years old, his hobbies and interests include: collecting wind-up toys and bizarre post-cards, while not losing sight of the finer in life (art, literature and the theater).
Jermaine: What is the basic storyline of Impossible Mission?
Dennis Caswell: A mad scientist named Elvin Atombender is trying to crack the computer launch codes of missile systems around the world. Once this is accomplished, he can initiate an attack that will annihilate the planet. Your assignment consists of entering Elvin’s underground installation, avoiding his army of robot guards, and breaking the computer’s security code which will shut down the control center and end this terrible nightmare. All you have to work with are your wits, dexterity and a pocket computer that can be brought up on the screen. By the way, your enemy has the ability to carry out his plan in six hours, so work as fast as you can in the game.
Jermaine: How did you get involved in the project?
Caswell: I came to Epyx when the company acquired Starpath in November of ’83, In the past, I created Atari 2600 titles like Escape from the Mindmaster and Phaser Patrol, but now I was ready to do something different. I wanted to produce a sophisticated action game, unlike anything on the market at that time. Impossible Mission was “inspired” (if I may so abuse the word) by the movie War Games, the difference being the existence of a crazed human villain who plans to blow up the world.
It took me ten months to complete the project. I did all of the programming, graphics and sounds, except for the speech synthesis (which was created by Electronic Speech Systems in Berkeley, CA). Credit also has to go to Craig Nelson, our head of product development, and to all the Epyx programmers who contributed ideas and helped playtest the beast. At one time or another, during the operation of the program, it uses all but 1 3/4K of the Commodore’s 64K of RAM. It could have been made smaller, but the memory was there, so I used it. It’s an unwritten law among programmers that any application, given sufficient time, will expand to fill all available memory.
Jermaine: Tell me more about Impossible Mission.
Caswell: The strategy of the game was really very simple: visit every room in the installation, search each piece of furniture, and gather as many puzzle pieces as possible. To save time, it’s best to visit the rooms in order and search them completely before moving on. By using this approach, you don’t have to keep track of the rooms that haven’t been totally explored and where they are located in respect to your present position.
The room with seven little floorlets is the most challenging of the game. To get to the lift in the middle screen, the player has to learn to step—not leap—over the gaps in the floor. As you have probably discovered, there’s no way to get to the lift by somersaulting over the opening. But by walking over to the edge of a gap, it’s actually possible to step across the opening. Be sure you hold the joystick to the right (or to the left, if you’re going to the left) until the figure has made it to the other side of the hole. If you release the stick before your stride has been completed, the figure on the screen will fall to his death—screaming all the way down. It also pays to make sure your toes are not. sticking out over the edge of the gap before you take your stride. If they do, you’ll slip and fall. This technique must be used in a couple of rooms and can be used in several others,
Each chamber also contains a number of robot security guards. It’s interesting to note that their behavior patterns are randomly assigned at the beginning of every game. So each room contains the same number of robots, located in the same positions, but they always react differently to your presence. Impossible Mission features approximately 90 of these patterns, displaying various combinations of a few capabilities.
Some of the robots are fast; some are slow. Some of them can see you when you appear in front of them, at which point they might charge you, fire an electrical charge, or some combination of the two. Some robots can actually hear you, while others sense your presence and move towards your location whether they see you or not. Still others cannot react to your presence and simply follow a pre-determined pattern of movement. The trick here is to learn to recognize the various patterns of behavior and adjust your strategy accordingly.
We also had some ideas for the game that didn’t appear in the final product. At one time, I considered making it possible for the user to reprogram the robots to help him in his quest. This initially sounded like a great idea, but time and memory grew short, and the program was complicated enough already. We even talked about having a game behind the control room door, instead of the cartoon that appears there now. But once again, time and memory came into play.
Jermaine: The program contains a number of puzzles to solve. What is the best way up deal with this element of the game?
Caswell: Puzzles tend to be tough, so let me explain a few things that might help you understand them better. First of all, the program generates visual puzzles from a library of 240 different pieces (which works out to 560 possible puzzles).
Each puzzle has four parts. Smart players will use their pocket computer to flip and turn pieces several different ways. Then it’s wise to pick up a particular item and scan through all the others until you find one that goes together with it. Continue working with these pieces until you discover a third and fourth piece that complete the geometric figure. Another way to find a mate for a piece is to concentrate on one corner of the piece, and try to find another one that connects to that particular corner. By using this approach, the player narrows down the number of pieces that might fit together to form the figure.
Completing nine of these puzzles will give you the security code. Then it’s a simple matter to locate the control center, push the joystick forward (to open the door), and the game is officially over. If you think you’re an excellent player of the game, I challenge you to beat my personal record. I completed Impossible Mission in about 45 minutes, scoring 29,000 points.
Jermaine: Was Impossible Mission a big seller?
Caswell: The program sold very well, and its sequel hit the market in 1988. By the way, some of the tips mentioned above can also be used when playing Impossible Mission II.
The Fastload cartridge caused a near-revolution when it shipped in 1984/85. Brothers Craig and Scott Nelson, who were commuting to Epyx at the time, designed the system in their car on the way to work. Then Scott made it work on a cartridge and that was that. Both brothers still work at the company.
Pitstop, one of the top-selling computer games of 1983, was the brainchild of Michael Katz (formerly president of Epyx). A year later, Steve Landrum and Michael Kasaka were co-developing Pitstop II. Landrum went on to work on other projects including the Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Super Cycle and the Vorpal Utility Kit. He also developed Skate or Die for Electronic Arts (with Michael Kosaka). Michael, the first resident artist, made Epyx graphics the talk of the industry, I recently spoke to these talented individuals and asked them about that phase of their careers.
Jermaine: Tell me about the making of Pitstop II.
Steve Landrum: In the beginning, an outside company worked with us on the project. The submissions they sent us were pretty bad, so I roughed up some game code to show them what we expected to see, Their work continued to be unacceptable, so I started the game over again. Even though half of the time allotted for the project was up before I started, I still got the product out on time.
I made an interesting discovery as I worked on some code to create a split screen with separate scrolling regions. If you activate both the extended-color mode and the multi-color mode at the same time (on the 64), the screen goes completely black. I used that effect in Pitstop II, whenever you entered or exited the pit. It allowed me to redraw the entire screen and not make it visible to the user.
Jermaine: How did you get involved in the Super Cycle project?
Landrum: We chose to write the program because Pitstop I and II had sold very well, and we wanted to generate a follow-up product that looked a bit different. Motorcycles were the perfect vehicles for the game. They’re more exciting to ride than automobiles, open to the elements, and definitely more dangerous to operate. I also wanted to convince the player he was really moving fast on the roadway. Whether you know it or not, I worked very hard to make that element stand out above the rest.
When I started designing and programming Super Cycle, I took the display code from Pitstop II, cleaned it up and rewrote it to be more streamlined. Then I took out sections and wrote new code to handle the different display needs of the program.
The game control code is all new code. The main similarity between Pitstop II and Super Cycle is in the appearance of the road, By the way, we thought about putting various types of vehicles on the road with your cycle, But that idea didn’t out.
Michael Kosaka, who was nicknamed “the sock,” designed the beautiful backgrounds that appear in the game. There’s an interesting story about the San Francisco track. It went out over the water to make Michael’s graphics of the city look right. After examining the positions of the local landmarks in the picture, it made sense for the cycle to be somewhere over the San Francisco Bay.
Here are some tips for playing Super Cycle. The optimum shift point is around 9000 rpm. Learn what the motor sounds like at 9000 rpm, so you can shift without having to look at the screen. When traveling at a high rate of speed, downshifting reduces your speed much faster than applying the brakes. In case you’re interested, my best Super Cycle score is over 320,000 points on level three.
Jermaine: What is the Vorpal Utility Kit and how does it work?
Landrum: The Vorpal Utility Kit was really Scott Nelson’s project, but I helped him finish it up and get it out the door. Basically, it’s a special [Commodore] 64 disk utility package that permits you to load things in a lot faster (about 25 times faster than normal),
This technology first appeared in the Fastload cartridge. When that product sold well, we decided to take things a step further. We created a program that allowed the consumer to write fast disk loaders for BASIC programs.
The word vorpal has an interesting origin, I believe it first appeared in “Jabberwocky,” a poem by Lewis Caroll. In Dungeons & Dragons, you sometimes see a reference to the vorpal blade (which is a mighty sword), As a program, a vorpal utility is something very powerful.
Jermaine: You haven’t said anything, Michael. What do you remember about working for Epyx?
Michael Kosaka: First of all, I was at the company from 1984-87, doing artwork for projects like Summer Games, Pitstop II, World Games and Super Cycle.
Several years ago, Scott Nelson and I pulled off the joke of the decade. Back then, Scott looked like the typical programmer: he had long hair, a beard and mustache, and dressed like a hippie. One day, a new Scott Nelson stepped through the doors of Epyx. Scott had to get glasses, so he decided to change his image. He got his hair cut short, shaved off the beard and mustache, and dressed in nice clothing. I mean he really looked like a stockbroker in that outfit. I didn’t recognize him at first. So I thought it might be fun to take him around the company, introduce him as Scott’s brother Max (who didn’t exist), and see what happened, We fooled practically everyone, from the programmers and designers to the heads of the company. Scott’s friends were actually shaking his hand and asking if he planned to get a job at Epyx. Scott would give them this serious look and say he was thinking about it. Some people didn’t appreciate our prank, but it was terribly amusing at the time.
Epyx also had a policy of charging you a dollar if you were late for a company meeting. After a while, someone broke into the president’s office and turned back all of his clocks (so they wouldn’t be late all the time). I won’t tell you who this person was, but he had a good reason for always being late.
I had a lot of fun with Steve and the guys back then, but they really took me to the cleaners at cards, Most of our programmers are hard-core mathematicians, and they knew all the card games inside and out. So I was constantly going broke in games where cards and numbers came into play.
Jermaine: Can you tell me about other projects you worked on?
Kosaka: Steve had problems when it came to constructing The Temple of Apshai Trilogy. As he examined the codes of these early games, there was a lot of material that needed a major facelift. After all, Temple of Apshai appeared on the market a long time ago. Technology has really changed since then, so much of the program was rewritten from scratch,
Speaking of Steve Landrum, he’s a great guy to work with. Steve is a smart individual who knows how to manipulate code very quickly. Believe it or not, he once looked over a programmer’s shoulder and located a bug in less than a minute, The other guy was about to pull his hair out, so Steve examined his work and said, “There it is.” Then he fixed it for the guy, That’s the kind of person Steve is.
Landrum: I really enjoyed working with Michael at Epyx and Electronic Arts (in recent years), He has a way of making microcomputer artwork look almost like a photo of the real thing, Michael also initiated the idea to hire a staff of artists at Epyx. That move made the programmers’ job a lot easier. And our graphics are state-of-the-art. Everyone misses Michael around here, but I still see him every now and then.
As I said before, last year I wrote a tribute to the Epyx Games line of products, At the time, The Games: Summer Edition wasn’t far enough along to do much with it. Now you’ll hear from the people who made the program and how it came together. My guests include: Peter Englebrite (project manager), Susie Green (graphic artist), and Joe Miller (vice-president, software development).
Jermaine: How did you get The Games: Summer Edition off the ground?
Peter Englebrite: It started in January of 1988, with the 64 and IBM versions of the product coming out before the Summer Olympics that were held in September. We finished every event that was actually started, Some of our ideas that didn’t work out included the long jump, high jump, 4x440 meter relay, certain swimming events and water polo.
We developed some contests and discarded others for several different reasons. First of all, we looked for events that could be made into good playable games. Then we tried to fulfill the fantasies of our followers, What would they like to compete in? It appeared that several records might be broken at the Summer Olympics, so we focused our attention on those particular events. Lastly, we wanted to put our players in the shoes of the athletes, as much as possible. Making a good computer game was one thing. Convincing the user that he was actually participating in the Olympics was another matter altogether.
Jermaine: The opening ceremony doesn’t feature the lighting of the Olympic flame. Why did you depart from this traditional Games opening sequence?
Englebrite: We don’t have much competition from other companies in this field, so we are constantly competing against ourselves. Each new product must be progressively better than the last one and not just. a thinly disguised sequel of something we’ve already done, Everyone felt it was time to produce a new opening for the game, so the torch was moved over to the menu screen. I really got excited when they broadcast the Olympics on television. They were using the graphics of an Olympic torch, flying around square icons of the various events just like we did in the menu screen.
Jermaine: How did you make the events for the program?
Englebrite: There was a lot to learn about velodrome cycling. We sent our people down to the San Jose track, and they returned with information about the “cat and mouse” game cyclists play. It’s basically a matter of knowing how to pace yourself and when to make your move. They also discovered that the “ringing of the bell” announced the final lap. So there was more to riding a bicycle than anyone ever imagined.
The uneven parallel bars gave us a number of headaches, I had a lot of trouble finding books on the subject that explained things on an Olympic level, instead of for amateur gymnasts. One of our people finally located the book we needed, complete with illustrations. But that’s where the work really began.
While all of this was going on, Cheryl Knowles (our art director) brought her little girl Shannon to the office one day, We took a look at her “monkey-on-a-stick” toy and used it to generate ideas for the game. First there were stick figures performing the different routines on the screen, Then our artists dressed things up and added all of the colorful details. It was also quite a challenge to put together routines in a set pattern, where the end of one sequence had to match perfectly with the beginning of the next.
The number of possible moves in the event staggers the imagination. We used 82 sequences in the game, containing about 300 frames of animation and 2100 Commodore 64 sprites. Now that’s a lot of stuff, but it only represents a small portion of the things a real gymnast can do. If you want to impress your friends, with a perfect “10” performance on the “bars,” follow these instructions to the letter: six downs, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, four ups, down and up.
Archery looks complex, but it was one of the easier events to make. In fact, it looks more like the standard shoot-em-up arcade game than a “take aim and fire”-type of challenge. We thought the game needed more depth, so wind was added to mess up your aim a bit.
Jermaine: How did you research the artwork for The Games: Summer Edition?
Susie Green: I think I can explain things by telling you about the hammer throw game. Initially, when they gave me the job, I didn’t know anything about the event. For starters, we went to the library and collected as much reference material as possible. This consisted of magazine articles, a rule book and step-by-step photos of hammer throwers in action. Unfortunately, no one could locate a videotape on the subject. We even went over to Stanford University looking for someone who might demonstrate the sport. Their hammer throwers weren’t practicing because it, was the wrong time of the year. So we didn’t get any help from them. But I did get some people to model for me as the project came together.
Going back to the rule book, I finally figured out how to construct the event. It started out with one screen displaying a hammer thrower going through his warmup exercises. As the athlete finally went into his routine, there came a time when he released the hammer, It soon became apparent that I couldn’t show everything on a single screen, There just wasn’t enough space. We could have done things with a scrolling approach, but it’s been used too many times in the past. In the end, we solved this problem by giving the player a bird’s-eye view of the hammer coming towards him (the moment it was released). By the way, I worked closely with the programmers throughout the project. I was always making sure that this thing and that thing could actually be done on the computer,
Jermaine: Did you think about doing some swimming events in the game?
Joe Miller: Yes, we talked about it in the early design sessions. Someone thought it might be fun to develop an underwater view of a swimming event. That concept sounded great at the time, but we gradually lost interest in it.
Jermaine: What else can you tell me about the project?
Miller: The Games: Summer Edition has done very well on the market. It was also our most massive project to date. Approximately 17 programmers, eight artists, two musicians and five technical writers worked many hours to produce three different versions of the same game at the same time.
When push came to shove, everyone made personal sacrifices, Peter asked Kevin to stay over late one night. Later it was revealed that he had already put in 40 hours straight. As The Games: Summer Edition drew to a close, Peter discovered that a scene from the closing ceremonies was missing. So rather than leave it out, he stayed up 20 hours and got the job done. Looking back on the project, it really makes me proud to think I was a member of this team. They did fantastic work.
I saved the best for last. It’s time to hear from the people who take care of business at the company. We have Gilbert Freeman (president of Epyx), Karen Janowski (vice-president, marketing consumer software), and Bob Lindsey (director, creative development). These individuals can tell us about their work abroad and possibly reveal a secret or two about upcoming products.
Jermaine: How long have you been selling software abroad?
Gilbert Freeman: In 1984, CBS was very active in the software business. They had offices throughout Europe. We signed a master contract with them to distribute our products in some of those countries. Initially we wanted to ship our programs to Germany, Spain, and the UK. But this agreement broadened to include Scandinavia, France, etc.
This agreement worked out well until CBS decided they wanted to get out of the business and didn’t tell us about it. All of a sudden, some of our products were no longer being marketed, so we looked for new licensees in the region. By 1985, we had organized a new system where a distributor took care of things in each target nation. We had U.S. Gold in England, our former CBS affiliate took care of France, there were licensees in every Scandinavian country, and so on.
This arrangement quickly became a nightmare because each company was competing against their counterparts in other countries. If U.S. Gold got a product first, for example, they shipped it all over (even to the countries that already had distributors). It became almost impossible to manage this job, and they wouldn’t work together for any reason. Something had to be done.
Two years ago, we signed a master contract with U.S. Gold, who now manages all of our affairs in Europe. They have exclusive distributors in every country, and everyone gets product at the same time.
Impossible Mission sold well in the states, but it was a megahit in Europe. Impossible Mission II has been a good seller both here and abroad. We weren’t allowed to market Sub Battle Simulator in Germany at all. They will not publish or sell any military games in that country.
Incidentally, our software is now written in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese. Epyx also imported the 500XJ Joystick from Konix (in Europe), where it was the number one joystick. Its sales are in six figures as we speak.
Jermaine: Dealing with people of different cultures must be interesting. Have you had any unusual experiences?
Karen Janowski: First of all, they spell things differently “over there.” They put -our on the end of words like color, for example. So you don’t always know what they’re talking about in their letters, proposals and manuals. (Just kidding.)
Last September, we attended a big trade show in London. It was too late to purchase space on the floor, so we ended up having our offices in a bus. Yes, Epyx rented an old double-decker bus, which was actually parked inside the building on the show floor. We met all kinds of developers there and negotiated some incredible deals in that environment. Unfortunately, you couldn’t stand upright on the main floor of the vehicle, so people scrambled for space on the stairwell and the second story. Believe it or not, we even conducted business standing outside the bus. It was a very unusual situation—but a lot of fun.
Then you have to deal with the time here verses the time over there. I’ve called individuals at 6:30-7:00 a.m. to catch them as they end their work day.
Bob Lindsey: Not long ago, I tried to reach my contact at the company in the UK that developed Tower Toppler. We had some unfinished business to discuss. Anyway, I couldn’t catch the guy at his home and he wasn’t in the office either, so I called him up on his car phone, Here we were, conducting business as usual, while the other guy raced around the streets of London at 11:00 p.m. I guess I didn’t distract him too much or I probably would have heard about it, if you know what I mean.
Freeman: The Europeans have their own special breed of software development problems. One programmer, who I believe was working on Battleship, suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. We couldn’t contact him at all. Epyx finally got through to his parent company. They said oh, he’s just been drafted into the Finnish Army. This meant the guy could only work on the project every third or fourth weekend.
Then you have the lost development, team in Budapest, Hungary. You just can’t get there, by phone or aircraft. I honestly believe there are a dozen phones in that country; half are always busy and the other half are broken.
All kidding aside, it’s hard to deal with a party 8000 miles away when your only communications are done by fax, telex, modem and direct phone calls. You never get to know the other people very well. It’s kind of a shame.
Jermaine: Earlier we talked about The Games: Summer Edition (the latest Games project). Can you give me some information about the next Games program?
Janowski: We’re working on a sequel to California Games. It may be called “Cal Games II,” but that decision hasn’t been made yet.
Here is a sneak preview of some of the sports we’re currently concentrating on. First of all, a new type of skateboarding game is presently on the drawing board. You may not know this, but water is moved around southern California through a large system of aqueducts. These open-air pipes that can be ten feet tall are a skateboarder’s dream. To do the job right, we’re working closely with the Team Riders, a hot group of skateboarders, in Santa Cruz.
Another big event is boogie boarding. Kids like to take these small boards out, flop on their stomachs and bodysurf back to shore, I’ve actually seen them do “barrel rolls” in the curl of a wave, This is really exciting stuff. I’m sure it will look great on the computer.
Snow boarding will also be coming your way. If you like to ride the waves at Malibu, imagine what it’s like to surf downhill on a layer of snow. Yes, snow boarding is a hot new sport, where the user masters elements of surfing and skiing at the same time. He also performs a number of stunts, as he tries to keep from losing it on the course. I can hardly wait to play this game. It sounds like a lot of fun. “Cal Games II,” or whatever we call it, features accurate simulations of each of these sports. I use the word accurate because we are working with experts in each of these fields. This product will be released on the 64 later this year.
Jermaine: Why do you think your employees are so special?
Lindsey: What can I say? They’ve added new meaning to the word dedication. Joe Miller discussed the dedication of the inhouse staff earlier, but a few other examples come to mind. Several years ago, we saw an early version of The World’s Greatest Football Game at a trade show in San Francisco. Epyx quickly negotiated a deal with Nexa, which was run by a man named Gilman Louie. It’s interesting to note that Louie and his people went on to form Spectrum HoloByte, and he’s still their president today. Anyway, their program needed a lot of work, but we went ahead and signed the contract telling them it had to be done by a certain date. Gilman said, “Look, I’m committed to you now. We’ll move heaven and earth to get it out on time.” I thought oh no, another one of those deals. Here we go again!
As we approached the due date for the project, Gilman and his group literally moved into Epyx (while we were still located at Sunnyvale, California). I’d come in in the mornings, and the guys would be hard at work or sacked out on the floor, And we didn’t have heavy carpeting on the floor at that time. We also saw them working on the game when we left the office to go home at night. Those guys were absolutely incredible and worked on the project for many weeks. Epyx didn’t need security people for a while because Louie and his group were always on the job. Now that’s dedication! By the way, The World’s Greatest Football Game was released on schedule,
On another occasion, we worked closely with K-Byte (a group based in Detroit) to produce our World Games program. I remember calling their president and saying, “We’re going to miss the window, Pat. World Games won’t be ready for Christmas release.” These people also believed there’s a time for work and a time for play. So they decided to put all their vacations on hold. They worked a three-day holiday weekend and continued putting the program together seven days a week, approximately 18 hours a day, during the final month of production. In the end, World Games did very well selling between 4-500,000 units worldwide.
This brings us to the story of how Sub Battle Simulator came to the market. Gordon Walton, leader of the Digital Illusions development team, gave us a demonstration of their realistic submarine program. And we said, “Gordon, this looks great! We’ll take it.”
Now Epyx had never done a simulation before, so we really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. Simulations must be carefully researched, extremely accurate and patterned after the real thing. Testing these programs is also very difficult. In fact, I believe we budgeted several hundred hours of playtesting for the project. When all was said and done, they had tested the product for 900 hours and still weren’t making much progress. So I called Gordon in Texas and said, “It just isn’t happening. We have to try something different. Why don’t you and your people fly out to California, bring along your equipment, and complete the project here? We’ll find you a place to stay.” So Gordon took my advice, and we put them up in a nearby motel. Before they arrived, however, I rented them a trailer to work in and set it up in the large deserted warehouse next door, Gordon and his people worked in these surroundings day and night, for several weeks,
Now Epyx is located on an inlet near San Francisco Bay, and there are a lot of ducks and geese around here. So it didn’t surprise anyone when white splotches appeared on Gordon’s boxes, But the team kept going around the clock. A short time later, they purchased a small swimming pool, so the ducks had a place to swim in the warehouse. Then they bought food for their fine feathered friends. Before long, these guys had attracted a whole gaggle of geese and ducks to the building. It was beginning to look like a wildlife refuge.
In the end, Walton and his people completed their task and had a good time doing it. We, on the other hand, learned a lot more about the development cycle of simulation software. Incidentally, Sub Battle Simulator was a very profitable venture for us.
These stories have one thing in common. They’re about dedicated people who don’t have a “nine-to-five” job, These talented individuals gave us their all, and were reasonably compensated for their effort. But there is more to it than that. We’re one big happy family around here. Our people work together, play together and have a lot of fun together. Everyone also wants his product to be the best-selling item on the market. It can’t be good; it has to be absolutely fantastic. And that’s the way it is.
Freeman: I feel like the head doctor at the local asylum. We have some real crazies around here, but I’m proud of every one of them. When we were shipping California Games, for example, people offered to work extra hours on the line to get the product boxed and out the door. It takes a special breed of people to care this much about their job. It’s our secret weapon against the competition.
Lindsey: Gil forgot to tell you that employees with different jobs at the company worked side by side on the production line, Even Gil was there, and he wasn’t giving orders, The president of the company was boxing software like everybody else. Pizza was brought in for supper, and everyone had a good time. As long as we keep this team spirit alive, the company will go on to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. I hope I’m here when it happens.
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