Retrogamingpappa

Raw text from my interview with Don Worth, the creator of Beneath Apple Manor.

This is the raw text from an interview I did back in 2014 with Don Worth, creator of what was (probably) the first «roguelike»-game, Beneath Apple Manor. I decided to publish it all here so that it can be of use to researchers, historians and others interested in the history of computer games.

Unfortunately I don’t have access to my original correspondence, so this is a bit random and most of the time my questions are missing. The photos and scans were all supplied by Don Worth.

An interview with the creator of the political strategy game Hidden Agenda.

This interview was conducted in 2008, for an article in Norwegian. It’s mostly about the political strategy game Hidden Agenda, but briefly touches other subjects as well.

Interview with wargame publisher Iain McNeil about the business of publishing wargames.

Iain McNeil is development director of Slitherine, Matrix Games, Ageod and Shenandoah Studios. Back in 2014 I wrote a story about wargames, and he kindly answered several questions for me. I’ve published them here. Be aware that my questions were tailored to fit the article I was writing, and are mostly about the wargame market and the challenges of being a wargame publisher.

An English-language interview with wargame developer Tomislav Uzelac.

Back in 2014, I wrote a story about wargames, and reached out to Tomislav Uzelac from 2×2 Games for input. In 2011 they had released their debut game Unity of Command. Here are my questions and his answers:

We’ve spoken with Mikito Ichikawa, Junko Ozawa and Sensu about the sequel to Space Mouse from 1981.

In 2016 I was lucky enough to get to interview Mikito Ichikawa, a Japanese game developer who’s been making games since the eighties. He’s worked with some of the country’s most famous developers and been involved in the making of classics such as Streets of Rage 2 and Slap Fight MD.

Junko Ozawa created the music and sound effects for many classic arcade and console games.

If you grew up in the eighties or early nineties, you’ve probably got fond memories from playing games on arcade machines. After feeding the machines some coins, you got to enjoy some of the biggest classics of the era, for as long as your lives – and coins – lasted. Arcade games were usually far more technically advanced than their counterparts for consoles and home computers, thanks to expensive and specialized hardware we could only dream of at home, and playing these games were often a bit like peeking into the future of gaming.

Numbertron is a single- or multiplayer puzzle game for the Sharp MZ-80A and Sharp MZ-700.

Numbertron is a pretty simple game, but you need to consider your moves carefully if you want to set high scores. The game is also surprisingly fun in multiplayer!

Martin Alper co-founded the british games publisher Mastertronic in 1983. When Mastertronic was later purchased by Richard Branson, Alper became president of the new company. This is a transcript of an interview conducted by phone in 2013. The interview was conducted as research for an article on The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, so the focus of the interview is on the story behind these games. Martin Alper sadly passed away in 2015.