Good morning Adrian. As far as I know you are an author of seven released games for Amiga and eighth one is being developed. Which one are you most proud of?

Probably my favourite is actually a choice between Doodlebug (ECS) and Tin Toy (AGA) as they both offer similar play styles but with somewhat different Amiga game engine capabilities. Tin Toy was about as far as I could push the Amiga personally back then.

Which of your games had the best reception and which one had not?

The best was probably Doodlebug and Cyberpunks for Amiga because they both had the added weight of a good publisher behind them with a path to retail, which was good for sales of course. Nucleus probably had the least favourable reception and was really a box filler for Bug Bash in reality as double pack release.

First two games were relased under Microtec label. If I understand well, Microtec was behind only those two games at all. Who was Microtec then? Was it also you?

Microtec (later to become Bigshot Entertainment I recall) was the first publisher I ever worked with around 1990'ish. I didn't have a great experience overall working with them and I almost left the gaming industry behind at that point. I did write a few more game demos though (not sure how really) and then finally somewhat luckily landing a deal in 1992 with Core Design for Doodlebug which saved the day. It was a dark time indeed between early 1990 and late 1991 which I have long put behind me.

Next two games were brought to the market by Core. How was the colaboration and was the publisher interfering with your work?

Actually Core Design were fantastic to work alongside. Apart from and initial visit to their offices in Derby in 1992 to pick up the upfront cheque and have the guided tour with Jeremy Smith it was all great. Basically I had a near finished game demo for Doodlebug, they liked it and snapped it up quickly for Amiga and Atari ST release with minimal intervention from them. After Doodlebug was released I was offered to write another of my choosing and I recall pitching Man Machine and Cyberpunks to them with a lead on through to Fantastic Island. I had also has interest from US Gold and a few other publishers but I had then decided Core were so great to work with that it would be them all the way from then onwards. All the work was done from home and sent in on disk via Red Star rail to their offices for speed before the internet really came about. The rest was done on the phone or regular postal mail.

Cyberpunks box cover art is signed "RAA". Who was the author of the Core released illustrations?

Actually the characters for Cyberpunks were name after Red, Green and Blue (RAA, GEE & BEE). The actual artist used by Core Design who did the box art and posters for Doodlebug and Cyberpunks etc. was Brian Lenton. I was actually even asked at one point would I like to provide the box art but really didn't feel up to the retail level airbrush quality expected so backed out of that quickly :)

Your games cover several genres - platformers, shooters, adventures, puzzles and even racing games. Which genre do you prefer as a gamer?

Personally I like platformers best and I have tried to write games down the years that remain firmly within my particular skill set.

Tin Toy adventure was your only AGA game. Was it easier or harder to create for A1200?

Yes I was just starting to work with the AGA chipset around 1995 and Core had kindly previously sent me early technical documentation on it. Sadly the Amiga market kind of dried up for them around then and we had to part ways. Using the information and what I had learned, I took the previous game engine and modified it to further work with extra features of the AGA chipset and Tin Toy was born.

Is the new game you are working on based on Tin Toy engine?

Yes without doubt it's mostly the same engine. I had planned to return to Amiga early in 2020 but the amount of work required to create Wiz in a year for December 2020 release required that I reused some parts of the older code. Also I'd not really done any 68K asm code for about 23 years until 2020, so I needed to relearn some things all over again having not long coming off Z80 asm based retro projects. Not too hard in reality but they are not the same cpu animal no.

Mutation Software is one man company. But in the past you tried a collaboration with other people. Can you describe the difference?

Yes I mostly work alone now since 2010 when I stopped sub contracting as a coder/artist. Last time I worked with a big team in house was around 2002. Since then it has mostly been work from home with others and now since 2010, working from home alone 100%. I prefer to work alone now as I have done all methods in 30years. Working on my own stuff is best for me now at this point I now find myself in life.

What is behind the idea for re-releasing your old games? Was it demanded by the players or collectors?

Firstly it was to see if it was even possible to create repackaged Amiga games that would lead me to write a brand new game (Wiz). Just firing up the Amiga and relearning my old tool chain at first took a lot of effort. Tony Aksnes (AmigaGuru) had friended me on online some time ago and asked would I consider writing a new Amiga title. So really with a lot of encouragement from him and a few others in the scene, I decided to make a return to the machine mostly as a hobby thing in reality.
Secondly after that I became aware that some collectors missed out on the Physical versions of some of my later Amiga releases in the mid to late 90's and I therefore provided another remastered run of hand signed limited edition collectors editions for them to own as keepsake of that era given some of the eBay prices for my older titles were getting very silly indeed really.

You ported Doodlebug, the game known from Amiga, to iPad 10 years ago. Was there any reception? You created many mobile games, is it your main job?

Yes by 2008 mobile had started to become the main source of income for me as small business. I produced many mobile apps in this period from early J2ME devices write through to modern smart phones running iOS and Android OS. I ended up porting Doodlebug from 68K to ObjC for iPad and iPhone at some point but it was never that well received along with a few others, so I moved in mobile gambling apps which was far more lucrative if somewhat soulless compared to retro games.

What I hate on mobile games they do not have any soul. I mean - not a single mobile gamer is interested in authors, nobody cares who is behind the game. And even the most known and popular ones - their players know maybe the developer logo, but not people involved. Isn't this frustrating?

Totally you have hit the nail on the head and driven it fully home! As I was also saying above it is quite soulless to constantly bang out mobile apps to meet an ever moving goalposts market. Mobile is a very fast constantly evolving business and early fragmentation of mobile devices caused large problems until engines like Unity for example were born. Mobile generates the larger portion of revenue for my small business but if you take the money out of the equation you are left with writing apps and games for machines that make microtransactions from ads or whatever and it is very machine like development experience when you have lot of apps to maintain in that regard. The new Amiga game Wiz, although I only work on a few hours day; has at least got a lot more of 'me' in it to hopefully better connect with the end player/collector. Mobile is still the main breadwinner here though yes.

You released some retro games for ZX Spectrum Next. How is the audience and sales for this platform? Will you continue developing for Next?

We actually sold out of all physical game packs and eventually left the Next scene in summer 2019. Since then the digital sales have remained steady via www.SpectrumNextGames.com where the games I wrote for Next are still available. I have no plans to return to development for that platform now.

Back to Amiga games. Was it easier to create games in 90s when there was not much feedback, or today in internet era, when everybody is tended to talk to your game?

It's certainly harder to create retro games in low level languages than say mobile apps in a modern engine and there are of course many obvious limitations to consider. Regards internet feedback, it's is impossible to please everyone both back then and now. Now though feedback is pretty much instant but it's not always useful. What I mean by that is, if you take feedback onboard (and you should at least listen) it is best not to try and please everybody by actually always doing as they ask, or you end up with an end product designed by them and not you. I have done this a few times to see how it works out and the end result has never been great IMHO.

Are there any recent Amiga games you like?

I really like Worthy (Pixelglass) and of course the Raid Over Moscow (ahem) release by Eric Hogan and John "Tsak" Tsakiris. For some time I've also had my eye on the continued development of Scourge of the Underkind by Wayne Ashworth and Magnus Tegstrom. I've not had time to actually play much else as I am literally always busy with small business and personal life these days. My biggest struggle is allocation of time on a daily basis; there just isn't enough of it left any more to do everything!

Your Amiga games, written for U.S.Gold were never released. I am talking about Beach Head 1 and 2 and Raid over Moscow. The last one was ported earlier this year at least, from Atari ST. What happened to Beach Head assets?

I think I handed out everything I had for all those titles to the Amiga public domain quite some time ago and of course Eric and Tsak did fantastic work to finally bring one of them to Amiga players as we know. I had art assets completed for all 3 titles but after several hard drive deaths down the years it looks like only Beach Head 2 and Raid Over Moscow survived all those years.

What was the fate of unreleased games like Egg, Vac Suit Jack, City Limits and Man Machine?

Those were mostly failed game demos but bits of them went on to trigger projects that were actually released later. In the early days of Amiga development writing game demos was the only way to attract publishers to hopefully take on projects. Also they were a great way to learn coding the machine at low level ...and how not to perhaps in some cases :)

Fantastic Island was lost forever because of the hard disk failure. Only a title screen survived at the end of Cyberpunks. What sort of game should it be?

Fantastic Island was intended to be the third title for Core Design and was a cute platformer featuring a toucan that had crash landed on Fantastic Island. The animated intro and graphics were very much complete and Core had shown initial interest. That is about when the drive went down and I lost everything for that project and parts of others. I had backups then on quarterback floppies but they were damaged too and that was the end of that pretty much. Not long after the Amiga kinda died anyway in retail so perhaps it was meant to be. I was gutted though to say the least.

There were two top-down shoot-em-ups in preparation - Outlander and Outlander 2. Not even one was released. I do not understand properly why you created a sequel to something that dint't exist. Could you explain?

Outlander was again written as a game demo in the late 80's by a small team being myself, Rob Brooks and Dave Boggust. We tried to gain publisher interest using the first demo but sadly didn't quite make the grade. Some time later life changed for everyone a bit further and we tried to grab publisher attention yet again by taking a quick demo of newer better looking second demo version of the proposed Outlander 2 game to the ECTS show in London I think it was. Yet again almost but not quite and we failed to get a publisher fully interested. I'm not sure now as 100% fact but I recall Dave moving away and Rob getting a paid gig in the games industry after then. I then left my full time job and went it alone into the 'Bug Bash' era I think around late 1989 into 1990. Some of it is just a blur in my mind now TBH.

Yesterday I completed Castle Kingdoms you sent me boxed. How difficult it is to release a game on a floppy today?

Castle Kingdoms I quite liked myself as it was a different challenge is some respects. To release on floppy is pretty much just has hard now as it was then, because we are only creating the physical games as a small cottage industry in limited batch runs. It takes a stupid amount of time to actually do everything to get the physical games out the door too. Because our source of fair priced quality floppies has now come to and end, then after Wiz is released on disk (2 disks in the box actually) and we run out of disks, then we are moving to supplying ADF's on USB stick delivery with the glossy disk label(s) in the same box. This means collectors can still buy the games and make there own disks from the ADF's if they wish. This method will also speed up duplication a lot our end.

Thank you for the interview and best regards.

Adrian

www.MutationSoftware.uk
www.SoftwareAmusements.com

Thank you too and best luck with your upcoming Wiz game!