Good morning David. Thank you for the opportunity to ask you a few questions about your old, but good games. Lets begin with the best...

Two words: Bubble Bobble. It is still incredibly popular and after 30 years part of my all-time top five for any platform. I have the originals for C64, NES, GameBoy, Amiga and Megadrive, but I consider the Amiga version as the best just after the arcade original. The game is full of secret triggers and hidden bonuses. Even three decades after the game's release not all of them have been completely uncovered. Did Taito give you the original code for making the port, or at least the description of all the game dependencies and how they should work?

When making the Amiga / Atari ST versions we received no support from Taito. The arcade machine was delivered and we spent weeks playing the game and taking pictures with a 35mm camera. We used to team up with two players, one player taking all the risks to protect the other player so they could advance without losing a life. Later in my career I also made the Playstation 1 and Sega Saturn versions which I did receive the designs for. The Amiga version was pretty close to how the game worked but some of the lower level rules were slightly different.

You have worked for a team called Software Creations. How was the collaboration? Did you know each other personally, or was it a remote work, as it is common nowadays?

We all worked together in the same office sharing one busy artist for all versions. Each platform had one programmer for Spectrum, Amstrad, C64 and Amiga / Atari ST.

Most of the Amiga games from Software Creations were arcade ports. How did this work? Were you buying licenses from the original copyright owners, or in reverse was the owner searching for someone, who would port his game to another platform?

At that time Software Creations worked for video game publishers such as US Gold, Ocean and British Telecom. The publisher would sign the deal with the arcade manufacturer and would hire teams like Software Creations to build the software.

Software Creations were also responsible for the conversion of Bionic Commando for C64, Atari ST and Amiga. The 8bit version was loved by the players, but they hated its Amiga counterpart and computer magazines rated it very low. This was mostly due bad scrolling, typical for the Atari ST, where the screen always jumped for 1/4 of the picture instead of smooth pixel scrolling. But the game also had bad collisions detection. Everybody was complaining that the Amiga version was just a lazy port from the Atari ST. What was behind this? Why was the Amiga Bionic Commando a direct port from ST, when Amiga would have been able to do it much better? Were you under deadline pressure, as it was common in most cases?

At that time most Amiga / Atari ST games were ports from Atari ST to Amiga. They shared similar hardware and financially it made sense to make one codebase. Even though the Amiga had great hardware it wasn‘t easy to make 8 way scrolling games, there was no obvious way to efficiently move the entire screen. The C64 had a character mapped screen which made scrolling more straight forward whereas the Amiga had a bitmapped screen which made 8 way scrolling more CPU intensive. There we‘re tricks to do 8 way scrolling on the Amiga which I eventually started to use in games such as Assassin but these tricks were not available on the Atari ST. Bionic Commando had a very challenging design that was a nightmare for most machines. I did the best I could at the time but it was a difficult project to build.

Together with Andrew R. Threlfall you created a lot of games. Did you keep in touch after your cooperaton ended?

It‘s been a long time since I spoke with Andrew. We did cross paths again in the late 90‘s but in 98 I moved to the USA so no contact since then.

Let's move to Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Despite the fact that game got a good score in magazine reviews, it wasn’t well received by players, partly because it was very difficult. Was it a direct Atari ST port? There are some slight differences in graphics in each version.

Ghouls 'n Ghosts was a very difficult arcade machine to play so the Amiga version is accurate. The team at Software Creations had become experts at ripping through new arcade machines but it took much longer to finish Ghouls 'n Ghosts than any other arcade machine we worked on.

Do you remember why Ghouls 'n Ghosts didn’t contain any sound effects?

The game we shipped had sound effects for sure and was tested on the hardware. Not sure why you are not hearing sound effects.

The situation is very strange. There is intro and death music, in-game background noise, but not any sound-effects. However – in the manual it says press F1 for pause, F2 key toggles music / sound on / off and F10 quits the game. We did a deep code analysis and found obvious F1 and F10 keyboard check parts, but no reference to F2 and also no sound samples beside those used in the music. Could these have been forgotten or the game code altered after you sent it to the distributor?

Maybe no one noticed because of the awesome Tim Follin music. I‘m certain this would have been mentioned in the reviews when the game was released. I think this game had protection so maybe at some point when the cracked image was first created something bad happened. I did on occasion do things like remove sound effects if a game failed the protection checks

We all remember the famous Ghouls 'n Ghosts cheat code. 30 years later can you finally let us know who this mysterious Karen Broadhurst is? Did all your games contain a cheat mode?

Karen is my wife, and we‘re still married. Yes cheat codes were necessary because most programmers were also the only person testing the game so we needed a way to quickly test the final versions.

How did those cheat codes become public? Were for example gaming magazines asking for them?

I only shared cheats with the publishers and team mates so it‘s likely they were given to game reviewers who might have shared them.

As far as I know your first commercial games were Mr. Frosty and the Killer Penguins (1985) and Metranaut (1986) for the C64. These were quite original and creative games. How did you experience your stay at Software Creations where you mostly worked on arcade ports? Didn’t you miss creating your own games?

I enjoy developing software. I‘m fairly creative but my passion is making code and developing software that is interesting and fun to use. At the time Arcade Games set the standard for cutting edge technology so it was very challenging to try to reproduce on machines with a fraction of the power. I found the challenge of reproducing very complex systems on machines with little power probably more rewarding than making original game.

What was behind you leaving Software Creations and establishing Psionic Systems? It seems to me that during your Psionic era you were developing original games again such as Dojo Dan, Assassin or Overdrive. Did you suffer from a lack of creative freedom in Software Creations?

Leaving Software Creations was more about wanting to create my own studio rather than any issues I had with them. I think all developers at some point want to strike out on their own and do things their own way. My co-founder was Haydn Dalton who was the artist and designer. I prefer someone else to build the designs but also give me the freedom to chime in now and then when I see something that can be improved.

Why did you remake Assassin to turn it into a Special Edition? Your publisher Team 17 did this with several games (Alien Breed, Project X…) – the players noticed that these Special Editions had been tweaked to somehow improve the playability, despite the fact the initial version was well received anyway. Who and what was behind these Special Editions (which btw were released only shortly after the initial release)?

I‘m not sure who decided that special editions were needed but from what I remember it was a popular trend with all publishers at the time. I suspect it was simply a way to extend the life of a game. Historically most games have a very short life cycle so making a special edition in many cases could give games another opportunity to make more money that can be reinvested into making new games.

You created a helicopter game called Apache. This one was distributed for free and was also bundled with some other Team 17 games. What was the reason for making a game that generated no money?

We started Apache with great enthusiasm and felt it could be great. As it started to come together I think we just ran out of ideas to make it great. We had put in enough work where we felt some people would enjoy it but didn‘t think it was good enough to charge people so it was released as a free bundle. In the end it was a good decision and hopefully gave some players a decent experience for free.

In general how would you rate working on the Amiga? Did you like programming for it? Many people say that programming the Amiga is difficult. You have to learn too many things in comparison to programming other platforms such as the Mega Drive / Genesis. Could you describe these differences?

I loved Amiga programming. It was a very challenging machine but also rewarding when things started to work. It was a great moment when the Atari ST was no longer needed and I could just focus on the Amiga. When I look back at how I implemented 8 way scrolling it's surprising it actually worked. A combination of hardware hacks, interrupts changing hardware registers and background updates happening at a different rate to sprite updates should not have been possible but the result was smooth 8 way scrolling and a decent amount of sprites for gameplay. Things were much more straightforward on console platforms. In general the hardware was designed for games so 8 way scrolling was part of the hardware as was sprites. No trickery required, just had to write the correct values to the hardware and all the tricky problems were solved.

Do you own any vintage computers or consoles you coded for?

No, I got rid of the last batch when I moved from the UK. I was also in the habit of trading up computers to help pay for the next new machine.

Which of your games from your 8/16 bit career are you most proud of? Which one would you like to forget about (if any)?

Without a doubt Bubble Bobble tops the list followed closely by Assassin. Making a game is hard work so I used to approach development as this game will be my best ever which always helped keep me motivated. All the games I worked on got equal attention and were the best I could do at the time. Some games were loved and others didn‘t live up to players expectations but personally in many ways they are all equal. My goal was to learn and keep building so I could produce better work. A game like Assassin would have been impossible for me to build at the time I made Bubble Bobble.

If you have children did they play your old games or at least are they aware of them?

My children have occasionally played some of my early games but once Playstation 1 arrived in our house that quickly stopped. I‘ll give them a reminder by send them this article.

Are there some people from those old times that you haven’t met for a long time and you would like to see again (I mean people from the gaming industry)?

Working at Software Creations was a great experience and I even re-joined them for a couple of years before moving to the USA. We were a small young team tying to figure out how to make games together. There were no egos or politics everyone just got along and were happy to be able to earn a living making games. It would be good at some point to meet up with the team that worked together from 1987 – 1991, maybe on my next visit to the UK.

And the final question: would you sign my Bubble Bobble manual for me?

Sure just send one to me!

Thank you again, David!