Questions for next castaway: Dennis 'Imagic' Koble

[DRS]

Hello all – my next castaway is Dennis Koble, who began life at Atari coin-op and then jointly founded Imagic at the start of the eighties. He went on to handle some interesting arcade conversions and began the long running PGA Tour Golf series.

He is currently back with many other arcade legends at Innovative Leisure.

As always, ask whatever you want – Dennis has a fine back-catalogue! See below….

All the best and thanks in advance – I should be talking to him in early June so you’ve got a few weeks.

Cheers

Paul @;]


Published Titles:
Dennis Koble:
Sprint I & II - Atari Coin-Op - 1976-77
Dominoes - Atari Coin-Op - 1978
Avalanche - Atari Coin-Op - 1979
Touch-Me - Atari Electronic Hand-held - 1980
Atarians Pinball - Atari Coin-Op - 1980
Sultans=s Palace Adventure - Atari 400/800 for Atari Program Exchange - 1981
Avalanche - Atari 400/800 for Atari Program Exchange - 1981
Chinese Puzzle Adventure - Atari 400/800 for Atari Program Exchange - 1981
Trick Shot - Atari VCS for Imagic - 1981
Atlantis - Atari VCS for Imagic - 1982
Solar Storm - Atari VCS for Imagic - 1982
Shootin= Gallery - Atari VCS for Imagic - 1983
Stocker - Bally Midway/Sente Coin-Op - 1984
MiniGolf - Bally Midway/Sente Coin-Op - 1986
Night Stocker - Bally Midway/Sente Coin-Op - 1987


Polygames (Dennis Koble & Lee Actor):
Don’t Go Alone - Accolade DOS PC - 1989
PGA Tour Golf - Electronic Arts DOS PC - 1989
Hard Drivin= - Tengen/Atari Sega Genesis - 1990
PitFighter - Tengen/Atari Sega Genesis - 1991
RoadBlasters - Tengen/Atari Sega Genesis - 1992
Steel Talons - Tengen/Atari Sega Genesis - 1993
Race Drivin= - Tengen/Atari Sega Genesis - 1994
PGA Tour Golf - Electronic Arts Sega Genesis - 1991
PGA Tour 2 & 3 - Electronic Arts Sega Genesis - 1992-94
PGA European Tour Golf - Electronic Arts Sega Genesis - 1994
Sonic Spinball - Sega Genesis - 1993

[lanky316]

Did you see working on Sonic Spinball as more pressure, or less pressure due to it being a change for the blue hedgehogs norm?

[DreamcastRIP]

What is your greatest memory of working at Atari Coin-op during those pioneering days?

[The Laird]

What a great person to get for an interview!!!!

Q. I noticed that out of the Atari arcade conversions you programmed for Tengen you seemed to have ended up with easily the most ambitous ones. Is there a reason why you got these games and how hard was it to port hardware intensive games like Steel Talons, Hard Drivin' and Pit-Fighter to the Megadrive / Genesis.

[merman]

Were there any major differences between developing for arcade and developing for consoles?

How did you create courses for the PGA games - any interesting technology or techniques?

Would you ever be tempted to go back and develop new games for old formats like the Genesis and VCS?

[noobish hat]

Favourite Doctor Who?

[Eric]

What do you think of the latest PGA Golf games and would you like to develop a remake of sorts of your original PGA with Innovative Leisure?

[DreamcastRIP]

How did you feel witnessing the huge commercial success of Milton Bradley's Simon which Ralph Baer copied from Touch Me?

[webding]

PitFighter: why?

[webding]

Also, was he a fan of golf, and either way, did this make it harder or easier in how things on the PGA Tour games were approached, designed and maybe even compromised?

[The Laird]

PitFighter: why?

The Megadrive version is bloody superb and one of the best games on the console IMHO.

[DRS]

Great stuff already chaps! Much appreciated... keep 'em coming

[slacey1070]

I do believe Jagfest passed out when he read this, such was his excitement

Looking back at the Imagic box art, what comment would you make on it?

If you could change one thing about your career in the industry, what would it be and why?

What one game would you pick to sum up your career?

What game have you seen that made you say "damn, why didn't I think of that"?

If your career was a biscuit, which would it be and why?

[The Laird]

Q. What was working for Nolan Bushnell like? Was it really all drugs and hot tubs?

[NorthWay]

Why is the C= 64 better than the Spectrum?

No, hold on, that's not right, I mean: Who is your favourite Doctor Who?

Wait a minute, who wrote this script anyway?

---

What was your thoughts when you learned that some of the Atari programmers walked out to do their own 2600 games as Activision?
And what did you think of their games?

Was there a divide between the A8 and 2600 line of programmers? Was 2600 programming more "high profile" inside of Atari?

The 2600 kind of defined the console industry; what did you think when you saw rivals like the Intellivision and Colecovision arrive? Were you anticipating their arrival? Were you expecting Atari to strike back with something better, or were you kind of expecting the consoles to last forever? For an undefined forever which you hadn't really though about of course.

Did the games/console/computer industry evolve at the pace you expected, or did it go faster/slower than you had imagined?

Does everything go in circles?