Questions for next castaway: Dennis 'Imagic' Koble

[NorthWay]

And then there were the hot-tubs... many female employees at Atari? Or Finns?

[slacey1070]

Did you call the 2600, a 2600, vcs or some other title (to settle a forum fight)?

[DRS]

Thanks to you all for some excellent questions. I have now arranged to phone Dennis next Tuesday (June 26th) so if anyone wants to ask anything, please do it by then. Cheers!

[DRS]

I'll certainly pass on your greetings to Dennis, banana. I'm sure he'll be delighted. And yes, he may well want to buy gucci handbags and other designer labels at competitive prices. Please do pass on the link.

[jdanddiet]

I'll certainly pass on your greetings to Dennis, banana. I'm sure he'll be delighted. And yes, he may well want to buy gucci handbags and other designer labels at competitive prices. Please do pass on the link.

I dunno Paul, friendly greeting from a fellow retro gamer and you just assume he/she/it is a spammer

[DRS]

Oh you misunderstand - i'm absolutely overjoyed to have discovered the fantastic bargains available at Hollister... I'm currently draping my naked body with the cool SoCal style of their fine clothing.

Call me a cynic, but i checked the profile details of mr/ms/spambot banana...

[jdanddiet]

Oh you misunderstand - i'm absolutely overjoyed to have discovered the fantastic bargains available at Hollister... I'm currently draping my naked body with the cool SoCal style of their fine clothing.

Call me a cynic, but i checked the profile details of mr/ms/spambot banana...

[DreamcastRIP]

Are bananas retro though?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1RFRoleEd0

Damn right they are!

[merman]

Are bananas retro though?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1RFRoleEd0

Damn right they are!

See the letters pages of ZZAP in the late Eighties for many banana appearances...

[DreamcastRIP]

Are bananas retro though?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1RFRoleEd0

Damn right they are!

See the letters pages of ZZAP in the late Eighties for many banana appearances...

Look at a C=64 magazine? NEVER!

[kiwimike]

Is there any of the Classic VCS programmers from it's boom time you really admire, or games you saw and thought, Damn, wish I'd done that?

[paranoid marvin]

What was the most dificult thing that you made the Atari 2600 do?

[DRS]

Just letting you know I talked to Dennis last night (for 2 hours 40 mins.. man, he has quite the tale!) so cheers for all these questions. I got some decent answers and I'll try to include as many as I can in the final piece (which will appear in RG107, so a bit of a way off) Oh and Merman, your question about PGA course design prompted a fascinating insight into old-skool game development! I'm going to put that in the 'main' article, as it would take up the whole Message in a Bottle column if included there, but cheers for the question mate

Thanks again to all who posted in this thread. My next castaway will probably be Trevor Hall, who wrote Twin Kingdom Valley and was software manager at Bug Byte for several years in the early 80s - has some great tales about the very early days of the UK software scene, most of which I'll be able to use ;] Before that, I'm talking to Eugene Evans, so look out for a question thread for that.

Cheers for your continued contributions - they really are appreciated

Paul

[DRS]

I've just finished the desert island piece with Dennis for RG107 and there wasn't room for some of your excellent questions, so here are a few that I'd written up but couldn't squeeze in... thanks as always for taking the time to submit questions and sorry if I couldn't get yours in print (though Slacey, I DID get another one of yours in the article!)

Till next time

Paul @;]


DreamcastRIP: How did you feel witnessing the huge commercial success of Milton Bradley's Simon which Ralph Baer copied from Touch Me?
You know, I didn’t view it that way. Yeah, you’re right, Touch Me was originally a coin-op and then Simon came along. I thought it was truly a well done version. I loved the colours, the design was great… I didn’t feel bad at all. Our version was the calculator model and their industrial design was much better.

Kiwimike: What other VCS coders did you admire?
I’d have to say David Crane, Bob Smith, Carol Shaw, who was brilliant, and some of the people that came over from coin-op like Ed Logg. They were all really good!

Noobish Hat: Who is your favourite Doctor Who?
I’m aware of Dr Who but I never got into it. I only became aware of it later in life. I was a big fan of The Avengers and other British imports, though!

Slacey1070: To settle a forum fight, did you call the 2600, a 2600, a VCS or some other title?
A lot of us referred to it as Stella, the nickname Joe Decuir gave to the chipset. At Atari, it was mainly the VCS, sometimes the 2600 and sometimes just Stella.

[DreamcastRIP]

Many thanks for the excellent feedback, DRS. Definitely looking forward to reading the final published article.