Dave Perry Interview
I conducted this interview with Dave Perry, famous for games like Turtles, Trantor, Extreme and Dan Dare 3 to name but a few... Enjoy!
Dave Perry was one of the most popular programmers for the CPC. With a resume which includes Trantor, Smash TV, Dan Dare 3, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, to name but a few, it isn't surprising why he isn't popular. He now runs his own development company which recently wrote Enter the Matrix, a tie-in of the Matrix movies.
He was kind enough to spare some time to be interviewed for CPC Zone.
1) Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
> Grew up in Northern Ireland. Extremely tall. Can't sing.
2) How did you get into computing?
> My school had a new computer "The Research Machines 380Z". That let us make games where you played as a letter "V" shooting "."'s at enemy letter "O"'s. Then along came the Sinclair ZX81 so I could do this at home! I was hooked. (We also had an Acorn Atom.)
3) What was the first game you wrote and had published?
> First games published were actually in the "National ZX80, ZX81 Users Club Magazine" published by Interface publications. I actually got paid for this work and it was cool to be in school with money coming in... My dentist I'm sure was happy by the amount of sweets I could afford!
4) How did you join Probe and what was your first job for them?
> I was asked by Fergus McGovern (head of Probe) to convert a game called Trantor the Last Stormtrooper to Amstrad CPC from the Spectrum version. What was funny was that the Spectrum version was not finished, and I ended up catching up with them. So Fergus kept giving me other games from that point on. The highlight for me was meeting Nick Bruty (artist) on that project and from that day on, we starting making our Spectrum / Amstrad games together.
5) In games you wrote for both the CPC and Spectrum, was it your aim to use as much colour as possible?
> By hooking up with a really good artist, he was making my programming look good as he was really digging deep for as much color as possible from the machine. (Extreme is a good example of this.) I enjoyed the challenge and so it's a trend you see through the games we did together.
6) Out of the games you've written, is there any game(s) you would have gone back to drawing board and started again?
> The game I hated most that I made was Great Gurianos. It was an Arcade Port and I did the graphics. It was nasty and I ran out of memory to actually finish the game, so I made the last boss impossible to kill. (There is no ending to the game! - I still use it as an example today of how NOT to make games.)
7) One of your licenced games was Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. How come the CPC/Spectrum versions were a lot shorter than the C64/Amiga/ST/PC versions? Was this due to memory limitations and relutance to use multiloads or was it because the CPC/Spectrum versions were new versions while the other formats were conversions of American format games?
> The truth? We only spent around one week on this game. It shows. But it hit #1 at Christmas. Smash TV was the same story. I'm still amazed at how quickly we could deliver these games. That year, I had ELEVEN games on the shelves at the same time!!!
:cool: In your time, you've written some good stuff, including several major licences. Is there a film/arcade/TV licence you wish you'd been able to write?
> I'm a big fan of Aliens / Predator / Blade Runner... I would love to work with James Cameron and make an "officially" expanded game based on these or a future property.
9) When writing both Turtles games, what did you find harder?
> I always lead on Sinclair Spectrum, the conversion to Amstrad would only take about 1-2 days as I would port the graphics by code. Nick Bruty actually had more work as he would then start to re-draw everything.
10) Can you give me a few memories (if possible) on the making of the following games:
Trantor - The Last Stormtrooper
> Loved making a game with a GIGANTIC character and flamethrower. It was impractical for gameplay, but fun to do. Nick's big spaceship was cool also.
Dan Dare 3
> This was actually a game called "Crazy Jet Racer", then when Fergus saw it, he asked if we could change it to "Dan Dare III". So that's what happened. Crazy Jet was about a robot on a unicycle. (I have a unicycle, so I assume it was about that time I got it?)
Extreme
> This was the last game we made on Sinclair Spectrum. My goal was to use EVERY piece of code I had in one game. That we did. We also decided to make the biggest character ever. So you were a guy on giant robot legs. It was really really fun to make. Not very practical for gameplay, but we enjoyed it!
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
> We were supposed to convert another Turtles game to Spectrum, but never got a copy in time. So we went ahead and made our own game as quickly as possible. We didn't realize just how big this property was becoming. That said, we threw some technical tricks in there we were proud of at the time.
Captain Planet
> Phil Harrison from Sony was the head of Development at Mindscape, so he hired us to make Captain Planet. We hated the property, but were good friends with Phil so agreed to make it. This game didn't take long to make and we actually used some of Nick's old artwork (that I liked) to make parts of it.
Paperboy 2
> The fun thing about this game to make was the experimentation with randomly generated levels. (How the heck could you store so many levels in a Spectrum?) They were actually made by the game. So we didn't actually design the game, the game did. Weird and fun.
Savage
> Nick and I got carried away on this game. It's actually 3 games in three separate loads. Playing as a giant character (again!), flying as a bird and traveling across a 3D landscape. I was a massive fan of 3D Deathchase, it's still my favorite Spectrum game. This 3D level was me trying to experiment with a very graphical version of 3D Deathchase.
Smash TV
> This game took no time to make, but I actually thought it was one of the more fun games we made. Colorful again.
Three Weeks in Paradise
> This was my chance to show Mikro-Gen that I could be a professional programmer. I put everything I had into it and was very proud of the result. I actually made a 128K version of the game also. That was intended for the Mikro-Plus, which was cancelled. So I was left with extra code. Luckily the 128K Speccy came out, so we finally got to release the extra bits too. This was also when I finally got to meet Sir Clive Sinclair.
Tintin on the Moon
> This game was yet another quick one. Nick and I decided to experiment on making an entire game from one map.
The idea was to just close and open doors, starting you in different locations. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn't work so well. I think we did a better job when we revisited this concept again on Cool Spot for Megadrive.
Tintin was actually a project Infogrames needed done. It's funny, but just by chance it was one of my favorite Tintin stories.
11) You now write games for the Nintendo Gamecube, Playstaion2 and X-Box. Is there anything from your programming history from the 8-bit computers you would love to see appear on one of these machines, either written by yourself or other people? Personally I would love to see Trantor given the super console make-over.
> I've never really thought about this. I think Trantor would be the one also. Possibly Wally Week could make a reprise as a comedy game.
12) One of your last major licences was Enter the Matrix, based on the film trilogy (which I couldn't make head or tail of). Critics and players critised the game (although I like it). How does it feel when people critise the stuff you've written?
> It was the #1 movie game of 2003, beating Lord of the Rings. It won the Spike TV Movie Game of the year award. It's made around $250,000,000 for our Publisher. I just don't feel bad about it. We continue to learn new things every year and considering it was our first PS2 game, first Xbox game and first Gamecube game all delivered at the same time, we can only do better in the future.
13) Do you play games today and if so, what do you like to play?
> I love online games. I find myself firing up Battlefield 1942 a lot. I also play games like Max Payne 2 / Farcry / Call of Duty. I think the reason is that my consoles are downstairs and I have a gaming PC rig upstairs.
14) With Probe or your own company, you've written for major companies like US Gold, Virgin, Atari (formerly Infogrames), Mirrorsoft/Imageworks, Firebird. Is there a company you would have liked to work for?
> No really. I've enjoyed my experiences as they have come along. Year after year, this job never gets old.
That said, it's kinda cool that I have an Atari business card right now.
15) You mentioned you liked the Alien films and would love to make a proper game of it. If I remember correctly, Probe wrote the Alien trilogy game for the Playstation. I don't have it anymore, but did you have anything to do with it? If not, do you think a good job was made of it. (personally, I didn't like it - I would have pefered it to be more in line with the movies.)..
> Probe did have the rights, however, no I didn't work on that one. Wouldn't you love to play an Aliens game with the story by James Cameron?
16) When talking about Turtles, you mentioned you were ment to convert another Turtles game to the Speccy/CPC but didn't get it in time. Was this other game going to be more based on the huge C64/Amiga/ST/PC game? Was any programming done for this alternative version.
> Yes, I think it was the CBM64 version.
17) Early screenshots of Turtles I saw in Amstrad Action and Computer and Video Games had a much better sprite for the Turtles and a slight difference to the format. How come it was all changed?
> Probably because I had my two pass system. (Software, then artist.) Nick (the artist) will be REAL happy to know you preferred the software version!
Dave Perry, thank you for your time..
Dave Perry was one of the most popular programmers for the CPC. With a resume which includes Trantor, Smash TV, Dan Dare 3, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, to name but a few, it isn't surprising why he isn't popular. He now runs his own development company which recently wrote Enter the Matrix, a tie-in of the Matrix movies.
He was kind enough to spare some time to be interviewed for CPC Zone.
1) Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
> Grew up in Northern Ireland. Extremely tall. Can't sing.
2) How did you get into computing?
> My school had a new computer "The Research Machines 380Z". That let us make games where you played as a letter "V" shooting "."'s at enemy letter "O"'s. Then along came the Sinclair ZX81 so I could do this at home! I was hooked. (We also had an Acorn Atom.)
3) What was the first game you wrote and had published?
> First games published were actually in the "National ZX80, ZX81 Users Club Magazine" published by Interface publications. I actually got paid for this work and it was cool to be in school with money coming in... My dentist I'm sure was happy by the amount of sweets I could afford!
4) How did you join Probe and what was your first job for them?
> I was asked by Fergus McGovern (head of Probe) to convert a game called Trantor the Last Stormtrooper to Amstrad CPC from the Spectrum version. What was funny was that the Spectrum version was not finished, and I ended up catching up with them. So Fergus kept giving me other games from that point on. The highlight for me was meeting Nick Bruty (artist) on that project and from that day on, we starting making our Spectrum / Amstrad games together.
5) In games you wrote for both the CPC and Spectrum, was it your aim to use as much colour as possible?
> By hooking up with a really good artist, he was making my programming look good as he was really digging deep for as much color as possible from the machine. (Extreme is a good example of this.) I enjoyed the challenge and so it's a trend you see through the games we did together.
6) Out of the games you've written, is there any game(s) you would have gone back to drawing board and started again?
> The game I hated most that I made was Great Gurianos. It was an Arcade Port and I did the graphics. It was nasty and I ran out of memory to actually finish the game, so I made the last boss impossible to kill. (There is no ending to the game! - I still use it as an example today of how NOT to make games.)
7) One of your licenced games was Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. How come the CPC/Spectrum versions were a lot shorter than the C64/Amiga/ST/PC versions? Was this due to memory limitations and relutance to use multiloads or was it because the CPC/Spectrum versions were new versions while the other formats were conversions of American format games?
> The truth? We only spent around one week on this game. It shows. But it hit #1 at Christmas. Smash TV was the same story. I'm still amazed at how quickly we could deliver these games. That year, I had ELEVEN games on the shelves at the same time!!!
:cool: In your time, you've written some good stuff, including several major licences. Is there a film/arcade/TV licence you wish you'd been able to write?
> I'm a big fan of Aliens / Predator / Blade Runner... I would love to work with James Cameron and make an "officially" expanded game based on these or a future property.
9) When writing both Turtles games, what did you find harder?
> I always lead on Sinclair Spectrum, the conversion to Amstrad would only take about 1-2 days as I would port the graphics by code. Nick Bruty actually had more work as he would then start to re-draw everything.
10) Can you give me a few memories (if possible) on the making of the following games:
Trantor - The Last Stormtrooper
> Loved making a game with a GIGANTIC character and flamethrower. It was impractical for gameplay, but fun to do. Nick's big spaceship was cool also.
Dan Dare 3
> This was actually a game called "Crazy Jet Racer", then when Fergus saw it, he asked if we could change it to "Dan Dare III". So that's what happened. Crazy Jet was about a robot on a unicycle. (I have a unicycle, so I assume it was about that time I got it?)
Extreme
> This was the last game we made on Sinclair Spectrum. My goal was to use EVERY piece of code I had in one game. That we did. We also decided to make the biggest character ever. So you were a guy on giant robot legs. It was really really fun to make. Not very practical for gameplay, but we enjoyed it!
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
> We were supposed to convert another Turtles game to Spectrum, but never got a copy in time. So we went ahead and made our own game as quickly as possible. We didn't realize just how big this property was becoming. That said, we threw some technical tricks in there we were proud of at the time.
Captain Planet
> Phil Harrison from Sony was the head of Development at Mindscape, so he hired us to make Captain Planet. We hated the property, but were good friends with Phil so agreed to make it. This game didn't take long to make and we actually used some of Nick's old artwork (that I liked) to make parts of it.
Paperboy 2
> The fun thing about this game to make was the experimentation with randomly generated levels. (How the heck could you store so many levels in a Spectrum?) They were actually made by the game. So we didn't actually design the game, the game did. Weird and fun.
Savage
> Nick and I got carried away on this game. It's actually 3 games in three separate loads. Playing as a giant character (again!), flying as a bird and traveling across a 3D landscape. I was a massive fan of 3D Deathchase, it's still my favorite Spectrum game. This 3D level was me trying to experiment with a very graphical version of 3D Deathchase.
Smash TV
> This game took no time to make, but I actually thought it was one of the more fun games we made. Colorful again.
Three Weeks in Paradise
> This was my chance to show Mikro-Gen that I could be a professional programmer. I put everything I had into it and was very proud of the result. I actually made a 128K version of the game also. That was intended for the Mikro-Plus, which was cancelled. So I was left with extra code. Luckily the 128K Speccy came out, so we finally got to release the extra bits too. This was also when I finally got to meet Sir Clive Sinclair.
Tintin on the Moon
> This game was yet another quick one. Nick and I decided to experiment on making an entire game from one map.
The idea was to just close and open doors, starting you in different locations. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn't work so well. I think we did a better job when we revisited this concept again on Cool Spot for Megadrive.
Tintin was actually a project Infogrames needed done. It's funny, but just by chance it was one of my favorite Tintin stories.
11) You now write games for the Nintendo Gamecube, Playstaion2 and X-Box. Is there anything from your programming history from the 8-bit computers you would love to see appear on one of these machines, either written by yourself or other people? Personally I would love to see Trantor given the super console make-over.
> I've never really thought about this. I think Trantor would be the one also. Possibly Wally Week could make a reprise as a comedy game.
12) One of your last major licences was Enter the Matrix, based on the film trilogy (which I couldn't make head or tail of). Critics and players critised the game (although I like it). How does it feel when people critise the stuff you've written?
> It was the #1 movie game of 2003, beating Lord of the Rings. It won the Spike TV Movie Game of the year award. It's made around $250,000,000 for our Publisher. I just don't feel bad about it. We continue to learn new things every year and considering it was our first PS2 game, first Xbox game and first Gamecube game all delivered at the same time, we can only do better in the future.
13) Do you play games today and if so, what do you like to play?
> I love online games. I find myself firing up Battlefield 1942 a lot. I also play games like Max Payne 2 / Farcry / Call of Duty. I think the reason is that my consoles are downstairs and I have a gaming PC rig upstairs.
14) With Probe or your own company, you've written for major companies like US Gold, Virgin, Atari (formerly Infogrames), Mirrorsoft/Imageworks, Firebird. Is there a company you would have liked to work for?
> No really. I've enjoyed my experiences as they have come along. Year after year, this job never gets old.
That said, it's kinda cool that I have an Atari business card right now.
15) You mentioned you liked the Alien films and would love to make a proper game of it. If I remember correctly, Probe wrote the Alien trilogy game for the Playstation. I don't have it anymore, but did you have anything to do with it? If not, do you think a good job was made of it. (personally, I didn't like it - I would have pefered it to be more in line with the movies.)..
> Probe did have the rights, however, no I didn't work on that one. Wouldn't you love to play an Aliens game with the story by James Cameron?
16) When talking about Turtles, you mentioned you were ment to convert another Turtles game to the Speccy/CPC but didn't get it in time. Was this other game going to be more based on the huge C64/Amiga/ST/PC game? Was any programming done for this alternative version.
> Yes, I think it was the CBM64 version.
17) Early screenshots of Turtles I saw in Amstrad Action and Computer and Video Games had a much better sprite for the Turtles and a slight difference to the format. How come it was all changed?
> Probably because I had my two pass system. (Software, then artist.) Nick (the artist) will be REAL happy to know you preferred the software version!
Dave Perry, thank you for your time..
Post edited by zeropolis79 on
Comments
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
Still, you've got to admire his balls :)
as a little PS, isn't it wierd to think you could be playing BF1942 or UT2k4 against someone like this!
Ha, ha....classic!
Anyone else remember that?
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[ This Message was edited by: btyler1978 on 2004-08-15 18:11 ]
I just wish that I could`ve borrowed one over the summer holiday so that I could finish my opus megagame - now lost in the data erradictaion of the education system.
Many of us hacked the server program and entered the protected programs stored on the Nimbus - a crime in the making that earned a detention and a week ban from lunchtime use.
Mat
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
Why don't Martin put the interview in an article on the site so it doesn't get lost. I'd be happy to make the HTML for it...
I know what you mean. Smash TV looked like a real rush job to me when I bought it - now I know why. Prick.
http://www.shiny.com
Pretty amazing when you consider he started out doing type-in listings for Tim Hartnell.
Will I be able rip/encode at good quality with a 900 Mhz, and GeForce 4 (or does the TV card take on a lot of the burden itself?)
I personally liked the bloke from interviews at the time, although his answers above do seem a bit blaazay (jeez, how do you spell that, ha)...
I would love to see the Bad Influence shows again... I don't know if my memory is playing tricks on me, but didn't one episode feature Lemmings on the Speccy?
I do seem to recall seeing Lemmings on Bad Influence, only because I remember seeing them moving rather than just mag pictures, although as you know they didn`t have much Speccy related on it or Gamesmaster, even the poor Amiga used to oft` get relegated in reviews for console stuff...
https://discordapp.com/invite/cZt59EQ
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.