"What’s in a name?" Shakespeare put forth the question some 400 years ago, but had he lived amongst us today, he might well have asked, "What’s in a game?" If you were a PC gamer in the mid to late-90s, you were probably aware of CHAMProgramming and their line-up of incredibly accurate arcade translations. In fact, John Champeau’s games were so accurate that they attracted the attention of companies like Atari and Namco, who wasted no time in showing their "appreciation". Thankfully, he didn’t hang up his programming gloves forever; 2005 saw the reincarnation of CHAMProgramming (as Champ Games) and he's just as devoted to create arcade-perfect translations – only this time for the VCS! We put 20 questions to the latest programming 'champ' to hit the Atari 2600 scene, in an effort to find out what’s in his games that makes them so damn good!
Q: What’s your educational background?
JWC: My educational background is a computer science and engineering degree from the University of Connecticut. My game programming background is mostly self-taught – I must have bought every game-programming book that came out in the early 90’s.
Q: What inspired you to go into game design?
JWC: In the early 80’s my mom bought us an Atari 800. We had been playing the VCS since ‘78, and the games on the 800 were even better. After a few months I discovered BASIC, and started writing some simple games. This was a huge creative outlet and soon I was spending many nights (sometimes all night) writing games, including a Karate game and a Wizard of Wor type game.
Q: Were there any programmers or games that inspired you?
JWC: I was not aware of any programmers, but I must say that the VCS games and early arcade games were my first inspiration. My friend Dennis and I would spend our free time designing games that we thought would make great 2600 titles. One game we designed was called Mountain Raider. This game can best be described a combination of Scramble, Berzerk and H.E.R.O. The design was even sent to Atari, although it was rejected.
Q: Before MAME got popular, your arcade PC versions were the next best thing to having the actual machine! What’s the history of CHAMProgramming?
JWC: The story of CHAMProgramming started in the early 90’s. VGA graphics had just become available, and the 320x200 256 color mode was quite easy to work with since it was a linear buffer. Almost immediately I started writing a sequel of Missile Command called Last Defense. The game was finished and featured power-ups, shields, and different weapons with the same basic play of Missile Command.
Around this time, AOL had become popular and I started downloading shareware games. Most were based on the classics like Asteroids, Pac-man, and Space Invaders. None of them, unfortunately, seemed to capture the spirit of the originals, so I was determined to make my own versions.
My first shareware game was Pacmaniac, a Pac-man clone based on the Atari 800 version. When I got my first $10 check in the mail, I was ecstatic! This led to Ms. Pac-man, Galaxian, Asteroids, and Centipede being developed. All games were still shareware, uploaded to the AOL game section and a few checks would come in every so often.
At this point, I had sharpened my programming skills and took on one of my favorites: Donkey Kong. With this new game I decided to dive into the Internet as well and set up my own web page where I could post news, shareware downloads, and have a central point where people could post feedback and buy the games. I decided to use part of my last name and call this new game CHAMP Kong. With this new game, I also spent time adding in other game related enhancements, like a common user interface, high scores, a side bar with graphics, a nice title screen, sound card support, game instructions, and support for controllers, including a regular Atari joystick through the CHAMP Cable. This was a cable that connected to the parallel printer port and allowed the player to use an Atari joystick to play the game. It was pretty cool! The biggest addition, however, was including a CHAMP mode with the game. This mode was similar to the arcade mode, except it would have different levels and power ups.
Q: Did anyone else help you with the games, or were they a solo effort?
JWC: To help with the business, my then-girlfriend (and now wife) Christina joined to help with filling orders and my brother Paul joined to head the hardware and testing department. I also employed a graphic artist and a sound effects expert as these were usually the most time consuming pieces of games design.
Q: What was your most popular title?
JWC: Champ Kong was a huge hit, selling many copies. From there, the comment mailbox starting filling up with suggestions of other games we should make. The first task I wanted to do was re-release the original five games with the new game engine and features, as well as add a CHAMP Mode. So, the next few months saw the release of CHAMP Ms. Pac-em, Galaxia, Pac-em, Asterocks and Centiped-em. All were met with a positive response and things were going well.
Q: Why did the company shut down?
JWC: The first bad news hit CHAMProgramming in October of 1997 with a cease-and-desist from JTS Corporation, the company who held the rights to Atari at the time. Although there were dozens of Asteroid and Centipede clones out, apparently our versions were a little too good and needed to be removed from the website. Game development continued, with the release of CHAMP Invaders and CHAMP Galagon. CHAMP Frog-em and CHAMP Burger Climb were both in development in July of 1998 and about 50% completed when a C&D was received from Namco. Removing the Namco titles from our catalog left us with only CHAMP Kong and Invaders, and the decision to shut down CHAMProgramming was made on August 3rd.
Q: With your games, were there any features you would have liked to have added, or any known bugs or glitches that gave you trouble (or never got resolved)?
JWC: We spent many hours designing our games, including the game play and the user interface. At the time CHAMProgramming was shut down, I was developing a new game engine that would have allowed us to created games for DOS and Windows concurrently. We were also looking into using higher-resolution modes for vector games and using the Internet for an online hi-score list for our games (similar to the Xbox Live Arcade). One major project we were designing was a ‘virtual arcade’ that would have allowed people to play our games online against other people over the Internet. The arcade would have had built-in games like foozball, pinball, skeetball, air hockey, etc. and allowed players to add CHAMP games too. I don’t know of any known bugs, but the sound driver we used seemed to be pretty buggy. We did have a few service releases of our games if any major bugs were found.
Q: Now that CHAMProgramming has been ‘reborn’ – as CHAMP Games – it’s clear the same level of quality and faithfulness to your ports continues. Why choose such a limited platform like the VCS to program on? And do you have plans to program for other systems?
JWC: I chose the VCS to get back into game programming for a few reasons. First, it is my favorite video game console and the one that I have the fondest memories of. Second, I have always wanted to make a game for the system, starting way back in 1982 with Mountain Raider. Third, the limited platform of the VCS offers a unique challenge that I wanted to tackle. Although I seem to have a list a mile long of games I want to do for the VCS, eventually I would love to make a real game for the 8-bit line and perhaps rewrite some of the BASIC games I made in the early 80’s, but this time write them in assembler.
Q: How did you come to work on some of the Flashback 2 games?
JWC: I was impressed with the FB2 overall but very disappointed in some of the new games - especially Caverns of Mars. I wrote to Curt Vendel and asked if I could help in improving them. After a few exchanges it appeared that a Rev. C of the FB2 was in the works so he had me try to "fix" a few of the games. My first project was to try to reduce the # of scan lines in the GCC version of Millipede; unfortunately, the game was PAL and too much game logic would cause the screen to roll. Up next was an opportunity to fix the constant flickering in Lunar Lander. For this project, I was given the ROM (which I disassembled since he didn’t have the source code) and tried to follow what was going on. This proved to be too difficult so I spent the next couple of weeks rewriting the game from scratch while retaining the look of the original FB2 version. Once this was completed, I offered to try my hand at doing a new Caverns of Mars. Lunar Lander was my first complete 2600 game, so taking CoM seemed a little overwhelming, but after a few days I was able to deliver a proof-of-concept that showed that the game could look and play almost exactly like the Atari 800 version. After a few months, the game was completed and Curt waited for Atari to give the go-ahead for the FB2 Rev C. Unfortunately, the FB2 Rev C project was altered and the updated games (including a fixed version of Arcade Pong that I did, and one of Yars' Return that was done by Dennis Debro). On a brighter note, I still owned the code so I took the time to rework the Caverns of Mars engine to a similar game called Conquest of Mars, which was released a few months later.
