Interview with Atari programmer STEVE WOITA
by Scott
Stilphen
SS: What's your educational/technical background?
SS: When did you start at Atari?
SW: I started
Atari around 1982 and left 1984. I interviewed with Rob Zdybel, and I
think I spoke with Dan
Hitchens. The guy who hired me was Don Tiser (not sure on the
spelling of his last name). Rob saw
what I was working on for the Apple (a 3D shooter) and gave the ok to hire me.
SS: I understand you worked with Jerome Domurat on your first game, TAZ.
Did he do the title screen?
SW: Yes, Jerome did the title screen for TAZ. He thought it wasn't right to have
his name on the graphic credits because I did all of the other graphics in the
game, but he helped me and he deserved the credit too.
SS: Did any other programmers help out with your games?
SW: Not on the Atari 2600 games. I mean we'd share knowledge and snippets of code, but in general it was a one-man show. I miss doing the whole game. I'm back to doing that right now with Shockwave, Flash, and Java.
SS: I've seen a
prototype of this with the title written as TAZZ. Was the title change
the only difference? Why was it changed?
SW: I wanted to have a short name for the game, so I came up with TAZZ. At this
time the name TAZ was never used before. A guy from Warner Bros. came by and we
talked about the name of the game, & he said, "How 'bout we drop one of
the 'Z's?" and I said no problem.
That's how the name "TAZ" was born for all the products you see now
that are out there.
SS: I recently discovered what the
'mystery dessert' is - this had been driving me nuts for years!
I admit, I had to cheat to find it (I used an emulator running at
half-speed). Actually, I was hoping
it was a stomach pump :)
SW: As far as I know, besides myself, no one has ever got there without cheating
:)
SS: A few years ago
you revealed how to uncover your name in the game. I noticed with Asterix (the "Euro" version of TAZ),
you took your name out of it. Why?
SW: It's been
so long, I forgot what I did. I
guess I'll have to try playing it again. I know that at the time, if Atari found
out anything later that was in the game that they didn't approve of, they
wouldn't give us our bonus.... or that was the rumor at the time, so I may
have opted to leave the Easter eggs out.
SS: Is it true that you were going to quit if Atari
didn't put your name on the back of the box?
SW: Yes, this is true. I truly admired the way Activision branded their games with who actually did the work. That way, if you liked the way a certain designer did their games, you could easily follow their work and decide whether to buy their next game or not. You wouldn't buy a music record or CD if it said, "Hip Rock tunes from Warner Bros.", would you? Of course not. You'd like to know what band made the tunes.
SS: I heard only about 10,000 copies of Quadrun were ever produced -
is this correct?
SW: That's correct. When we focus-tested the game, it tested too hard. The focus
group consisted of mainly of 10 to 12-year-old girls. I have no idea why our
marketing department used this demographic - it was a shooting game. I stressed
so hard that we must do another test with the correct demographic, but the cost
would've been too high. The girls kept saying, "It's not like Ms.
Pac-Man". So, armed with this brilliant information, our marketing
gurus figured the game was just too hard and it should be used as one of the
featured games for the "Video Olympics". The Video Olympics consisted of
Quadrun, Gravitar, and Battlezone.
SS: In another
interview I found, you mentioned that it took you and another programmer a whole
day to do the voice for this. Do you remember his name?
SW: His name was Frank Hausman.
He set up the recording stuff and we kept at the recording of my voice
until we got my "QuadRun, QuadRun, QuadRun" voice down to around 700
bytes. I put the sound driver in and fiddled with stuff for a while to get the
whole thing working. I had to shut the whole video display off to get enough
6502 horsepower to process my goofy voice. I figured the best place to put this
voice stuff was between rounds just before I put up the 6 char kernel that
displayed the name of the alien you were going up against next.
SS: Supposedly there
was to be a final playoff at the 84 Olympics, for Atari's Video Game Masters
competition. Do you recall if this ever happened, or who won with Quadrun?
SW: I heard that it did happen, but I don't know who won though.
SS: I'm surprised Garfield
was never released, as it seems fairly complete. Was it?
SW: I was about 1/3 of the way done with Garfield when the
"T" brothers bought (and ruined) the company.
I would have finished it if that didn't happen.
SS: I also noticed how it has your
trademark graphics display- was there a reason you used that in all your games?
SW: I just liked framing the games with a consistent
trademark. I wanted to have a
common visual theme in the games that I did for Atari. That's why you see what I called "cooking woks" on
the top and bottom of all my games. It's
sort of a signature, so people could tell whose game it was if they cared.
SS: Other than Garfield, were there any other titles you
worked on that didn't get finished or released?
SW: There was one
game that I started to work on for about 2 weeks just before we sealed the
Garfield deal with Jim Davis, but I didn't even have a name for it yet. I
usually find a name for the game before I start it. That helps me get more excited about doing the game.
SS: Do any of your other games contain your name or hidden messages?
SW: Quadrun does, & I truly forgot how to do it!
If you get to the end of TerraDacktel, you'll be fighting against
my face, which will be spitting out stuff.
SS: With your 2600 games, were there any features you would have like to
added, or any known bugs or glitches that gave you trouble (or never got
resolved)?
SW: Well, I guess since so many
people are making a big thing about Quadrun being the first commercially
available game to do voice without an adapter, I would've tried to put some more
voices in the game, but I liked the way it turned out. Quadrun was my first
project at Atari, sort of a project to get to know the 2600 and I figured I
could sort of make a game out of it.
I was lucky at
Atari, of the 3 games I did, none of the testers ever found a bug in them :)
SS: Any memorable stories or anecdotes from your days at
Atari?
SW: I was working with Dan Hitchens on converting Battlezone to the Atari
2600. Dan was on vacation for a couple of weeks. We got some of the mountain
stuff scrolling around in the background and a few other goodies going. When Dan
got back from vacation I got to tell him the following story: "Hey Dan
guess what, I was walking by Rich Frick's office and saw a completed
version of Battlezone for the 2600!" Dan was not happy with this story. As
it turns out, GCC was contracted 6 months or so before Dan and I were asked to
do the conversion. I've never been a big fan of doing conversions and this
was one of the big reasons why.
SS: Why would
Atari have you work on porting this if they already contracted GCC to do it?
Lack of faith in GCC, perhaps?
SW: I heard that our 2600 group really didn't know that GCC
was working on this other version. We think that another part of Atari just
didn't know (marketing) & contracted the game out to GCC.
SS: I understand you worked with the Super Nintendo at
MediaGenic. What was that like?
SW: We worked on Shanghi for about a month only to
find out MediaGenic sold the rights (or something like that) to another company
to do the game. They (management)
wanted us to work on Pitfall 3 (I forgot what the actual title was), so
we worked on that for quite awhile, but I wanted to do my original idea, and as
we were working on Pitfall, I got the feeling that my producer wanted me to do
my original idea, so we dropped Pitfall and worked on my idea (I'm not saying
what that idea was), I got laid off before we could finish it - the company
moved to LA as Activison.
SS: While at 3DO, you worked with Bob Smith on a
few games. Did you guys know eachother at Atari back then?
SW: I've always heard about Bob Smith while I was at Atari, but never did meet
him back then. The first time I met him was when he interviewed me at 3DO.
During the interview I said to him, "Hold on, did you say your name was Bob
Smith, as in Bob Smith the 2600 programmer?" "Yes, that's me!" He
basically said to me, "Well, if you can program the 2600, the PSX should be
no problem." and then he hired me. Bob's one of the best people you could
ever know. He's one of the best managers I've ever worked with, and hope to work
with him again soon.
The titles I worked on with Bob Smith were: PSX Sarge's
Heroes, Sarge's Heroes II and World War.
SS: Were you involved with any other 3DO titles?
SW: I also worked on WarJetz for the PSX II. I didn't do a whole lot on WarJetz, and left 3DO during this
time because of an offer I couldn't refuse, to be the Director of Game
Development at Design Reactor, which did online Shockwave and Flash games for
some very, very big client sites (Disney, VH1, etc.) – one of their games was Udder
Insanity. I carefully
interviewed with this company for almost six months before we reached an
agreement, as I was giving up a lot of stock and working with the best people in
the business at 3DO. As it turned out, they had a business model that was less
than stellar, but I can't blame them since the "dot.bomb" thing was going
down. Needless to say, there was no need for me to direct their online game
division any more, and now I'm back to writing my own goofy games.
SS: I checked out your Java site the other
night (very 'retro' cool). Dunk It is quite addictive (can't get past
those damn sprinkles). I like some of the voice-over sound effects (such as the
Mr. Bill-esque "Oh Noooo" in Antenna). TerraDacktel has
a bit of that Joust feel to it. Who's "Beyondo" Woita?
SW: Beyondo is
our cat ^..^ If you go to http://www.coffeebreakarcade.com/adtoit/sdacktel.htm,
you'll see a different version of TerraDacktel, where Terra's carrying one of
the games that I worked on at 3DO.
SS: How was it writing for the PS2?
SW: In most cases you're writing to whatever game API (Application Programmer
Interface) the company has chosen. In the case of 3DO, they made a HUGE mistake
by not using Render Ware as the API of choice. This API was working way before
our internal library team could get their act together. Our library team should
have been telling us the do's and don'ts of Render Ware, and reporting back to
the folks at Render Ware on what to fix or add. If 3DO would have used this
pre-made API, we could have been to market with our first titles much sooner,
and with much less frustration. It was a very costly mistake. 3DO is not a
technology company - they're a publisher, and I just can't believe that we
weren't able to just focus on making great games.
SS: Besides at shows like Classic Gaming Expo, do you ever see any of your
former Atari programmers?
SW: Since I left 3DO, I don't see any of the old Atari programmers. Both Rob
Zdybel and I are no longer at 3DO. I believe that Tod Frye, Howard
Warshaw, and Bob Smith are still there.
Both my wife (Susan) and I love the Classic Gaming Expo and we can't wait for
the next one. Oh, by the way I guess I'll announce it here - I hope to be
showing off and selling my new game for the PC called BigTime! at
this year's show. I'm trying to get back to basics on this game. The game puts
me (yes, my goofy mug's in the game) against my own goofy Boss Monster designs.
The story so far: The evil "OneTooth" character has taken over all of
my Boss monster designs (he's driving these big creatures around) and it's the
players job to defeat OneTooth and free up each inanimate object (Bosses). I
must stress that this game is not 3D, it's 2D, and almost all of the artwork in
the game is 1-bit! You see, all of the creatures that I've designed were done to
look like the game is on a chalkboard in comic-book style (with the chalkboard
being black and the chalk white) - hence the 1-bit art. I hope to have a demo up
on one of the largest and best game sites around, called http://www.CoffeeBreakArcade.com.
Keep checking to see if it's there. This game site is truly the best online game
site around. As I said, this would be a demo version of the game and the full
version will have all of the levels and maybe more goodies, and the game price
will be kept dirt-cheap.
SS: What are some of your favorite games (for any format)?
SW: There are so many. I really
think the list would be too long to list here so I'll mention a few that come to
mind: Castle Wolfenstein,
Doom, Doom 2, Quake (all versions), Metal Slug X, Driver 1 &
2,
Hydro Thunder, Twisted Metal (all versions),
Arctic Thunder, Crazy Taxi,
Spy Hunter,
State Of Emergency,
Green Rouge,
Fantavision,
Midnight Club,
Aqua Aqua,
Twisted Metal Black, and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy.
SOFTWARE & HARDWAREOLOGY:
OctAgun
(unreleased)
Apple
Apple II
Joyport (hardware device, with Keithen)
Sirius Software
Apple II (worked with Keithen)
Quadrun
Atari
VCS/2600
Taz / Asterix
Atari
VCS/2600
Garfield
Atari
VCS/2600
Mousestick
Video 7
Apple Macintosh
test software
Apple
Apple II GS (contract work)
Super Sprint (track level layout)
Tengen
(Atari)
NES
Police Academy
(unreleased)
Tengen
(Atari)
NES
Krazy Kreatures (some game
design) Bitmasters
NES
Sonic Spinball
Sega
Genesis
Kid Chameleon
Sega
Genesis
Waterworld
Ocean of America
Virtual Boy
Waterworld (unreleaseed)
Ocean of America
Saturn
Gubble (co-level designer)
Actual Entertainment PC
Gubble 2 (co-level designer)
Actual Entertainment
PC.
Sarge's Heroes
3DO
Playstation
Sarge's Heroes 2
3DO
Playstation
World War
3DO
Playstation
WarJetz
3DO
Playstation 2
Antenna
Adtoit.com
online Java game
Dunk It
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online Java game
TerraDacktel
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online Java game
Duh!
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online Java game
Big Time!
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online Java game