The Apogee Legacy #24 - Final Edition

Today we're bringing you the final edition of the Apogee Legacy Interview Series. As this was put together by Joe Siegler, we'll let him talk about the conclusion to the series.

"It's a bit of a sad moment, as this series has been a lot of fun to put together. Apogee has a rich history, being involved in some capacity in over 70 titles in our 19 year history now. I've been here for a long time myself, having seen the majority of these games get released. When Scott Miller originally came up with this idea, I wasn't terribly sure how well it would work, because a lot of the people we spoke with for this series either haven't kept in touch, or we lost track of them, etc, etc, etc... But it worked out well. Managed to reconnect with some folks, including a couple we haven't spoken with as a company in over a decade.

Yes, this is the final edition. It is not the normal edition, as this one is a summary, and has some recollections by folks of the two people who have worked here who have since died; William Scarboro & Dennis Scarff. So let's get onto the final edition."

Of all the people who have worked here (and there's been a lot), we're fortunate that (to our knowledge anyway), they're all still alive. So far only two folks who have worked here have since died. We want to take this time in the final edition of the series to commemorate them.

First up is Dennis Scarff. Dennis is not a name known to most people, because he was not a developer. Dennis took care of some of the business side of things for a few years in the mid 90's. If you look in our older shareware from the late 80's and early 90's, you'll see a lot of them have a listing of foreign retailers, and things of that nature. It was quite hapzardly done (compared to today's standards), and after a time, it was decided we needed someone to coordinate all of that. So Dennis was hired. Dennis was in charge of handling all shareware requests, as well as keeping track of foreign retailers, making sure they paid the royalty money they owed our company, things of that nature. As was said before, he wasn't really known to the public, but he played an integral part of our business side of things at the time.

He was also a tech nerd, although from a previous generation. Dennis was huge into Ham radio, and had all kinds of ham equipment and books in his office. He kept talking about how we all should participate in that. He was also likely to be found in all the local Radio Shack stores looking for parts, and he frequented several of the mom & pop computer stores in the area.

One funny story about Dennis recalled by Joe Siegler..

"As was said, Dennis was always into gadgety type of things. One time when the Dallas Stars first located here from Minnesota, several of us attended a game, including Dennis. In between periods, the Stars would fly this radio control blimp around the arena, and Dennis claimed that it would be easy enough to scan for the frequency of the thing and take control of it himself. He never did that, but it would have been amusing to see him try. Outside of work, that's the kind of thing he was always known for. He always had some parts catalog around, some phone thing, was a great guy. I miss him.

Tom Hall also remembers Dennis.

"Dennis was like the kind ol' grandpa of the company. Always there with a smile, a nod, a reassuring presence. A good fella."

Scott Miller recalls the original hiring of Dennis, and the reason why we eventually parted company:

Scarff was hired from a shareware catalog, the biggest of its type, called Public Brand Software, which was a huge catalog in the early eighties. Scarff was a big Apogee fan, and at the time we need someone to deal with all of the shareware outlets that helped drive our business at the time. But as the 90's moved forward, shareware catalogs and BBSs were replaced in importance by the Internet and the web. So, around 1996 or so we released him.

As was said above, Dennis was not as well known to the public, but to those of us who worked here when he was at Apogee, his is a name that is remembered fondly. It was with great sadness that we found out later he had passed away (via email from his widow).

Here's a few pictures of Dennis around the office.

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Second up is William Scarboro. William is far more known to the public than Dennis was, as William was one of the major folks on our Rise of the Triad project, as well as being the original lead programmer and engine designer on Prey. William died on Aug 9, 2002 of an asthma attack. It was quite sad actually, as we're told he died alone (likely in pain due to the way he died), and wasn't found for a few days after he had passed. But his life was one of fun and passion, and that's the way he's remembered. In fact, most people who knew him will remember him as this photo portrays him, as it pretty much summed him up..

Tom Hall (id, Ion Storm, Midway, etc) recalls Wiliam:

"William was a completely unique character. He was always good for a laugh. He'd describe an event in some crazy anime he'd seen, and then say, "Dude! That's ridiculous!" He'd have his little bag with his tuna/pasta/salsa/Omega 3 fatty acid bowls. He'd wear his odd American Male shirts on his muscle-bound frame, and talk about "chicks". He made the weapons in Rise of the Triad "insanely rockful". One day, he was so into typing code he didn't see the big turtle we set next to him for two minutes. So many little stories. He is missed."

When asked to elaborate on 'The turtle story', Tom replied with this..

Looking a bit sunburnt in a non standard white T-Shirt

"Heh, yeah, he was referring to a document or book two feet to his left. In between the two were two thick books stacked up. So he'd type, refer, type, refer.... Scott almost ran over a turtle, so he picked it up to get it out of the road and take it to water, but he thought he'd bring it in the office. We decided to surprise William with it, so we placed it on those stacked books. He kept turning to the reference, back to the computer, and so on for awhile. Obviously his brain registered "TURTLE!" and threw it out as bad information. Finally he turned and jumped back, his brain finally registering it as really there. :) "

Fellow Rise of the Triad programmer Mark Dochtermann (later Ritual, now EA) also recalls William:

"William Scarboro had uncanny way of boiling the world down into black and white. He either liked something or hated it, he desired it or pushed it away. His desire to classify his world into two absolute states made him a very passionate engineer. When he was into the work that he was doing, he was unstoppable."

Scott Miller (Apogee founder) also touches upon the original hiring of William, as well as his connection to Prey both old school and modern.

A rarity - William in a Tuxedo!

"William Scarboro was one of the first two or three actual developers (a coder) we hired in 1994 when we first shifted to internal development. Up until that time, we had solely worked with external teams, like Id Software and many others. He was hired to help develop an Id-approved sequel to Wolfenstein 3-D, which later became a non-Id game, Rise of the Triad. For the first year William worked here, he wore many shirts of many colors, but soon shifted to an all-black-shirt wardrobe. Made buying shirts easy, I suppose! But this became his signature look for all the remaining years I knew him.

William eventually became the lead coder on Prey, leading development of the Prey portal engine, and just as significantly, the Prey editor, called Preditor internally. At the time, this editor was a significant improvement over any previous 3D game editor we'd seen, and Remedy even used it as the template for their very similar Max Payne editor.

It's a shame that the original Prey project didn't reach escape velocity, and for many reasons it eventually ended. William moved on and away from the game industry, somewhat burnt out and looking for a more sane job. That was the last I saw of him, and two or so years later I heard he had tragically died due to an asthma attack.

William was also one of the industry's hardest, most dedicated workers, and we were proud to dedicate the new Prey to his memory."

Finally, Joe Siegler chimes in on William:

This is quite hard to write, as William was a good friend of mine, and it quite bothered me when I got an email from a (then) co-worker of his that he had died. While we were grateful for the update, we were not happy with the contents. As was said by the others here, William was quite the character. He could be completely into himself with his work, or be completely out there with his humour. One of the things that William an I shared was a case of the giggles. After we had been working together for awhile, there were certain catchphrases we were able to say to each other to set the other one off. One was "Uhhh.... 27?" which was a reference to a Beavis & Butthead episode where Butthead was trying to pass himself off as 27 years old. The other I can't recall right at the moment, but after those had been going on for awhile, it got so all we had to do was look at the other for more than a second or two, and we'd bust out laughing. That kind of friendship is hard to find. William & I attended a few concerts together. One was the tour that Van Halen did with Gary Cherone (which was better than it's reputation gave it), and the other was the tour that Motley Crue did John Corabi as vocalist. William was always on a quest to tour Europe where sex laws were not as uh, "strict" as they are in the US, not sure if he actually pulled that off or not. :)

Anyway, here's something I wrote about William back in January of 2006 when I was looking for pictures of other former developers at the start of this series. I found a picture of WIlliam I had forgotten about, and it inspired me to write this:

-- Start Story --

Every time I see a picture of him, I get sad. It's still depressing to find out the way he went. I also recently found out additional information about his passing. I had run across the original email I got from a (then) current co-worker of his informing me that he had died. I wrote back to him and asked what exactly William was doing when he died, as it occurred to me I didn't actually know that, all I knew was "not in the games industry". Here's what I was told..

Joe Siegler, William Scarboro, & Stephen Cole at E3 1998.

"RIA provides Income Tax solutions for Corporations, Accounting firms and CPAs. He was part of the Platform Technology Group. This group was responsible for core backend services for computing and printing tax returns. It involved a lot of hard core c++ skills. He was very integral to the group and will be sorely missed."

I also found out that the folks at RIA had gotten concerned when he hadn't shown up for work for a couple of days. Apparently his mother also was concerned as well, and she eventually went to his apartment, and it was his mother who found him dead - terribly sad info.

Anyway, I miss my old buddy, and I wanted to say finding some "new" pictures (or at least ones I forgot about) was a nice treat. Wish you were still around, pal.

-- End Story --

A nickname we had for William at the time was "Da Hur" (as in the whore). All this sounds odd, but if you knew William, it would make more sense. :) Miss ya buddy.

Here's a few pictures of William from around the office:

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We're fortunate that with so many folks we've worked with over the years that so few of them have passed on. There's some that just seem to have up and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Take for example Todd Replogle. Todd is well known as the programmer behind the first three Duke Nukem games, as well as Cosmo, and some others from the ancient days of our company. The last anyone from here heard, Todd was living in the backwoods of the state of Oregon. We heard a rumour that he had turned his money into PVC Pipe and buried it in his back yard. Whether that's true or not, he hasn't been heard from in years, and no one from 3DR has any idea how to contact him. We tried, as we wanted him in this series, but he was unreachable.

We tried getting a hold of some other folks for this series but couldn't. Duke 3D Atomic Edition producer Greg Malone was last heard of being a teacher in Arizona. Bobby Prince did briefly reply when we initially sent out the queries back in December of 2005, but hasn't been heard from since. Some others just declined to participate.

Some of the folks we did get to participate were not easy to track down. Peder Jungck was someone we hadn't spoken to in almost a decade, and was found via Google. Mike Voss was tracked down via another game developer. Lindsay Whipp was difficult, had to go through Google, to find some dead ends, we finally got a hold of him via someone at Wildfire in Australia, who had his email. Jason Blochowiak was difficult, as we had to track him down via a few other former employees. Most of them had him working at Midway Chicago, but a phone call to their receptionist said he wasn't there, we lucked out that someone knew where he went. One of the more interesting ones was Dave Sharpless. Since Dave had a game that was put out over 15 years ago, none of us had much (if any) contact with him in the interim. He was eventually tracked down when Matt at the Jumpman Lounge was kind enough to put us in contact with Dave.

Additionally, we do get quite a few queries about Lee Jackson, so I thought I'd take a moment to answer folks who want to know what's going on. He's doing fine, and after he and 3DR parted company in 2002, he briefly applied at another game company, but decided for a complete change of direction with his life. He went to a Radio broadcaster's school, and now holds a job with a firm in Dallas that does the traffic reporting for several radio stations in the Dallas area, including the big news station KRLD. This company also does reports for Sirius Satellite Radio, so if you have them, and hear a familiar voice, it's Lee Jackson. It's still amusing to me personally to hear "This is Lee Jackson in the KRLD traffic command center" coming over my radio.

So it was fun tracking down all these guys and gals, and it was a blast putting all this together. It's sad that the series is now ending, as it's been a blast going down memory lane these last six months the series has ran.

If need be, we might have special editions of the series in the future, should we make contact with someone who would be a good addition, but this was the final scheduled edition of this series. Thanks for sharing the trip down memory lane with us! This series went on far longer than we thought, and thanks to all who participated, and thank YOU for reading it.

So this ends the series. It's been nice looking backwards at our company, but now it's time to go forwards. The Prey demo is out, the full version will be out soon, so there's great, cool new stuff for you to look forward to.

That's all, folks!

P.S A special prayer goes out to Dennis & William - sorry we couldn't ask you guys directly about this series, it would have been nice to still have y'all around and contribute.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:18 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #23 - Paul Schuytema

Today we bring you the final "new" issue in the Apogee Legacy series. This edition is definitely one of the more unusual ones, and with the Prey demo being released this Thursday the 22nd, a timely one as well.

This week's edition is with Paul Schuytema. Paul was with 3D Realms for a couple of years in the mid - late 1990's as the project lead on Prey. Now what makes this unusual is that Prey was not released when Paul was here, so his insights into things are not the same as what they would be for someone who has published a game through us.

Still, with Prey on the horizon, and having covered Prey's original project lead (Tom Hall) earlier in the series, we figured we might as well hit Paul up too, and he was glad to send in his answers. Suprisingly for someone who didn't technically put out a game with us, he has a lot to say, so make sure and check it all out.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I first came to know Apogee from their games.. publishing Wolfenstein and Blake Stone and then ROTT.I was working as the game design editor for Computer Gaming World Magazine when I was sent down to Dallas on assignment to cover Duke Nukem 3D before it was released-it was so obvious from looking at that game that it would be a HUGE hit. I remember sitting in his office and asking George: "So how does it feel to KNOW you have a monster hit on your hands?"

I then worked with them to create a feature for CGW on editing in the Build engine. At the time, I was teaching at Monmouth college and we modeled the student center in the engine-it was a ball.deathmatching with my students through the campus union!

Paul Schuytema's as artwork

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

3D Realms lured me away from FASA Interactive. I was working as the lead designer on MechWarrior 3 and Scott Miller approached me about being the project leader on Prey. While I loved the MechWarrior universe and working on the Mech game, the chance to help grow our own game universe and flesh out a deep and interesting game character was too good to pass up.

In the "small world" category…when I left FASA, my producer was Tim Gerritsen…who went on to found Human Head. We became good friends during my time at 3DR and now his team will be the one that allows Prey to see the light of day.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Since Prey wasn't released when I was there, I can't really answer that question. I do have plenty of hindsight, though, on what we could have done better with the game and technology; as they say, hindsight is 20-20!

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

N/A

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Since leaving, I've had the chance to create games in which we retained no rights at all and some in which we retained nearly all the rights. I think it depends on the game. The honest truth, though, is that whomever bankrolls the project should probably control the majority of the rights, since they are the chief risk-taker.

In a perfect world, a developer would be able to self-fund up to a prototype state and then partner with a publisher for completion and distribution and then retain the major IP rights. The real trick, though, is having the capitol to fund that prototype. That's not a trivial feat to pull off!

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

For the games we've done as Magic Lantern, it's clearly a benefit to own our own IP - it gives us some freedom in putting together distribution deals to maximize our potential return.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

N/A

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yowza... there are so many! Four big ones stand out:

- the first time we showed of portal technology at E3- the gulp of amazement from those who saw it was a real rush for the whole team!

-our team design meetings when we would work on alien race cultures for Prey- the team really came together, time and time again, and we were able to take blue-sky ideas and reel them into nuggets that would fit in the context of an action game

-our team trek to see KMFDM (who was then doing the soundtrack for Prey) in Austin - they were paired with Rammstein, from Germany, and the show was intense and we got to hang out with the band back stage. [ Ed Note: There are still pictures of this event online here. ]

-my last E3 with 3D Realms - for just a few demos, we had a real trick up our sleeve - we did the demo for the press and talked a lot about cool multiplayer stuff and then for a few (I think we only did it two or three times), we had the press sit down and we spun a computer screen towards them and showed them that we could deathmatch right there - that there was game play in addition to the demo - that really wowed them!

Paul in the back room demo area for Prey at E3 1998

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Every publisher wants to mitigate their risk and taking a chance on a smaller or lesser-known team isn't they way to do that. That's a shame, because it's in those smaller studios that you'll find the real centers of game play innovation.

Also, the idea of mentoring is almost non-existent, which is a shame. Without mentors, small studios are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past - with mentoring, they can grow and flourish. I remember being on hand when Scott and George started their relationship with Remedy, and I was really impressed with how they coached and helped Remedy get started as they began work on Max Payne - it was something really special.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The consoles have really taken over and everything is "bigger, better, faster, more!" It's very, very hard for small studios, especially US-based studios (where labor costs are high as compared to overseas), to thrive. Also, since so much is ruled by so few, and all the triple-A games need to be multi-platform out of the gates, the barrier for entry is so high as to be almost impossible. Gone are the days when a great idea and a willingness to dive in and learn and work your butt off in your basement will allow you to start a game company - and that's kind of sad.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I started Magic Lantern (insert shameless plug: http://www.lanterngames.com) in 1999 and since then, I produced and designed 20+ games, from the casual to the hard-core (including a hand in one of the early Rainbow Six games). We did this in the cornfields of rural Illinois, and along the way, became very involved in community and economic development.

Late last year, I "turned the asylum over to the inmates" and started a new career with the University of Illinois. Now I work to make games and simulations to support faculty research - really a dream job for me, since I was in academia before I jumped into the game industry.

At 3DR HQ around October 1997.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

So far, the grass is pretty green around the ivory tower and I'm making games right now - maybe ask me again in a few years!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Honestly, I think we maybe spent too much time living in the now-defunct world of Glide (3DFX's 3D accelerator API) before we jumped to Direct X - we should have made that leap sooner, but of course, that's hindsight talking!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D, hands-down. The intensity of the multiplayer action was something I had never experienced before, and the laser trip bombs were just genius!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My all-time favorite is the Age of Empires series - the blend of tactical combat with world building and a real historical feel made the whole series incredible.

I also logged way too much time with the first 3D Jedi Knight game - the poly count was low, the characters looked goofy (by today's standards) and the textures were chunky, but the game play and the sense of scale is still unmatched - and the boss battles rank as the best I've ever played.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

During the time I was at 3DR, the industry was really coming into its own - the PC was still the big kid on the block and 3D acceleration was just starting out - and middleware was just becoming an option - it was very exciting to see so much change - but it was also a spooky time in which you had to guess on which API to support and what system specs to target. Did you use MMX? Glide? Direct X? What sound API?

It was also a time of great variety - there were big players in the market, but also small studios were thriving and the game spectrum was very wide indeed - there was so much to play and so little time, we were crafting our own game, after all!

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A special thanks goes out to Paul for answering the questions. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what he'd say when approached, but he was glad to help out.

• Our Prey Page
• Official 2K Prey Home Page
• Prey Page on Wikipedia
• Lantern Games Home Page

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the final edition in the Legacy Interview Series. The final edition will be a series wrapup with highlights from the rest of the series, and a tribute to two former 3D Realms employees who have since died.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:50 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #22 - The Levelord

As we wind down the Apogee Legacy series (click here for schedule), we will be bringing you some slightly different choices to wrap up the series. Today we are bringing you a mini interview with none othre than the Levelord himself, Richard Gray! The reason why we're calling it a mini interview will be self evident shortly.

Richard worked here back in the Duke Nukem 3D days, and left with some others who were working here at the time to found what would be come Ritual. Rich has remained friendly over the years with us, and we get together from time to time and chew over the old days, talk about what's going on with our companies now, etc, etc, etc.

As Rich was an important part of one of our most important projects (Duke Nukem 3D), we wanted to get his input in this series. However, Rich being Rich, he didn't answer all the questions. So we'll bring you an abbreviated interview with him. He answers some of the questions, but definitely not all. We'll flesh this one out with some pictures from the archives of him. :)

So here goes:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I had made some levels for DOOM back in 1994 and uploaded them to CompuServe. They were good enough to catch the eye of Nick Newhard, then with Q Studios. He contracted me to do levels for Blood. Both my DOOM levels and Blood caught the attention of George Broussard. He soon asked me to come to Garland, Texas to work fulltime on Duke Nukem 3D.

Levelord at our 1995 Halloween Party

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I would have worked at ANY game company, and would have cleaned the bathroom floors with a toothpick, for free, just to get into the industry ;) I was also being offered a job at Q Studios, but I chose Apogee because it was so close to id Software. Just seemed important at the time. This was late 1994 and there were only a few game companies making FPSs.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Better, because the Duke Nukem 3D Team was a great one! I also give credit to the technology of the times. Today, I spend more than half my time wrestling with technology. Everything has gotten so complicated and complex. Back then, a decade ago, everything was so much easier to deal with and I spent much more time on the Fun Factor and polish.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Although I was an internal employee, I would say this holds true for my experience. I was allowed almost free reins on my levels. This gave me creative freedom, and this gave the entire team creative freedom. When asking about retaining IP rights, I must add consideration for ownership and future endeavors with a property. Retaining creative freedom, as related to an IP, is always good. Financial ownership is another thing.

Chowing down at the 3DR Offices

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yes, going to my very first E3 in 1996 with the Duke Team. It was the first E3, so that made it memorable. I had lived in Los Angeles from 1980-1990. I lived only a few blocks away from the Nakatomi building in the first Die Hard movie. I lived in the garage of my parents while going to UCLA. Late one night, at about 2am, they started filming much of the exterior helicopter stuff at the end of the movie. I thought it was a real event ;)

Anyhow, that AM/PM store is right there, where the cop bought the Twinkies for his pregnant wife. This store, being so close to home, was just a regular old store to buy smokes and gas. To most others, though, it was an icon. First thing we did at E3 was go to this store and buy Twinkies ;)

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Trust, and there always seems to be fingers on "the other side". Most external involvement entails external influence, creative influence. It is understandable, putting money into something, a lot of money, and wanting control and oversight. However, my experience is that if you sign-up to have a group of professionals perform a task, you should trust them to complete the task. I always use the metaphor of hiring a caterer and then insisting on being in the kitchen and deciding on my own list of spices and cooking times and such.

---

As you can see, Rich didn't answer most of the questions, he probably got distracted by a picture of boobs or something at the time. So, I'm going to plunder his website for a few funny stories, and go through our own archives for pictures of him.

At 3DR HQ watching a Duke3D demo the night before release. L-R: George Broussard, Doug Wood, Joe Siegler, Allen Blum, Terry Nagy, Dirk Jones, Jim Dose (obscured), Chuck Jones, Levelord

April 24, 1998:

Rich talks about "The Levelord Drinking Game" Joe Siegler invented for our semi-regular trips to the Outback Steakhouse..

"The Levelord Drinking Game"? Okay, I'm in ;) I bet we could make a pretty penny with the travel version. Seriously, you're a funny man, Joe... ...that's why I keeel you laaaast!... ...just in case any are taking this seriously, Master Siegler and I meet at the Outback Steakhouse in Mesquite every few months. He goes for the Bloomin' Onions and I... ...well, let's just say I get very pedophilic with all the high school waitresses and their short, short little skirts showing just a hint of flowery panties underneath and their amply round melon-sized boobs bouncing up and... ...or dear, ...that's two drinks for me!

September 22, 1999:

Rich talks about the advances of gaming tech and Duke Nukem 3D:

I'm so tired of chasing technology! Cutting-edge and special effects have become horrible phrases for me. We spend so much time and effort "getting up" and not enough "going", and for an old fart like me, it just gets tiring.

Keep in mind that I've been in software since before there were floppies. Platter "hard" drives stored a whopping 128k and programming was down on card readers and hoppers. Anyone else remember their Hollerith code and EBCDIC? I remember being in the Navy, dabbling in FORTRAN, and seeing the DPs carefully walking down the halls holding 8" floppies, when they first came out, like some precious serving tray. They were afraid the bits would get jumbled if the floppies got jarred in any way.

I am so completely convinced that we could release Duke Nukem 3D right now and it would still sell as many copies and be as popular.

February 8, 1998:

Rich remembers (or tries to, it seems like a rambling piece) on Allen Blum, Megadeth, & Duke Nukem 3D:

...Well, it's early Sunday morning, got the stereo blasting away, freshing toasted (toast is so much more crisp when your lungs aren't coated with tobacco smoke;), and cranking on some levels in our new office space. This is way cool, apart from the new space being "new", we were crammed like Bismarck Herrings in the old office. I even have enough room to crack my 16-foot bullwhip! ...hey, man, ...it's Texas, ...live it, ...love it!

Speaking of stereos blasting, I've got MegaDeath's latest blaring (ya, ya, it's a 97 release, but remember how old and slow I am!) and just noticed the title of the 7th track... ...Sin! Yes boys, play it loud please! MegaDeath will ALWAYS remind me of 18-hour stretches of Duke leveling and Allen The Third Blum playing "Youthanasia" thirteen times in a row... ...bless his demented little heart. Dave Mustaine... ...hmmmm, you don't supposed, do you, that Tom has an alter profession like that sCary Spice bitch (how ya doin' BTW, Steve)?

March 10, 1995:

Rich recalls his 10 year anniversary of coming to work for 3D Realms:

Holy sheep shit! (picture is at 3D Realms in March of 1995)

It was ten years ago today when I first rolled into Garland, Texas to start working on Duke Nukem at 3D Realms!

It has definitely been a decade that seems to have gone by quickly (probably due to the time warped perspective of growing older), but it also seems like a LOOOOONG time when I try to remember all the things that have happened in ten years.

The question for me? Would I do it again if I knew back then what I know now? It is a question for me, ...even with all the ultracool things I have gained and enjoyed on the ride, ...it was a truly rough road to travel!

April 20, 2000:

And finally, this one where his Loness writes this about Duke Nukem and 3D Realms:

...and finally, I am really starting to regret leaving Garland. I played pool with George the Broussard last night and Duke sounds fricken incredible! It all brought back alot of fond memories. That sure was a fun game to make and Mr. Nukem has a long way to go before he gets too old. I don't know how they're doing it all without me, but I wish I was still there ;)

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As was said above, Rich was involved with just one title with us, Duke Nukem 3D, but it was an important one. Here's a few Levelord related links for you to peruse.

• Our Duke Nukem 3D Catalog Page
• Levelord's Home Page (graphic material alert :) )
• The Levelord page on Wikipedia
• Ritual's Website

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series, as we wind it down. After this one, there's only two issues left.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #21 - Darren Baker

In 1995, Apogee Software released the first title under our new branded label concept. That was Terminal Velocity under the "3D Realms" brand. This concept was used a second time in 1998, when we released "Balls of Steel" under the "Pinball Wizards" label. As with the "3D Realms" branding idea, the Pinball Wizards one was to launch a series of pinball related titles. However, to date Balls of Steel was the only title put out under the Pinball Wizards brand.

One of the driving forces behind the Balls of Steel title was Darren Baker. Darren Baker was actually involved with two other titles with us before Balls of Steel in 1998. Those titles were Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage as well as Mystic Towers (both in 1994). So Darren has been involved with us for several years now.

Darren, mostly due to his location (Australia), has one of the more unique relationships with us. Despite having worked on three seperate titles with us, has never met us face to face. It's one of the more unique aspects of our company, having developers all over the world. Let's get to his interview:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I came into direct contact with Apogee in 1993 (I was 18) through a group of guys here in Brisbane who were developing a very cool (256 color parallax scrolling!!) game called Halloween Harry. I managed to get onto the team and contributed the digital sound engine. My brother Steven also composed a good deal of the music for the game.

Harry was picked up for Australian distribution by Manaccom, who then lined up US distribution through Apogee.

We had heard of Apogee prior to all this of course, particularly with the Commander Keen and Wolfenstein games, so to be associated with them was very exciting.

The Harry project then led to Mystic Towers (with another team on which I was the PC programmer), then eventually to Balls of Steel, as Wildfire Studios.

So basically Apogee published the first 3 commercial games I worked on.

Darren Baker at his desk with Fidelio - Feb 2006

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I guess the initial reason was that we had the contacts with Apogee, and Scott and George were willing to support and take chances on inexperienced - albeit talented - teams, and overseas ones to boot.

As for going on your own, other people I knew had tried the "do everything" route (eg one or two people doing code, art, sound, manuals, packing, duplication, distribution!), and invariably the efforts were less than rewarding financially. At the time, getting products marketed and distributed properly was not something we properly understood or were even really interested in. We were far more concerned with the challenge of developing the games themselves, and when a successful company like Apogee offers you advances to get on and do what you enjoy, how good is that?! :)

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

I think Apogee did a great job with Balls of Steel. I think sales suffered a bit because the game's promotion led the ship date too far (or the ship date trailed the promotion, depending how you look at it!) That wasn't entirely their fault... ;)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I have no doubt the final product was better for Apogee's involvement.

Balls of Steel took a somewhat different direction than we had originally intended for it once Apogee came on board. Originally it was to be more of a true-to-life pinball simulator, but a mixture of Apogee's influence, a need to better our competitors, and good ol' feature creep led it to be more of a hybrid sim / action game. Of course the most obvious Apogee influence is the Duke Nukem table, but the overall 'hardcore' feel probably owes a fair bit to them too.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Yes, it's best from the creator's point of view to retain the IP rights. But it's also best from the publisher's point of view that the publisher get the IP rights in exchange for the funding. Both can be reasonable points of view depending on the money involved and other specifics of the deal.

I certainly believe that developers should relinquish/sell their IP very reluctantly and only after much consideration. They need to negotiate to keep whatever they can.

Final Balls of Steel Box Art

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Yes, definitely. After Balls of Steel we reused our pinball engine technology to develop half a dozen more pinball games and licensed it out to other developers.

More recently, a key part of our business in the casual games market is to retain ownership of our brand and carefully control territory and platform distribution rights. This allows us to reuse and license our technology, create sequels and spinoff games, and control revenue streams from online and worldwide retail channels. This strategy has paid off for our hit game Tumblebugs, for instance.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

The idea has been kicked around on and off. Apogee actually owns the trademark for Balls of Steel (see, Scott's not *completely* silly and giving away IP rights all over the place :)) but we're pretty free to do another game, which is great.

We'd really like to do a Balls of Steel 2... maybe with a Duke Nukem Forever table.. yeah, that would be cool.

In the PC market pinball tends to be a budget title genre though, but I'd want something much better than that. I think it'd be a great fit for the PSP.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

What's odd is that such stories are quite hard to come up with, because I've never actually met *any* of the Apogee folks. Not one. We've only ever swapped emails, and had the occasional phone call. The upside is I still have something to look forward to!

However, one thing I do distinctly remember is when Scott offered us the Duke Nukem 3D license to include in Balls of Steel.

We hadn't seen the game, and to be honest, we didn't think a whole lot of the first two Duke games (sorry Todd et al!), so we were sceptical to say the least. And it didn't help a whole lot either when were sent nothing but a CD full of raw Duke graphics like static cutouts of pig cops and loads of various gibs :) What's more, we were also going to have to scrap a whole lot of work we'd done on the Devil's Island table to make room for it.

I do remember Scott insisting that the game was definitely going to be a hit, but still, pigs with guns ... riiight...

Anyhow we eventually got a build of the game, and that's when the 'maybe' rapidly became 'yes please'!

(Besides, it was only fair - they put a Balls of Steel pinball table in Duke :))

Pre-Pinball Wizards unused Balls of Steel Box Art

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I'd guess the perceived risk is the big factor, but I think it's actually a smart business move if you can manage a nascent external team and provide the missing ingredients (funding, marketing, business, management, QA etc) and harness their idealism and creativity.

I have asked myself over the years whether I'd do for another team today what Apogee did for us back then, and I'd like to think I would. One difference is I'd want to do more due diligence and manage the teams a lot more closely ('from the inside') rather than just hope that they kept delivering milestones from time to time and didn't drop the ball! It took us over 2 years to ship Balls of Steel, and while I don't think Apogee was overly sweating the advances, it was definitely a long time to be on a project.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

In some ways that question's quite difficult for me to answer, because I think I have learned and changed so much over that time that it can be tough to compare objectively.

I was going to say that were we starting out now, we would have a much harder time getting a deal, and that there'd be no Apogees out there to give us a break. But with the booming casual games industry over the last couple of years, the window has once again opened for small developers to get games to market, so that's not really true.

There is of course the usual observations that the budgets are bigger, the teams are huge, that most games are based on licences, etc.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

For the most part I've been CEO and Technical Director of Wildfire Studios. I worked as a programmer for a short while in London a few years ago for another developer, and that was an excellent experience. I'm really enjoying the success Wildfire is having, and it's interesting moving my focus from programming, which has always been my passion, to the business to ensure we sustain and grow.

The Duke Nukem table from Balls of Steel

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Heh, I've thought about *leaving* the industry from time to time, but there's nothing I can think of doing that requires such a blend of technical, creative and business skills. It's very stimulating. :)

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Yes, quite a few. I think we could have exploited the success (critical if not commercial) of Balls of Steel in various ways, but didn't have the perception and know-how to do it. That said, we haven't done too badly at all, but we could have been smarter and focused on the right things. But overall I regard the early days (including our time with Apogee) as an excellent apprenticeship in the industry.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke 3D was my favourite, that sucked down (so to speak!) way too much of my time. The network play was awesome.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

I think the Infocom games (Zork etc) are some of the best of all time.

In more recent years I thought the original Unreal was excellent.

These days I don't play games for entertainment anywhere near as much as I used to, now my interest is more of an analytical one.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

I would like to thank Scott, George, Joe and the rest of the Apogee crew that we worked with over the years. They were instrumental in getting us started in the industry, and great to work with. I still keep tabs on what Apogee/3D Realms is up to, and listen closely to what Scott has to say about the business of games.

As to our fans - stay tuned. We've got some great new games on the way!

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As was said above, Darren has been involved with three seperate titles with us. We have plenty of information available on them on our website, please use the links below:

• Our Balls of Steel Catalog Page
• Our Alien Carnage Catalog Page
• Our Mystic Towers Catalog Page
• Mystic Towers Page on Wikipedia
• Balls of Steel Page on Wikipedia
• Wildfire Homepage

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series. The series is close to being finished, we have two more interviews planned, plus a wrap up edition. The last couple will be special issues, so you're going to want to tune in for those.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:02 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #20 - Joe Siegler

This week's edition of the Apogee Legacy series reaches a milestone with it's twentieth edition. I think when we first came up with the idea, we didn't expect it would run this long. We are reaching the end of the series, as there's only a couple left after this one. This week, we're running a slightly different edition for our twentieth. This twentieth interview is with well.. myself, Joe Siegler. Now I hadn't planned on doing one of these myself, as I didn't think there was a point. Scott Miller asked me to do it, and when I objected, he said "consider it an order", so here I am. :)

The short intro to myself is that I run the website here at Apogee, amongst other things (a more complete list is here). Yeah, I know most people know us as 3D Realms, but I've been here for a long time since before the name 3D Realms came up. Those who know me know I tend to resist change, so even 12 years after we came up with the name, I still refer to ourselves as Apogee.

One of my concerns is that I'm not a traditional developer, and as such some of the questions wouldn't apply to me directly. While that is true, I have a lot of friends who are, and also having read all the interviews before mine, I'd like to think I have some not completely off base thoughts on the matters at hand. As I've already started talking, let's get to the actual questions.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Trying to imitate James Hetfield, circa 1993

Well, that would require the firing up of the wayback machine. I started here in Dec 1992, but I was "involved" before that. I was a customer of this company for awhile. I'm not sure which was the first game I ever bought - it was probably either Keen 4 or the original Duke Nukem game. I was working at a computer repair facility at the time, and on the repair floor, Apogee games were used a lot on the computers. You had to test something, and quite frequently to test repaired floppy drives, some Apogee game would get installed. I also was running a BBS at the time, and Apogee's games were quite popular on the BBS scene.

In fact BBS's are the reason why I'm here. Back in the day, I used to dial up Software Creations all the time looking for the latest shareware releases and updates by Apogee. I would download 'em, and then upload them to several BBS's around the country on my own dime, all not knowing Apogee at all. So on May 5, 1992, along with most of the rest of the world, I was totally blown away by Wolfenstein 3D. It was some seriously good shit at the time, and I knew then that I wanted to try and work there, although I didn't know as what, because I was not an artist or a programmer. After the v1.2 update of Wolfenstein 3D came out, I shortly after that saw a "user hack" version of Wolfenstein pruporting to be "An adult upgrade of Wolfenstein 3D to v1.3". I contacted Scott Miller on Software Creations about it, since this file did not orginate there, like all the others did. Scott thanked me, and Apogee/id issued a statement about it, saying it didn't come from them, there is no "Porn" version of Wolf from them, and it was for this reason that there is no v1.3 of Wolfenstein 3D. Not long after this I decided to leverage this and ask Scott if he needed any help being a beta tester. He said yes, and I was added to the beta testing team (which I later on ending up being the head of, which was amusing to me). At the time, Math Rescue was in beta, so that was my first project.

At the Ft Worth Duke3D Rodeo Shootout, 1996. More Info

After a short time doing beta testing of that (and Major Stryker), Scott posted a message in the beta area asking if anyone from the beta team was intersted in coming to work for Apogee. Originally, I was hired to be telephone tech support for Apogee. Somewhere in my dusty archives is the original message he posted, but I can't locate it now. One highlight in his "incentive" package was that the Coke machine at the office cost only a quarter per can. I figured any company which talked about "Wearing what you want", and offering Coke for a quarter in it's "Come work here" pitch probably was pretty cool. So in October of 1992, I made the decision to move to Texas from Philly to take this job. I was to replace Shawn Green, who was the first employee of the company (outside of Scott and his family) who was being bumped up to the newly created "Online Support" position. However, inbetween my getting hired and coming down, Shawn quit to go join id Software. I then told Scott I wanted that job, since it was exactly what I was doing anyway in terms of file releases, support, etc.. So they gave me that job instead, and to this day I thank Shawn for making that move allowing me to get this job. It's kind of amusing, 13.5 years later I'm still here, and I'm still technically in the same job, as I've never really been formally promoted or anything like that. It's just evolved from BBS's to the Internet and websites/email.

It's exactly the kind of job I would have wanted had I actually stayed in school and got a degree (which I didn't).

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Well, unlike the 19 folks who have preceeded me in this series, I'm not a real game developer as such. Sure, I write tech docs, I do support, maintain the website, and I even dabbled in level design awhile back with Rise of the Triad, but I hold no illusions. I'm not a game developer, I just work at a game company. Back in 1992, it wasn't an issue of working for anyone else, I didn't know anyone in the game industry. Scott offered the job to our beta team as I talked about above, and I took it. So working for anyone else was not an option.

With Joe Selinske (TRI, Ritual, EA, Black Label) at E3 2001

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Well, I do have two games under my belt as a formal developer, and those are Rise of the Triad, and Extreme Rise of the Triad. For ROTT, I got paid "per level", it wasn't a royalty type of issue there, I got "x" per level I designed. For EROTT though I got paid royalties. EROTT was totally done by Tom Hall and myself, no one else from Apogee worked on that. So I was definitely excited about getting a royalty check.

I did get a couple of good ones right after release, but it started tapering off not long after that. That's the one beef I had with the game back then - Extreme ROTT was the only game at the time we had no advertising for. We advertised ROTT, and all the other games released back then, but EROTT came out after the 3D Realms label started, and I think the marketing was there for Terminal Velocity, and Duke Nukem 3D was well underway at that point, so EROTT got kind of forgotten about, and if we had marketed it, there might have been more sales for a product that I felt was a lot better with it's level design than the original product was.

It's not a major thing now, because I'm sure EROTT would have been discontinued awhile back anyway, and I thorogouhly enjoyed the experience both from the work done, and working solo with Tom Hall. I'll always treasure that.

With The Levelord (Ritual) & Jim Dose (Ritual, id, Valve) at a Mesquite Outback in Feb 2005.

One final story to this is that the last couple of royalty checks I got were under $10, with the last one I think being about $2. After that, George Broussard (who handed out royalty checks for the company) came to me with a buyout offer, so he wouldn't have to go through all the records just to arrive at a check for $2. So I got a $300 buyout somewhere in early/mid 1996 on my EROTT royalties, which I figured out back then would carry me over to around the year 2035 if I spread out the diminsihing rate at which the checks were coming in, so in the end I made out OK with that in my opinion. :)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Well, again only having one game under my belt makes this a bit different, as I'm not sure how to answer this. I'd say the game was fine the way it was. Sure, I know there was a chance to use Build back then instead of the Wolf engine, and I'm sure that might have made the game better had it been used, but to be honest, I rather like ROTT the way it was.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Well, again I don't own the IP to Rise of the Triad, Scott & George do. I think it's a great idea for the designer to retain IP rights. That is however they don't own it just to bury it like some companies do with some properties they own ( that fans have shown there is an interest in reviving).

With Tom Hall at E3 1998.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

This is not applicable to me at all. No comment.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Well, there was already the aforementioned addon pack for my one game, that being "Extreme Rise of the Triad". While I'm not Scott & George, and I can't speak for them personally, I seriously doubt they'd ever want to do another sequel to that.

However... If I ever ran across the kind of stupid money that would allow me to never have to worry about money ever again, I'd personally fund a Rise of the Triad sequel. I still think there's potential for a killer game in the ROTT franchise, and I'd probably try and hire back as many of the original team as I could. Most of what made ROTT "ROTT" IMO was Tom Hall's silliness - the same zany stuff that made Keen "Keen". There's a bunch of other cool things there too, but this game was very much (to me personally) a Tom Hall game.

However, the amount of money required for that dream is far beyond what this Webmaster will probably ever see in his lifetime. So while I WANT to say yes there will be, the answer is probably no.

In a stretch limo with the rest of 3DR on our way to a good dinner at a Steakhouse in Dallas in Nov of 2001.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Oh dear God, there's way too many of them! I've seen an awful lot of people come through here, and have been friends with most of them, I probably could tell a story on all of them. The problem is I know so many stories here, how do I pick for this? OK, I'll do a few of them.

Ken Silverman's US Maps

A few issues back, Ken Silverman did a bit about his drawing the United States anywhere. Here's a story I remembered about that. "One time the group of us were out to lunch at one of the local restaurants. This was one of the places that lets you draw with crayons on the table on paper they put on it. As Ken stated, he generally was pretty quiet, so most of us weren't paying attention, just talking the usual trash nonsense. After awhile one of us looked over at what Ken was doodling, and went "What the hell?" Ken was sketching the United States Map. He apparently has the ability to just draw the entire US map on anything. It pretty much took us by surprise, as he was roughly half done at that point, and from that point on we just watched him finish the map. So if you go anywhere with Ken, don't let him wander off on his own mentally, he'll draw the United States somewhere. :)"

ROTT Release power outage

In December of 1994, we were about to release the v1.0 shareware version of Rise of the Triad. As any game developer can tell you, the day before you release is one of the most stressful and worrysome times, as even if you think your game is going to be good, there's that one moment of "What if it sucks?" Anyway, it was the middle of the night and we were all testing, tweaking, packing, etc, as any end of project was. We were just about done, doing final checks, and then we lost power. At first we thought we blew a fuse, and then we noticed the whole building was out, and then we went outside and noticed that nothing had power anywhere that we could see. It was as if the whole power grid up and died. I recall someone at the time saying "id Software did it!". It was both a relief and a stressful thing as we wanted to finish and get the game out. Some of us handled the break differently. William Scarboro slept on the floor of his office. Some of the rest of us (myself, Mark Dochtermann) went downstairs into the lobby of our office building and brought a water rocket. We were bored, and with no computers to use, we had to resort to other juvenile attempts at passing the time. We chose setting off a water pressured rocket inside the lobby of our office building. So we filled it up with water (there's a picture of this rocket on the ROTT CD), and got all excited. Pumped it up, and the stupid thing went up about one foot, and as I recall got Mark completely wet. It was complete failure. We tried again, but the stupid thing never worked right. For some reason we felt it sounded cooler to name it, so the water rocket from Planet Failure was called "The Avenger". Power came on a short while later, and the game was released without further incident, but the water rocket story from the night of release was one I'll always remember.

At SWC BBS in 1994.

Monty Python Tech Support

Back when ROTT was being developed, the Tech Support department in 1994 consisted of Kevin Green, Steve Quarrella, & Lee Jackson (picture). From time to time I'd need to jump in and help them as we were pretty busy at the time. When the four of us were together, it seemed to prompt what I called "Monty Python Tech Support". You see, Lee, Steve, & myself were huge fans of British Comedy. Monty Python & Red Dwarf in particular. The three of us knew the routines, the lines pretty darn well. At a moment when relief was needed (or more likely) when the group of us were just goofing off, or when we wanted to mess with Kevin, one of us would start a Python routine. Since the three of us knew 'em so damn well, we could do them, and we'd do 'em rather a lot. Ended up driving Kevin bananas. That issue aside, it was cool that the three of us had that kind of rapport where we could do that.

More ROTT Development

There's a couple of stories from ROTT development that I'll tell here (although I could do a whole entry on that game's development too). The first is one called "50 Kills". The second is called "Death to a Coffee Cup".

Towards the end of ROTT development, we (even then) were hearing the cries of "You're taking too darn long". So Tom Hall, in his bizarre sense of humour, decided to make a video out of that. We had made this video where he pretended to be an undercover news reporter, and I was his cameraman. We "broke in" to the Apogee HQ, and he was going to do this expose as to why it was taking so long. We ran upstairs, into our offices, and looked around at people's desks, and there was no one there. We eventually found a couple of guys playing ping pong in another office, and it was something along the lines of "Hey, it's game research" or something liek that. My memories of how the video ended are fairly cloudy now. We had Rise of the Triad running in the background on various people's computers, but the funny part of this for me was when Tom got into the offices and looked at one of the computers, the rather distintive sound of a ROTT multiplayer game came up. Tom yelled out in a rather dejected sounding voice "50 KILLS!" - he had set the game's kill total to 50, so the game ended. This compltely ruined his "crazed undercover news reporter" thing and we had to shoot the video again. This was never released, unfortunately - and is lost to the ages. I tried finding this a few years ago to release, but no one knows if it's even around anymore. Shame, as it was pretty darned funny.

Also as a side story to this, the story of losing to an inanimate object in ROTT deathmatch comes to mind. Back then, ROTT had a record for allowing 11 people to play at once in a deathmatch game. Doom was the king of deathmatch, but it was limited with the number of players. With all due respect to Spinal Tap, Rott "Went to 11", and when we were testing deathmatch we didn't always have that many people to play. So we'd fire up ROTT on other computers, and stick down the fire button, so that player would at least be doing something, if not actually "playing". The sad part of this is that we used coffee cups on a lot of the computer keyboards to wedge down the fire button. More than once, one of the coffee cups managed to win the game. I've been accused of not being very good at deathmatch games, but losing to a friggin coffee cup is rather embarrassing.

During a voice recording session for Duke Nukem Forever in 2001.

Mt. Xenophage

Back before I started working here (and right when I did), we used to take our own 1-800 phone calls for orders. Back then we had a guy working for us who took orders named Jason Reed. When we put Xenophage on sale, like every other title we sold, we got a bunch of stock to sell. Jason went and sat on top of the pile of Xenophage boxes, and we took his picture up there. For some reason the image of this picture has stuck in my mind over the years, and it's come to be known as "Mount Xenophage". We ended up using this picture as a Camera Captioning Contest entry back in 1997. The memory remained, as some years later in 2002, we recreated the picture with Bryan Turner on a pile of boxes.

Blackburn on the log

We haven't done this in ages, but from time to time we used to go out collectively as a company and do something outdoors. One day many a moon ago we had rented (or just took over, I can't remember) a park in Garland where we had our own private BBQ. The majority of the company came, and we had a great time playing volleyball, having a cookout, and just generally hanging out.

After awhile we started exploring the grounds behind the picnic area in the park, and ran across a creek with a big tree that had fallen over it forming a bridge to the other side. Since it looked pretty unsafe, it instantly became a dare as to who would have enough balls to cross the thing. Funny thing was that the daughter of one of our employees was the most nimble, going across it like there was nothing to worry about. Some of us tried it but without as much aplomb.

Eventually, Steve Blackburn crossed over, got to the other side, and the got stuck there. He apparently was afraid to come back either because of abuse he was taking, or he just got scared of crossing - don't remember that now. Anyway, this prompted mass taunting and abuse from the others here, particularly Scott & George, who were calling him several names I won't print here. Even the aforementioned kid ran up to him, stole his hat, and came back.

The climax to this story was when Scott Miller got out halfway on the tree, and started throwing things at Steve. No one was hurt, but damn were those of us watching this laughing our asses off. There's a picture of Scott tossing another tree branch at Steve online here. We haven't done anything like this in awhile, and I miss these kinds of company outings.

There's so many others, I could spend all day recounting stories. Some of the others I thought about using here were the story of when we shipped Max Payne, how Corrinne Yu loved to eat cereal in the lunchroom, the entire company going out to dinner to celebrate completing Duke Nukem 3D, Tom Hall's "Iced Tea, No Lemon, No Spoon", Mark Dochtermann's "Lookin' for some Hot Buns!", there's just too many, man!

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I'm gonna pass on this one. I think the folks in this series have already said way better what I could possibly do with this one. Check out the other entries in this series for that.

As Heinrich Krist during the video recording session for Rise of the Triad on Jan 22, 1994.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Well, I'm still here, so the "when you worked" doesn't apply. :) But my answer is the same as most people's. Money. Size. Scope. The industry is not what it was when I got hired. Gone are the days like that. There might be a few small independants around on the scale of the old days, but as a whole, the industry has gotten much larger, and much more expensive.

I've always said for years that this kind of thing would come, because there's always this drive from customers for the latest, the newest, the best graphics, etc, etc, etc. Companies that didn't move forward or just stayed at the current level they were at generally got left behind, and nobody wanted that. So the drive internally and externally to provide something bigger and better has gotten us where we are as an industry.

Game budgets are stupid huge, I often wonder how in the heck money can be made given how much these things cost (or so I'm told they cost, anyway). The days of things like Crystal Caves, Cosmo, or other games like that where you could have a team of at most two or three people doing everything, or in several cases one guy doing everything are dead, gone, buried, decomposed, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The public won't allow that level of game anymore, unfortunately.

Packing Foreign Max Payne Orders - July 2001

We tried a couple of years ago to have a throwback game like that, which evoked memories of the past (this would be Duke Nukem Manhattan Project), but it sold poorly. My gut feeling is that we won't see any more of those old school kind of things from us, unfortunately. I could be completely wrong, but I don't think so.

Of course, "casual games" have their market too, and things like the games on Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 have proven to be rather popular. Plus there's other things like Gold Miner Vegas and things of that nature which aren't going to set the world on fire sales wise, but are darned entertaining games, so what the hell do I know? :)

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Well, I'm still here, so this doesn't apply at all.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Well, this sort of applies to me, as I do work here, but I don't "make games" in the classic sense of being a game developer. I've often thought about doing maps again. I have dabbled a bit with "Duke's Enormous Tool", as well as having several ideas for Prey levels, having played it a lot in the last few months. I might do something after the fact - we'll see if I have the time. :)

Scaring Bryan Turner & Nick Shaffner at DFW Airport on the way to E3 2001.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Not really. I'm pretty happy here, and the company has been pretty nice to me over the years. I guess the opportunity I was offered some time ago and did not take was a good one, so it's a "reverse missed opportunity". I was offered a job working for Dan Linton up in Massachussets at Software Creations. It would have been a pay increase as I recall, but I turned it down, because I am a creature of habit, and I didn't want to upset the apple cart and leave Apogee. Good move, as Software Creations ceased to exist within two years of that offer.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Let's see, since I can't say ROTT (ha), I'll go with Monster Bash, Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Death Rally, and Raptor. I liked all of our games for some reason or another, but these are my favorite "games", or old some special meaning to me. Keen 4 was the reason I got my first sound card - I was a PC Speaker person, but at my computer repair job I mentioned above, one of the test machines had an (original) Sound Blaster card in there, and I loved the extra sounds - so I ran out that night and bought my first sound card just to hear the cool sound and music in Keen 4. :)

Joe at his desk (holding Alf) on May 22, 2006.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Oh dear, there's way too many! I don't know where to begin. I am a fan of Sports games (baseball & football mostly), as well as open ended things like the Sims and GTA, and the like. Some other games I've enjoyed in the past are Unreal Tournaments, Quake 3 Arena, Doom, Monster Truck Madness 2, Big Rigs (just kidding), and .. there's just way too many.

I have a shelf full of games, a lot are there because I know someone from another company who worked on it. A lot of old friends of mine from other companies (Joe Selinske, Levelord, Jim Dose, etc) are people whose games I like to have on my shelf, it makes me feel good. Also seeing all those games by friends reminds me of how lucky I am to be in this industry and to have survived as long as I have. Granted, my not being a formal game developer has a lot to do with it I'm sure (not the same pressures and issues), but so many of my friends have bounced all over the place, and several aren't even in the industry anymore. It's probably silly, but I like seeing my friends work on my bookshelf.

But for things I truly enoy from other companies, I'd say the ones in the first paragraph, plus Animal Crossing. I wasted a lot of time on that one, and I can't wait for Animal Crossing Wii. :)

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Thanks for buying our games over the years and keeping me employed. ;)

---

Thanks to myself for doing the entry. :) Yeah, this is the bit where I usually thank the person doing the interview, so how do I thank myself here? The series is winding down, there's only a few left, so make sure and stick around for the finale of the series. Here's a few pages about myself or other things I've done.

• My bio page here
• Our Rise of the Triad Catalog Page
• My Page on Wikipedia
• My Page on imdb.com
• My Blog
• My Black Sabbath Fan Site
• My Texas Rangers Fan Site
• My Anti Dallas Cowboys Fan Site

Another thing I'm proud of in having done this series is getting a lot of other games released as freeware. Given this was my own entry, and my stuff is either still available for sale (ROTT), or is freeware (EROTT), I decided to look into the past and see what obscure thing I could get released. Found one. Some time ago we released an addon for Wolfenstein 3D called "The Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades". This package consisted of a boatload of extra levels for Wolf (over 800), a level editor, and a random level generator. This is pretty obscure, in fact, most people don't even know we sold this for awhile. But it's another step in my goal of getting everything we don't sell anymore released as freeware. You can download it from our downloads page in the Wolfenstein 3D section. Enjoy.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:42 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #19 - John Romero

Anyone that knows our company should also know the name John Romero. If you don't know him, you haven't been paying attention. His name as been attached to some of the most notorius games in our industry's past. Both with us (Commander Keen & Wolfenstein 3D), and not with us (Doom, Quake, Daikatana).

John has bounced around a bit since his id days. He's been involved with Ion Storm, Monkeystone, Majesco, Midway, amongst others. His name carries a lot of weight in our industry, so we were glad to have him participate in the series.

Enough of this lame introduction for someone who shouldn't need introducing anyway. :)

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Scott Miller had several of his games published through Big Blue Disk and had a monthly subscription to it. He saw one of my games, Pyramids of Egypt, on BBD and was really excited by it - seeing an opportunity for me to take the game, create additional levels, then publish it through Apogee Software.

Scott knew I worked at Softdisk and knew they filtered mail to make sure no one was trying to steal their programmers and artists. So he sent me about 4 letters in the mail, all of them pretending to be someone who played the game and wanted me to write them back for various reasons ("I think I found a bug, write me back!" or "Please write back - I'm 67 years old!"). The names were all different but the mailing address was the same on them all.

I didn't pick up on the duplicate mailing addresses until I was reading PC Games magazine and read an article about Scott and his Kroz games. At the end of the article was the address and I was thinking "I know that from somewhere. Where could it be from???" as my head slowly turned toward my wall where I had my prized fan mails. WTF!!??? I admit I went nuts. Mostly because my ego was instantly gibbed because I realized those weren't really fan mails they were just some guy trying to get me to contact him.

Well, I wrote Scott back and we got in touch and very quickly we settled on doing a trilogy of games for him titled "Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons". We worked day and night for 3 months and Apogee released the trilogy on December 14, 1990. If you want more detail the book Masters of DOOM does a good job with this part of the story.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Well I wasn't trying to moonlight while at Softdisk since I was really focused on my work there - Scott just provided an opportunity and I took it. Regarding why I didn't do a startup instead: before Softdisk I had already had two startup companies where I had about 17 published games between the both of them. I wanted a break from it for a little bit.

John Romero, recent vintage

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Apogee did a wonderful job getting the game out in front of people. Software Creations was a great tool in that respect. It was probably the biggest and best BBS back then, run by Dan Linton.

Apogee could have done a better job with taking orders in the early 90's by using their income from Wolfenstein 3D and buying a networked order-taking system instead of the "stacks of paper" system where operators took the phone orders, wrote the info down then entered all the orders into a computer at the end of the day. We had a talk with Scott about this and gave him some time to implement it but he didn't - that's why we self-published DOOM.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I don't remember getting much creative feedback from Apogee because we were fairly experienced at game design and development - we just finished the game and handed it over.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

We wouldn't have signed a deal with Apogee back then if we couldn't have retained our IP. Besides, Apogee didn't pay for the development of our games - they gave us a $2,000 advance during Keen1-3 development but that was all for our entire relationship.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

id Software definitely benefited from retaining ownership. If you look at the time period from 1990-2005 you'll see that the Keen and Wolf3D properties have had sequels and made money for id and Activision.

John & Tom Hall during the Ion Storm days

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Yes and there have been sequels made. I don't doubt more will be made in the future.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

There are actually many fun stories about that time...but I'll bring one almost forgotten story up here.

I remember when I had discovered Raven Software in Madison, Wisconsin and gone over to meet with them and came back impressed with their team. I talked to the other 3 id guys and then Scott Miller (over the phone) and we both came up with a development budget that I could propose to Raven if they'd move over to PC game dev (they were Amiga guys) and license our Keen4-6 engine and make games for Apogee.

They declined the offer and one of their founders quit because he was upset with the decision.

Not 6 months later they had a deal for a PC game with EA and so we modified the Wolf3D tech and licensed it to them for Shadowcaster. Id saw no money from this engine license - the only time that had ever happened.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Did you know that I helped Human Head Studios become a company? I gave them $250,000 so they could leave Raven, get an office, buy computers, etc. and start making a game for me using Unreal tech.

Actually, most big publishers find and publish outside projects all the time. In fact, they are always on the lookout for unknown teams with talent because the cost is much cheaper especially when the studios are outside the USA.

Much rarer is having a developer (not publisher) help other developers with their businesses and game designs because most developers are always struggling to stay alive. Id Software was one of the first to do this (Raven, Valve, Parallax, Rogue, Ritual).

John at the Ion Storm Dallas offices.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Well, the PC gaming industry is much more mature. We were there at the very beginning of when the hardware was just starting to be something you could do smooth scrolling and animation like console systems (with a lot of tricks and fancy coding).

Nowadays the gaming world is all 3D thanks to Wolf3D, DOOM and Quake. The world has definitely changed since those days, each of those games forever altering the course of 3D game development.

Quake brought the world into high-speed full 3D games then Quake II brought 3D acceleration and color; everything since then has been icing on the cake.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Games! I'm currently on my 7th startup company and I've returned to the PC from five years of mobile games and then console games. And now I'm developing in the genre that I consider the future of PC games - MMOG. If you want to know exactly what games I've been working on you can simply check my MobyGames profile.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A!!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

The only opportunity that I'm aware of was when Paul Neurath asked me to join him as his first employee at Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Technologies). I didn't take the offer because I had already planned on starting a company with my boss (Inside Out Software). If I had taken the offer at Blue Sky then an incredible amount of things would have been different. I'm glad I did what I did.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D, hands down - I love that game so much it's crazy. I actually listened to the music from Duke 3D for about 5 years every day while I worked....THAT'S how much I loved the game (and music). It was such a fully featured and well done game - and it was truly the very last of its breed when it was released just before Quake hit the scene.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My favorite OTHER games: Chrono Trigger, Resident Evil 4, World of Warcraft, Half Life 2.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

If you're a fan, there's a lot of pages out on the net about the games! And if you want to know what I'm up to just check out http://rome.ro. Over and out!

---

Of the games that John did with us, we still sell them all, so check out the links below. John is also a record holder with us - having the longest hair of any developer we've ever worked with. ;)

• Our History of Keen Page
• Our Keen Vorticons Catalog Page
• Our Keen Galaxy Catalog Page
• Our Wolfenstein 3D Catalog Page
• John Romero Page on Wikipedia
• John's Homepage
• John's a cartoon!

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:51 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #18 - Petri Jarvilehto

Our Legacy series marches on today with it's 18th entry in the fifth month. Today's edition is with with Petri Jarvilehto of Remedy Games. Petri has been involved with several games with Remedy and 3D Realms. The first one was a car racing game in 1996, called Death Rally (one of the final games under the old Apogee label). Remedy then went on to make the runaway hits "Max Payne", and "Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne" that 3D Realms produced.

Petri has some interesting insight in that he worked with us under the old Apogee label, as wel as the 3D Realms label more recently. If you were a fan of Remedy and Petri's work, you'll want to read his interview, which he wrote a preface for:

[ Remedy has worked with Apogee both with the older shareware concept/label (Death Rally), as well as with the 3D Realms label (Max Payne games). Considering that this is a legacy interview I'll just focus on the older times :-)]

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Back in '95 when Remedy was starting, we did a quick demo of the racing game we wanted to create and sent that over to all of our publishing contacts. Apogee was looking like the best fit for the game, so we ended up signing the game with them.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

We were just starting up, so going on our own wasn't really an option.

Petri during motion capture sessions for Max Payne 2 in New York.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Not much. Getting GT Interactive involved and eventually having them handle the retail box sales and still retaining the direct shareware distribution was a really good combination at that time.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Death Rally definitely benefited immensely from having Scott and George involved. We were quite newbies at that point, so having people with their experience levels working with us made a big difference.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

IP rights can be incredibly valuable, and it's always fantastic if the developer can retain those rights. Developers who own their IP usually have even stronger motivation to create the best possible game out of it.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Definitely.

Petri in Feb of 2006

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Well, as much as I would love to see Death Rally 3D (or DR 2), I don't think that'll ever happen. As to the Max Payne series, I definitely wish that we'll see a Max Payne 3.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Loads of stories. We did hide some of them as easter eggs in Max Payne 1 and 2 :-)

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

It's pretty risky, especially nowadays that the investments involved are so much larger.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The industry has changed vastly. Sometimes it feels like the industry in its current form was only begun in the early nineties, and everything operates on massively different scale nowadays. Production has changed from a bunch-of-guys-in-a-basement into massive almost movie-scale projects. Game design, code, pretty much every aspect of game development has seen radical changes in methodology and process.

In early 90's gaming was pretty much only something the nerds would do, whereas nowadays the mainstream acceptance is pretty much a given and game productions are high profile stuff that get a lot of visibility.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

We'll around the time of shipping Death Rally, Apogee re-branded into 3DR and shipped Duke Nukem 3D. We had a good development relationship going forward and created the Max Payne games (where again, the input from Scott and George was invaluable, especially on Max Payne 1). I worked as the Project Lead on Max1 and in the Lead Game Designer role on Max Payne 2.

More recently, Remedy is now developing the Alan Wake game series, and I'm leading the game design on those.

Death Rally Screenshot

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Still here, and no plans of leaving the industry. With the increased budgets and production capabilities, it's all just getting even more interesting.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Not really. I think we've always been pretty good at taking advantage of the most promising opportunities and the ones we haven't jumped on... well, usually there's been pretty solid reasons why they wouldn't have worked for us, so there's no point in second guessing them now.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Out of the older Apogee classics, Raptor is something that I really got a kick out of. Any arcade game where you're never supposed to let go of the fire button is ok in my book.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Nowadays, I'm finding myself playing more and more semi-obscure japanese RPG variants. Games like Disgaea or Fire Emblem series and so on. The most recent game that I found completely stunning was Shadow of the Colossus. The sheer audacity of the game design is fantastic (even if the control scheme is a bit borked ;).

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Not that much. We're grinding away with Alan Wake, and I'm really excited on how the game is shaping up. Can't really talk about it yet though.

---

Thanks to Petri for taking time out of his busy Alan Wake schedule to help out with the answers and some pictures. All of Remedy's games are still available for sale, so check out these pages (please not that 3DR no longer sells Max Payne 1 or 2).

• Our Death Rally Catalog Page
• Our Max Payne 1 Catalog Page
• Our Max Payne 2 Catalog Page
• Death Page in our Online Store
• Death Rally Homepage
• Death Rally Page on Wikipedia
• Max Payne Page on Wikipedia
• Max Payne 2 Page on Wikipedia

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:31 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #17 - Mark Randel

Mark Randel is the subject of our latest legacy Interview. Mark is one of the founders of and is the current CEO/Owner/President of Terminal Reality. Terminal Reality (or TRI) is another local gaming company here in the Dallas Metroplex. Their first game was published with us back in 1995, and that was "Terminal Velocity". Mark Randel came from Microsoft, and was one of the folks responsible for (at that time) the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. He took that knowledge and founded TRI. They have gone on to publish many games through many people, including the little known two sequels to Terminal Velocity (Fury3 and Hellbender) through Microsoft. They're also responsible for BloodRayne 1 & 2 as well as many other titles. For us they only did the one title, but it was an important one.

Terminal Velocity was also the launch of the 3D Realms brand name. As such, TRI had a lot of added pressure I'm sure in that it was the launch of our new "3D Games" brand. This branding was later continued with the Pinball Wizards line (of which we have a Legacy Interview pending for that too). However, TRI and Terminal Velocity was the first foray into this concept of branding. Of course, since then, the 3D Realms brand has been used almost exclusively, and has become the defacto name of the company, but back in 1994 when the idea was first originated, "3D Realms" was a gamble.

One other final note. This interview comes out on May 1, 2006. That's 11 years to the day that the original v1.0 of Terminal Velocity was released; happy birthday! Here's Mark's interview; enjoy!

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

We first came in contact with Apogee due to proximity; they were already well established in the area when we started up in the Dallas Metroplex.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

The potential for working with Apogee was really attractive: at that time they were the premier publisher for independent game studios trying to make it big in the industry.

Terminal Velocity Artwork

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

I think Apogee/3D Realms did a great job marketing Terminal Velocity. As is their policy even now, they were really careful with every aspect - from picking the title to positioning the logo on the box for maximum visibility. At the time when they started the 3D Realms brand, it was scary being the first title under it. Nobody knew it, and everybody knew Apogee. Nowadays, it is kinda the other way around.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Definitely the game was made better. We had a flexible schedule, which we ourselves finally pushed to get the game out the door. There were a lot of ideas that Scott & George had that in hindsight would have made the game even better, but we really wanted to get our first title shipped and probably rushed it out too quickly.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Of course, it is always better for the developer to retain full IP rights to its titles. It is not always possible in this day and age for many reasons. Very high development budgets often call for licensed properties such as movies, comic books, etc., so there is no way to own that yourself. Also, publishers see a lot of risk in taking on new IP, so they would like a cut of that if they are fronting the development money for it. We have always kept the license to our engine, which for us is very important.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

We have benefited from owning our IP and engine. It makes us more valuable as a company. Also, we are going to get into the engine licensing business starting with our full featured Infernal Engine for PSP. We have the first full development platform for the PSP, with radiosity lighting, physics, vehicles, indoor/outdoor rendering, streaming, etc., that we will be announcing formally soon.

Mark in 1999 at the Fly! Release Party

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

I would love for there to be a sequel of Terminal Velocity someday--if it made good sense. If everything were to come together - a great idea, funding, etc., then it would be really cool to work on again. Scott, George, care to fund Terminal Velocity II?!?!?!?

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Any interesting story during development of Terminal Velocity? Sure! He'll probably hate me for this, but Tom Hall was our producer at the time, and every time we went out for lunch, he would order "ice tea with no lemon and no spoon" every time to drink. I guess that little bit of eccentricity is what makes him a really creative individual.

Ed Note: There's a website about Tom's Iced Tea thing here.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

It's different for each developer. We're so completely focused on producing our own titles (especially moving into next-gen production) that we simply don't have the bandwidth. We are working with a few developers in various capacities on some unannounced projects right now.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The biggest difference from now and when we worked on Terminal Velocity was the budgets and team sizes. We made it with less than $500K with about 8 people, now it takes over ten times that amount of money and at least 5 times that many people.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

We've been busy making games for the past decade. We did the Monster Truck Madness series for Microsoft, The Fly! series, 4x4 EVO series and Nocturne for Gathering of Developers. We made the BloodRayne series a big hit for Majesco. We are currently finishing up Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run for Midway. Those are some of our highlights, and we have some new stuff in development as well...

Terminal Velocity Screenshot

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Sure, there are always missed opportunities--we passed on one development opportunity that went to another developer and wound up selling millions of copies. That's life. But there will be plenty more of them to miss in the future. You make the best decision you can at the time given the information you have, and use what you continue to learn to shape later decisions.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Other than what we released, we loved Duke Nukem, and are still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Favorite games by other people? There are probably dozens - Katamari Damacy comes to mind. The new Prince of Persia series. GTA on the PSP is really fun. Ico, a long underappreciated PS2 game that everyone in this industry needs to play.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Checkout our website at http://www.terminalreality.com for a glimpse of what we are currently working on. And we always love to hear from our fans!

---

Thanks to Mark for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about the past. We still sell Terminal Velocity today, so you can check out these links below:

• Our Terminal Velocity Catalog Page
• Terminal Velocity Page in our Online Store
• Terminal Velocity FAQ by Adam Williamson
• Terminal Reality Homepage
• Terminal Velocity Page on Wikipedia
• A visit to TRI in 1999
• Fly! Release Party Info from 1999

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:27 PM

The Apogee Legacy #16 - Jason Blochowiak

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with an interview with Jason Blochowiak. Jason's company "Argo Games" was responsible for the 1996 title, "Xenophage" with us. In addition to Xenophage with us, Jason was also involved back with id Software in the day, and was a co-owner of id for awhile in 1991. Jason did sound code for id games back in the Keen/Wolf era, wrote code for Keen Dreams, etc. So his name should be familiar to fans of our company's Legacy titles.

Xenophage was our lone attempt to get into the fighting game market. Xenophage did bring a lot of firsts into this genre of game. We did try a second fighting game with someone else, but it was never released, so Xeno remains our lone entrant into this style of game. In fact, this interview is coming out at a very timely manner. On April 26, 1996, Xenophage v1.0 shareware was originally released. So this is the 10 year anniversary for Xenophage, and because of that, we also want to announce that we're releasing the full version of Xenophage as freeware to go along with this interview and the anniversary. Read through the interview to get the download link. The Xenophage freeware release also has another tie to our current product. The "Art Director" on Prey is Rowan Atalla, who was Jason's parter in Argo games. Rowan also did art on Xenophage; things have a tendency of coming full circle, don't they? :)

We thought last week's entry in the series by Peder Jungck was the longest in terms of words, but Jason's now holds that record. Jason talks at length about many of the sujects in the interview, including what he's done post Apogee. This is a very long, and very good interview, so make sure to check it out.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Well, I was around when the Id guys first got going - Jay Wilbur, John Carmack, and I were all living in the same house when Id started. After I left Softdisk, I worked with Id briefly (during the Keen 4-6 & Wolf 3D era) when they were working with Apogee. So that's how I got to know Scott, George, and other Apogee folks. Later on, when I decided to make a fighting game (ultimately titled Xenophage), I contacted them, and they showed interest in helping develop it, and publishing it.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

The fact that we all knew each other certainly helped, and Apogee's friendly style of doing business was also a plus. They were also successful enough to help out significantly with funding, which was important for our small studio.

By the way, Xeno was our first experience with "outsourcing" art - it's interesting to see more companies doing that sort of thing these days, and I see them experiencing the same set of issues that we ran into. We ultimately pulled all art production in-house to finish the game, but we wouldn't have been able to get the initial assets in place without the outsourcing effort, and we wouldn't have been able to get those without Apogee's help, both logistically and financially.

Box cover art for Xenophage

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

No, not that I can think of. Apogee's prominence in the shareware industry pretty much guaranteed broad exposure for any titles they released. Keep in mind that this was before the Internet had "gone wide" - it was pretty much only for researchers, academics, and students. So, shareware lived on Bulletin Board Systems (dedicated machines with banks of modems that you'd call into), and shareware catalogs. Because everyone knew Apogee as a premier shareware brand, any shareware releases were quickly disseminated from the original release points (equivalent to current "file mirroring"), and got large amounts of page space in the catalogs.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Definitely better. In retrospect, the biggest thing my studio (Argo Games) was lacking in was game design experience, and the guys at Apogee definitely pushed us in the right direction - if anything, we probably would've been better off listening more.

I go into a bit more detail later about this, but I've been hopping between game genres my entire career. This has a number of advantages, but it does sometimes mean that my understanding of a particular genre will be deeper at the end of making a game, rather than at the beginning, when the game is in the planning phase.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

As an independent developer, I'd say that it's definitely beneficial for the studio to retain the IP. Of course, the publishers generally have a different take, for fairly obvious reasons.

It seems that the conventional wisdom about this is that the publishers are taking the financial risk, so they should own any resulting IP. This completely ignores the much larger personal risks that people at smaller studios take. The days where everyone at a studio is a scruffy 20 year old, and the difference between the studio doing well or doing poorly means the difference between good beer or cheap beer - that's gone (well, at least for the majority of large-scale professional developers – see #13). Most of us now have mortgages and spouses, and quite a few of us have kids. Not to mention that doing games means working twice as hard for half the pay of other (albeit, far less interesting) jobs.

Of course, the exception to this is where the publisher brings the IP to the table in the first place - either something they developed internally (like, say, extending a franchise into a different genre), or a license that they're shopping to developers.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

It certainly leaves more options open. In the specific case of Xenophage, I don't think it will make a practical difference (see next question), but there are other back-catalog titles of mine where it might - and that's the important thing, that I have the choice, without having to negotiate to release rights with anyone.

Jason and his wife on vacation in Istanbul

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

We're probably not going to be seeing Xenophage II. I mean, it brought some stuff to PC fighting games that hadn't been seen there before - like the zooming playfield that let us have large, detailed character sprites. However, the game really missed striking the right nerve in the gaming public. There were a number of issues with the game, but I think the statement (from some random person on a message board somewhere) that sums up the public's reaction was the the fighters were "too big, and too weird."

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Sheesh, it's been almost ten years since Xeno got released, so I'm sure there's plenty of amusing stuff that I've completely forgotten.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Clearly the stakes are getting much bigger for front-line titles. The more money is involved, the more conservative people get. As with everything, there are a set of tradeoffs - people at smaller studios tend to be more devoted to getting it right, compared with "gameplay programmer #47" at the bigger places.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The biggest thing would have to be the money. Back in the day, 3-5 people could put out a front-line game in well under a year, with budgets that were in the low hundreds of thousands, if even that much. The last two projects I worked on before I left Midway had budgets that were, well, I'm not allowed to tell you the exact numbers, but both had 8 digits to the left of the decimal point.

Things are also more, well, deliberate. With bigger projects and more people, much more planning and logistics are required now. Everything was a lot more cavalier back then - it's been interesting watching the game industry go through the process of maturing.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

(Pardon the relative long-windedness here - more than two-thirds of my gaming career has been after Xenophage was published!)

Awhile after Xeno was released, I decided to try a somewhat different career path - I hadn't ever worked for a larger company, so I joined Midway at their Chicago studio.

I've been pretty happy that I've been able to work on so many different game genres - puzzle (Rescue Rover 2), platform (Keen), fps (Wolf3D), board (Hexxagon), trivia (Trivia Shell), fighting (Xenophage). I hadn't done any arcade games, though. So, after helping out on the tail-end of an arcade gun game (Carnevil), I led the programming effort on an arcade snowmobile racing game (Arctic Thunder). Arctic was a fun game with broad appeal, and it sold well, but the arcade industry in general was on its last legs, so Midway exited the arcade business, and focused entirely on home consoles.

After Arctic, our team pitched a number of concepts to management, and the one that stuck was what turned into "PsiOps - The Mindgate Conspiracy." It was definitely an interesting experience - although I had helped out the people porting Arctic to the PS2 and Xbox, I didn't really have any significant console programming experience. So, starting with a blank page and building a new cross-platform game/graphics engine and toolset for a genre I hadn't done before (3rd person action/adventure), on platforms I hadn't worked on before (PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube), recruiting, managing & directing a programming team larger than ever before (up to 20 programmers, at one point) was, well, to call it challenging would be an understatement. It was an intense few years, but I'm really proud of the game on a number of fronts.

Xenophage Screenshot

On the anal-retentive side, it's great that the game was so clean (actual professional tester quote - "It's really frustrating when your job is to break the game, but you can't.") that our QA costs were below 50% of the company average, and that we got quick approval from the console manufacturers.

On the "I made that" side, PsiOps garnered the highest aggregate review scores of any title developed internally at Midway, and the second highest of any title ever published by Midway. This at a time when management was really wanting to improve expectations about the quality of the console titles coming from the company.

On the "holy crap, we pulled it off" side, the programming staff started with one programmer (me), added a mix of a few industry vets, some folks with some game experience (but not necessarily a whole lot), and some complete gaming noobs who showed general promise, and came together as a team to make a game we are all proud of.

There is one Chicago restaurant's pizza, though, that none of us ever want to see again. Ever. Really. Not because it was bad, mind you, any food that you eat that much of during months of crunch – you’re just going to get sick of it.

Anyways, after PsiOps, I provided some initial technical direction on a new project ("John Woo's Stranglehold") for next-next-gen consoles, which looks to be on track to really capture the full essence of the cinematic experience of his action films, to a depth that gamers haven't seen before. It's a great team, doing some great stuff, but I'd been at Midway for 7 years, and I guess the 7-year itch set in, so I decided to move on.

So, p1mpage for my new venture: Monster Entertainment! My partners (who are finishing up their current gigs) and I are striking out on our own and starting a new studio. There are a number of factors that shape the culture of a work environment, and we have some very specific ideas about how to (and how not to!) build a studio that's functional, profitable, and a personally rewarding place to work for everyone involved.

Additionally, although the PsiOps engine was a decent enough piece of engineering, it was rooted in my understanding of the world (and software engineering) as of 4 years ago, and I've learned so much since then - it's great to be able to start over fresh, and build new tech that's clean, flexible, and poised to take advantage of the latest crop of PC and console hardware.

As a side benefit of building fresh tech, it's been great fun to brush up my graphics programming skills - even though, at the end of the day, writing HLSL code isn't all that incredibly different than writing VU1 code, and dealing with the PS2 DMA controller and VU1's limited memory looks a lot like dealing with the Cell SPE's "Local Storage." Despite the similarities, the increase in raw power that's available with the current crop of GPUs does make for some interesting possibilities - in particular, I think going for "photo-real" will become increasingly passe, and going beyond it will be a part of the visual branding process for studios.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Well, seeing as I am still making games, I'll reverse the question to "why are you still making games?" The answer is that it's still interesting to me. As I mentioned above, I'm very happy I've been able to avoid doing the same game over and over again. I've had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of hardware, software, and wetware. There's enough continuity of what making games is about, so I'm not totally bewildered as new cycles of hardware come along, but there are enough differences to keep things interesting.

I actually think there are a number of strong similarities between making games, and cooking (which is pretty much my only hobby). Both involve basic technical skills, without which you can't really do anything. They involve the psychology of the consumer. They require foundations in things people are comfortable with, but to be successful you need to introduce fresh elements, and keep evolving.

In the professional sense, for both heading a team or studio's programming effort, and heading a working kitchen, the skills you need to develop reach beyond craftwork. There's a certain magic required to transform a collection of different people, with different technical skills, different educational backgrounds, different levels of social skills, etc., into a functioning team that can deliver under intense pressure. Learning that magic is tricky, but interesting.

Xenophage Screenshot

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Well, buying more Midway stock when it was at $4.43 and selling it when it was at $23.73 would've been good, but aside from that, not really - I've been really fortunate to have all the opportunities I've had.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

I'd have to say Duke 3D. I hear there's a sequel being worked on, but it hasn’t come out yet.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Half-life 2 was pretty excellent. My first experiences with Steam weren't.

I've had a running love/hate relationship with the Civ series for quite awhile now. More love than hate, though.

Baldur's Gate II is definitely on the list.

Age of Empires III ate at least a couple weeks of my life recently.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?
Well, I'll take this occasion to ramble a little (more). The Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times" definitely seems to apply to the game industry.

While AAA game budgets are skyrocketing to levels that frighten anyone with a calculator and a brain, it's also interesting that the actual barrier to entry for making simple games has gone to pretty close to nothing beyond having a PC of moderately recent vintage, and a willingness to learn & put some hard work in.

When I took a gander at the source code archive for Xeno, there were something like 20 variants of a routine to copy graphics rectangles around in different ways, all hand coded in assembly for speed. Now, even the cheapest graphics hardware handles all that, and tons more as well.

You can get an industrial grade C++ compiler for free, including a fairly comprehensive Integrated Development Environment, in the form of the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition.

The DirectX SDK, by itself, includes a ton of code to springboard from (some of it good, some of it crap), and a bunch of free utilities that easily accomplish what experienced folks were tearing their hair out about not all that long ago. HLSL/Cg is much easier for most people to understand than the previous iterations of vertex and pixel shaders.

There are free image editors (and a bunch of free textures out there). Free modeling and rendering programs (and a bunch of free models). Free scripting languages (why anybody "invents" any more game scripting languages is really beyond my comprehension at this point). Free language parsers (Spirit is interesting to play with). XML can handle a bunch of things handily, and there are free XML parsers, processors, transformers, etc. Free audio compression/decompression - with Ogg Vorbis and OpenAL, I added streaming music/sfx to my new engine in less than a day. Now, granted, I’ve been doing this awhile, but that timeframe had more to do with ease of use than it had to do with experience.

So, with all this available, a determined programmer can put a game together without too much difficulty, and the only difference (albeit an important one) between what a solo amateur can do versus a seasoned team is cranking out professional content with the appropriate level of polish.

What does all this mean? Well, lower barriers to entry means more crap, but it also means that someone out there somewhere can make a little game, get it out there, and actually make money from it – just like back in the day.

A few words about the people in the pictures from Jason:

• Chris (Rhinehart) - Prey's project lead for Human Head. Fellow Lead Dog programmer with me on the freeware 33-hour insanity project "Duelling Minivans" and the followup "Super Duelling Minivans."
• Dave (Mueller) - At Midway, currently on the MK team, I believe. Worked at Argo after Xeno, before Midway. Currently has my Arctic Thunder arcade machine in his apartment (because none of the doorways in my house were big enough).
• Erika (Ersland) - Kristin's older sister.
• Jason - um, me.
• Kristin - my wife.
• Pat - my mom.
• Rowan (Atalla) - my best man - I believe his current credit is for art lead on Prey. Xeno was his first intro to non-traditional media. Clearly his mastery of the subject has improved with exposure - just take a look at Prey.

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Thanks for Jason for writing such a good, long interview. Thanks also to him for allowing Xenophage to be released as freeware. Check out these various links below.

• Our Xenophage Catalog Page
• Full Freeware Release of Xenophage
• Xenophage FAQ by Doug Howell
• Monster Entertainment (Jason's current gig)

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #15 - Peder Jungck

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with an interview with Peder Jungck (pronounced 'junk'). Peder was responsible for the 1992 title, "Secret Agent" with us.

Secret Agent was Peder's only title with us. It was a cool little game that yours truly bought before he started working here all those years ago. :) Anyway, it's a game where you play Secret Agent 006 1/2 on a mission into the secret island fortress of the DVS. Secret Agent, along with Crystal Caves are believed to be the #1 & #2 record holders for time elapsed between original release and a maintenance patch release. For Secret Agent it was just about 14 years between it coming out, and us releasing a patch for it in October of 2005.

Peder is no longer making games, and was a little harder to track down than most of the folks for this series, but we're glad we did. We haven't spoken with Peder in several years, and as you will find out by reading his interview below, he was more than happy to contribute. In fact, Peder wrote probably the longest entry in terms of words for the series. It's a great read, covering all kinds of stuff.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

In the late 80's I wrote a graphics package for the Zenith-100 (pre-PC & EGA days) that was used for many of my early games on that platform. When the EGA video adapters started driving decent graphics in the PC I ported my libraries and developed a commercial product called the ProGraphx Toolbox. I advertised these tools in Programmer's Journal and wrote several articles on graphics programming. George Broussard was running MicroFX and had purchased the ProGraphx Toolbox and contacted me about doing some enhacements to the library. As it turned out, I had just recently moved from Chicago to Arlington Texas, not too far from George in Garland. We got together one day at a Chili's to discuss the requirements and it grew from there.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I had developed games ever since I was 10 on platforms like the Commodore Pet & VIC-20, Apple II & Mac and Zenith-100. I had my own companies, published through bigger companies and at times worked with small incredibly talented teams. Having experienced some of each I have come to the conclusion that the best things happen when you find a group of incredibly talented people driven with a vision. George and Apogee were just such a group. When you meet great people with vision, your decision is not about some calculated move of which company but rather one of excitement and fulfillment of goals. So, if I were to place one reason of why Apogee, it was all about the team.

Title screen for Secret Agent

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

I had a great experience with Apogee and thier ability to market. In the days of bulletin boards and emergence of Shareware in packaging at the computer stores I felt like my game was in front its target audience. Within the first few months the sales started ramping up and response was positive. Secret Agent did very well in its first year and if there were anything they could have done better, it would have been to kick my tail to have gotten it out a lot sooner as it was on the tail end of the side scroller generation. In actuality, without the marketing genius of Apogee to develop the 3 episode shareware approach where episode 1 was free and 2 & 3 cost money shareware marketing was a bust. Additionally, the development of cheat codes in every game with access only through purchase made it as captivating as an infomercial today. Apogee had the best marketing in the shareware gaming space hands down.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Definitely a better product. Apogee drove the quality of the game play, pushed for high quality graphics and did extensive quality assurance testing to ensure compatibility and in those days completability of the game. We found issues where certain EGA cards didn't pan thier graphics smoothly and had to make modifications to support each. Apogee brought in artists to do opening cover art and upgraded the icon and pixel graphics for smooth character movements. Apogee invested in each developer and each product extensively in a tight relationship more so than the publishers of the day.

Peder in 1992

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

I do believe that it is important for game developers to retain rights to thier work. In many ways this is an art and one does not want to constrain an artist. That said I think that the IP rights issue in the early days was a bit different than it is today. For one, the product was often created by an individual or a small team. Today, it often can take dozens or even more than a 100 for big title. Second, gaming has become big business and as such intellectual property protection, lawsuits, cross-promotion deals and branding is expensive. I think that an individual won't be able to fully maximize the potential of thier intellectual property value today as they did then. I believe that the choices by Apogee in the early days of PC gaming was the right choice and part of thier success. I am not sure that I believe that this is the best choice today for either the publishers or designers.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

I have benefited in two ways. First, it brings a peace of mind. I have often thought of playing with the software to experiment with gaming on other platforms. I know this code (although not well anymore) so it always seems easier to take an existing code base to try something rather than start from scratch and know that you are potentially violating an agreement. The second way is that I have watched the resurgence of casual gaming on devices like PDA's and cell phones. I truly believe there is an opportunity for the revitalization of the Apogee phenominon that occurred pre-3D on portable devices. Having a say in this option is valuable.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Sure, if not we close the door and every great trilogy needs to leave the door open. On the PC, I would doubt it unless it was written by one of my sons and fortunately that's not too far out of the question. If there is, I would see it on a cell phone. Besides that is more Secret Agent 006 1/2's size. :>

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

While I recall many long nights on the phone and transferring files and bug lists it was the social times that are most memorable. Being a car guy, I must say that high end cars have always been a big motivation in life. I recall meeting with George driving my 4-cylinder mustang and he had an old camaro. One day as things were starting to pick up for Apogee and George tempting me with the fruits I would see when my game shipped, he showed up with a bright red Acura NSX. Mind you in the early 90's in the wake of depressing cars from the big 3, this was an almost iconic vehicle. There is no low end version of an NSX, it was pure race technology design from the ground up. Getting to drive that car provided a memory I will never forget and it drove me to finish my game fast. Net result, spend most of my first few months sales on my Saleen Mustang and a 1966 Mustang painted to match. Every time I see an NSX I think of Apogee even today.

Secret Agent Screenshot

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I think that to be successful at this the business leaders need to be gamers, passionate, involved and savvy business people all in one. This is a rare combination to find in a small group of individuals. It also needs to be part of the culture from day one. Apogee was a special place that resulted in special products.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Shortly after my Secret Agent days with Apogee, I went from building games on the side to doing gaming for full-time business. TerraGlyph Interactive, a CD-ROM edutainment company I helped start, was one of the first of the big business venture capital based mega game companies. In a matter of a few years in the 90's, the scale of titles went from a few developers over the course of a year to a title I directed and produced, Beowulf, had over 200 people-years of effort to product and millions of dollars. I have heard that the gaming industry is driving more revenue than movies in some categories and the technology required to develop has become increasingly complex. Just like the Internet has gone from a government and university experiment to the change of a culture, gaming has gone from its small text based adventures to massively multiplayer games that are leading to online dating and marriage. This is a night and day difference, however, deep inside these organizations, there is still the passionate gamers spending late hours coding and drinking Mountain Dew. That is the industry I miss and still look for because it contains the heart of what will always keep gaming on the top of the entertainment charts.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Building and playing games was a passion as a kid and a sideline through college and afterwards bringing in lots of enjoyment and money for college bills and cars. After Apogee I published a book on gaming, Graphics Programming and Animation, that was one of the first for PC gaming that was very successful for me. I then went into gaming full-time for the first time ever with TerraGlyph that ran for 3 years before the big game systems and Internet revolution changed gaming from CD-ROM onto its next phase. TerraGlyph got me hooked on big Venture backed startups in my home turf of networking and high end computing. I have continued to do startups since 1997 running a IT Consulting and Systems Integration house in Chicago, taking the role of CTO at yesmail.com which we took public in 1999 and then starting CloudShield Technologies in 2000 which develops supercomputers for the network that are sold to the service providers and government. I spend most of my time solving multigigabit problems for processing applications such as VoIP and Security on the Internet.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Sure. Once a gamer, always a gamer and every time something new comes up you can't help but think of the good times. Ideas continuously pop up that makes me think about how to find the time to do just one more foray into gaming. I gotta tell you, mobile phone look just like an old 286 with EGA to me perfect for those old side scrollers. Maybe I could use this forum to announce Secret Agent for Windows Mobile?

Secret Agent Screenshot

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Sure. I watched the 3D events unfold before my eyes and even had an engine built in 93 that if I had jumped on could have done well. Do I have regrets, no way. The real-time programming and detailed hardware knowledge I learned in bit blasting the EGA/VGA gave me an understanding of computing that has formed a basis of what I do today. In many ways we all make decisions that we can never be sure of the alternatives, however, I am happy with the outcome and to have been part of Apogee during some magical years.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

I must admit that Duke Nukem titles were always my favorites. Even the side scrollers before the 3D. They were easy to jump into and just have a great time blasting away.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

As I said earlier, I like cars and as such car games are some of my favorites that I go back to over the years. Twisted Metal on the Playstation, Rage Racer and now Need for Speed Underground for the PSP have gotta be at the top of the list.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Apogee is one of the few gaming companies still around which embodies the true essence of what gaming companies are all about. I just would like to thank the devoted followers of Apogee, Secret Agent and the titles I provided graphics engines for. In the world of mega gaming companies supporting independent player such as Apogee is what will keep the big guys honest and the game quality highest possible. Some day in the future, I hope to return to the gaming world in a more active fashion and its great time spent remember the early days.

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Thanks again to Peder for helping out. We still sell his game almost 15 years later, and it's a cool fun game, so check it out with the links below:

• Our Secret Agent Catalog Page
• Shareware Episode of Secret Agent
• Secret Agent Page in our Online Store
• Wikipedia Entry for Secret Agent
• Cloudshield Technologies (where Peder works now)

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #14 - Scott Host

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with an interview with Scott Host. Scott was involved with us on two games, although only one of them was released.

The first was Apogee's only attempt at an RPG game, one called "The Second Sword" based on the old Shadowcaster engine from id Software. It never got very far, though and was abandoned. Scott did do a game that is more well known to Apogee fans, that being "Raptor: Call of the Shadows". Raptor was a scrolling shooter game much in the vein of Scott's own independant game Galactix. It was a big hit for us and Scott back in 1994, and it's following continues today.

Scott was a local developer. His company at the time (Cygnus Software) was based in the same building that id Software was while they were working on Doom and Doom II. Scott has returned to his roots from his pre-Apogee days and is an independant developer again operating under the name "Mountain King Studios".

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

As far as I remember, Scott Miller sent me a letter after seeing a game I made called Galactix and so I called him. We made a deal to make a 3D RPG game Called "Second Sword". Which we stopped working on to make "Raptor".

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Well at the time in shareware Apogee was "the shit" so there was no real other choice. At the time I was selling my game "Galactix" and it was a pain in the butt.

Raptor Manual Artwork

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Higher level of Marketing towards the Pygmies on the isle of Zoot. They only have 1 pc but damn there is millions of them little buggers.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Better. Though it was difficult to have an outside source commenting on the making of "Raptor", I look back and think of that as a good thing.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

I think its better, at least for me it was. ( more under next question )

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

It was good for me because we stil sell "Raptor" today ( ported to windows ) and it is still selling after all these years on www.mking.com ( << can i do that hehe ? ) [ Ed Note: Sure, but remember we still sell the original version, too. hehe :) ]

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

YES !

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Playing PaintBall and The Pygmy thing but since I dont want to be cursed by the Chief Of Zoot again, I shall not discuss this.

Scott after a Jimmy Buffett concert

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I think today at least they do not want to take the chance because its so easy these days to make something that looks good but is no fun. It seems in the past, alot of publishers where putting out anything that "looked good" but didn't sell.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Shareware was new so it was easier to make something small that had a big impact.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I moved back to Chicago ( where Im from ) and renamed my Company to "Mountain King Studios". To this day, I am still making shareware games and now selling them too. My Girlfriend Nadeya moved in with me and we play "Worlds Of Warcraft" together alot. For the last 2 years I have been working on not a game, but a "paint/animation" program which will hopefully be done soon.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

Title screen for Raptor when it was known as "Mercenary 2029"

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Not really. I wish I didn't try making an RPG 3 times in the last ten years. I put alot of time in trying to make the games yet they never got done, but it was fun trying.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D and Wolfenstein.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

I like so many games, I will just name the ones I put the most time in playing... Origins Ultimas ( all ) WarCraft 2 StarCraft Elite Force

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

This ain't no dinosaur game!

---

Thanks again to Scott for helping out. Raptor had one unique thing in it's release date, it was put out on April 1st, 1994. At the time, most people didn't believe we were actually going to do that, they thought it was a joke. Since then, we've released a few other things on April 1st - each time most people don't believe it's actually happening. :)

• Our Raptor Catalog Page
• Shareware Episode of Raptor
• Wikipedia Entry for Raptor
• Mountain King Studios Website
• Scott's rendition of the Apogee Theme Song (details)

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #13 - Andy Edwardson

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with an interview with Andy Edwardson. Andy did one title with us, a racing game back in 1994, called "Wacky Wheels". This game continues to have quite a following to this day, and was one that has been remembered quite fondly.

Andy was one of our overseas developers, he's from the UK, and back in 1994, it meant getting builds was a little more adventersome (and slow) than it is today in the land of the Internet and broadband connections. Wacky Wheels was also one of the first games to include a "Dopefish Cameo", something that has become somewhat accepted when a game is made by someone who was involved from back in the the day. :)

Andy is no longer in the game industry, but once he was tracked down, he was quite happy to contribute to our series.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

It is a bit hazy but I guess it was about 1992/93. Scott Miller contacted my partner Shaun Gadalla, who did the graphics for Wacky Wheels , and expressed an interest in taking the game on.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

In our opinion Apogee was the top shareware company and the commerical outfits did not think that arcade games on the PC had any future. Wolf really showed that anything was possible. Plus Scott is a great sales guy as well ;)

Wacky Wheels Manual Artwork

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Well I doubt it had anything to do with Apogee but the really annoying thing for me was that I wanted to see our game in regular stores. I used to get really mad when I saw other titles in the shops but never ours. Apparently Formgen had plans to make it retail but it never seemed to happen.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Better.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Not sure if IP meant much back then to us. My gut feeling though is that the creator should retain the rights to the IP but then again I find it hard not to be on the fence on this subject. Surely it all depends how much the publisher has invested in it as well.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

I guess we own the IP but I cannot think of any real benefit.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

I doubt it. There has been a few times I thought about it but not as much these days.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Seeing a framed cover of our game in your offices in Garland next to all the classics you had brought out. That was a cool moment. Oh and going to George's house and meeting his Shark. Originally the Shark in Wacky Wheels was called "Bubbles". George told me that it was a bit of a sissy name for a Shark. I renamed him to Razer because of that.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

My perception has always been that Apogee/3d Realms are a kind of mini publisher/developer hybrid. I am not so sure that other studios would feel as comfortable doing this. Like you say, you have been doing this forever, and it works for you.

Wacky Wheels Screenshot with Dopefish Cameo

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The sense of adventure back then was really great. It was a magic time. The industry seems much more formulaic today and kind of sterile in a lot of ways.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Well it's been over ten years now and a lot of stuff has happened. As far as my professional life goes I have been writig lots of software and hoping for that magic to return again :)

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I do not make games anymore but I design and architect software for education. I find that my old games experience comes in handy. As far as returning to the industry , I doubt anybody would have me!!!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

I wish we had joined Apogee earlier on. A little known fact is that we had a game cancelled by Apogee. It does not appear in the FAQ but it was called Prime Time Warrior. Anyway shortly aftert that we where asked to come over and work for you guys. I kind of regret not doing that.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Monster Bash. I loved that game to bits.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Doom & Pac-Man.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Remember Kids Wacky Wheels is only a simulation. Don't drive like that in real life.

---

Thanks again to Andy for agreeing to contribute. Wacky Wheels was one of the more fun games in development for me personally in my time here at Apogee. There is more to the Wacky Wheels Story as well. A few years back Andy wrote some text about Wacky Wheels' development for the Apogee FAQ. I'm going to include that text here as well, but before you read that, check out these Wacky Wheels links:

• Our Wacky Wheels Catalog Page
• Shareware Episode of Wacky Wheels
• Wikipedia Entry for Wacky Wheels

---

Andy Edwardson's History of Wacky Wheels (as it appears in the Apogee FAQ):

Back in 1993, we were doing some low budget stuff for a Belgium outfit called Copysoft. I got fed up with the meager work, so I decided to work on a game engine in my spare time. I figured that the PC could do the mode7 stuff that the Super Nintendo was doing. I could not find any references for it, so I just studied Mario Kart and tried to figure out how it worked. I had a prototype engine up in about a week that did the floor painting and the rotation stuff. After that, I worked on it for a few more months, and Shaun Gadalla did artwork for it, and it started to get pretty solid. I showed it to the Copysoft crew, and they were quite excited and put a few screenshots of it on Compuserve. The problem was, we hadn't come to any commercial agreement with the company, and it was not a sure thing that they would get the game. Scott Miller, Apogee's president, happened to come across the screenshots and contacted Copysoft, and then we got into a fight with Copysoft over royalties, should Apogee end up distributing the game. I had made an unfortunate mistake -- I had included the C++ source code on the demo disk we left with them.

Shaun contacted Scott, and we came to an agreement. Shaun and I agreed to pay back what CopySoft had given us for equipment and so forth.

Development went on. When we went into beta we thought we would be out of there in a few weeks. However, when we got in there it was apparent that we needed more features. Beta was really important for me. If I had not listened to those testers, the game would not have been what it is. Most of the ideas came from us, but they kept the pressure up. It would have been too easy to sit on our hands and think what we were doing was best. The testers kept me on my toes, and, best of all, they told the truth. Another thing was Joe Siegler. I hate to admit this, but I didn't understand why he was so blunt all the time. I was so wrapped up in myself and becoming a bit of a pre-madonna. It was only later that I realized Joe was just being honest with us and trying to help us make the best game possible. I think Joe symbolizes what Apogee is; he works so hard all the time, and he practically lives there. At any rate, at one point I wanted to make amends with him. I knew he was into Dopefish, so I asked if we could put the fish in as a cameo. We discussed how it might work, and he sent me some stills and a collection of belches that he had recorded when he sat down one night with a microphone and a two liter bottle of Diet Coke. I picked one of them, but I think that Joe would have preferred it if I had picked one of the louder ones he sent me!

Because Doom had introduced the concept of modem play, the beta testers wanted it. Despite popular belief, Rise of the Triad did not introduce Remote Ridicule -- Wacky Wheels had it first. Rise of the Triad did take it one step further by allowing you to type messages to each other. At any rate, modem play really made my head spin. I never realised how unreliable packets were until I did the multiplayer engine. My hat goes off to John Carmack for his net play engine. To make matters worse, I was working at Shaun's place, and his phone lines were awful. But it did make the protocol really robust!

The music in Wacky Wheels was really lacking, and George Broussard said we needed more tunes. Jim Dose had just been hired at Apogee, and he had a terrific sound engine. We ripped out the old one and put his in. Jim also put us in touch with Mark Klem, and I would spend hours on the phone with him listening to his music. I really love the stuff he did, and I really should contact him for old time's sake.

As testing went on, I got more and more worried that, in the wake of Doom, all gameplayers wanted now was blood and guts, and Wacky Wheels wasn't about that. But we kept going, and I was determined to make it work. Anything the beta testers wanted, they got, except for the rear view mirror suggestion they kept plugging for. I didn't think it lent anything to the game, and it would have meant rendering another 3D view in another little window.

One memorable moment for us was when Shaun and I flew over to Texas, and we went to see George and Scott at the Apogee offices. I will never forget going into and seeing the pictures on the wall. They had the cover art for each of their games in a frame. Wacky Wheels was next to Wolfenstein 3D. That was an incredible moment in my life -- to be anywhere near associated with one of the greatest games of all time was neat to say the least. We went out to dinner with George and Scott, then visited their houses. (George had this bloody great big shark in a tank!) We got to talking about games, and George showed us Pitfall and asked if we could do anything like that. After Wacky Wheels, we did a test engine for them, but they were moving into the 3D market by then, and we didn't have anything to offer in that area at the time.

Anyway, we finally cracked the modem play, and it had one final round in beta testing. Joe Siegler gave it a good test, and he was happy with it. So it was finally ready to ship.

Then the bombshell hit us. Scott faxed us that Skunny Kart, a game from Copysoft that used my engine, had hit Compuserve. My heart sank. The only saving grace was that it was not all that similar to Wacky Wheels, and there was quite a legal wrangle over it all.

I was so angry, and it took all of Shaun's resolve to stop me from acting rashly. There was no way Copysoft had the ability to write an engine like that from scratch. In a perverse way, it taught me a valuable lesson. I was very hurt by it all, and it still bothers me to this day. In hindsight we were very stupid and should have known better.

If I could turn the clock back and make Wacky Wheels violent, full of blood and gore would I? Nah. It was fun, and kids big and small can enjoy it.

---

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:38 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #12 - Mike Maynard

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series finishes up it's third month with an entry from Mike Maynard. Mike and his group ("Jam Productions") put out two games through us. The first was released on Dec 3, 1993, and was titled "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold". The second was put out on Oct 28, 1994 and was titled "Planet Strike: A Blake Stone Adventure".

Mike was one of the three guys who made up "Jam Productions", and had the arduous task of working on the first 3D action game by us in the post Wolfenstein 3D era. Blake Stone had many firsts in 3D gaming, one of which was the rather common practice of NPC's, or "Non Player Characters". These were characters that would give you helpful information, so just going in and shooting everything you see was not the way to go here. Some other novelties in Blake Stone was the fact that you could go backwards to levels you already had visited. In some cases this was necessary to unlock certain locked areas in upper levels.

Planet Strike was also novel in our company history, as it was the first time we ever put out a game in the retail channel directly. Later on, some of our earlier games ended up there, but Planet Strike was our first ever foray into the arena of "Hey, pay attention to my box on the store shelf!" (that's why there's a woman on Planet Strike's cover art when there was no woman in the game at all).

Anyway, Mike has continued to stay active in the gaming industry since his time with Apogee in 1994. He's worked at such gaming companies as 7th Level, Ion Storm, Third Law Interactive, TKO Software, and is currently employed at id Software. Read on to hear what Mike has to say about his time with us (now 13 years ago).

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

The JAM team in 1993 (Mike's on the left)

In 1990, I worked at Softdisk Publishing in Shreveport, LA. It was a very interesting time because all the original guys that ultimately formed id Software also worked at Softdisk. Of course they ultimately left to form id and work with Apogee on the Commander Keen series and eventually Wolfenstien. With the success of Wolfenstien, Apogee wanted more games using that technology. John Romero recommended a friend (Jim Row) and me to Apogee and we signed a deal to create the shareware version of Blake Stone.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

We weren't necessarily shopping game ideas to different publishers and we certainly couldn't fund ourselves. (However, we did create a side-scrolling, space-themed shooter for the Amiga in our spare time called Outpost 13. We ended up selling it to Compute! magazine for $1000! woohoo!.)

Apogee was looking for a team to create a game using id's Wolfenstein technology. We had experience making games and had worked with id's previous technologies.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

At the time, Apogee did several things to market their games. The most cost-effective was to send nice, color fliers to previous buyers of their games. For instance, anyone that bought Wolfenstien 3d was sure to get the advertising flier since they were similar games (FPS, using Wolf 3d technology). I believe they also included fliers with actual products that people bought, too. They also placed general 'Apogee' ads in magazines that listed several games so the cost of the ad could be spread over several products. We were fairly pleased with all of these methods.

Mike in 1992 before Blake Stone development started

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

They made certain areas of the gameplay better by taking out monotonous gameplay (for example: traversing back and forth through various floors of the buildings) and adding bosses throughout the game to give the game intermediate goals. However, these changes (and others) were made fairly late in the development cycle which actually delayed the release a bit. I really don't remember a lot of input or even a need to see the game on a regular basis until at least 12 months of development. While that made for 'no-hassle' development I think it hurt us in the end.

Considering Blake Stone was released one week before another little game called DOOM, that delay pretty much sealed our fate. We had decent pre-orders and the first couple of months were pretty good but sales dropped pretty quickly. Had we gotten more input from Apogee earlier on in the development process I think we could've released the game 3-4 months earlier than we did.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

You could argue either way on this topic. Since I'm not a publisher, I'll go with the argument that the developer should retain all IP rights.

Simply put, a publisher isn't going to fund a project that they think won't make them a reasonable profit. So whatever they fund (whether they own the IP or not) they're betting that the game will make them money.

If they own the IP and the project fails, the IP is worthless so it doesn't matter who owns it. If they DON'T own the IP and the project is a success, they'll still make money (and profit) on the HUGE percentage of royalties they'll get from that project. So a publisher taking ownership of a developer's idea is purely for control and greed.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?
5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

We did the sequel to Blake Stone shortly after it was released; it was called Planet Strike and published by FormGen. :)

As far as a sequel with up-to-date technology, I doubt it. I've talked to people that think a new game (FPS or otherwise) based on the Blake Stone IP would be cool. However, the IP alone wouldn't attract more than a handful of old-school gamers. Any new Blake Stone game would pretty much have to reinvent the IP and stand on its own.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Blake Stone Artwork

There's nothing that really stands out but some details about development include:

• After a couple months of dealing with art problems Apogee was generous to increase our monthly funding so we could bring in a full-time artist, Jerry Jones.
• Dr. Pyrus Goldfire was originally called Dr. Goldstern. One person sent an email to Apogee complaining about how the name "Goldstern" portrayed Jewish people as evil. So we had to change the name.
• Joe Siegler sent an email on Thanksgiving Day saying that the version we uploaded for testing didn't work. So I went up to the freezing office and uploaded a new version of the game. I ended up calling the management at his house bitching about the lack of heat in the building.
• Some people (bank tellers n such) would ask us if JAM Productions was a music company. JAM was Jim And Mike.
• The game was so successful at one point we were making $1 million a month. .. Oh wait, that was Doom. Nevermind. haha

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

It has to be money. Otherwise, every studio would be working with external teams and try to become the next EA or Activision. I know at Third Law Interactive and TKO Software / Dallas, we were happy just to get projects for the internal teams to work on. Working with external teams was the last thing on our minds.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Everything associated with making games has gotten bigger.

• The size of the development team - While JAM Productions did contract out music and a small amount of art, the majority of the game was created by 2 programmers and 1 artist. We did our primary jobs (programming and art) as well as game design, level design, business matters, production, and publisher relations.
• The budget needed to create the game - JAM's total budget for Blake Stone (18 months development time) could barely pay for a small team of, say, 12 people for 1 month. If you're licensing a quality engine, be prepared to spend the salary of several quality people.
• The technology needed to compete against other games - The technology used in today's AAA games are much more impressive and more complex than when we created Blake Stone. And that doesn't just pertain to the graphics engine. Other things like AI, physics, networking, and animations have become much more complex.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Planet Strike Artwork

Making video games, of course! Ask me in another 12 years and the answer will be the same; that is unless I'm able to get my PGA Tour card! ;)

Here's a quick rundown of companies and games (newest to oldest):

ID SOFTWARE
<< wouldn't you like to know >>

TKO SOFTWARE
Call of Duty (Nokia NGage)
Leisure Suit Larry (Nokia NGage)
Ms Pacman: Maze Madness (PS2 / PC)

PARADIGM ENTERTAINMENT
Terminator 3: Redemption (PS2 / XBOX)

THIRD LAW INTERACTIVE
KISS: Psycho Circus (PC)
Aliens vs Predator 2: Primal Hunt (PC)
NOLF: Game of the Year Edition (PC)
WWII: Normandy (PC)
WWII: Iwo Jima (PC)
Minigolf Megaworld / Minigolf Master 2 (PC)

ION STORM
Daikatana (PC)

7TH LEVEL
Return To Krondor (PC)

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

I had the chance to join id Software early on but I was already knee-deep into JAM Productions and Blake Stone. I'm not the kind of person that just quits something I've started unless I'm really forced to. I wanted to finish Blake Stone and try to grow JAM into something cool. Besides, I finally got the chance to work at id Software again (been there about 6 months now) and I'm excited about helping them create their next generation of games!

Even still, the companies I've worked with has allowed me to interact with a lot of talented people and different technologies. But mostly, I really like the fact that I've been able to work on many different genres of games including: First Person Shooters, Real-time Strategy, Third Person Action, and even a couple games my son has been able to enjoy (Minigolf and Ms Pacman). There's nothing cooler than having your son enjoy games you've created.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

The games I played the most were Wolfenstein 3D and Balls of Steel.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

(in no particular order)

Quake
Unreal Tournement
Tiger Woods Golf
Grand Theft Auto
Rollercoaster Tycoon / Sim City (sim games, in general)
Any game my son wants me to play with him.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Of all the games I've worked on, Blake Stone was probably the most fun and intense at the same time. Simply because there were only three of us (Jim Row, Jerry Jones, and Myself) to do pretty much everything. We did the Game Design, Programming, Art, Level design, Working with contractors, Business matters, and LOTS of other little things that simply take a ton of time and effort. It was the first big game I created from the ground up and except for the timeframe, I think it turned out pretty good.

---

Thanks again to Mike for helping out with his questions. Since Mike was local, it was easy enough to go over to id and say Hi. Was nice to go back and reminise with Mike about his time with Apogee back then. We still sell both Blake Stone & Planet Strike, and if you're interested in trying them out, you can do so with the links below. One other thing Planet Strike is notable for is being the only game in our history that does not have a shareware/demo version. As it was our first retail game, the decision was made back then not to have a demo. It was thought that the existing Blake Stone game was enough of a "demo" for the retail Planet Strike game.

One final comment about Blake Stone.. Just where were all those medics? ;)

• Our Blake Stone Catalog Page
• Our Blake Stone Catalog Page
• Shareware Episode of Blake Stone
• Wikipedia Entry for Blake Stone

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:04 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #11 - Dave Sharpless

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with a trip way into the past. Today we're going to bring you an interview with Dave Sharpless.

Dave is not a name that is known to most fans of our company, simply because he did one title with us, and it was withdrawn quickly after its initial release. This title was Jumpman Lives! which was put out in early 1991. For various reasons the game was withdrawn from distribution shortly after release, and (to this day) we no longer offer it in any capacity. The game however, has enjoyed a cult following over the years - mostly since the rise in public use of the Internet. To this day there remain fans who still create new levels for the game, which brings me to my next point. Jumpman Lives is a first in PC shareware gaming - it's the first game we're aware of that contained a level editor with the full product. This practice is common now, but back in early 1991 when this game was first released, it was quite a novel concept for a PC title.

Dave continued on with gaming after his brief time with Apogee about 15 years ago, and was glad to contribute to our series.

Dave during the Summer of 1990, about 6 months before Jumpman's release.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Sometime around January 1991, I was a student attending the University of Toledo for a CSE degree and living in an apartment in a really bad neighborhood just off campus when I received a typed letter from Scott Miller. Scott got my home address from my shareware "Joust" and/or "Mario Brothers" games. In it he wrote about his appreciation for the two games, explained the Apogee business model a bit, and asked me to give him a call at the 800 number. During our phone conversation(s) we both agreed that JMLives would be a good game for Apogee to sell and for me to make.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Yes, to try something new. My last two games were circulated on my own via BBSs, etc and generated very little revenue and I hated preparing the disks, mailing labels, and mailing them out.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Yes, somebody could have read the Jumpman owner's manual and realize he was from Jupiter and not Saturn! (The introductory screen to JMLives shows Jumpman coming from Saturn). Seriously, it would have been nice to avoid the legal issues that eventually surrounded JMLives by spending more time creating a variant of it instead of an exact copy. At the time Jumpman was still property of Epyx and they forced Apogee to discontinue selling it just months after it was released.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Better... and definitely faster. Scott often let cash do the talking which is great motivation for a starving college student. Some folks at Apogee also contributed in the way of screen graphics and levels which was a big help at crunch time.

From 1992 - Employment badge of one of the coolest places to work in the world at the time.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

If you're the creator, then of course it is! Back in the days of JMLives, Apogee didn't start paying for the game until it was mostly done so the IP rights were going to the right party.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

This isn't really applicable.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

No.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Not particularly, since my time working with them was so short.

Jumpman Lives! Title Screen

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Good question. It seems like big companies would rather let the studio prove themselves by making a hit and then buy them outright.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The size/complexity of projects and the size of the development teams required to create them.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I finished school and took a job with WMS Gaming (casino & lottery games) in Chicago. It wasn't my dream job but it did land me in the same building with sister companies Midway, Bally Pinball, and Williams Electronics. After a few years of that I joined a startup company down the street in Chicago called GameWorks doing wacky products for the casino environment. Spielberg wanted the name so we became High Impact. High Impact was purchased by Anchor Gaming which relocated me to Las Vegas in 2001. Anchor was then purchased by the market leader International Game Technology and I'm still there today trying to give you the best possible gaming experience while money is slowly being extracted from your wallet.

Jumpman Lives! Level Editor Screenshot

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

All the time. I'm just waiting for the right opportunity I guess.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

No, I'm pleased with the way things turned out. Life is good!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

I don't have a favorite Apogee game because I never played any of them. I don't mean any disrespect because I have seen most of them and it's obvious that they're of very high quality. Maybe I just don't allocate as much time as I should toward playing games!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Another World (Amiga). Magic Carpet (PC). Carmageddon I (PC). Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64).

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Thanks for reading the interview. Keep up the good work. Feel free to contact me via email - don't be shy (and remove the "-nospam").

---

Thanks again to Dave for helping out with the series - his was one interview we were eager to have here given the uniqueness of his title in the past history of our company. While we don't distribute this game anymore (either in shareware or registered form), we are making available for the first time online the original hint sheet that we sent out for a brief time when we did ship the game. Back then, all of our games came with a "hint sheet" which contained tips & cheats. In 1994, these things were done away with and converted into on disk files, but this one has never been available since the game was discontinued 15 years ago.

Additionally, there is plenty of information about the game on the web. Check out these links below:

• Matty's Jumpman Lounge - by Matt @ classicgaming.com
• Apogeegames.com Jumpman Page by Lon Matero
• Interview with Dave Sharpless by Matt @ classicgaming.com - Sep 2004
• Apogee's Jumpman Lives! Hint Sheet - in pdf format

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:37 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #10 - Allen Blum

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues into its tenth edition, this time with long time Apogee staffer, Allen Blum.

Allen has had his hands in a ton of titles of ours, and goes all the way back to some of the earliest works of our company. He's been involved as a developer on all the Duke Nukem games released by Apogee/3D Realms (Duke Nukem I, Duke Nukem II, Duke Nukem 3D, & Duke Nukem Forever) directly. He's also been involved in many others such as Shadow Warrior, Dark Ages, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, as well as the aforementioned Duke games. He was however, the lead designer for our 1993 title, Major Stryker. Stryker was an (EGA) scroller game in the vein of our other such titles like Stargunner & Raptor.

Allen's also one of our internal beta test team, so even if's not listed above, he's played through it a lot and had input into the titles (some titles under this category are both Max Payne games as well as the forthcoming Prey). Allen (and his hats) have been a major part of our company history, and it's a pretty safe statement to say we wouldn't be where we are without him.

Allen with Randy Pitchford, Doug Wood, & Dirk Jones.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

In 1990 my High School friend Todd Replogle was working on some games for Apogee such as Caves of Thor and Monuments of Mars. At the time I was into the graphic abilitys of the Amiga and was working on a Super Mario Brothers 3 clone for fun.

Todd started working on Dark Ages and needed a level editor so we used my Mario clone editor on the Amiga. I ended up doing art and level design on the Amiga while the game only ran on the PC. After that we did Duke Nukem 1 the same way with most content made on the Amiga and the game running on a PC. It was pretty nice being able to see most of a level and all the textures for the game on one high-res screen on the Amiga while the PC was only able to do 320x200 EGA. With the success of Duke Nukem 1, Todd moved to Texas to work closer to Apogee on Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure while I continued school at the Univisity of California at Santa Cruz. I little while later while I was out visiting Todd and checking out Apogee, I was working on a top down shooter for fun called Dr. Protons Revenge. Apogee happened to see it and asked me to make it into a complete game which was released as Major Stryker in 1993. After that I moved out to Dallas and did Duke Nukem 2, Duke Nukem 3d and currently working on Duke Nukem Forever.

Allen holding his gift from the gift exchange at the 2005 3D Realms company Christmas Party.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Back in 1992 the "Shareware model" seemed like a great way for me to make my own game. It was easy enough to just release it on bulliten boards for people to play and if they liked it they could buy it.

I'm glad to see that a simular thing is part of the Xbox360 with the Live Marketplace. They just need to get rid of the "old tech" games like joust and have more games like Wik or Geometry Wars.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Other than bulletin boards and flyers sent out to thousands of people, I would have really liked a Superbowl commercial. :)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

No response to question.

Allen averting his eyes to the light at his desk at 3DR - May 2005

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

This didn't really apply to Major Stryker.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Not really, as I never did anything with the Major Stryker franchise. Can it be a franchise with just one title in the line?

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Duke Nukem Forever is getting closer to being done day by day.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

It's all a blur, man!

Allen at the 2001 company Halloween Party

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I have no idea! Money? It's all about the bling-bling now, isn't it? You want to have the largest piece of the pie, I'd suppose, and that's diluted this way.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Back when I started you could really make a game from home. Major Stryker only had 3 people working on it, Bobby Prince in Florida doing music, Gary Sirois in the north east doing art, and me in California. We never worked in the same room and actually never even saw each other. We only worked over the phone. I'm sure you could probably do the same thing much easier and faster with todays tech and such for small games. But for anything else like DNF you need a big bunker filled with people. At least now I get some excecise running around to the other side of the building to the coders area.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Since? I'm still here!

Just WHAT is Allen doing with this Lara Croft statue at E3 2000?

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I'm still here! Are you trying to get rid of me or something?

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

OK, why do all these questions make it seem like I'm some old fogey who has retired in a corner and drools on themselves? I'm still here!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

There's other games besides the ones I worked on?

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Seeing that I live in an FPS working on DNF and play most all FPS games, I would say almost any racing game would be my favorite, just becuase it is completly different from an FPS. And I like to drive fast without worrying about wraping my car around a telephone pole. Current top of the list would be Trackmania, Burnout or Flatout.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

....need more stripper research.

---

Thanks to Allen for sending in his answers, and being a good sport about so many goofy pictures of him being taken over the years. While Major Stryker was discontinued some years ago, here's a few links about some of the other games Allen has worked on over the years you might find interesting:

• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure Page
• Duke Nukem I Page
• Duke Nukem II Page
• Duke Nukem 3D Page
• Shadow Warrior Page
• Major Stryker Page
• Freeware Registered Version of Major Stryker

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:09 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #9 - Lindsay Whipp

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with the latest edition, this time with programmer Lindsay Whipp. Lindsay was the author and developer of one of the more amusing titles in our line, "Mystic Towers". This featured a character that originally was in someone else's game, "Baron Baldric: A Grave Adventure".

Baron Baldric (the character) was funny in that he would scratch his butt and fart while during the game - something that was definitely not the case in any other game of ours at the time. Lindsay only worked on the one title with us, but it was definitely one of the funnier titles in our product line. Read on to hear Lindsay's opinions on the Mystic Towers development, and how he has a connection to the current "Destroy All Humans" game.

A Lindsay Whipp "toon"

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

...I was referred by the Australian distributor Manaccom.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

...Working out of Australia, I needed a bigger market, and one world publisher was the best option.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

...No, I was pretty happy with the results. Modest by today's standards, but, hey! We're talking 286 computers and the end of the DOS era here!

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

...It was made DIFFERENT. What started off as a comic graphic adventure ended up as a comic shoot-em-up. I went along with that quite happily, but still think it lost some of its original humor along the way.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

...In my case, that didn't apply. I approached Apogee with a completed product, although it changed radically during Beta. These days, the budget demands are too great to allow small developers to do that, which is a pity in many ways - it cuts out the quirky individualism, and everything has the same blandness. My daughter recently worked as lead artist on Pandemic's "Destroy All Humans" and had to work damned hard to allow that element to be retained.

Lindsay in 1989 on the computer the original Amiga that Baron Baldric was written on.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

...In my case - no.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

...What, Baron Baldric for Geriatrix? Barren Baldric more like...

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

...Yes. George telling me that there were 3 important aspects of all games and they were, in order of importance: 1. interface 2. interface 3. interface - not the sort of advice one forgets!

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

...The cost! The complexity of todays games are horrifying. The days of the maverick like me are simply long gone, or even small studios.

Mystic Towers game manual cover art

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

...The scale of all productions, and the size of the teams needed to produce games at that level.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

...Working with software publisher and distributor Manaccom in Australia - the company that distributed my stuff here at the time the Baron was active.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

...I have a daughter in the games industry, one son in the media business, one in the IT business - enough is enough, already!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

...No - I made products for public comsumption, and that's what happened.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

All the Dukes of course! (funny - my tongue seems to be glued to the inside of my cheek...)

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Abe's Odyssey, GP3 (great driving fan)

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

...Get a life!

---

Thanks to Lindsay for sending in his answers, as well as the "toon" of himself used above. We still sell Mystic Towers, so if you've never checked it out, you can check it out with the links here:

• Apogee Mystic Towers Page
• Download Mystic Towers shareware
• Buy Full Version of Mystic Towers
• Mystic Towers Page at Wikipedia

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:44 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #8 - Ken Silverman

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with its eighth edition, this time with Build engine programmer, Ken Silverman. Ken's work can be seen in several of our titles, most notable Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior. His Build engine has been used in numerous titles by other companies as well (there's a list here). Ken was an engine guy, he never had a released "game" like others in this series up to this point, but don't mistunderstand that. Ken's contributions to the success of our games have been huge, specifically Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I wrote a letter to Scott Miller about marketing Ken's Labyrinth in October 1992, 3 months before the game was released. We didn't reach a deal at that time. In March 1993, Epic released Ken's Labyrinth - which caught Scott's attention. He and Mark Rein of Epic sent me competing offers until August, at which time I chose Apogee.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Sure. Apogee offered me the best deal. Unlike Epic, they offered a good salary - a fantasy for a kid just getting out of high school. Also, I knew about Apogee's reputation of producing high quality games, so I knew there was likely to be long-term benefits as well.

Ken Silverman - October 2005

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

No. I would look pretty silly complaining here when Duke Nukem 3D was the hottest selling game of 1996. Actually, now that I think about it... this slogan might have increased sales: "Duke Nukem 3D, from the makers of Ken's Labyrinth" Just kidding : )

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I wasn't really working on my own game. Supposing I had to do it all myself, I probably would have made something in the same style as Ken's Labyrinth, just with an updated engine. It might have looked a lot like the "KenBuild" test game on my website, or JFBuild (Windows port by JonoF). A commercial version would have included more maps, more crappy artwork, and a pointless story like "find some keys and exits because that's how you win". It would have been bad.

So my answer to this question is obviously yes. Apogee put a full committment into using my engine and tools. They took a risk by hiring a kid just out of high school to take on that kind of responsibility at their company. They did a great job on all aspects of the game.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

In my case it didn't matter. My rights to the Build Engine were shared with Apogee/3D Realms. After I left the company, I did nothing to market the engine on my own. Any potential licensors dealt with Apogee/3D Realms, because that's who they knew about.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

No. In retrospect, all it meant was that I didn't have to ask Apogee/3D Realms permission to release my own source code. I gave them a heads up anyway.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

For Duke Nukem 3D? Ha! You tell me : ) I can only speculate by pointing out that most mathematical models would suggest that the answer is no. After 10 years, I have no further information about this than a typical fan.

Ken showing off his US map drawing - Apr 1996

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Sorry, I suck at remembering funny anecdotes. I didn't go out very much with the guys ... and when I did, I usually just sat there like a mute. It was hard being younger than everyone else.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I can't speak for them. I can only guess that it has something to do with risk and them not wanting to take it.

8) What's the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

There's more interest and more competition now. Gaming is now as mainstream as movies. Online, I see lots of kids begging to get noticed - which is not unlike the struggling actors you see in Hollywood. Back then, I felt like an innovator for writing my own engine. Today, I am made to feel silly for not using an existing one. It hurts because I don't have the other skills.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I returned to Brown University in 1997 to finish college. Since graduating in May 2000, I've been working for myself. I still do the same amount of programming I used to, but I don't make money on it anymore. I release things on my website for free. Sometimes, I collaborate with friends online, such as Tom Dobrowolski (Voxlap/Moonedit) or Jonathon Fowler (JFBuild/JFDuke/JFSW). Also, I volunteer time at local schools, helping students with programming-related tasks. It's fun.

Ken with Frank Maddin in 1997 during Shadow Warrior development

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I sometimes do small projects by myself and release them on my site, but nothing commercial. Most game companies in the New England area seem to be focused on money and business plans rather than making a fun game. I haven't looked too hard though. I'd rather be doing my own thing since I can.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

No. I turned down a lot of offers in those days. In retrospect, I am very happy with the ones I chose.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

I guess Death Rally since it's one of the few games I've actually finished.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My favorite games of all time are:

• Pole Position: I loved the 3D effect at the time
  
• Super Mario Brothers: smooth scrolling, easy to play, great music
  
• Quake 3 Arena: great gameplay (with fast internet connection)
  

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

I've said enough. If you want more, or if you want to see my recent projects, you can visit my website: http://advsys.net/ken.

---

Thanks to Ken for sending in his answers, as well as a few pictures from his archives. Make sure and visit Ken's sites via the links in his answers above. However, our webmaster will relay a funny story as Ken said he wasn't good at that.

"One time the group of us were out to lunch at one of the local restaurants. This was one of the places that lets you draw with crayons on the table on paper they put on it. As Ken stated, he generally was pretty quiet, so most of us weren't paying attention, just talking the usual trash nonsense. After awhile one of us looked over at what Ken was doodling, and went "What the hell?" Ken was sketching the United States Map. He apparently has the ability to just draw the entire US map on anything. It pretty much took us by surprise, as he was roughly half done at that point, and from that point on we just watched him finish the map. One of the pictures above has another one of his "map doodles". So if you go anywhere with Ken, don't let him wander off on his own mentally, he'll draw the United States somewhere. :)"

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:31 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #7 - John Passfield

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with the seventh edition, this time with John Passfield. John was one of the creators of our 1994 title, "Halloween Harry" (later renamed to Alien Carnage). John's influence went beyond that though as some people who worked with him on Harry also worked with us on other projects, too (Balls of Steel and Mystic Towers come to mind here).

Carnage/Harry is unique in our product line, as it's the only game title to have a name change after it was released. That frequently happens with titles before they come out, but not afterwards! John continues to be a successful game developer in Australia, and was more than happy to help out with our Legacy series.

First, in a little break from the norm, John also sent in a bio about himself to go with the interview:

John Passfield is a veteran of the computer games industry with more than 20 years professional experience as a games designer, lead programmer and scriptwriter on numerous award-winning titles. He is also credited as a founding member of the Australian games development community and helped establish some of the first development houses.

John was also a founding director of Krome Studios and co-created their flagship TY the Tasmanian Tiger series. He also created and owns the innovative Halloween Harry, Jaruu Tenk and Flight of the Amazon Queen properties. John is now the Creative Director of Pandemic Studios Australia.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

We're based in Brisbane, Australia and we were in discussion with Ian Mackay of Mannacom, a local software distributor to publish Halloween Harry. He happened to handle a lot of Apogee games - so we signed a deal with him and he hooked us up with Apogee.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

We really wanted to retain our Intellectual Property (IP) and weren't going to hand it over to anybody - and Apogee was very developer friendly.

Alien Carnage Print Manual Cover

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

They did a pretty good job except I remember one of our European distributors stiffed Apogee and didn't pay up royalties. Apogee decided not to pursue it for whatever reason and we lost a lot of our European sales. Which sucked.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

From what I can remember Apogee had a very hands off approach. We pretty much made the game and let them sell it. So I don't think the partnership had any impact on the actual game. But they certainly helped get it out to the world and make us some money.

Looking back, I think we could have been more involved in the process. We were young, naïve and thought we knew it all. In hindsight I should have jumped on a plane and met up with Scott and George in person and talked about how to market the game and how to grow our business. I think we could have learned a lot from the guys and could have grown the Aussie industry a lot sooner.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not? Personally I like to own my IP. But realistically ideas are a dime a dozen. I think it's more important for developers to create quality games on time and budget and build up their reputation first. Then they can worry about owning their own IP. And remember, IP is useless unless you do something with it.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Well, the IP is generally owned by the developer - which is usually a company. In the case of TY the Tasmanian Tiger, an IP I created with Steve Stamatiadis the company we created, Krome Studios, owned that IP. As soon as I sold my share in Krome Studios I lost any interest in the property. So unless you have the IP assigned to you personally you're still in the same position as working for a publisher that owns the rights. However, when I left Krome I made sure that I was personally assigned the rights to a number of IPs that I helped create over time including Halloween Harry, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Mystery Club, Jaruu Tenk, Shadow Town, etc. I can exploit these IPs anyway I want and in some cases can derive extra revenue from them.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Yes. I'm currently working with an independent developer to produce something new with the Halloween Harry license.

Screenshot from Alien Carnage

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

I remember visiting Ian Mackay at the Brisbane office of Mannacom in 1993 to show off the latest build of Halloween Harry and he had just received a build of the new id game from Apogee. We gathered around the PC to witness a game that very few people had yet seen: DOOM. That was pretty amazing. Here was a fast paced 3D game that would change the way games were made, and there we were with a quaint 2D side scroller!

Ed Note: In its earliest incarnation, the original Doom was still a project that id was working on to be published through Apogee. id then decided to "do their own thing" during the title's development.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I think most publishers and developers are risk averse. I know of one company that was developing handheld games but no one would sign them. A local independent company partnered with them so they could port their PS2 game to the GBA. As soon as the GBA title shipped publishers signed them up because they were now "real" developers. That is so very typical.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Well, in the console space the budgets have grown obscenely large. But in the PC space I think it's gone full circle. I see Casual Games as being very similar to shareware back in the nineties. Games are developed by a small group of passionate developers, there is a try before you buy policy and most games are independent productions. But since the nineties shareware scene there have been some amazing improvements with the Casual Games industry. BBSes, for example, have been replaced by the web, everyone now uses credit cards and aren't afraid to buy stuff online, and development costs are much cheaper and the potential audience is much, much larger. There are no excuses for wannabe games makers to not make and market games today.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Well, I founded Krome Studios, one of Australia's largest games development companies and have worked on almost twenty published games. I recently sold my share in Krome and have joined the Pandemic Studios Australian team as their Creative Director. I've also been creating shareware style games in my spare time - the latest one being Word Shake which is available from Casual Games Arcade. I've also married and started a family - which is one of the best projects I've had the privilege of working on!

Halloween Harry from our 1993 Print Catalog

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Professionally, we didn't have a viable business until 1999 when we formed Krome Studios. I think that moving to the States when Alien Carnage/Halloween Harry came out would have accelerated that process by at least five years. So I think I missed the opportunity to grow the business faster - but you live and you learn!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Wolfenstein 3D was pretty cool!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My favourites are Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, the Zelda series and Mario 64.

Just recently I've been digging the new games on PSP and Nintendo DS - Mario Kart, GTA: Liberty City Stories and Animal Crossing all rock. I love these new handhelds!

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Check out Casual Games Arcade to grab some quality PC and Mac games. These are the spiritual successors to the shareware games we grew up with! Oh, this is probably the place where you'll see the new Alien Carnage/Halloween Harry game first!

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Thanks to John for taking the time to send in his interview, as well as the old newspaper clipping image. While Alien Carnage is no longer available from us (it was discontinued a few years ago), his other projects are up and running. Check 'em out:

• Casual Games Arcade
  
• Pandemic Studios Australia
  

There is also more information on Carnage/Harry on our archived catalog page for the game here. There's more to read over at Classic DOS Games Archive. Finally, you'll want to read the Halloween Harry entry in the Apogee FAQ, which talks not only about the game's name change, but the two sequels to the game (Zombie Wars & Halloween Harry 3D), as well as an aborted TV series about the game.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #6 - Mike Voss

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with its newest edition, this time with Mike Voss, author of the 1994 game, "Hocus Pocus". Mike only did one title with us, but it was a memorable one; it was a great entry in Apogee's long line of sidescroller titles. Mike (who we have no pictures of) no longer works in the game industry but was very happy to be interviewed about his game with us now 12 years ago.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I was playing around with the idea of writing a shareware game around 1991. I started with a graphical adventure style game that ended up tired and boring after a while. Then I was inspired by Duke Nukem! I studied the game and figured that I might be able to tackle a similar style game. I was somewhat pessimistic about the idea of the shareware marketing model paying off until, in a local specialty magazine store, I came across "shareware magazine" and thumbed through it. I read in an article that Apogee was receiving about 300 orders per day.

I began to devote a large amount of time to programming. I created a game called Clyde's Adventure and tossed it into the shareware arena. The game was a modest success. I could almost make a small and very modest living. Very very modest. After a few months I received a letter from Scott Miller suggesting that possible fame and fortune was on my doorstep. Apogee offered to publish my next game. I said okay.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Given that Clyde's Adventure was a small, run and hop type game, it wasn't as if Electronic Arts and Sierra was banging on my door. Further, I never really intended to make a career out of programming games. Apogee was offering to market my work and toss a chunk of the profits my way. It was a win-win proposal. I worked with Apogee because they asked me to.

Hocus Pocus Game Manual Artwork

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Hocus Pocus was released immediately following the release of Raptor. I saw full page ads in gaming magazines for Raptor. I saw no advertising for Hocus Pocus. At the time I felt cheated. Apogee always presented their company image as "not like the other companies" and that all games are given equal attention. I recall hearing George Broussard mention to me that "advertising does not do much to improve sales." I couldn't believe that he was telling me this. I understood the logic: Raptor sold better than Hocus Pocus. A dollar spent advertsing Raptor would always bring in more money that a dollar spent advertising Hocus Pocus. It was simple business sense not to spend money advertising my game. Still, I felt that I was unfairly treated. I got over my resentment on a recent Dr. Phil show, perhaps you saw it.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Apogee absolutely made my game better. They had contacts for sound engines, music, art, etc. I hammered out Hocus Pocus on a 386 20 Mhz machine with an old 10 meg hard drive. My monitor died on me and for a few weeks I was using an old sony 6 inch black and white monitor. You might go so far as to say that my resources were on the lean side.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Given that I have kept my head out of the computer gaming business for the last ten years, I don't feel that I'm qualified to give a good opinion about this issue.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

No response to question.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Hocus Pocus 2: With a Vengence.

Screenshot from final version of Hocus Pocus

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

The best time I had working with Apogee was meeting Jim Dose. Jim was working on the Apogee sound system in New York and I would have long phone conversations with him on many occasions. He later ended up working with Apogee in Texas. Although we never met in person, Jim was one of the best people I met in the gaming industry.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Companies tend to continue with what works for them. Apogee started out by working with outside companies so it's no surprise that they continue this practise.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Again, I have been out of the gaming industry for so long, I don't know too much about the changes that have occurred.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Shortly after I started developing Hocus Pocus, I got married. Apogee advanced us $5,000.00 to help us financially, the advance was free of interest for more than a year. Kudos to Apogee for a class act.

We now have two children, Jacob, who is six and Heather who is four. We have a small house in the suburbs and lead a comfortable and calm existence.

Like 98% of programmers, I began to do commercial web programming during the dot com bubble until it popped. My hobby now is playing with my kids and hoarding Google stock.

In a rather strange career move, I am currently completing my training to become a paramedic in the spring. Adios, programming.

Screenshot from final version of Hocus Pocus

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Sheesh, no. The industry now is so different from the small development teams that I worked with. If I'm not the star of the show, so to speak, then I don't want to be involved. Nowadays, to be a star, you need an IQ like a phone number. I dropped out of the game programming industry after id software wrote a little ditty called Doom. I could not compete with that. I tried for a little while, and just when I was getting the 3D concepts, they released Quake!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

I believe that all things happen for the best, good or bad. We learn from bad experiences and profit from good experiences. Regret is like driving while looking in the rear view mirror.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Halloween Harry is my favorite Apogee game.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Civilization
Doom I and II
All MS Flight Simulators
All Sim City's

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

My deepest appreciation goes out to everyone who played and enjoyed Hocus Pocus. Even the ones who enjoyed the pirated copies. (George will hate me for saying that.)

I'd also like to thank Scott Miller, George Broussard, Todd Replogle, Jim Dose, Jason Blochowiak and my beta testers, Andre Foucault and Chris tenDen.

---

Thanks to Mike for taking the time to send in his interview. We still sell Mike's game, and it's still a good sidescroller game. You can check out the shareware version on the downloads page, or you can buy the registered version here. There's also some more information about Hocus Pocus on our catalog page for it here.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:21 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #5 - Frank Maddin

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with its fifth edition, this time with Frank Maddin, author of a few games with us. His first game with us was 1991's Crystal Caves, and then followed it up with 1993's Monster Bash. After that, he teamed up with Jim Norwood to do 1997's Shadow Warrior. Frank also briefly did some work with is on a fourth game after Monster Bash called "Cybertank", but it was abandonded early on in development (was to be a tank game with a 3D engine). Additionally, Frank is one of the few developers we've had to ever get dressed up as one of their characters (see the pictures below).

Frank now works at Microsoft, and was happy to participate in the interview series. Hereeeee's Frank! :)

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I met George Broussard in Lufkin, Texas. He calls it a "stinky little town". His family had moved there from Dallas. I'd lived there most of my life.

I had a Commodore Amiga (Jack Tramiel was the devil the ST was crap) and knew very few people in town with one. So I put an ad in a local trade paper and his mom called me. We became good friends - his mom and I - eventually we let George hang out with us. :-) We commuted to college together in nearby Naca-nowhere.

Scott was a friend of George from back in Dallas and would come down to visit occasionally with Terry Nagy. We'd all go play tennis or something. Of course, I was by far the best tennis player and there was usually tears and gnashing of teeth, but I digress.

When George graduated he and his family moved back to Dallas. Fast forward a year or two and I had a job at Lockheed that I didn't like, and George was getting ready to compete with Scott because Apogee was starting to take off. I told him to send me some code and I'd take a stab at it.

A number of months into the development of Crystal Caves, George joined Apogee and Crystal Caves became an Apogee product.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I'd just sort of fallen into game development. I doubt I could have gotten a job at a real game company, or started my own at that point.

Frank with his son back in 1991

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Back in the day, the BBS was the main distribution method. The main form of marketing was mailing out to previous customers. Once they built up a reputation, that was pretty much all they needed to at least get new people to download and try new games. The 3 episode hook got people to pay. Worked pretty well for the time.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

The level of support varied from game to game. Sometimes tools, sometime design, etc. They generally had good design input. If I was making the game in a void I'm sure it wouldn't have turned out nearly as well.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Well sure, you should keep the IP. If the game is a hit it might be worth something. Seems to me it's about who has the upper hand and the position they are in. How badly does the publisher want the developer? How far along is the game?

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

I don't think it's highly applicable to me. Seems like with my projects it's kind of a joint ownership thing with Apogee. Of course I could do something with it if I got permission, or payed them something from profits.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Probably not. I have the most fondness for Monster Bash, so if I could choose, that would be the one.

Frank dressed up as Johnny Dash from Monster Bash at the 1996 Apogee Halloween Party

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

There is an interesting "brush with greatness" with the author David Gerrold.

The fellow that wrote the script for the Star Trek episode "Trouble with Tribbles", David Gerrold, actually played and liked Crystal Caves. Mr. Gerrold, like Jerry Pournelle, was also a computer guy and wrote articles for computer magazines. I was reading a computer mag (I think it was a programming mag called PC Techniques) and I noticed that the author mentioned Crystal Caves, talked about it a bit, called out that the first episode was "Trouble with Twibbles" and seemed to think that was funny. At the time I thought it was cool but I didn't realize the significance. Not much later I think I picked up a SF book he'd written and saw that he wrote the Star Trek episode. I was pretty floored. That probably had something to do with his mention.

There is also the "Great Romero Misunderstanding"..

My best work was probably the snake in Crystal Caves. There is a story about that. At one point during development we'd flown to see id software (involved with Apogee) for business reasons and I'd shown CC to them. Later, I heard that John Romero thought I had stolen the snake from one of his earlier games it looked so similar. The truth was that I hadn't seen that game and that it was the only way I could figure out how to do a snake in 16x16 pixels. But it kind goes to show you the limitations can really influence what the art is. So John, REALLY, I didn't steal your snake! Swear to GOD mode. I just know this will get back to him.

I'm sure there are many others lurking but I can't dredge them up.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Seems like a good thing. I'm not too up on these working relationships these days. Japan seems to have more separation of design and development, but that's maybe not quite the same thing.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

I remember George said once, something like "Making games is too hard. id came along and screwed it all up. I'd have been happy making side scrollers forever". That was probably back in 94 or 95 or something. It's just gotten harder. It takes vast effort, lots of people, and oodles of resources.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Raising a couple of kids, enjoying life. Still making games. The majority of my time has been spent at Digital Anvil/Microsoft.

Frank at his office at 3DR in 1997.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Can't think of any large ones. Shipping earlier on all games would have been good.

Should have put a better level as the first level of Monster Bash. There were many that were better. Wouldn't have programmed the bug that didn't allow you to finish level 4 :-)

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Commander Keen. It opened my eyes to seeing the PC as something that could play games like a console. I didn't have a high opinion of the PC at the time, being an Amiga person and all.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Fairy Tale Adventure, Splinter Cell, Call of Duty

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

I had a lot of fun in those early days developing, and I hope you enjoyed playing.

---

Thanks to Frank for helping out with the interview series. We still sell all the games released with us during his time here (Crystal Caves, Monster Bash, & Shadow Warrior), so make sure and check them all out on our Games Page.

If you want to read more about Frank, you might also want to check out this interview done with him over at the "Perilous Crystal Caves" fansite, where he talks more about the development of Crystal Caves.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:58 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #4 - Tom Hall

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with its fourth edition, this time with Tom Hall, a core figure in the early days (and more) of our company. Tom was a founding member of id Software, working with them and us on Commander Keen & Wolfenstein 3D. He later joined Apogee, and was the project lead on Rise of the Triad, as well as having his hands in several titles doing work for them ranging from Hocus Pocus, Duke Nukem II, and Duke Nukem 3D. Additionally, he was the original project lead on Prey when it was in it's original incarnation.

Since his time here, he's worked at Ion Storm, Monkeystone, Midway, & now KingsIsle. Tom has a huge connection with us and our past, so we're sure you're eager to hear what he has to say...

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Scott Miller had been trying to hire John Romero from his old days as a contributor to Uptime (an old monthly software magazine on disk), then he'd been getting fan mail from various people which he hung up. Then he noticed they were all coming from the same address! Both amused and angered, John wrote a strongly-worded letter back, only to find out it was Scott wanting to publish something.

Carmack and I had stayed up late one night making a funny joke demo of Super Mario Bros 3 and putting it on Romero's desk in the morning. This lead to a demo for Nintendo, which got to the head table but was rejected, so we decided to do our own thing. I went off to my office and in 15 minutes came up with the story of Commander Keen, which Scott was dying to publish, and so he did!

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Scott was so excited to publish us, and he sent us pizza money, which was so cool of him and a big convincer. Once Keen started selling, we realized we could live on that money. The rest is history.

Tom on his first day at Apogee

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Well, the initial "Miller Model" of the buy one, get two was brilliant. But they needed to grow as we did. We had our computers networked before they did, putting the money back into the company, and we knew DOOM was gonna take off at least as well as Wolfenstein 3D did, and we didn't want that handled by a company with SneakerNet going on. But we totally owe our initial success to Scott believing in us.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I think the Keens were made better by the trilogy thing. I think they were a little me-too during the development of early Prey. But working with Scott and George was a pleasure. Those guys love games.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

That is awesome of them. Just wish I owned Keen. :-) It's kinda just a business property to the folks over there at id. Ah well. For some reason they want the ten thousands it is worth while the millions roll in.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

N/A

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

If I owned Keen, there sure would be. I don't consider that GBA game canon by any means. :-)

Searching for something in the offices where Rise of the Triad was developed. Mark Dochtermann is in the background.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Back in the development of Duke Nukem 3D, I walked into George's office and said, "When people get done with work, they are playing DOOM. Something is wrong if you have a new first-person shooter with deathmatch working, and everyone's not playing it." George took over the project and gave it a much higher fun factor. George MADE that game fun.

And the reception for the Dopefish was so strange. One guy became an ordained priest of the church of the Dopey Fish. It's just funny that a dumb fish from one level of Keen 4 is now an industry easter egg thing. Heh.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

They don't have the guts, and they are run by business people, not former (or current) developers. Some studios ARE run by former developers, but they've been converted into the evil business people, like some sort of Body Snatchers movie.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Shareware isn't such a big thing, since everyone does demos now. And the bar is so high with the new graphic cards and consoles, and there's SO much high-quality web content out there, it's hard for a small timer to stand out. Even phone games are getting high tech! But

There's always room for innovation. Perhaps the next place for the small games is e-paper. Who knows?

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Did id Software, ION Storm, Monkeystone Games, Midway, and now KingsIsle Entertainment. I've been busy. Anachronox won a number of awards, Congo Cube was rated "A" by PC Games, Area 51 did well (I had a little input, but didn't make that game), and now I'm doing an MMO (massively multiplayer game). I'm still excited to be making games.

Tom in 2003.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

No, it's been a pretty good ride. Wish I had the rights to Keen and Anachronox, but I've tried to stay creatively happy throughout my career, and have pretty much done that.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Other than our stuff, Duke Nukem 3D is still the best from that studio. Really fun.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Chrono Trigger (SNES), Wizardry I (Apple ][), Ultima III (Apple ][), Half-life 2 (PC), Day of the Tentacle (PC), Secret of Monkey Island I & II (PC), um... oh wait, you said 2-4. Did I mention Sneakers (Apple ][)? Ape Escape (PSX)?

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

See, a bunch of folks can just get together, make the type of games they love and come out with fun, popular stuff! And dudes, finish Duke this year. Really. Ya might, I dunno, put a milestone schedule together, maybe something in Project. Just an idea.

Just kiddin'! We all want to PLAY it! Quit hoggin' it, man!

And to the fans... really, thanks for playing the dumb little games me and my buds have been making in a little room somewhere. What an odd job this is!

Thanks!

---

Thanks to Tom for helping out with the interview series. You can read more about Tom's life on his website. Additionally, we still sell all the games he worked with during his time with us (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity, etc...) so make sure and check them all out on our Games Page.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:04 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #3 - Karen Crowther

Today we bring you the third in our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series. This week we speak with Karen Crowther (now known as Karen Chun), the author of the only two educational games in our product line. These are Word Rescue, and Math Rescue, both released in 1992. These are the only titles in our line she was involved with directly, but she's been a friend to the company for awhile now. Additionally, she's the only female lead game designer we've had. We've had other women work for us, or on our titles, but she's the only lead designer we've ever had.

So without further delay, we take you to Hawaii for our interview with Karen...

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I was a fanatic Commander Keen and Duke Nukem (sidescroller) player. I love those games and still think they're the best. (And I really miss Tom Hall and his wacky sense of humor...hey, Tom, you need to visit me in Maui!!!)

Dang! My mind is going...I know Scott and I were involved in a lot of political stuff (fighting off government regulation of computer games etc. with Diana Gruber and Rosemary West - hammering out the role of shareware and making sure the authors didn't get ripped off by the retail publishers) but I think that came later.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

First, I really liked Scott Miller. He put me in touch with Todd Replogle (Duke Nukum) who helped me with some programming issues. If no one else tells you, Todd is a really great guy and pretty humble considering what a good programmer he is. Scott helped me with PC sound effects and cool ideas. And I loved interacting with George Broussard. When Joe Siegler came along, he was a lot of fun too. I think that Scott is a marketing genius.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Apogee did a great job for me. They basically let me do anything I wanted and made me a millionaire (well, started me on the way, at least). I have nothing but good stuff to say about them.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Well, better, of course! When I listened to Scott, my games got better. That's why the games I distributed through Apogee are the most successful. Although Pickle Wars (distributed through another company) did become a cult classic with game developers, it never made much money despite what I think was some pretty fantastic music by Bobby Prince. So, in retrospect, I can say that Scott's instincts were right on. The games that I was paid beaucoup bucks to produce for big name retailers are dead, dead, dead now. The Apogee games (Math and Word Rescue) are still going strong.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

I liked the fact that I retained the rights because I had fun wheeling and dealing. However, knowing what I know now about the way that big retail publishers can mess up, I'd probably have left more of the decision-making in Scott's hands. He has the clout to make them keep their contractual promises. But you know, at that time, we were
all winging it and learning by doing. I can say for certain, that I made more money through Apogee than any other publishers.

5a) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

I have so many people asking me to update my games to Windows. I start doing it and then I get "Polynesian Paralysis" (e.g. you start working and then you decide to go to the beach instead). Plus I absolutely HATE Windows programming. Now that I'm getting into Java and PHP programming, I might make web versions....but then again, I might go surfing instead :-)

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

No response to question.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I tell you, my experience with big game companies is that they are by and large run by idiots. That's why. They're the typical corporation where some guy with a great line of BS comes in, dazzles the clueless bosses and then makes life difficult for the programmers, artists and so on because all he wants is a raise and promotion. Meanwhile he has no common sense and no love of the games and the things that those of us who make games value (like cool programming and having fun).

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

When I created my first games for Apogee, it was just me and the artist, doing it on spec. Nowadays the look and feel is so expensive, you need at big bucks and it is much more difficult to do a complete game on your own while your working at a day job. I still think that the Internet (in our days, BBS) is the key to new people getting started. But the retail (store shelf) arena is locked up by a few big companies.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I moved to Maui and started paddling outrigger canoe. I'm such a fanatic that I actually coached at 2 clubs here on Maui and have been racing...doing the 41 mile Moloka'i to 'Oahu channel race (7 hours of paddling) a couple times. I design and build houses, do webpages - some for money and some (like the Maui Sierra Club website) to give back to the world that has been so good to me.

I've always been into my kids and now I have a granddaughter (who also paddles outrigger canoe). Every morning I wake up and say to myself, "Dang, I'm living in paradise!".

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I'm starting to get a little bored. Now that I've figured out how to make CSS and Java games, I'll probably do some small web games. I took a break for a while because I hated Windows so much. When I programmed my old games, there were just a few instructions (a tiny set of C instructions and the DOS interrupts) so you could program just about anything by being clever. Then along came Windows with API docs bigger than the San Francisco phone books! I'm not good at memorization and programming just wasn't fun anymore.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Not really. I had a lot of fun, got to do exactly what I wanted (be with my kids, make games, go to Maui, build houses). I had the opportunity to become more of an administrator and have Redwood Games become a big company, but I found that I didn't enjoy being a supervisor so I just took an abrupt U turn and ditched that whole scene. I like the hands-on part. In fact, I think that was the most important strength of the Apogee business model...it let people like me do exactly what we wanted to do which was the hands-on stuff and have the creative control while getting help and feedback from Scott and his team.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

That is really, really hard. It's a tie between the side-scroller Duke Nukem and the old Commander Keen games. Also I liked Blake Stone and the early 3D games.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Well nothing was as fun as the side scrollers but I really like William Soleau's puzzle games. (You can tell I am stuck back in the early 90's ;-) )

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

A big thank you to those who enjoyed my games and for continuing to enjoy them. I'm getting people now who played Math and Word Rescue when they were kids, buying the games for THIER kids. I really value the emails I get from players of my games. It gives me a real lift to know that folks appreciate what I created.

---

Thanks to Karen for agreeing to help out with the interview series. You can read more about Karen's life on this page at her site. Additionally, we still sell Math & Word Rescue almost 14 years after they were originally released, make sure and visit these pages for more information on them.

• Official Word Rescue Page (w/ shareware download)
  
• Official Math Rescue Page (w/ shareware download)
  
• Buy Math & Word Rescue Combo CD
  
• Visit Karen's Redwood Games Site
  

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:36 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #2 - Keith Schuler

Last week we started a new series on our website about some of our developers from the past. We called this series "The Apogee Legacy Interview Series". In our first edition, we brought you an interview with Jim Norwood. For the second edition, we are bringing you an interview with our own Keith Schuler. Keith has been involved with us for a very long time, and continues to do so to this day. His first project with us came out back in 1991 (Paganitzu), and then he went through Realms of Chaos, the aborted Duke Nukem Forever scroller game, as well as Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, Shadow Warrior, and now Duke Nukem Forever.

So without further delay, we bring you the tallest developer in our history, Keith Schuler...

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I had seen Kroz games in shareware catalogs and other places, so I was familiar with the name. Big Blue Disk published one of my earliest games, Chagunitzu. About a month later, they forwarded a fan letter to me. It was written by a little boy, and he wanted to know what my high score was at Chagunitzu. I thought it was an odd question, but I couldn't ignore my fan, so I wrote a letter back to him.

Shortly thereafter I got a phone call from Scott Miller. He explained that he had written the fan letter so that he could contact me without raising suspicion at Big Blue Disk. Apparently he had been approaching other developers there, as well. Scott thought that Chagunitzu would work well as an episodic game, and he wanted me to write a sequel trilogy, to be published by Apogee.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Scott mailed me some of the current projects that other devs at Apogee were working on, like Monuments of Mars and Commander Keen. Commander Keen, in particular, completely amazed me. After seeing such groundbreaking games (and getting an unsolicited check for $50) I was convinced that Apogee was the team to play for. It was certainly an improvement over my two current jobs: Burger King and my father's lawn mowing service (for which I was not getting paid.)

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

With regards to Paganitzu, I don't think anything could have been done better. It was still selling long after many other Apogee games had retired. With Realms of Chaos, I don't think anything could've been done to save it. Like other 2D games at the time, it was stillborn into the post-Doom era.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Definitely better. George and Scott absolutely excel at taking a game and polishing it to perfection. It's what they do best, in my opinion.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

They did? Crap, I don't think I own the IP for my two games. Or do I? I don't know, I'd have to ask. I don't have a clearly defined answer to your question. Best for who? It is best for the creator to own the IP when it is strong, and he can leverage that strength to put himself in a better position with the publisher. That doesn't guarantee a better game, though, so what's best for the creator might not be best for the player.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

If applicable, no. The Paganitzu and ROC IPs are not strong enough to matter, anyway.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

I still want to make a sequel to Paganitzu. Something that runs under Windows, is mouse driven, with updated sound and graphics, and gameplay that is more fair and fun. Unfortunately, these things take time, and I'm not a teenager living with my parents anymore. That's not even considering whether Apogee/3D Realms would want to publish it. And, assuming they didn't, IP ownership and non-compete issues might be a problem. I haven't looked into it, since it's not even close to being an issue right now. Duke Nukem Forever and parenting take up all my time.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

The way Scott Miller contacted me is probably the most interesting story. Other than that, there was the time I was in limbo after completing Realms Of Chaos. George tried letting me produce some external titles (including the original, side scrolling Duke Nukem Forever), but those projects were all dropped shortly after Duke 3D came out. I finally talked them into letting me move to Dallas and becoming an internal employee, although it was unclear what I would be doing. When I got here, the guys who would eventually become Ritual had just left, and the remaining guys were working on the Plutonium Pak. I picked up the Build editor and made a little Duke 3D map of my own, just trying out the different features. When George saw what I'd done, he made me a level designer on Plutonium Pak. The rest is history.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I think Apogee is in a unique position. They are financially independent, yet still have enough money to fund outside projects. And, like I said above, George and Scott excel at producing polishing games to perfection. Max Payne showed that the process could succeed. If Prey also succeeds, that will prove it wasn't a fluke. The repeated successes may encourage other studios (and possibly publishers) to take similar risks. Who knows? In the future we may actually see production houses that have no internal projects at all, but exist only by funding external projects and acting as liaison between the developer and the publisher.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Everything's bigger. Dev teams number in the hundreds, in some cases. Games have much higher production values and require much longer to create. Gone are the days when a guy like me would create an entire game by himself, in less than a year. Now you have James Bond games starring the actual film actors. Sports games have all the sports stars. Now, movies are being made based on games, instead of only happening the other way around. (Of course, they aren't *good* movies.)

Keith dressed up as Alabama Smith from his Paganitzu game.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Working on Duke Nukem Forever.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

I wish I'd started my IRA a lot sooner than I did.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Robotron, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, System Shock 2, & Thief 2

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Follow your dreams. You can reach your goals. I'm living proof. Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!

---

A special thanks to Keith for agreeing to help out with the interview series. Keith's two projects are still available for sale from us, if you'd like to check them out, make sure and visit these pages for more information on them.

• Official Paganitzu Page (w/ shareware download)
  
• Official Realms of Chaos Page (w/ shareware download)
  
• Buy Full Paganitzu
  
• Buy Full Realms of Chaos
  

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:20 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #1 - Jim Norwood

Today we lead off a new regular section on our website. Apogee Software has been around since 1987, and while we changed the name we're generally known by (to 3D Realms), the origins of the company are in the name Apogee. We were involved with many developers back in those days. Some of these folks have gone on to bigger things in the game industry. Some are not working in the industry at all anymore. But we've sought out as many of our old developers that we could locate (some of which we haven't had any contact with in a decade) for an interview series based on their time working with us. It's been fun talking to these folks about their time with us, and we hope you enjoy this insight into the developers who helped found what our company is today.

This series will be a regular thing on our website, with a new interview appearing each Monday for you to check out. This first edition of the series is with Jim Norwood. Jim was involved with two projects with us, 1993's Bio Menace, 1997's Shadow Warrior, and assisted on a whole scope of other projects from back in those days such as Duke Nukem, Secret Agent, & Wolfenstein 3D among others. Bio Menace was also recently released as freeware, so we thought that would be a good starting point for our interview series..

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I was at the time, like many developers, 'doing my own thing'- just working on a 2D game in my spare time that was something I thought would be fun to play. My day job at the time was some boring dBase programming gig in the business sector working for Raytheon. At least I got to see Patriot Missiles up close and I had cool national security clearance, but those were about the only perks.

At the time, I was making a side-scroller. Those were the popular games back then. I saw the Commander Keen engine from Apogee and was so impressed by how smooth John Carmack had gotten the scrolling in the engine, I naively just picked up the phone and called up Scott Miller at Apogee (yes, CEO's still had direct lines back then. Isn't that something?), and asked him if the source code to the Keen scrolling technology was also shareware. (Duh) Of course it wasn't, but that got Scott and I talking. When Scott also found out I was doing all the art for my own game, he became even more interested and asked me to send him samples of bitmap art I had been doing.

Well, after doing that, they liked my artwork and that landed me my first job in the game industry working on the original Duke Nukem 1 side-scroller doing background art. They even bought me a new PC to do the work on - I felt like a king. I was also given art tasks on various other games as well. In the mean time, I continued with my programming skills on my own, until eventually, we all went down to Shreveport, Louisiana to meet up with John Carmack, and the other ID folks, who by the way, were still working for SoftDisk at that time. They were not really ID just yet, not the way you'd know them now. By the way, just so you know - secretly, my favorite Id game is still Dangerous Dave. I just couldn't get enough of that shotgun. If you loved the shotgun in DooM, you owe a debt of thanks to Dangerous Dave for that!

So in the end, I got that Keen scrolling technology after all when I licensed the technology for my first solo game project, BioMenace, where I'd also be the game's only programmer, as well as the artist, and the designer, the level designer, and the sound engineer...whew! It was great fun, and I will always look back on those days fondly...but honestly, it was also a lot more work than one person should attempt on their own, even in those days.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Apogee was the first company I had contact with and they gave me break into the game industry, which is what I always had wanted. And quite frankly, I didn't know anyone at any other game companies at the time.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Marketing and distribution weren't as big a problem as lack of development resources at the time. I needed a team to get things done before the game became too dated, even if I didn't realize it at the time. I think those early game projects might have been bigger hits if I had had a little help from some friends and put them out a year earlier.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

As opposed to working with who as an alternative? This is hard to quantify, but I feel that Apogee had a clear vision for what made great games at that time. Their early success proves that fact.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

The man footing the bill wins. If a publisher pays for your development costs, he is the one taking all the risks, not you. I believe in that case, the publisher should retain the rights and not the developer. However, in cases where the developer makes the game and then approaches the publisher with a nearly finished product, the developer should clearly hold the rights instead. It's all about who is the one taking the most financial risks on the project. Those are the folks that should reap the most rewards. But you cannot have a hit game without a developer either, so being generous for a job well done is also warranted even if that developer does not retain property rights to his project. I've always felt this was a pretty cut and dry issue, but you'd be surprised at just how muddled development deals can become...

Jim in 2006

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Hah! Of course I benefited! I got royalty checks for my first games for over ten years! Imagine getting a paycheck for ten year old work you did! Well, I did...on a monthly basis, until the sales finally just fizzled out from old age.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

No. We tossed around the idea a few times, but my projects were never big enough hits, mostly due to late release dates, that they do not have the following to merit a sequel. The comparison here would be to look at sales and popularity of Duke Nukem 3D vs. Shadow Warrior. Shadow Warrior has a following sure, but it's paltry compared to Duke.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

A better question would be: are there any stories about my time with Apogee that don't stand out? I had a great time in my seven or so years with Apogee/3DRealms and met and worked with some of the greatest minds in the game industry today. What's not interesting about that? As you know, Id Software was affiliated with Apogee for a good while - so we all knew each other personally.

A very interesting story was the time we had to evacuate from George's house and run for our lives when a certain disgruntled developer who forgot to take his lithium came calling unexpectedly late one night, weapon in hand... I won't go in to details, but that certainly DID get one's blood pumping, and stands as a clear memory to this day. The police arrived to save the day, so we all survived the ordeal in the end.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Is it true that other developers do not do this? Microsoft and EA are prime examples of large companies that work with smaller external studios. I work at EA, Redwood Shores now and we have plenty of external development houses helping out on various projects. (I cannot be more specific for legal reasons - sorry.)

8) What is the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Size. It's bigger, it's more mature. The stakes are higher, the projects monolithic, the competition more fierce than ever... The game industry is for the 'big boys' now. It's moved into a multi-billion dollar industry and the little guys either get assimilated, or destroyed if they resist (sorry for the obvious geeky reference there). Or they just plain run out of funding because they cannot compete with the quality of projects that really large game companies are capable of now.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Making more games of course... I'm currently at EA as a software engineer.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I don't plan on ever NOT making games - when some guys in white coats from the geriatrics ward arrive at my desk to take me away, that's when I'll be done with the game industry.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Id Software offered to hire me on to work on Doom 1 and help me finish BioMenace in the bargain. I declined their generous offer at that time for various reasons. But getting BioMenace done faster would have been a boon, and missing the chance to join Id? Well... need I say more? We don't always make the best choices in life since we might be blinded by other factors at that time. As they say, hind sight is 20/20.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D. That game kicked ass - period. Dudes - where is Duke 4!? Huh huh?

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

X-COM 1, Doom 2, No One Lives Forever (series), any game having to do with the WarCraft franchise (I'm currently addicted to World of Warcraft), and ALL BioWare games. (I admit it - I'm a shameless BioWare camp follower).

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Sure - figure out how to revamp the Apogee line by creating next-gen side scrollers! It's the 3D revolution, but I'll never stop being a fan of the side-scroller genre. I'm convinced it can still be beautifully done with current generation technology, but most companies, if not all, won't take the marketing risk.

Also, to Frenkel, who created map images of all the BioMenace levels (link) - I thought that was great! My hat is off to you.

We'd like to thank Jim for his time in giving such a good interview to launch the series with. If you'd like to continue the trip down memory lane, you can check out the freeware release of Bio Menace, as well as information about Shadow Warrior, both of which are available on our website.

Please remember to tune in next Monday for the next interview in the Apogee Legacy Series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:02 AM | Discuss this story on our forums