That was just a nice connection.Ībout a year later, after I finished the book, I heard from one of our computer center members who actually worked at Industrial Light & Magic that Lucasfilm was starting up this new games group, and I immediately contacted, who was the head of the computer division. They had a flip book thing where you could flip through the book and in the corners see animated little videos. Lots of programs, and combination of mostly using Basic but with some assembly language routines.Īnd during the research part, I contacted Lucasfilm, which was in my neighborhood coincidentally.ĭavid: Not quite that close, but, yeah, it was in the same county, and they had just started up this new computer division a couple years earlier, so I hung out with them, and got to interview them, and talk about where computer animation was at then, and where it was going, and got some sample clips that I could put in the book. State of the art at the time, early 80s, ’81, and the second half was how to do animation on your Atari 800. We ended up … Did a couple of books while I was there, and the last one I did was on computer animation, called Computer Animation Primer, and the entire text of the book is online so people can still look at it, but the first half was kind of on overall animation. Kevin: So you were basically creating ports.ĭavid: Yeah, we were porting mostly from Radio Shack to Apple 2 and to CPM. By being in the code, and seeing how they did coding and games, that was kind of my education on game design and game programming. So like we got the Radio Shack version, the TRS-80 version, and we’d convert it to like an Apple 2. Looked very cool, but it didn’t last past a few years.Īnd during that time, I would get programs from other people, from other companies like Adventure International, and we ended up doing conversions for them, by converting the games to other computers. Our first one was a processor technology Sol-20. And we ended up with … Oh, I think by then maybe 40 or so micro-computers, lots of Atari 800s and 400s, and Apple 2s. After that, we ended up turning it over to the students, the kids who were running it with us, who were volunteering. We started the Marin Computer Center in 1977, and we ran it for about five years. Kevin: Prior to joining Lucasfilm Games, what were you working on?ĭavid: Before Lucasfilm, I was doing a non-profit micro-computer center with my wife. Without any further ado, let’s get on with the interview. And while he was the Director of Operations, the studio produced Monkey Island, Loom, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. The games he worked on at Lucas Film include Rescue on Fractalus, Labyrinth, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This will be a two part episode with the first part focusing on the early days of the point-and-click adventure game genre. I’m Kevin and today we are speaking with industry veteran David Fox about his time at Lucas Film Games, his exploration of immersive entertainment, and his reunion working with his old Lucas Arts crew on Thimbleweed Park. Kevin: Welcome to Arcadeology, a podcast about video game history and design.
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