NFalstein

It was all done in assembly (6809 in the case of Sinistar) and testing was done by the team, we didn't have dedicated playtesters. There was no OS, Williams had a kind of core OS many games used (on Sinistar it was Sam Dicker who did most of that work) but it was pretty primitive and tedious by modern standards. Code merging was done by hand, we actually had 4 people contributing code on the core Sinistar game at the end, and debugging was often complicated by the fact that the games required the work of software, hardware, and mechanical engineers, so sometimes a bug in one group was blamed on another. We had a very tricky one in Sinistar that turned out to be a fault in the specialized hardware created to allow us to devote one part of the screen to the radar/control panel - the code crashed when one particular instruction happened to fall on a specific 8-bit boundary, so one time in 256 it would happen (repeatedly on that particular compiled version) but when you added debugging statements, it pushed it off the boundary and worked fine. That took a LONG time to figure out.

That was my idea, we'd experimented a bit with mixing different play styles in our Last Crusade adventure game, and I wanted to take it further. Hal went along with it, somewhat reluctantly because as project leader it fell on his shoulders to implement all the extra work involved in 3 paths (I think it meant the game was about 2x as hard to make as if it had been one path, not 3x as there was a lot of commonality/reuse of assets). We had fun coming up with ways to appeal to each type of player. I don't have figures for sure, but I'm pretty sure that only a minority of players - I'm thinking 10 or 20% - played through on all 3 paths, but that was mostly anecdotal, we didn't have analytics built into the game as it would now. The intention was not for people to replay so much as for the game to essentially adapt itself to the favored style of the player - but we also knew that completeist players would want to try every variation, and the "Indy Quotient" system was designed specifically for them, to encourage them to keep going. To get all 800 points you needed to play all 3 paths AND several variations and "achievements" that were possible within each.

Interesting side note, that 3 path structure inspired Louis Castle at Westwood to do something similar with his Bladerunner game, and took it several steps further. Brilliant game, I'm looking forward to see what kind of games come out of the current movie sequel to that.

We enjoyed the recurring catchphrases that we stuck into our subsequent games as Easter Eggs. My favorite that I wrote was originally in the Last Crusade game, "I'm selling these fine leather jackets" - that showed up in many subsequent games.

Lots! I was the first project leader (of 4) who worked on that, and as such I got to work more closely with Lucas and Spielberg on it than the subsequent ones. But perhaps the most memorable start to a project - we were having our regular "Project Leader Meeting" in the conference room of the Main House at Skywalker ranch when Steve Arnold, the head of our division at the time, announced I'd be the project leader on the game. Very exciting moment for me. A bit later in the meeting we felt the room start to shake - not too unusual, we'd been through many earthquakes in California - but then suddenly it got much stronger, and we started to hear someone scream, and some glass crash to the floor somewhere, and most of us dived under the huge mahogany conference table to ride it out. It was the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, still by far the strongest one I've experienced. Perhaps an omen for the fact that The Dig would go on to take 6 years before it came out, by far the longest of any LucasArts project, and have a fairly troubled existence because of it. Even though Spielberg in particular is a great collaborator on games, I've talked to several friends who have also worked with him, and having him on the project means that everyone wants to put their 2 cents in, which can be extremely difficult to manage. That hurt The Dig I think. The final game barely credited Brian Moriarty (the 2nd leader) even though the story was about 90% from his version. My version was pretty much totally redone, tried to incorporate too much RPG for the comfort of many. I think the story and feel of the final game were very good, but I think the gameplay and puzzle structure were not among the best we did.

Aw, thanks - I co-designed it, there was a big team and Hal Barwood had the most influence on the game, but as it was the most successful adventure game LucasArts ever did (at least before the recent mobile game remakes, don't have figures on that) and did better than either of the other Indiana Jones games we designed without each other, I think it hit a sweet spot of collaboration, where Hal's writing and cinematic experience blended well with my game design skills. And as with so many things, there was a good dollop of luck and timing, but thank you in any case for the kind words. Incidentally, a bit of trivia - for a long time the working title was Indiana Jones and the Key to Atlantis, but we weren't really satisfied, and I think the manager of the division was particularly adamant that we change it. There were dozens of alternatives thrown around, including some I've forgotten except that they were terrible (and had strong supporters nonetheless). But I think "Fate of Atlantis" was perfect, short but provocative, and with a tinge of foreshadowing since Fate often implies a bittersweet ending. Names are one of the hardest things to do - not kidding, anyone who has worked on a game will concur.

To digress - I remember in particular one 3 hour session doing nothing but hashing out the name for "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" - that was actually thrown out as sort of a joke, along with "Hitler's Greatest Hits" which I expect would not have been a wise move. For the record, we had a long talk about the ethics of making a game where you could play the German side, but we thought (and I still believe) that in doing a war game, allowing people to play both sides is important to remind you that there were human beings on both sides of any conflict.