Interviews with Past Cinemaware Employees

By Adam Bormann

Cinemaware was a popular game company for the Commodore 64 and Amiga platforms in the late 80s and early 90s. There titles included such great games as Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger, The Three Stooges, Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, SDI, King of Chicago, Lords of the Rising Sun, It Came from the Desert, and the TV Sports series. The basis of their games was their attempt to mock a popular film style with each game (Rocket Ranger was the 40s WW2 sci-fi; It Came from the Desert was the 50s radioactive mutant genre; etc). Their games really made a lot of progress in crossing genres by combining adventure, action and strategy into a single game. After the company disbanded in 1990-1991, the brilliant minds scattered around the industry. Two of them, Pat Cook and Allen McPheeters, ended up at Dynamix, where we caught up with them.

Interview with Pat Cook

What positions did you hold at Cinemaware?

I started as the QA manager, then after six months became a producer, then a senior producer, then head of Product Development for the digital side (David Riordin had that title for the video side of the company), then a director/designer until Cinemaware crashed and burned.

What games did you work on at Cinemaware?

All of them except for the very first Defender of the Crown on the Amiga, which had been done by the time I got there. My favorites were the TV Sports line, Rocket Ranger, Lords of the Rising Sun, and Three Stooges. But I worked on Sinbad, King of Chicago, SDI, Wings, and all the other stuff on every platform.

What is your favorite Cinemaware game?

Tough question! I liked a lot of them for a lot of different reasons. I thought the TV Sports stuff really broke ground in a lot of areas (one of the first, if not the first, 11-on-11 football game, for example). I really liked the football game a lot (as is evidenced by what I did in the years after Cinemaware folded and I came to Dynamix to work on sports games). Lords of the Rising Sun was a lot of fun because I worked with David Todd, who is one of the most talented programmers I have worked with in 12 years. And Three Stooges was fun because, geez, it was the Three Stooges! Rocket Ranger was great because it had a great story line and some of the best graphics I had seen to that point in any computer game.

What do you think were the reason(s) Cinemaware disbanded? If the games were so good, and so popular, what went wrong?

There were a lot of reasons, but there was one primary one to me. From my perspective it was pretty simple: great games, wrong platforms. Cinemaware did stuff on the Amiga and ST, and while we won lots of awards and got lots of recognition, we never sold much in big numbers because the markets were small. We also were pirated to death, especially on the C64 and Atari ST. We never did much on the IBM. We did conversions, but we never developed good tools and didn't get into the IBM market when it was starting to take off. Instead of working on titles for a growing market, we worked on titles for shrinking markets. You obviously can't stay in business long that way.

We also got into CD-ROMs, or as we called it there, "video," too early. The CD products were expensive and sucked a lot of money out of the computer/video game side (we called it "digital"--I didn't make the names, that's just what they were called!). There were some really interesting products, but we were just a little too far ahead of the times on that.

And when the video game consoles came out, all of the development guys looked at both the NEC Turbographx and the Sega Genesis. All the development guys wanted to work on the Genesis because it was a 68000 based processor (which we knew how to work on) and was a true 16-bit machine. Although there weren't as many development tools available at the time and it would be harder to get going on the machine, from a developer's standpoint we knew it was much more powerful than the T-16.

But it came down to finances. Bob Jacob told NEC and Sega he wanted X amount of dollars for us to develop on their machines (by that point Cinemaware was struggling with cash flow). Their answers were the start of the end: Sega said "go to hell" and NEC said "how much?" Bob took the money because we needed it. But within six months everyone had signed on for Sega, and there were only a couple of developers on the NEC in the US, and we knew we were screwed.

So, basically, Cinemaware just ran out of money by being in the wrong places at the wrong times. That's from my perspective. I'm sure other people have their opinions as well.

Do you find it surprising that Cinemaware managed to get a much more cinematic and solid-toned product that other companies have managed to do even with the advance of full-motion video and Red Book audio?

Not really. Bob Jacob really wanted to make movies instead of computer software when he started. He thought that melding his storytelling abilities with computers would be a "backdoor" way into making movies. Bob hired some fantastic people who understood storytelling, and their talents set the early tone for the products. David Riordin came on board with his Hollywood background and experience, Kellyn Beeck did a couple of things on contract, and one of the first hires Bob made was John Cutter, who I still think is one of the best, if not the best, game designers I have ever known.

The artists were also top-notch and had a very strong commitment to "movie-like" quality. Rob Landeros, Jeff Hilbers, Jeff Godfrey and John Duggan were simply amazing. When I look back at the tools they had to work with compared to the stuff that is available now, I am convinced that it just came down to sheer talent. Those guys were four of the best artists I have ever worked with.

Per capita I think Cinemaware was one of the greatest collections of pure talent this industry ever had. Bob Jacob may not have been the world's greatest businessperson (his wife Phyllis was the business brain--we wouldn't have been around even as long as we were had it not been for her talent and vision), but he was able to gather a collection of people who bought into his vision and shared his passion for storytelling and production quality.

What have you been doing since then?

A few sports games (grin). I came to Dynamix and started the Front Page Sports line and did FPS: Football, Football Pro, Football Pro '95, Baseball '94, and Football Pro '96. The past 18 months, I worked on Outpost 2 and currently I have no project funded but a couple of proposals on the board.

Where do you see Cinemaware's impact in the industry today?

Several different ways. Cinemaware did the first "interactive movies" and was the first place to use that phrase. That was always Bob's vision. If you look at the TV Sports line, you see a whole bunch of influence on sports game being done today. But the biggest impact, I think, was the people who went on to do other things. The list is long and I'll probably forget some of them but off the top of my head:

• Peter Kaminsky went to Activision and wrote some amazing tools and worked on several products for them.
• Rob Landeros went on to co-found Trilobyte and did 7th Guest, 11th Hour, etc.
• Jeff Godfrey worked on numerous titles for Sega, the SNES, Playstation, etc. He has a company called Left Field Productions that does a lot of sports stuff.
• Peter Oliphant worked with Rob on 7th Guest, did Lexicross and Stonekeep for Interplay. Peter had one of the funniest guys I worked with. Great jokester and wonderful sense of humor.
• Andy Caldwell formed a development group called Screaming Pink.
• Steve Quinn worked at Park Place on several of their early titles, including John Madden.
• John Duggan went on to Sega Technical Institute and did a lot of interesting things there.
• Jeff Hilbers went to Disney for awhile but I haven't heard from him and I'm not sure what he is up to now.
• David Riordin and David Todd started up a group and did several products such as Voyeur. David Riordin went on from there to Time Warner and Interplay, while David Todd still has a group doing development.
• Randy Platt, who programmed many of the titles, still does programming and has worked on a lot of sports stuff for platforms and still makes lots of kids in Utah.
• Larry Garner has done numerous sports titles on several platforms. Larry was the programming spark on TV Sports and the worked with John Cutter on much of the design. And one of the best basketball players we had too, which shows in TV Sports: Basketball (the first real five-on-five basketball game on any platform).
• Jerry Albright was the head of product development at GTE for a while.
• Mike Knox went on to do Park Place.
• Jim Simmons went on to Park Place and worked on the first John Madden Football.
• Will Robinson did John Madden Football and several other games on numerous platforms.
• John Cutter came to Dynamix and did Betrayal at Krondor (one of the best RPGs of all-time), then did Muppets for Starwave and is now working at Cavedog on another project that will no doubt win a lot of awards and be top-drawer stuff.
• Ken Goldstein went to Broderbund and worked on many of their hit titles and is now head of their Red Orb division.
• Russ Truelove went to Sierra in Oakhurst and worked on several of their adventure games.
• Allen McPheeters came up to Dynamix and worked on the Front Page Sports series as a designer.
• Jim Haldy went to Park Place for awhile and then formed a group that did Journeyman Project.
• Larry Weissenborn went to Activision as a product for awhile and now works at Symantec.
• Nigel Spencer and Russell Comte, my buddies from Australia, worked on numerous sports games for the Genesis, SNES, etc.
• Bernie Whang and James Maxwell worked at Acme Interactive then Gametek for a while on several sports titles.

No doubt there are others that I am leaving out, but my point is there was a tremendous collection of amazing talent there at one time, and when it exploded, it scattered fertilizer all over the place. All of these people have gone on and done some truly wonderful stuff at other companies and will continue to do so.

Do you still keep in contact with others from Cinemaware? Do you know what they are up to now?

Some of them. See above.

Ten years later I realize how unique of a time and how amazing the talent we had really was. I don't know that I will ever be so fortunate to be surrounded by not only that level of ability but also with people who I learned so much from and really enjoyed working with.

Interview with Allen McPheeters

What positions did you hold at Cinemaware?

I was a play tester from January 1988 to April 1990. Toward the end, I also started writing user manuals.

What games did you work on at Cinemaware?

Well, when I got there, we were just finishing up the original (Amiga) version of The Three Stooges, as well as doing various conversions (Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, Atari ST, IBM, and the occasional 8-bit Nintendo) of the "original four" titles: Defender of the Crown, SDI, King of Chicago, and Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon. Later, we introduced Rocket Ranger, Lords of the Rising Sun, It Came from the Desert, and TV Sports: Football, all for Amiga. Most of these titles later shipped for the other platforms as well.

Toward the middle of 1989, C'ware created a new label, "Spotlight Software," which was devoted to importing European titles for North American distribution. Most of these were of poor quality, but the best of the lot were Total Eclipse, a first person 3-D game like Doom, and Speedball, a sort of futuristic sports game. One of the imports, the name of which I cannot remember, was actually sold under the C'ware label, but it was really awful. It was based on some London stage play.

What is your favorite Cinemaware game?

Tough question. The titles in the second wave of C'ware interactive movies were the best. I still hum the Three Stooges theme to myself, and I'd love to remake Rocket Ranger. TV Sports: Football has probably had the most impact on my career, since my next job in the industry was at Dynamix, making Front Page Sports: Football.

What do you think were the reason(s) Cinemaware disbanded? If the games were so good, and so popular, what went wrong?

C'ware made some crucial errors in their business decisions. For example, when the 16-bit game consoles came along, C'ware signed (exclusively, I think) to do stuff for the NEC TurboGrafx-16, instead of the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. This wasn't a completely foolish decision--NEC offered the most money to C'ware--but when the TurboGrafx flopped, C'ware was out of luck.

The most common reason businesses fail is that they don't have sufficient capital to achieve their objectives. After Cinemaware launched as a developer (published by Mindscape), they took the next step and became a publisher, complete with disk duplication and warehousing facilities. This was probably biting off more than they could chew. Afterwards, they started the Spotlight software label to bring in some easy cash through North American distribution of European titles. At that time, though, the European game market had different standards of quality--a title would be developed in about half the time there that it would take here, which left them often quite buggy and with only rudimentary documentation. This meant that C'ware would have to spend time (and money) having the bugs fixed and rewriting the documentation. It also, in my opinion, diluted the value of the Cinemaware brand--though they were labeled Spotlight, the Cinemaware logo appeared on the back of the box.

Another problem for Cinemaware was that the games were always terrific on the Amiga, but oftentimes got lost in the translation to other platforms. A lot of this was due to the technical limitations of the other platforms. Remember, at this time, the IBM market was just moving into EGA. (VGA cards were being released just near the end of my stay there, I think). No other machine had the built-in graphics hardware that the Amiga did. Unfortunately, the Amiga never grew in popularity to the same extent as the C-64 or IBM PC. So, in some ways, C'ware got burned by the Amiga in the same way they got burned by the TurboGrafx.

Do you find it surprising that Cinemaware managed to get a much more cinematic and solid-toned product that other companies have managed to do even with the advance of full-motion video and Red Book audio?

I don't know that I agree with that. Some games have had terrific success in that area--the Wing Commander series springs to mind. But Cinemaware did have a "formula" that was very successful. Bob Jacob, the president and founder of the company, had some very specific elements every C'ware title had to include. They all had to have maps. They all had to have great cut-scenes. And they all had to have at least one very buxom woman on the box (grin).

But in some ways, I don't think people are trying to make interactive movies in quite the same way C'ware did. What is the last game you can recall that was based on (and captured the flavor of) the old movie serials, like Rocket Ranger did? On the other hand, most of the "interactive movies" people tried to make in the early '90s (no one's even using that phrase any more) failed because they were made by people who focused too much on the "movie" part and not enough on the "interactive" part. Most of the time in a C'ware game, the noninteractive parts were fairly short, and the player got back to playing pretty quickly.

What have you been doing since then?

A little over a year after I left C'ware, I started at Dynamix, making the Front Page Sports line with Pat Cook, another Cinemaware alumnus. Except for a short stint with Viacom NewMedia in '95, I've been here ever since.

Where do you see Cinemaware's impact in the industry today? Do you still keep in contact with others from Cinemaware? Do you know what they are up to now?

I'm going to combine these answers, because I think Cinemaware's biggest impact is probably in what its alumni have done since they left.

As I mentioned above, Pat Cook, who served in a variety of roles for Cinemaware, has been at Dynamix since '91, doing Front Page Sports until '96, and we both designed Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. FPS: Football changed the face of computer sports by putting all the elements of the game (play design, lots of statistics, arcade play) into one package. All of those elements had existed before, but you'd have to buy two or three games to get all of them. The second version, Football Pro, is in Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame, and the Football line won three or four Sports Game of the Year awards.

John Cutter, who was the leading designer at Cinemaware--he influenced nearly every title done in-house there--went to Dynamix and produced Betrayal at Krondor. When CGW listed the top 100 games of all time last year, John had been involved in four or five of them. BAK is in CGW's Hall of Fame. After his time at Dynamix, he moved to Starwave, and is now at Cavedog.

Rob Landeros was an art director at Cinemaware, but is probably best known as the co-founder of Trilobyte, which of course made the landmark product The 7th Guest. Rob has since left Trilobyte to start a new company called Aftermath Media.

Peter Oliphant was an IBM-PC programmer at Cinemaware--he did Rocket Ranger, among others. He later designed and programmed Stonekeep, an epic RPG distributed by Interplay. He's active in the Computer Game Developers Association, and I think he's involved in some kind of web site development.