John Passfield is perhaps the most well known local games industry veteran. John published his first game, Halloween Harry, back in the early eighties on a Microbee (anyone remember those?!) and has been making games ever since. Andrew Bailey also made his programming debut on 8-bit hardware (the very popular Commodore 64) in his teens, and produced a very well-known title for that platform called Druid.
Like John Passfield, Andrew also co-founded an Australian game development company, and in recent times has gone full circle to making his own games. He's currently developing the follow up to his hit C64 game with Golem Crusades, and while I had planned to send him a whole bunch of interview questions about his C64 roots as well as his current project, I've found these two interviews that cover those bases completely.
First up is c64.com's recent interview with Andrew on how he got started on the C64, all the games he worked on back then, how they were made, and right up to the point where he moved to Australia.
(Andrew) For the games prior to Druid, I used a machine code monitor which basically was just a slightly more friendly way to enter assembler than raw numbers. For Druid and Druid II, I used a proper macro assembler which was a blessing for generating those unrolled scroller routines. For art, I developed a couple of art packages that used the Koala pad for character and sprites.
Hey, I actually spent some time on the C64 with Koala Pad! :) I'd say it was as challenging to use to an artist as a code monitor is to a programmer ;) A great interview, well worth the read here!
Then, of course, is Screenplay's excellent interview with Andrew about his current effort, Golem Crusades, and starting up as a small indie again...
(Andrew) I think we have, or are coming, in a full circle. For the 8-bit home computers, video games were more about original games, due to the open platform. But with the success of closed platforms like the NES, and the want to put licensed material on it, the "work for hire" relationship came into being...
But now, every platform has a digital distribution portal that is fairly easy to get in to (albeit with varying levels of ease), making the bedroom operation viable again.