Interview: Don Goddard (2011-11) by Torentsu

This is an unaltered copy of an interview of Don Goddard, for use as a primary source on Sega Retro. Please do not edit the contents below. Language: English Original source: Torentsu (The Cutting Room Floor forum)

Torentsu: Can you tell us a little about who you are and what sorts of games you've worked on? 

Don: My name is Don and before Leland Interactive Media I worked as a Jr. Programmer in 1992 on Gunship 2000, F-15 Strike Eagle III and prototyped stuff for Across the Rhine at MicroProse. After Leland was sold to Midway in 1994 I would reject their new contract and go to Sega Technical Institute to work on Sonic X-treme. I've worked on a bunch of other titles and was most recently a Tech Director for a number of years at a 'serious games' company. Now I have my own gig and get to make much cooler stuff!

Torentsu: How did you come to work for Leland Entertainment, and on Fun n Games? 

Don: I happened to get a call from a recruiter after I was at MicroProse for a year. MicroProse was having major financial difficulties and I was curious what other companies may be interested in me and wanted to be a mid-level or lead programmer. A recruiter shopped me around and came back with 'Leland Interactive Media' (previously Cinemaware which was famous for some great arcade coin-op games) who wanted console and assembly coders both of which I really wanted to do. 

I interviewed and was offered the position at a 50% higher salary than what I was making at MicroProse! Unfortunately, I had no experience on a Super NES and very little Assembly language experience especially with the bastardized 65816 SNES Motorola chip. I didn't care what game I worked on first for this opportunity and Fun 'N Games sounded very straightforward and would give me a great chance to learn.

Torentsu: What can you tell us about the development cycle of Fun N Games? Who else was involved ? Were there any sections that were cut from the final game? 

Don: Fun 'N Games was exactly what people thought it was... a total rip-off of Mario Paint! Why be creative and do original and quality titles when you can just pilfer other successful content (well, this was the mentality of many of the game companies at the time; especially LIM)? LIM also felt they were so bright that they didn't NEED designers which was a bit of a shock to me since MicroProse had some of the best designers ever. Having no actual assigned designer was VERY common and at least half of the companies just had anyone design stuff on the fly. 

Most of the game was designed from a producer Mike Abbot (known for designing Hard Hat Mack and being one of the guys in the famous EA pic showing the top most talented future game developers) and a couple of artists who just wanted to target the young kid market (under 12) as best they could. The primary idea was to just mimic Mario Paint and sell it with a dirt cheap mouse and parents would eat it up. 

There may have been one game cut but I can't recall offhand but, believe me, it would have been as bad or worse than the shooting game! Other than that everything that was planned for actually made it in. 

How the project actually got developed is another story (see the section after the questions)! 

Torentsu: Who was it that picked the outfits in the mix n match section of the game? 

Don: Hahaha, the outfits were all designed by the artists and one was a girl and the other was a guy who was definitely not straight. The art for games at that time was also spread out between four and eight artists at any one time so they would just pump out a bunch of stuff without much consistency. This was a common problem with several games and the artists just went off and drew a lot of stuff in a hole. This is why there is so much inconsistent art in the 'Paint' section because it's all random stuff different artists pumped out. 

Torentsu: Can you tell us a little about the development of the two games in the game section of Fun N Games? 

Don: Yea, the games were the cheapest possible games that could be made. Now these are all old school 8-bit pure assembly games and Flash wouldn't exist for several years but they were the equivalent of 'mini-games' as we would know them today. I came in after the design was laid down and there was NO documentation! It was just a producer telling me some things and artists telling me other things. The 'Mouse-Maze' was almost certainly chosen because Mike Abbott had some old Z80 assembly code for ghost AI behavior and pac-man was one of few games that all kids, male or female, would play. It became quite extensive with a number of levels and background. The shooter was like a really simple (and bad) Star Raiders, or more like a cheap shooting gallery. The idea was to keep the game as simple as possible so shooting crap in space was very easy to set up, create art for and program. The Mouse Maze actually took a lot more effort so I think a third game may have been cut. 

Torentsu: Can you tell us about those other "Horrible Games" you recommended? 

Don: There are LEGENDARY horrible games out there such at E.T. for the Atari 2600 but some that are less known because they never had such a big license. Some are 'ESPN 2Night' basketball for the Dreamcast and 'Hooters Racing' both of which I know the guys who created these games! 

Torentsu: Where are you currently working and do you have any current projects? 

Don: I currently have my own studio and I'm consulting on a very cool educational project for schools. I also do iPhone/iPad projects. Most of these I cannot talk about as they are not public yet and if they are good then you will hear about them and if not, hmmm, well maybe I can buy the Leland name and put it under that company! hahaha. 

Torentsu: Thanks for looking at those. Its really neat to talk to someone behind the game. It'll make a great 100th video. I'll also track down some of those other bad games you mentioned and give them a try. 

Don: How 'Fun 'N Games' was anything but fun to make for six months: 

Coming straight off of some amazing titles at MicroProse a head-hunter finds me (most likely hearing that MicroProse is most likely going to have some big layoffs due to a bad number of sales at Christmas). He tells me about some no-name company in San Diego that wants me doing console games in Assembly language which is where I really wanted to be because the SNES and Sega Genesis were the hottest game systems on the planet. I wasn't thinking about what projects I would work on as I was a pretty naive Jr. Programmer at the time. 

I interview there and get offered a fat pay increase. I hear later that Mike Abbott was amazingly impressed by how I could drink straight vodka so fast (that should have been a warning sign!) They want me working on this new title yesterday and I tell them I don't know assembly and have never worked on a SNES before. They are so desperate to get things moving they ship me this huge set of manuals for the SNES before I can even begin to pack to move. I ask them when this is supposed to be done and they say something like four months! 

So I ask who else is on this project and they name artists and I say, well yea, but what about other programmers and a designer? They tell me that I can do it all, there's plenty of time and they don't use designers because they don't need them! I reiterate I've never worked on a console or seriously in Assembly code and I can't do everything, especially a per pixel paint package on a tile based game system (only MarioPaint had ever done this for a console.) 

Well, I get over there and they tell me they've contracted a programmer to do the Paint package so I can work on the other stuff. So I go to work on other stuff and there is no art, much less plans as to what will be shown or how it will all work. The artists go to work making art from what they can guess the producer wants and get whatever artists are available to help out as most of them are too busy on other projects. So I start working on The fashion and mix n match stuff and they scramble together what they've got and toss me a bunch of stuff to cram in. Thinking that I'm pacing myself well I ask every week about the guy programming the Paint stuff and keep hearing, oh it's coming along and he's going to submit a milestone very soon. 

I get to moving on to the Music package and I'm told to just do everything Mario Paint does and the sound guy will help give any direction on creating the Music design. We're also told that they are having a hardware company design a mouse that will cost less than five bucks and we'll have it in the final package or available as an accessory. We'll have to make the joypad work as well in case we don't get the mouse built into the package. All still seems well and I'm getting the hang of this game system that is really half 8-bit and half 16-bit and has a bastardized Assembly language. But still I'm just cramming away trying to get things done fast since we want to get this out in four months (only later to realize this was a ridiculously short time to do a whole title which would normally be 9 months or more!) 

Then the bombs start dropping! The guy doing the Paint package comes back with a bunch of broken code and is crying that he can't do it and we don't have to give him any money for the work he's done so far. So their solution is to just make me do it! I'm going, WTF?!, I've got a music package and these games and I'm still learning all this shit!? Abbott says I've got to do it as nobody else is available. 

Now doing a pixel based painting package with a tile based renderer is a bitch and a half! The guy gave up because he couldn't get floodfill to work. So I'm staring at his code saying that there is too much to just throw away and start from scratch so I start trying to decipher his code. Floodfill is the hardest feature to implement so I try that and actually fix his code after a few days. And then I get the stamping feature working and things are on their way. But with all the time I have to burn on Paint and Music the deadlines are slipping. 

Another programmer comes on to do the space game and I start on the Mouse Maze because they are all panicking that the games have to be in there immediately. I start doing the mouse game and I get mazes and the mouse moving around with nice steering and sliding off of walls. But I'm thinking, how the hell do I get all of the cats (aka ghosts from pac-man) to do their AI?! I don't have code or anything for that! So, again, Mike Abbott pops up and says he has some Z80 Assembly code and I'm trying to just UNDERSTAND it and it's like a friggin puzzle! He says he knows it works and wrote it himself so he sits down with me and after trying to figure it out for a day or two he says what he thinks it should be doing but he cant figure it out and knows it works so just tells me I have to figure it out and put it in somehow. Damn! WTF?! Well, it takes me a week or so to decipher and code it and I pray there will be no bugs or bad behavior but eventually I get it in. 

Well, now I'm cramming on getting all of these disparate pieces of this mutant Mario Paint ripoff together and I'm just glad I'm not working on Troy Aikman Football because that project is over a year late and is really f'd up! We all keep joking about the sucker who's going to have to do the Genesis version if the SNES one ever finishes. I finally start getting in all of the final features and find that some of the features are so annoying to put together that no one will use them and trying to use the control pad is just an exercise in punishment. All the while I was using the Mario Paint mouse which was a great experience. 

Then they bring buy the hardware manufacturer who has a prototype mouse that supposedly costs only $5 to $8 (this is when mice where commonly around $40 to $60). We're pretty amazed this super cheap gizmo even works but it actually does and this will be perfect if boxed in with the game. Even with the mouse, I go to use the Music piece and it's lame, in that you really can't compose squat so the only fun is hearing the original compositions which took a pro musician several weeks to put together with professional music software on a Mac. So to not make it totally useless I come up with a substitute feature so you can replace a set of notes with any other note, most of which were animal sounds. At least doing that makes playing the compositions fun (for all of five seconds) by hearing dogs bark a Christmas song or whatever. 

The schedule is pushed back as we experience delays but we have to get this game out for Christmas as that is the killer selling season. Well, they are bringing around guests from various companies, like Midway, Blockbuster and other ones they don't tell us about and we're thinking they have to be trying to sell this crappy little company. Little did we know how true that would be the following year. As I finally start wrapping up all the details Mike and others tell me how hard it is to pass the Nintendo submission for a game and that the game will probably be rejected at least twice especially since it's such a direct copy of Mario Paint. I'm sweating trying to get all of these details in and they drop a bomb... oh, we're not going to include any mouse with the package now (err cost too high, um hardware guys didn't work out, blah blah blah) so the kids will have to buy the MarioPaint mouse or use the control pad. 

They tell me the game will still sell really well and for each copy I get royalties (supposedly a quarter for every copy sold). Again, being naive, I believe them and squash every bug I can to make this really solid and get out to market fast. FINALLY, they convince me it's solid enough and they are going to submit it to Nintendo. I sweat it out while trying to find bugs that would get the game kicked back (being that Nintendo is so picky). We wait a couple of weeks and finally hear back from them surprisingly soon and thought there must be some obvious bugs for them to kick it back to us so quickly. Nope, they passed it! On the first submission! 

I'm elated as this thing will get out well before Christmas and hopefully someone will have a mouse to play this with and might find some enjoyment in it and make me some of my first royalties. Then they tell me not to worry about Christmas. I ask about royalties and when I might see some and good ole Mike Abbott tells me that it takes at least six months before they get money but it doesn't matter anyways because I won't be getting any... they sold it as an exclusive title to BlockBuster so it's not a commercial product that will earn royalties! I'm thinking.. Fuck!... well I don't have anything on paper and I'm just some lowly programmer so I have no leverage... but at least I'll get to work on a real game next and hopefully on the Genesis which has a much better processor and is really fun to program on. Boy there are a thousand great ideas we have and we're ready to really make something kick ass! 

So Abbott invites me into his office and says congratulations on finishing Fun 'N Games!... now we really need someone to do Troy Aikman Football for the Genesis and no one else is available... (Fuuuuuuuuuucckk!) 

Don