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INTERVIEW: MICHAEL ROOKE

Please provide a one-liner introduction
I made the sound effects for a couple of CBM64 Titles and Backlash (ST).

How long have/did you work in the videogames industry ?
Must have been 1986 ->
I'm not working in the Industry anymore. Perhaps with colour mobile phones there is some room to work, but the whole OS of such devices is a complete mystery to me - gone are the days of really bashing the metal. - I program microcontrollers for various home projects these days thats about as close as I can get to they rewarding world of strange registers & bit fiddling...

Which companies did you work with? Any titles we'd know ?
Novagen, I was busy cranking out sound effects. At that time Damocles was very much work in progress at Novagen.
The connection to Novagen is via Ian Thomson Yates who was a friend of my brother. My brother at the time decorated the Novagen offices and mentioned I was coding, the rest was history :)

How long did you work with Novagen ?
On and off from 1986 until June 1990. In 1990, I was working on "Transfighter" an ST game for Quantum Concepts. (Ian Davies & Emmerson Best) - I was responsible for the interrupt logic,opening titles, sprite movement routines (heavily optimised for speed) and the sound effects. I also coded some game editor utilities for spite path motion etc. Quantum had something to do with Novagen, I think Novagen was the publisher or middle man I dont have much recolection of the inner workings of the company I just banged out code, read data books and pressed the right buttons.

What exactly was your role ?
You mean besides making the Coffee for Bruce?

I started at Novagen to work on Backlash. This was previously called Encounter II. I made a proof of concept demo on the CBM64. This included basic graphics and sound effects.
My sound effects caught Novagen's attention. They decided to use them in Battle Island (Commando rip-off) and XTerminator both released on CBM64 by Novagen or Quantum Concepts (Emmerson Best et all).

I was given a 520ST and Mono (Luxury!) Monitor to "understand" - Armed with K-SEKA and a spare floppy drive I set to work on getting something out of the Yamaha sound chip in the ST.
My day to day interaction was with Bruce, the coffee machine and avoiding the haze of smoke that hovered midway between the ceiling and floor.

What's your favourite anecdote of this time ?
Making Bruce's Coffee! He insisted on ALTA RICA which surprisingly is still going strong. http://www.nestle.com.au/nescafe/worldofnescafe/products/altarica.asp

My first wage from Novagen was 50 pounds! - this paid for my 1st SLR Camera. See: photo of the ST Developement system :-) Did you start to read "young and exploited" into some of the answers?


Asking for help from Bruce for the ST sound effects. This involved a visit to the GURU himself - Paul Woakes. Bruce drove me to Pauls house referring to me as the "kid". I sat with Paul as he figured out how to control the sound chip. I remember quite vividly watching him craft macros for K-Seka involving complex boolean bit operations. These were used for part of the sound chip control code. The time with Paul was around 2-3 hours. He also demonstrated a new fountain effect in Backlash spewing sprites all over the place which was very impressive. I have no idea if that made it into the game but Bruce told him to get on with getting the game finished :)
Pauls computer had hard drives something quite exotic back then. Sounds daft stating this now but then his setup seemed more like a super computer. Paul was polite, pleasant and very thoughtful when I asked questions. After the coding session we went to the living room downstairs to discuss how to continue, time needed and payment and around this time he mentioned the satellite dish was about to go off due to the Sun on the dish. The Satelite system used to go off for 5 or 10 minutes at a time each day... He was into sat-tv which I knew nothing about. I remember Paul mentioning Blakes 7 (Scifi).

The smell of the 3M spray mount glue was always fun at Novagen - I cant rememeber why that stuff was used in vast quantities - maybe one of the packaging guys can tell more?

Are you still in contact with any other Novageners ?
I did speak with Paul Woakes back in 1993 asking a question somehow relating to integer routines and floating point precision. These were used in a multiprocessor neural network simulator for my University project. The exact details of the coversation escape me, but I do recall he was very helpful. I designed a fault tolerant AI chipset and demonstrated it object tracking. That was in the period now known as the second winter of AI. Paul was a great coder theres really not much more I can say about him personally. He helped my career and I shall be forever thankful.

What's your all-time favourite computer or console ?
Early days the CBM64 - later on the Amiga.

What's your all-time favourite game?
Sinclair Spectrum. - Chuckie Egg, Jet Set Willy.
CBM64 - Monty on the Run, if just for the music!
Atari ST - Damocles - It set the standard.
Amiga - too many to remember.

Is there a particular developer (code, gfx, whatever) whom you consider as a genius / pioneer / extra-talented ?
Not in any preference:
All rounder - Mathew Smith, Software Projects.
Music - Rob Hubbard period.
3D games - Definately Paul Woakes.
Strange games - Yak - (Jeff Minter)

How do you feel about people considering the '80s as the videogaming golden age, and the associated hero-worship of some of the people that were part of this ?
I feel proud to have been involved in the movement. The whole industry was different back then - the games were very innovative. Every last drop of performance was obtained from the machines and then some more.

The controversial question - about emulation! Have you noticed the number of emulators on the net ? Have you heard about MDDClone ­ the PC version of Mercenary made by a fan ? Does it bother you if such a clone is freely distributed ? What do you think when you see some of the other games you may have worked on freely available on the net ?
I think, "wow I was part of that" :-) more to the point where can I find more games :) Emulation is an excellent way to enjoy the old classics - As for legal aspects I can understand the need to protect the brand new product but do the bean counters still want to flog dead horses?
I haven't tried the MDDClone but will do. Freely distributed ? I don't really mind, in my opinion it would only serve to strengthen the interest in Novagen / Paul Woakes products whatever they may be in the future. The BBC should run a story about Novagen, I recall a program made about the early days of the Spectrum & Mathew Smith...

Have you visited The Mercenary Site? If so, any feedback ?
Yes, great work and really nice to see someone spending the effort in recording a part of gaming history!

What are you up to these days? What keeps you up at night ?
I work for the world leader in mobile communications as a Senior Systems Engineer.

Anything else to say ?
Does Bruce need any coffee?

27th October 2003, updated in 2020 with memories of Paul Woakes (with Mike's approval).

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