Temple Curator: Scott Matrix
Unfortunately, as each shot was put into 'Dotmation,' it became clear that another shot would have to be added to make clear what the previous shot was. And then that new shot needed another shot to explain itself, and then... HOLY MONTAGE, BATMAN!
So, this little multiball effect was growing by leaps and bounds, and I saw no end to it. I halted progress at this point, convinced I had to find a better way. But where else can you see Wesley Snipes in three shades of orange (even if only for 3 frames).
Getaway was the game that pushed the memory ROM from 2megs to 4megs, mostly because of the video mode. After that, all games in the pipeline and afterwards became 4megs to fit in the dots. As originally concieved, the video mode was to have a road that twists and turns, you get closer to the mountains, you go into a tunnel, you come out of the tunnel on a road that is now on the side of the mountain as shown here. Driving into the guard rail sent you off the road, and down the side of the mountain in a fireball.
Once the basic mechanics of the game were worked out with the strightaway currently in the game, however, it was decided that what we were working on was a pinball game and not a video driving game at the resolution of 128 X 32 pixels. Plus, memory was getting scarce. That's why it's a one color animation.
And for those sharp viewers out there: no, we weren't working on a panarama display system. The image of the road actually panned back and forth.
Actually, most video modes in Steve Ritchie games start out being a lotmore ambitious than their final version. Usually, Steve would want 3, 4, or 5 videomodes in a game until the realization came in that, hey, that's a lot of ball time being used up there. Which leads us to next the animation, another proposed video mode thatnever made it into a Steve Ritchie game.
For those of you who don't know, we routinely make videotapes for our distributors and for trade shows showing our new games. In the videotape for Popeye, they even mention Mutant Spinach multiball. Oh well, the mode that got away...
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Indiana Jones TM & © 1993 Lucasfilm, Ltd. All Rights
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Demolition Man is a trademark of Warner Bros. © 1993
Popeye TM The Hearst Corporation. © 1993 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Used by permission.
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