Join Q*Bert creator Warren Davis as we discuss his new book “Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games”. All about Us VS. Them, Williams days and more!
Shane R. Monroe
Hello everybody, this is Shane R Monroe and you are in the passenger seat with me. It’s passenger seat radio. I am here with my returning guests game developer Warren Davis famous for such games as Cuber, jous, to the laser disc game us versus them, Terminator two revolution, x and so many more. This is part two of our interview. So if you missed out on part one, you’re definitely want to go check that out. Warren is here to talk about his new book creating Cubert and other classic video arcade games available now at Barnes and Noble Amazon and everywhere books are sold. Welcome back, Warren.
Warren Davis
Thank you, Shane. Thank you for having me. I’m, I’m ready for part two.
Shane R. Monroe
Boy, Part one was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?
Warren Davis
It was it kind of flew by? You know, we covered a lot of ground. But yeah, it didn’t seem like it didn’t seem like an hour and a half.
Shane R. Monroe
It didn’t it. I don’t know if you’ve gotten any feedback from folks in your world. But everyone loves it. Everyone loved the interview. And they’re dying for part two. So they were hoping we didn’t flake out and not deliver before Christmas, so.
Warren Davis
Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, that’s great. No, I’m glad to hear that. That’s one. Well,
Shane R. Monroe
tell us how how’s the book doing?
Warren Davis
Funny you should ask. Let me demonstrate with some material. Oh, we
Shane R. Monroe
actually get to see one. Holy crap. The books
Warren Davis
are printed. Look at a couple of copies here too. I honestly, I don’t think I’ve opened this yet. Oh, you’re so
Shane R. Monroe
awesome. That you’re here with a passenger seat. Regular exclusive. Look at this.
Warren Davis
Yeah, this is this is a this looks beautiful, actually physically available. And I’m actually able to hold one in my hand. I’m very excited. When did you when did you get them? I can’t wait to read it. By the way to find out how
Shane R. Monroe
when did you actually get them?
Warren Davis
i They were delivered last night? Wow. Really?
Shane R. Monroe
I mean, so you’re still kind of riding the high of holding that thing? Right? Is this this is your first printed like published? What look like this? Right?
Warren Davis
Actually, no, because I self published there was the self published version of the right. And there was a hard copy of that. That no, that was never hardcopy this hardback. So that’s different. But But yeah, no, i i But the thing is, I went through the process myself of laying out the first version of the book, you know, everything was me, I wrote it, I laid it out. I sent it to a printer online, you know, paid for every copy, got them back. And then I sold a few copies online. And also at at one show that I managed to go to before the pandemic hit. Yeah. And and as we talked about last time, it was during the pandemic that I decided to reach out to actual publishers. And that started this process, which I think I think I signed a contract with the publisher, like January 1 of this year. So it’s been an all year long process. And, you know, the, the publisher wanted to do some edits, they wanted a new title, they wanted a new cover. My original book didn’t have a foreword or an afterword I, you know, Ed Boone was kind enough to write the foreword and John newcomer wrote the afterword. Yeah, so it’s it’s a real book. It’s a real book. I, my publisher just sent me a link that it has been reviewed on Publishers Weekly. Wow. So that
Shane R. Monroe
wasn’t a good review. I mean, did they read it or something was good. Yeah.
Warren Davis
It was? Yes. Surprisingly, it was.
Shane R. Monroe
I’m not surprised. It’s an awesome book.
Warren Davis
It was a positive review. So I couldn’t be happier. And, yeah, I have them now. So it’s so exciting that it’s gonna take me some time, I don’t have many copies, and I have to order some more. But I will, as soon as I can. I will make them available on my website, Warren Davis shop dot square dot site, which you so kindly put up in part one, we’ll make them available for autographed copies that people want.
Shane R. Monroe
Several people have been asking, so I think you’ll you’ll do well with that.
Warren Davis
They will be available and I’ll ship them out, you know, as soon as I can. And, and then I’m going to, you know, I feel like next year for me, it’s just going to be a lot about publicity and just trying to spread the word that’s that’s, that’s really what I hope is that the word gets spread so that at least among the retro gaming community, people are aware of it if they’re interested. I found with my self published book, it was just it was really difficult. You know, the book was out and most people have not heard of it. And yeah, I’m not I’m not a self promoter. I’m not a marketing guy. So you know, this is going to be a little bit Bit of a new, a new world for me,
Shane R. Monroe
I assume having an actual publisher, part of what they take I’m assuming they’re taking their cut for is to actually do the promotion and get the word out and do things like that publishers review and things like that. So hopefully, you’ll have that as a, at least a starting point. And the retro gaming community is so rabid anyway, you know, once you once we open up a couple of these shows, right, and you can go to the classic gaming expo or any of these other ones I, you’re gonna do so well with that, I think because it’s such a good book, and
Warren Davis
well, I’m very excited to bring it to some Yeah, it’s
Shane R. Monroe
Wait, it’s I’m telling you, it’s almost surreal, probably more for you than for me. But, you know, I’ve got this these digital pictures of your book, and you go to Amazon. And it’s not a real picture of the book. It’s a picture of the cover art. But now it’s real. I mean, you’ve it’s really, really real. Look at it. It’s awesome. It’s not CG. Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s a real book. That’s a real for you kids born in the 2000s. This is what we call a book, ages and everything looks really good. See, I would have honestly, I don’t mind reading digitally. But I would rather have the book, I would have rather have consumed your book that way. And when my copy gets here, I’ll probably go through it again, because it was just a good book. All right, well, listen, I know I’ve got you for a limited time. And we’ve got still so much to talk about. So in part one, we covered Cuber, your early years, we started leading up to us versus them. And we tried to I tried to shoehorn some in there. And I didn’t want to do that title disservice because it’s really an important title. And I’ve got like 10 questions to discuss about it. So if you’re okay, we’ll circle back, we’re not going to go back to the other stuff, they can listen to part one if they want to. But I would love to go back and have a fresh start on us versus them. Because I think it’s I think it’s a brilliant work of art and and deserves our time. So just to kind of recap, we’ll get right back where we were. So we started talking about 1983. And Dragon’s Lair came out and, and drastically, even though for a short period of time sort of changed. sort of changed what people were thinking about video games, you’d walk in, and you see Pac Man, which is okay, it’s Pac Man. And then you look over here, there’s this beautiful Don Bluth, animated, fully animated cartoon, you’re playing this movie, and everybody was crowding around it. And, you know, it was raining cats and dogs, whatever. But, um, but that was, you, you say in the last interview, that Dragon’s Lair wasn’t really your cup of tea, you didn’t like the interactive movie piece of the equation? Right? You wanted something a little more interactive? And that’s where us versus them came in?
Warren Davis
Yeah, it’s not I mean, it’s not what I didn’t like about it was sort of the robustness of the, okay, you know, push here, push it use it was all very timed. You know, which of necessity because it was basically a, you know, a cartoon, so you’ve just had to make very simple decisions. So, yeah, it wasn’t it. I mean, it was nice that it was interactive. For me, it just wasn’t interactive enough. Sure. You know, that’s fair. And we had a system at Gottlieb that we made for Mach three was really our regular hardware. Okay, we really all we did was in our regular original hardware, same hardware as Hubert reactor mad planet. One of our engineers de Pfeiffer replaced the background plane of our system with LaserDisc footage. So yeah, I mean, it was exactly the same hardware. So basically, we were capable of putting 16 by 16 pixel sprites, on top of LaserDisc footage, whatever that footage might be. And for Mach three, which did incredibly well in the arcades, was a huge success. You know, that was flying footage where you had a choice of doing, you know, first person or first third person, you’re behind the plane and you’re shooting things, or, or bombing runs where you’re looking straight down and you’re trying to hit targets, you know, so, we already had that. And they were looking for a kit to go into Mach three after, you know, Mach three had its run, which games did you know they were popular for a while and then they kind of faded off? And Dennis Nordmann came to me Dennis Nordmann, of course of, you know, fame as a pinball designer, still still designing pinball games today. He was working at Gottlieb at the time as a game designer, and he came to me this idea of doing a science fiction like a B movie science fiction kind of thing. And I was immediately fascinated I love science fiction. I love B movies. I grew up on those crazy 1950s sci fi movies. And I thought that was a that was a great concept, and no idea how to do it. No idea how to make it work. And you know, we talked about a lot of crazy Easy things, you know, originally it was going to be all these weird angles like a movie would keep changing angles like a movie. And I just saw how are you going to how’s the player going to keep track? You know, um, you know, you’re you’re aiming at something and all of a sudden you cut to a different angle, it’s right right here, and not a good thing. But, you know, we worked all those things out eventually. And the thing that became the big stumbling block for us versus them in the development of it was scheduled, because they there was a big show in well, there’s always, there was always a big show in the fall. And then there was another one in the spring. And we didn’t make the show that we wanted to make. I think we knew we weren’t going to make the fall show. We were hoping to make the spring show. Maybe I’m getting that right. I have to I have to go check my I have to go check my book or check the book. That’s what I researched for my book. But um, so yeah, but the thing is, we you know, we had to get it ready for a show and it just wasn’t gonna be ready. So there was a last and I worked tirelessly for days to get it ready for the show in a in a simplified form. It wasn’t going to be the full game was going to be like the first six levels are some
Shane R. Monroe
huh, a shareware version. If you like the game, you can unlock the rest of it.
Warren Davis
A little, a little more than that. But yeah, it was going to be whatever we could do realistic. But yeah, and I busted my ass. And then, like two days before the show, I was told Yeah, we’re not gonna take it to the show. So I was crushed. But as it turned out, it just gave us more time to finish the game and the game itself. Once we put it out on coin test, it tested phenomenally. It was like really poised to be another huge hit for us. And then, you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t because the laser disc games were found to be not reliable out in the field. And people cancelled the distributors canceled their orders with golly, now the distributors, those were got leaves, you know, clients, you know, Godley built the machines and sold them to these distributors. And they’re the ones who put them out in arcades or wherever. So that was, that was a really tough blow. Godley even filed a lawsuit against their distributors, their own customers, because they cancel their orders. And it was just a really horrible time not only for golf, but I think for the entire video game industry and and then you know, and then there was the the crash the video game crash shortly after, which was partly fueled by by laser discs, I think. And also, just by the saturation of games that were out there. It was just oversaturated everybody was making video arcade games suddenly, and a lot of them just weren’t that good. And, yeah. Anyway. So,
Shane R. Monroe
you know, in the book, I was really hoping because I’m, I’m, I’m a huge fan of laser disc interactive gaming. In general, right, we in my last show, I showed you my little little Dragon’s Lair machine, and I’ve even worked with digital leisure time to time helping them try to perfect their emulation or their recreations of these games, because I played them so much. And I had these a really near and dear to my heart. So I was kind of hoping when I read the book, you would talk a little bit more about the challenges or even the sort of the day to day operations of actually having to write a video game against the laser disc. I mean, because you said it’s your hardware, right? It was Gottlieb’s hardware. So no stranger there expert. Were there any sort of challenges with interfacing with that sort of? It’s, it’s, it’s it’s random access, right. But there’s a time delay. It has seek times. What were some of the kind of maybe cool challenges if you can remember any about working integrating your hardware with this patent? It was a pioneer deck, right at the time pioneer LaserDisc. Yeah, right. Get any stories about
Warren Davis
that? I mean, honestly, I feel like the hardware design was such that it made it pretty easy for the programmer, you know, okay. You know, we and again, I think the way the game was sort of designed, it made it easy for the programmers, you know, we we had basically, minute long scenes, right, which would start with maybe a few seconds of a story. And then and then there’d be a cut to a flying footage seen a cutaway to a little interstitial gag, usually during each scene and then have maybe a little scene at the end or maybe not, and, you know, but you know, we have about a minute of gameplay in every level and, you know, all we have to do is pick where we want to go on the laserdisc and seek to that point. And as long as you weren’t seeking very very far on the laser disc, you know, your seat time, wasn’t that, you know, noticeable and I just thought It was pretty easy. I don’t I don’t remember any challenges in getting the laser just to work. I mean, if there were any long forgotten them, by the way, you know, I don’t retain pain in my brain. So something was a chore. And I got asked it, I might I might just forget it. Yeah. Try to not remember it.
Shane R. Monroe
But well, you know, I was. Yeah, cuz I was thinking, I was thinking like, again, I am. I’m an amateur developer, I’ve released a couple of titles. So I’ve got some basic game coding background. For me, I think it would be really challenging to code these sort of sequence even a minute at a time, because you didn’t have you had footage, right? Or you didn’t have footage for a while. So you maybe you had some animatics or some storyboards or something like that. What were you? What were you coding against? Because in the book, and we’re gonna get back to this, too, but you mentioned that, you know, it was up until like, the very end before the final laser discs were pressed. How are you? How are you deriving footage for development time?
Warren Davis
We had, as I call it, we had so like, test pressings of a few levels. Okay. So once we got any flying footage back, we were able to throw like a test disk in it wasn’t complete, but it had a few levels. And in the, the the beauty about the design is that the backgrounds were kind of irrelevant. All we had to know is, you know, is are we in a scene? Or are we in flying footage. So you know, okay, if we’re in, if we cross a certain frame threshold, we know where we started the actual flying level, and I’ve got to put the graphics up. And if we cut to an interstitial, I have to take the graphics away for a second, right and put them back on the interstitial is over. But that’s about it. I mean, you know, like I said, it was fairly easy to go from and the thing is, I could develop the game without any LaserDisc
Shane R. Monroe
because it’s gonna say you probably didn’t even need it. It wasn’t even there.
Warren Davis
I mean, the beauty about the design is that the gameplay is that these computer graphics were overlaid over the flying footage, but you didn’t interact with that flying footage. Right. You didn’t have to track I will take I’ll let me take that back. The caveat to that is the forest level.
Shane R. Monroe
Up on the forest level, don’t get too deep. And I got some questions about that. That will lead into it. I know I’m so go ahead. Go ahead. And I’ll just my question. Go ahead.
Warren Davis
Well, you were saying so the forest level did require, and actually the mothership levels required interacting with the disk, but But I programmed those later. So I had the things you know, we had all these different angles, there was a first person angle, there was a sort of above third person angle, there was sidescrolling. So I have plenty that I could do before we actually got the flying footage back. And then like I said in the later levels, and we never used animatics. As far as I know, although the special effects company in California that was doing the the mothership levels for us, they did give us some test footage of just literally black and white pieces of cardboard, there was a zooming in. And there were different like different shaped and oriented holes. And you had to ally as you’re going through the mothership, you had to align your ship to those holes, or else you would crash. Very similar to the the forest level, but in the forest level, the trees, a tree would come up right in the middle of the screen in some portion and you had to avoid it. So that was a little easier, because they were just vertical lines. And all I had to do is detect if your ship was within a boundary between two vertical lines, it was the math on that is very, very easy.
Shane R. Monroe
So cool. So you know, if you watch if, if my listeners are familiar with the game, or you go look it up on YouTube, and you watch it, you know, you might kind of assume that maybe you guys grabbed like an old B movie or something like that. And you chopped it up and maybe you inserted a couple of scenes here and there to kind of fill in some gaps. But you guys started from scratch, right?
Warren Davis
Oh, yeah, we we realized pretty early on that we were not going to find the footage that we needed anywhere. I mean, we needed very specific types of shots and they needed to go on for a long time in a minute. If you think about minutes a long time. And we these scenes were sped up because I you know I don’t know if you’ve ever taken movie footage out of a plane, but you it does not feel like you’re moving. It’s very slow looking. So we had to speed these things up about five times. So you to get a one minute, you know, run you had to fly for five minutes, and then we would speed that up to a minute
Shane R. Monroe
So one of the things that fascinated about the fascinate me about your involvement with us versus them is the fact that you had this acting background. And it’s kind of funny that this project seemed to be like this perfect marriage of developer and actor. And you mentioned these these cute little fun, existential cutscenes. And I know the book goes into great detail, but I was, I really, really enjoyed your stories about being involved in your friend, the actor, and without going into a lot of detail. Can you tell us a little bit about it? And then they can fill it in with the book?
Warren Davis
Well, yeah, we so we hired actors, because we had, you know, live action scenes and stuff. So the guy who played commander Tracy, you know, the sort of the hero of the story in the control room was a friend of mine from my acting class. And we also got people, you know, variety of people, we had auditions and everything, and hired people to do the little interstitial comedy bits. And then, you know, the funny thing is, I don’t, I didn’t even know I was studying acting at the time. The The reason this was a great project for me was because my desire to be a filmmaker, I was much more interested in filmmaking than I wasn’t acting. So that’s where I kind of stuck my nose in. And ultimately, I did all the editing for the entire game, which I love doing. I
Shane R. Monroe
mean, I we did some direction to write I mean, I remember, you mentioned that you were just the director would just look at you, like, Is this okay? Or? Yeah, what I can
Warren Davis
sort of like, I kind of like, weaseled my way in, you know, like, first, I would just be like, you know, I pull them over. And I can we do something a little bit more interesting, we get a little, little bit more of an angle, or, and then I, you know, I was sort of like, Oh, can I just say something to the actors, you know, and then eventually he was just looking over to me, he was just, like, what are you? What do you want to do?
Shane R. Monroe
That’s so awesome. You know, and so, let’s go back to that forest level, because I thought it was, you know, as I was reading through your book, it seemed like everything, you know, I’m not, I don’t know, if I believe in the concept of fate, or we’re predestined to do this, or predestined do that, or things will step in, and things just happen as they should. Your life seems to be filled with these moments, at least that’s how the book presents it were, like, you know, something kind of bad happened. But then this other thing came right along and everything was solved. And in the forest level was one of those things where when I got to that part, the whole production of the game seemed kind of Charmed, honestly, I mean, with the finding this the the movie theater to actually watch like dailies in or it seemed like, everything just happened, you had the right person at the right time in the right place. But the force level really seemed to be a good example of that.
Warren Davis
Well, I don’t know about Charmed, you know, we, I would have been completely lost trying to get anything done. But we had this as I, as I talked about, in the book, we had this, we found this steadycam operator, and he just kind of rolled in like a like, you know, like a snow plow into Kalamazoo, Michigan, you know, clearing everything out of his way. So we got what we want. I mean, he was so bold and fearless. And I was like, stunned, I would like to watch him in awe. He would just like he called up a theater owner, like, he would just he was calling up any owner, he could find and say, Yeah, we’re making a movie here. And we need to watch our dailies. Can we use your theater before you open to watch our dailies? And he found somebody who said yes, and the next thing you know, where we’re sitting, you know, and, you know, the film was shipped back to Chicago, developed overnight and shipped back in the morning. And next thing you know, we’re sitting in a movie theater, empty movie theater, watching our footage on this big screen. It was, it was crazy, but it was it. He was just fearless. And he was the guy hanging out of the helicopter when we when we flew over Chicago, and he’s just, you know, shooting everything we needed. And it was 26 degrees below zero. I mean, we’re just freeze. I mean, I I remember because we had to take turns sitting up in the front of the helicopter that’s the only way I stayed alive is because I got to sit up with a heater was yeah, oh my god. It was it was crazy. It was crazy time. I don’t know about Charmed, but it was it was a wonderful time. Yeah, I
Shane R. Monroe
mean, you know, in the in the forest was like, was was the first was sort of like an an not an extra level but something you weren’t really originally planning on. Right? It was that sort of fell into place, just again, kind of chill out. Was
Warren Davis
you know, it was one of those things where one of the guys who has helped you know, who helped develop one of our design team, if you will, Dave Faust said he knew of this forest in Michigan where the trees were, you know, planted in rows. And, you know, return to the Jedi had literally just come out in 1983 that summer. And you know, we were shooting this later in 1983. And it was just like, let’s do a forest level rip off of a Return of the Jedi. But yeah, so crazy found a way to make it work. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
So I know in the book, you basically say you have no clue what this cost. I’m sitting here in my head trying to add up helicopter rides, jets over Arizona film overnighted to Chicago. I’m trying to come up with a number and it’s not, I can’t compute it. You have no idea, right?
Warren Davis
I have absolutely no idea. I was not I was not in charge of money. I was literally just there to design and program.
Shane R. Monroe
And nobody came to you and said, Dude, no force level for you. We’re not gonna fly you out. So you were completely on independent ops, you had? No, there was no executive producer chasing you down telling you to shoot fast or nothing. It was just the money kept flowing. And you were good.
Warren Davis
It wasn’t it was I was not controlling the purse strings. I’ve no idea. I’m assuming it was rich Tracy, who is our art director, Gottlieb’s art director overseeing the entire art department. I don’t honestly, I had nothing to do with it. And you know, the only thing I remember is, you know, being told that we were we were not going to the show. We were not going to the show. So go home, get some rest, and then come back after the show and finish the game.
Shane R. Monroe
Oh my god. So a lot of a lot of you sort of alluded to one of the reasons why us versus them didn’t make it out was because of the problems with the laser disc. And you and I talked a little bit, I believe, offline about the problems that were being had. So there was a problem with laser disc reliability, right. And you told me some interesting stories that I hadn’t heard regarding why this was a problem. I knew that there was because I worked at an arcade that had a Dragon’s Lair, and I remember the owner operator of that arcade, you know, bitching all the time that it was down, or he had replaced this or had to replace that. But it was making a whole ton of money. So I mean, he he paid the money. But he was not happy about it. But you had mentioned like, like, there were, I don’t want to I don’t wanna steal your wool, but what was the what were some of the things that that people could do to screw with that laser disc in the arcade itself?
Warren Davis
You just bang on the side of the cabinet into the laser This is marking kind of like a record player. Yeah, it’s not making contact there’s a stylist but it’s, it’s it’s sending out a little laser beam. And it’s reading the little pits in the disk and, and sending ones and zeros back. But, you know, again, you know, if you slam that thing hard enough, and you can make it skip, and once it skips, it loses track of where it’s supposed to be. And, and then it’s it’s gone. It’s lost. And you know, you get a blue screen because the laserdisc has nothing to tell tell you, and then you go to complain to the arcade owner, and gives your money back and resets the game. I mean, that’s, you know, if that happens all the time. That’s not good.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, I think you had mentioned this is the part that cracked me up is you play the game up till you know, you were getting ready to die and lose your last life or, you know, you’re you know, you’re at a game and then you smack the side of the thing blue screen and get your money back. So it was like playing for free.
Warren Davis
Exactly. Yeah. Now this is visible.
Shane R. Monroe
I just can’t believe that, like nobody, like in quality control was sitting there going, Hey, maybe we should put some, I don’t know absorbent material in here or put it on? They did. They did all that.
Warren Davis
There was some cushioning in there. It just Yeah. I mean, you know, if you have access to the side of a cabinet, and you have a foot, man, you know, little bit is gonna help.
Shane R. Monroe
So terrible. Yeah. And I think I think that really sort of sealed the fate of LaserDisc. And you know, it wasn’t, wasn’t cheap enough, I guess to like, store video on wafers or anything at that point. So yeah, so thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So when God labor, should I say mile star, which is, by the way, the worst possible name ever? And I guess we’re not alone, based on what I read in the book. Get when they close down? How big of a blow is that? I mean, I know you were you were crushed about us versus them not getting out. But like, I don’t know how emotionally involved you were by then with God labor milestone, or at the moment, you say you were getting happy, unhappy towards the end of your tenure anyway. It sounds like you were being pelted with offers, right. So from a financial standpoint,
Warren Davis
let’s let’s let’s back up a second. Okay. Gottlieb did not like immediately shut down after us versus them. us versus them happened and then the company went on for months, you know, okay, maybe five or six months. So I, you know, it was I was moving on to other things. But the reason the reason I became unhappy is because, you know, it was sort of a natural progression that had to happen. which is that? Too many people were hired who were not coming out with games that could be released. And so the the original philosophy of hey, you know, we just hire people and let them do their thing. And, and hope we get some hits. It wasn’t working there, they had, you know, because they started to hire a lot of programmers, and they became a little heavy around the middle with people who just weren’t producing games wasn’t all the programmers faults. Because, you know, the market, like I said, had become saturated. So it’s, and people had gotten used to things. So, you know, when video games like skyrocket to popularity, you saw this wide variety of things. You know, so if a lot of people are sort of coming out with the same thing, or a slight variation on the same old thing, you know, it’s like, yeah, seen that before? So, um, and there were no new technological breakthroughs other than laser discs, which just found out wasn’t going to cut the mustard. So, um, yeah. So it was sort of a down, downward slide from there. So the first thing they did is they hired a middle manager to basically crack the whip on the programmers. And that created a kind of a stifling environment. I think a lot of people resented it. I I’m not saying it didn’t have to be done. I think it did have to be done from a business standpoint, but it wasn’t fun. So just the whole environment became just a little bit more oppressive, and there was about deadlines, and about, you had to pitch your game, and you couldn’t just get a game approved. And so it’s a little bit stifling. And that’s the environment that we were in. And then I don’t even know if that’s the reason the company folded because the Columbia was owned by Coca Cola. So all of these decisions were happening at a much, much higher level. If I was to speculate, I would say Coca Cola didn’t care much about owning a pinball company, you know, and with, and so pinball was down because video games, then video games became down because of the crash in 84. And they were like, What are we doing hold on to this piece of garbage? Let’s just cut it loose. And so they made the decision to end the company. We got, we just, you know, you could feel it in the air those last few weeks. They were like conversations in hushed tones. And, you know, people were having meetings and you know, people are going away to meetings, you’d be like, Ooh, what’s that? Were they talking about? You know, so? It was a weird, it was a weird time at the end. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
So I mean, and you, uh, you had been, you’ve been getting, you’ve been constantly being pelted with Headhunter calls and things like that. I mean, it didn’t sound like there was ever a time where, like, from a fiscal point of view, you were really concerned about what your next gig was gonna be. But like, like, when when you left? Was that ready to go, you know, from God lib at that point in time, or was it? Yeah, to the crisis?
Warren Davis
It was tough. You know, it’s, it’s, I don’t think it’s not any different I think then, you know, being in a terrible marriage, but you struggled to hold on to it, or are living in a neighborhood that becomes terrible around you. And yet, you don’t want to leave because it’s your home. It’s a similar, similar dynamic there. I really believed I was going to work at Gottlieb for the rest of my life. I thought this was my lifelong job. I had that much devotion to the company and to the people I work with. And so it it was crushing. It was an absolute crushing thing, even though things weren’t great. You know, there’s always the hope that things will turn around things will pick up will weather the storm. Yeah, didn’t have a chance to do that. Yeah. Oh, well, let’s
Shane R. Monroe
move on to different different oceans then. So I found a really, this is probably just me completely reading into things. But you moved on to data logics. This is really fascinating to me, because this doesn’t exist really, anymore. This type of data processing service, right. From my point of view as the reader, I suddenly felt like there was almost a shift in what you were doing, right? Because when you were brought on there, you were implementing graphic import formats, right. You weren’t actually coding this application or writing games, you were extending it with sort of almost like a graphics API. Right.
Warren Davis
Kind of Yeah, I mean, so their product was basically a word processor. You know, we have word processors. Now, we don’t mean anything. But back then, you know, computers, personal computers, were, you know, like the IBM PC came out in 1981. This was 1984. So, you know, yeah, PCs had been around for like three years. And they were not very memory. They didn’t have a lot of memory. Windows, I not even sure if Windows existed. Everybody used DOS, the original legacy operating system. So there were no word processes, you just didn’t have a graphical means of communicating, you know, documents. And so data logics was a service where you know, you, they would maintain your documents, and part of that is, if you needed some kind of graphic, you know, it would have to be stored in some sort of form some sort of graphic format, and then we needed to be able to display that, when we print it. So it was, yeah, we were basically and those, a lot of those graphic formats were proprietary. So there, it’s not like there was, there was a thing that showed you how the data was stored in a graphics file, somebody would generate a graphics file, and we had to basically, you know, hack it, and just look at your data and figure out, oh, this, this code means this and this code means, you know, this, it was, it was a kind of fun, it’s kind of fun work.
Shane R. Monroe
And as I as I progressed through the book, and I started seeing what you were doing with Williams, and we’re going to talk much more about your graphic tools and things there, it almost seemed like this was almost like an opening salvo for not a change, because you still did coding later on. But it sounded like a lot of your contributions seem to sort of shift to graphic tools. I’m really excited about talking about these graphic tools with you, too, in general, but is did you feel that? Or is it my interpretation as a reader, just having this 30,000 foot view that you sort of kind of shifted directions at that point, and you’re sort of becoming more graphically intensive? Is that what spawned? Because, because because in godly, your guy Jeff was doing all the artwork for you weren’t really engaged in graphics, other than how to get them on the screen and collide with them and all that stuff. So was this?
Warren Davis
Well, I, I did it you know, if there was some simple thing, you know, to do, then I would get involved in making graphics that I was capable of plopping pixels in a grid, which is basically what I do. But yeah, I mean, I didn’t need to make any tools that got lead. You know, I even got lead, I did write the diagnostic package. So you know, every game has operator diagnostics. So I did work on that, for the laser disc system, because we had some specific tests that were needed for the laser disc system. And and I think I, I even did something I worked on that kind of stuff for Cubert. And maybe, maybe even I don’t think reactor but maybe Cubert, I started working on Diagnostics, in a way in some small way. But um, I just, you know, tools is something that you did, because you needed to do them, you know, yeah. So to me, it wasn’t necessarily a shift in focus, it was just doing what needed to be done. Same thing at Williams, like when I was first hired at Williams, one of my first projects was sort of revamping their art tools. I think they were moving from that they had a single plane system, they called system four. And then Giles two was done on a system with a background they called system six. So, you know, with, you know, more planes you need, you know, you needed different tools. There were there was a need to sort of streamline the process of getting your images into the game. So that’s something I was working on. But it was all, it was all fun for me. I mean, it was a challenge. And it was something that needed to be done. And if I had an interesting idea that I thought, Oh, I could do this an interesting way, or, yeah, it was just fun for me.
Shane R. Monroe
So became clear in the book, like you could, I could almost feel the heat radiating off the pages. But you felt like you’d won the lottery. When you got the call from Williams. I know, right? I can actually, I wish I had, I wish I had my coffee, I could be holding it up periodically. This is all I got is back here. You called Williams, your Emerald City, which I thought was awesome. And you were so impacted, according to the book, that you don’t even remember the interview, or the time until you were like walked into your office at Williams because it was that much of a life changing moment for you. Do you remember anything since writing the book between the time that you kind of got that interview? And you and you went to work for Williams?
Warren Davis
No, I don’t I really don’t. I don’t know why either. I just don’t. I don’t have a memory of my interview there.
Shane R. Monroe
of dopamine. Rose. Yeah.
Warren Davis
And of course, I remember the walk to the office because I did it every day. It was right. It was every day. You know, you’d go in the main door you go you’d say hi to the receptionist, you get in you’d be buzzed into the where all the front offices were. And yeah, kind of make a little jog. Then you go into the plant you had to walk all the way through the plant itself to get to the back Yeah, yeah, I mean, that was like a everyday thing.
Shane R. Monroe
And so in the past, you talked about some of your interviews being like, hey, I don’t need this gig, whatever, if they give it to me, whatever. I bet with Williams, were you were you? Were you were you tied up in knots in your stomach? I can’t even imagine, like going to the Emerald City and seeing the wizard, and not being a complete wreck the day before even the day of. But we’re all at home and cool about it.
Warren Davis
Well, first of all, yeah, when I interviewed Gottlieb, my attitude was, I could take it or leave it because I had made the decision, as we talked about last time. And as I talked about, in the book, I made the decision to leave engineering. I just like done with engineering. So that was where that came from. But you know, after working at godling, for years, and making the games I did, and then working at data logics, and being out of the industry for a year, a year and a half. I was totally excited about coming. Desperate to come back. It’s like, Are you kidding? I think I save and then book I got that call from the headhunter at data logics. How would you like to get back into video games? I didn’t have to hesitate. i The answer was yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And of course, Williams. Williams was you know, the the Williams man. Beacon, amazing games. You know, I
Shane R. Monroe
wasn’t even a developer and I know that Williams was the golden chalice man. Yeah, that’s incredible. So
Warren Davis
but anyway, but But then, of course, then the reality. Okay. I’m sorry. My computer’s making all these Yeah,
Shane R. Monroe
I think I’ve got I’ve got no one wants to bother me. I haven’t been bothered all day until we started recording. Now. Everybody wants my attention. Yeah, leave me
Warren Davis
alone. Computers are these days, they they tell you things that you couldn’t care less about? They just lied to me.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah. And when they actually important comes along. It’s like, oh, well, we focused we did focus assist for you. You didn’t need to know that.
Warren Davis
Yeah. Anyway. So you know, coming to Williams, you know, the department had been decimated by the crash at that point. Yeah, really like a bare bones, you know, as skeletal team in the dead zone. So, yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
So you started working there in 1986, which was after that big crash in the 80s. And, you know, it’s funny, you started to talk about it. But the book paints this really colorful picture. And you’ve got a really good talent for painting pictures of like environments and situations. I just wanted to let you know that. But you’d mentioned about the offices that the Williams offices looked at, like at the time with this, the abandoned cafeteria, because video game crash, right. But I assume despite Williams not being an all of its glory, it was just surreal as hell the first time to walk in there like as I’m sure they gave you a tour or something. But like, as an employee, I work at Williams and you walk through even though it’s kind of, you know, there’s no cafeteria or anything, but it was surreal as hell to be part of that legacy. No.
Warren Davis
Yeah, yeah. No, I was thrilled to be there. It was fantastic.
Shane R. Monroe
So you mentioned your first project at Williams was completing jous two with Christina DOnofrio? Is that right? Yeah, I always hate I hate mispronouncing people’s names. How much of that project was completed? Before you got there? And the listeners can read the book to get all the details about that, but it was clear you weren’t? I didn’t feel like you were really happy about the gels two project in general.
Warren Davis
Well, that’s not entirely true. i The impression I tried to leave, and maybe I didn’t succeed there, but it’s just that I didn’t feel particular ownership to it. Yeah, it wasn’t my game. So it doesn’t mean I didn’t I didn’t want to work on it. You know, just listen, you know? Yeah. And Cubert were always in some way related in my mind because of that video games article from Video Games magazine. Again, talk about in the book that that there was an article that compared joust and Cubert. Were not compared, but mentioned Johnson Kubert, as American made games, when all of the games, the games that are popular games were from Japan. So here’s, you know, me at Gottlieb and John newcomer at Williams, making these two games that, you know, are, are suddenly huge successes about the same time. So to come to work at Williams, and to work with John who, and this is the crazy other thing, which is in the book, too. But John had worked at Gottlieb for a short period of time. After joust he left Williams and came to Gottlieb for a short time, but anyway, so now I’m back at Williams and I’m working with John on gels to I that was like an amazing thing. It’s just it’s pretty cool. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t my game. It was it was and it wasn’t even my programming job because another programmer had done all of the basic work and we were just sort of mashing it
Shane R. Monroe
up. I think that’s what I was kind of alluding to was like, if you come in early into a project, you have a chance to kind of make it your own and put your own spin on the ball, a little English there. It didn’t sound like it sounded like you were there to just like you said, Write the documentation, tidy up, finish it, you know, but you didn’t. And and you mentioned too, and I hate to give too much of the book away. But you’d also mentioned and we all know, those of us who’ve played jazz too, which I have that it’s, it’s, it’s a Tate or vertical implementation of a game that dammit, it needed to be in a horizontal orientation. And I mean, you can’t be blamed one way or the other for that. I’m assuming that that decision was made long before you got there.
Warren Davis
Well, that was a management decision from day one. Yeah. But listen, I people come to me and, and tell me all the time how much they love jobs, too. And that really doesn’t get enough love. There’s a there’s a lot of people out there who are fans of jobs too. So obviously, something about it works,
Shane R. Monroe
I guess. So I’m gonna guess I go sit in the corner something because I just, you know, and I didn’t have any of this backstory. But I’ve always wondered like, from the beginning of time when I first saw it. Interesting choice. Why would they make this vertical game like this? That doesn’t? That doesn’t compete? Yeah. The answer in the book to find out, you must read the book now. So what about working with Christina was now that’s the only time I heard her name. In the book was during the jazz two stuff. Was there any friction coming into a project? I mean, you didn’t really talk about what her part of the project was? Did she? She didn’t feel like you were coming and stomping on feet or anything. How did that dynamic workout? No, no, we
Warren Davis
were both brought in to finish the project after the original program was let go. Okay, so we were on equal footing. And we, you know, we got, we just sort of split the work up.
Shane R. Monroe
Okay, so she wasn’t there as part of the original project. And you joined after John, John right had left. So she came in.
Warren Davis
John was not the name of the programmer who left but that’s, I’m sorry, John, John newcomer is the designer, John, John designed it and did the graphics for it. There was a programmer who had been working on it, who was let go.
Shane R. Monroe
Got it. Okay. Yeah, that clears it up. That team was basically
Warren Davis
John and this other programmer. And then he was like, Go, and then Christina, and I came in to sort of finish the game.
Shane R. Monroe
It sounds like there’s an interesting story there. But I’m gonna put you on the spot to talk about that. But yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, I found I thought it was interesting. And, and maybe, you know, I’m gonna have to go back and look at jazz to have a slightly different appreciation now, one, knowing that you were involved in it, because I really didn’t know that before I read the book. I mean, I knew that your name was attached to it. But you know, again, I’m on I’m on the camp of I didn’t, I didn’t see the love and jazz too, but I’m gonna have to go back and check it out now. So I alluded earlier that it seemed like your career sort of shifted by working with these graphic tools. And so it Williams, you were involved with a lot of tools for development. And this began with extending the Williams image management program or wimp, as part of your work with just two. And we’ll talk a little bit more about those tools later. But before that, let’s talk about how you were involved with the digitizing graphics part. And you this was one of those great urban legends that all Amiga users glommed on to because we wanted to think the Amiga was important. And so there was always like, bulletin board posts and stuff like that talking about how like narc was built with Amiga hardware, not with with Amiga hardware, but the Amiga is were used to build the graphics, things like that. And so I know when we we originally sort of talked on Twitter, before these interviews, you’d sort of set me straight going now, we worked on some Amiga stuff early on, but it went out the door. Can we talk a little bit about that? And then you also create an algorithm for picking colors. And I’m fascinated by that as a sort of a developer and sort of a little logic base guy. Could you elaborate on that, too?
Warren Davis
Okay, well, let’s start with the Amiga man. So I just got wind of this Amiga digitizer. And I just thought, oh, that sounds interesting. I think, you know, we always knew at some point, we were not going to always be limited to 16 colors. I figured, you know, we I think we knew resolution was going to change color resolution and pixel resolution were both going to change in the future. And just I was sort of thinking ahead and thinking, Well, you know, wouldn’t it be nice to have movie quality or photographic quality images in a video game? So what would it take? And what it takes is a good enough, you know, colors, you just need colors. Anyway, so I found out about this Amiga digitizer and I decided to start you know, playing around and management was all over. And they were like, Yeah, sure by one. So we got it. And the thing is, it wasn’t very practical because you had to, you literally could only take a still image that your subject couldn’t be moving. So it was great for still lifes, and it had a color wheel. So you had to kind of rotate this thing and get, you get a little bit of the clear color, you get red, green, and blue, whatever, and you filter out and then and then the software would combine all of these colors into a full color image. And I think it had something like 4096 colors or something like that. But, you know, if you took a little, you know, if you pointed, and you use the black and white camera,
Shane R. Monroe
that’s the right, like a secondary camera, if I remember, did you view was that way? That’s right. Yeah.
Warren Davis
So. So anyway, I just started playing around understanding how digitization works, understanding how colors work. And part of that was because I knew we were never, you know, in the near future, we were not going to have 4096 colors or more than that. So then you then you had to start looking into how you going to reduce colors. And you know, the idea is to get the best. And I think we kind of knew the next step up was going to be 256. So we were we were thinking ahead that okay, we’re going to have a 256 color system next. So then it became well, how do you reduce a, an image that has up to 4096 colors to one that looks like, you know, to one that looks as good and only has 256. So that’s why I started looking into these algorithms. And you know, there was no internet, you know, you had. So I went to the library, and I would start reset researching technical manuals about computer graphics. So looking at what, you know, what’s being done in the universities, what kind of algorithms being developed. And, you know, there were a few at the time, they were not, they were not ideal, or, or as complex as some of the algorithms we have today that are phenomenal, they’re really, really give you great results. But back then, you know, there was like the Median Cut algorithm. And you know, you had to sort of you computed a color distance, because you’re in an RGB space, RGB is three dimensional. So you had to compute a distance from the actual color to a target color. And anyway, there it was, there were all these algorithms and I just, you know, coded them up and tried them out. And it was it was, again, fun. It was kind of fun. I’m a computer geek, you know, that’s my job. So I enjoyed it. You know, and I got some results. And the real thing that made it possible for us to get graphics into our games was the introduction of the target boards. So that was a true vision was a company and they created these target boards. They created the Targa format. So if you ever see a TGA file, that’s where it came from. Targa and they had a series of three different boards. They had the sort of the souped up the high end was the target board, there was a middle sort of ground with something called the ICB or image capture board. And then there was a a smaller lesser board that I think didn’t even do digitization, it was called the VDA. And that was just like a like a graphics card to put in your computer. So the ICB became the board we bought. And the beautiful thing about this is it came with an SDK. It came with a software library of functions. So you could write your own software to control the board. And that was the beginning of W TARC, which is the software that I wrote to basically do what we needed. I you know, it let you grab frames and let you select frames that let you output the frames in a format that your game code could be it can be incorporated with your game code. Anyway. I’m getting too technical here. So I try
Shane R. Monroe
to keep it it’s your it’s your mouth to my ears. My actually my next question and I swear this is true. I can hold it up right now is I noticed that you you had mentioned something about you had dreamed about real interactive movies that could bridge the rich storylines of games like Infocomm text adventures, which you know, boy, how do you explain that to somebody that was born in 2010? Right?
Warren Davis
They’re still out there.
Shane R. Monroe
They are. You kidding? Yeah, you can run them in a browser, right? That’s really cool. They’re like Infocomm libraries that you can go online. And you can play any one of these games, probably illegal, because they’re probably still copyright, but you can actually just do it in a browser and play these Infocomm games. But you sort of dreamed about being able to do that with these high level of graphic fidelity. And I actually wrote down here the W TARC. Software you created for the true vision capture boards was really the first step in that direction. And it’s up right up Don’t worry about getting technical. My listeners love it. So You know, I can’t I, the one person that I net Well, I think that’s pretty much down to the last person I never really got to interview that I felt like is missing from my retro gaming radio world was Eugene Jarvis and I’d reached out to him a few times, I guess I listened busy guy didn’t know who the hell I was. I get it never got an interview with him. But the guy’s always fascinated me. And I know that you talk about him in the book. So I have a little note here, tell us something about working with Eugene Jarvis that we don’t know. What would be something interesting to know.
Warren Davis
I don’t know what you do know. So how do I know it’s
Shane R. Monroe
something that’s something you know, like, everybody knows, like, his involvement, you know, with Williams and everything, but was, was the guy was the guy. I don’t know yet that kind of rock star status. And I’ve seen some of the rock stars in the gaming industry. And let’s be honest, they kind of became asses. asshats, I guess, if you will, was huge. Did Eugene Jarvis have an ego? Was he like super cool to work with? Was he receptive to your ideas?
Warren Davis
I would say he was super cool. He, he was a, he was just so self assured. You know, he knew what he liked. And he knew what he thought was a good game. And he knew what he you know, he knew what he wanted. So it, I don’t feel he it was an ego thing for him. Yeah, you know, he, he loved what he did. And he had very strong ideas. And he was in a position where he could, you know, he could get them to into reality. So, you know, he deserves all the praise that is heaped on him. But, you know, he was the most you know, he was a real easygoing kind of a guy. I mean, you know, maybe a little eccentric in some ways, but you know, just kind of a goofy guy you just
Shane R. Monroe
but you know, there was genius, an eccentricity don’t usually tend to separate too far sometimes. Right? They overlap even diagram. So
Warren Davis
he he was he was, he was a genius. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
So cool. So I know you and Jarvis were on different teams. And he went on to do narc while you were working on the tank game USA. And I know you were really excited about USA. I mean, it comes through in the book. This, this was your baby, and you loved it, and you care for it. But I wonder though, you know, were you did you ever harbor any kind of regret or resentment for not being part of narc? Or were you kind of secretly glad you got left out of that? Because you did say you did have some concern about the violence in the title and where that responsibility may take video gaming?
Warren Davis
Well, okay, so you know, I’m, I’m the Cubert guy, right. I’m my, my idea of an experience that I want to create for people. You know, narc would not be that. Okay, that doesn’t mean I can’t work on a title. That that, you know, because because, you know, I’ve worked on titles that were, I guess more high, high testosterone, if you want to call that, you know, but I don’t have a problem working on those games. And my only problem with narc and it wasn’t even a promise. Just a question. It was, you know, it’s the question that Jeff Goldbloom asks, in Jurassic Park, you know, just because we can. Does that mean, we should? That’s all that’s all. I was just asking the question. But as far as, I mean, so, so no, I didn’t have any regrets about not being on the narc team. Because, you know, I was happy to be on my own team with John Newton. Absolutely. A game that I really was excited about. The thing is, while we were developing the system, you know, the hardware and the software, I mean, I did contribute because the, you know, I basically, you didn’t wrote, Eugene wrote the generic operating system, and I wrote the generic display system. So we actually both contributed to the core of the system. And then we both went our separate ways and worked on our separate games and then modified both of those things as we needed but
Shane R. Monroe
so the core hardware and the operating system, all the low level stuff between narc and USA, were the same hardware platform overall, other than once they broke into their own. Yeah, pretty
Warren Davis
much you know, like I said, the the display system and the operating system and the two things that you know, you want to have in place and then and then everything else becomes game related, but you might need to tweak either or both of those things for the particular needs of your game. But um, you know, we we had a starting point, that was the important thing.
Shane R. Monroe
So how bad of a blow was it? I mean, I know cuz I read the book, but I’m trying to tease the audience a little bit. How bad of a blow was it When Usa was cancelled? How did it how did it affect you personally, and as it’s not, didn’t get selected? so to speak, is it doesn’t exist in any form that we can see it video or cocktail napkin renderings, anything like that, because I’m really curious, after reading the book, I wanted to see this thing, man with what you were working on.
Warren Davis
Yeah, me too. Me too, I am not aware of anything that exists anywhere. What I did for my self published book, is I created sort of like a little mock up in Photoshop, of just an idea of what the screen sort of looked like. Very vaguely, just you know, but, you know, the thing is, we had digitized images, and we had enough colors to do justice to a sort of generic ground. But John newcomer had made all these fantastic models, he might model houses, like suburban houses, and a 711. And then McDonald’s and, and, you know, we had a top down view, and we shot these images. And it just it I just felt like photographically, it just looked looked phenomenal on screen. And of course, the the vehicles, there were tanks, you know, where the turrets moved independently of the direction of the tank. And then there were these four by four trucks that the player had that you were controlled, with a steering wheel and a gas pedal. And then you had the rocket launcher in the back where you could stop and actually start controlling this rocket anyway. I just thought it was a really fun thing that was starting to come together. But yeah, I was I was absolutely crushed. When it was cancer. I really thought the two things I thought one is that it would make a great game if we were allowed to finish it. And two, I didn’t think we needed to. I didn’t think we were competing with narc. I mean, you know, it’s like, what’s wrong with having two games? Right? Or even if it’s done, hold on to it for six months and let narc run its course. And then yeah. And
Shane R. Monroe
so did you ever get a resolution or disposition on? What that what or why that decision was there?
Warren Davis
I I know that there were people in the company who were not fans of the game. There were some vocal people who were not fans of the game. And they had some sway, you know, and but I couldn’t tell you if that’s why it happened or not? I really don’t know.
Shane R. Monroe
And you don’t think that there was you don’t think there was a there was like an unspoken competitive? Well, we’re gonna set these two teams on fire, we’re going to let him go. And we’re just going to pick whichever one we like the best at the end. Do you think that it started that way? Or do you think it migrated that way? Because of some internal like
Warren Davis
speculating, when I have no information, sir. I prefer not to speculate, speculated enough. Or too much. That’s fair. No, really, I guess, I really don’t know. And so any kind of speculation on my part can be misinterpreted as a truth. But it’s not. I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, I just I have trouble believing that they would throw away a second team’s all I mean, I don’t know, how long was that? a month, three months? A year? What What was that timeframe? Well,
Warren Davis
as I recall, it was at least a few months, you know, it would have been maybe three or four months. Yeah. Yeah,
Shane R. Monroe
I mean, even that it just steam just I questioned the concept of chucking something with that much development time. And I assume it was playable at some point. I mean, you guys had more or less working?
Warren Davis
I mean, it had evolved, you know, so like, it didn’t start as a completely, you know, fresh, finalized concept evolved, you know? Yeah, it’s just something that kept evolving. And, you know, because it was like, Okay, do we do we have both trucks on the screen at the same time, and we have one image, and then you zoom in and out, I remember, there was a version where you, you know, the screen, you know, you’d get larger as your camera would get, you know, higher or lower, depending on where the two trucks work, because you could drive in opposite directions. And that was like, that became a problem. And so there was like, you know, let’s do split screen. So we went to like a horizontal screen, and each player had their own views. So you, you know, if the two trucks were near, you’d see them in both halves, but you could drive off into your own area. So you know, there were there were trade offs. And we were working. We were working through those, which is part of the process. But yeah, we just never got to finish it. Sucks.
Shane R. Monroe
I would have liked to have seen that sounds cool. So moving forward, you didn’t really want to work on high impact football. Do you have any regrets there? Because it became pretty popular.
Warren Davis
I have no right or wrong. I no regrets? Good. The fact that a game that I didn’t want to work on became popular, I mean, fantastic. But But I didn’t want to work on it. So the fact you know, why would I want to spend months and months of my life working on something that I don’t care about? And then have it be successful? It’s like, yeah, yeah,
Shane R. Monroe
that’s Good. I mean, you know, that’s a real I mean, I would like to be able to say that if I had some sort of a fork in the road, where it’s like, I could be part of a project that didn’t really care about but was hugely successful that I would have turned that down, because I didn’t want to do it. So bravo to you. I’m not. I mean, a lot of us would like to say that, but I don’t know if everybody would do it. So that those
Warren Davis
that point, I was like, you listen more power Williams I, I did not have animosity against anybody. Williams, it just I, you know, I had to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to do something that I wanted to do here. And you know, at that point in my career, I felt, you know, I probably should look for something where I can get to do what I want to do. And working on a football game just doesn’t get me jazz. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
I wouldn’t want to work on a football game either. For what it’s worth, I just, I don’t I mean, I dig the fact I dig what I dig about high impact football is not the football part, but the you know, the testosterone piece of its. But once again, your semi charmed kind of life delivered you back to God lab roots with Gil Pollack, who purchased the charred remains of godliness, under the name of Premier technology, and you reunited with your artists Avanta Jeff Lee, you were tasked with a full stack creation hardware, software tools, and a game and you stayed in the book, you were completely confident you could do it. But man, I was just you mentioning what it is that they tasked you with. That seemed like a really overwhelming task. Were there any challenges or issues you just seem to blow right through? It’s like, Yeah, I’ll do the full stack.
Warren Davis
I mean, that. At that point in my career, I had learned everything I needed to do in order to do exactly what we needed. So I didn’t I didn’t do the hardware design. That was that was not in my wheelhouse. But we had Joon Young, who was the hardware designer for Gottlieb’s hardware. So, you know, it’s like, you know, I, I knew I didn’t have to do everything, you know, when you when you have a task in front of you, you don’t always say, Oh, I have to do everything. No, you put the team together. So you grab the people who know how to do what you need. And in this case, it was a team of people that I knew and respected. And so yeah, I had, I had faith in that and, and then con again, you’ll come a con. It’s in the book but con and joy. Con Yamamoto, also former Gottlieb employee had started their own company called pixel lab. And so pixel lab was hired by Premier to create the game in the system and all of that. And then once that was done, then I and Jeff would work on the game itself.
Shane R. Monroe
And so the fly game rose from the ashes. And that ended up being the game exterminator. So we talked about the fly game. I love the whole the whole story behind the fly game. We talked about it a little bit in part one. The story is so good in the book, I don’t want to spoil a ton of stuff. But you talked about working with Jeff Lee on the graphics. I feel like there might be an interesting story between the two of you working on that game that maybe didn’t make it in the book. Is there anything you’d like to extrapolate on that experience of working on? exterminator?
Warren Davis
Are you accusing me of holding back on a good story?
Shane R. Monroe
I’m accusing I’m not accusing. I am suggesting that perhaps an interesting story to us may not have been unnecessarily interesting enough story from you to put in the book. It sounded like YouTube. Like I said, in the part one of this interview, it sounds like you guys seemed like you were kind of close. And you guys had a lot of good times together, you worked really well together, you bounced off of each other. I mean, in my 10 year of work, there’s only a handful of people I can say, in my experience of work with my vocation that I could, I could say what it looked like you guys had. So I’m really curious about how that relationship works with you guys. And exterminated really seemed like maybe there might have been because you guys were working the late nights you guys were talking about the graphics and all of the different stuff, which is in the book. Right? But I’m just curious if there’s anything you wanted to share about, about that experience with him? That maybe didn’t make it in?
Warren Davis
I don’t think so. I mean, it’s all in the book. Yeah, Jeff and I worked we had a very comfortable relationship we worked on you know, he had worked on both Cubert and us versus them we worked on the lotto game lotto fun which you know, is also in the book so yeah, we just had a very comfortable relationship I you know, completely respected his talent, his amazing talent. And I was just happy to have him on board Yeah. Very well. You know, Jeff is a it’s just such a reliable guy that you you he you know, he’s gonna deliver and and and you can talk about anything you can bounce ideas and that’s what we did we bounce ideas off each other.
Shane R. Monroe
So cool. Overall, though, you know, exterminator didn’t sound like a particularly great period of time for you. You’ve been Separation from your wife a lot of pressure based on some early press, which I thought was really crappy. But it’s in the book, you guys can read and commiserate a little bit. You compound that with the overall failure of the game, which you actually attribute to yourself. Although I as the reader, I, I didn’t feel you bore any responsibility whatsoever. But that just might be my interpretation. That must have been really rough for you, overall. And I had my my, I had trouble getting my mind around how long this era was. So what was that timeframe? I mean, it sounded, it worked for like two years with Premiere, right? Was that all that whole time with exterminator? Or controls a feel for the timing? Yeah, it was
Warren Davis
developing, it was developing the hardware, it was developing the software and the system tools. And then it was developing the game. So yeah, there was a lot that went into those two years. And of course, you know, it’s not only just developing the game, it was tuning the game, testing the game, then all of the problems getting all the problems with the game, trying to fix them. So yeah, there was a lot going on in those two years. And there was, you know, there was some stress, but ultimately, yes, I was disappointed that it wasn’t a success. But you know, you it happens everybody, right? You know, I kind of, you know, wasn’t happy about it, but I think I kind of took it in stride, because it was what it was, you know, and and I don’t think I was solely responsible. I think, you know, I had failings, some of the failings were mine, but, you know, problems with the controller, you know, yeah, that was nutty. That was netic part of the noise problems in the board, that that was just something we all just sort of throw our hands up and until, until John was able to sort of tackle that and improve it, but it just it really took a while and and then the fact that Gil, you know, announced the game would be ready long before he should have been that that just put an extra pressure on that didn’t have to be you know, so you know what, it should have coulda there were a lot of things that kind of could have gone differently, but didn’t so it is it is what it is.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, and I really, I while it wasn’t necessarily like the great thing for you, obviously in that two years I as the reader, I really liked the story. And I’m excited that the listeners will get to get to read that with all of those details, because I thought that was a really interesting. It was an interesting story to me. Sharing, you know, it’s a game.
Warren Davis
What’s that? 15 minutes?
Shane R. Monroe
It’s 1215 Oh, my goodness, are you serious? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m gonna try it fly by myself. Drop a little bit here. Okay, so let’s move on. So again, once again, your life is a series of opportunity without skipping a beat after premiere, you joined pixel lab part time, and I was dying, when you essentially became the token white guy of that company I, I was, I told you that I was I was, I was getting a CT scan the day I was reading your book. And I had to chuck down all of this contrast dye. And when you mentioned that you were the white guy in the room or something like that. I did literally spit some dye out. So I wanted to share that story with you. Because forever might CT scan will be related to your book, which take that for whatever it’s worth. That seemed like a sweet gig and you got to spend more time pursuing acting. And I get the feeling that the universe is pendulum sort of swung back after those premiere technology years. Yeah.
Warren Davis
Yeah, you know, just things just seem to be in the right place at the right time. And timing, timing was everything in the back then. And then just, yeah, just things worked out.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah, it’s just your story amazes me. And I mean, maybe I’m reading too much into it. But like every, every time there’s this, the pendulum swings that goes right back. So you went back to Williams in 1991. And that must have been completely surreal. Because you say in the book, you kept almost leaving the gaming industry over and over and over again, only to be pulled back in. And while we’re on the topic, I mean, what a superstar squad to go back to right I mean, Eugene Jarvis Sal De Vita Ed Boon, John Tobias on the cusp of what would change the world, which, honestly, Mortal Kombat, if you’ve, you probably have not read anything that I’ve written, and that’s okay. But I consider Mortal Kombat to be like the last. That’s the last pivot of video gaming to me. That’s when the last big 9093 was sort of like that. I’m pretty sure was 93. To me, Mortal Kombat was the last thing that set the world on fire after that everything has been kind of iterative, even Mortal Kombat itself. And what’s more, you went back and you worked on like the arcade legend, which is Terminator two.
Warren Davis
That’s yeah. What is that? Just get brought brought in in the middle of the project. Because Because a programmer left he wasn’t fired this time he had left of his own accord, but Yeah, they needed somebody to step in who knew the hardware who knew the systems and, and that was me, they asked me and I was absolutely thrilled to come back. I was excited.
Shane R. Monroe
And the department hates you, man. You have to read your book.
Warren Davis
Because it’s hard. Yeah, sure. But the department had grown, you know, so a lot more people and all the, you know, the, the, the heroes of video gaming in the 90s. Were there or were about to be hired. So it was a, it was an exciting time. Yeah.
Shane R. Monroe
But I just, I can’t even imagine that. I mean, that just it blew my mind when you said you had gone back. And here was like, everybody that sort of, I don’t know, the third golden age or whatever. I don’t know. It just was crazy. But what really got me what really got me and you’re gonna tell me you can’t say and that’s okay. Because I’m going to talk about what’s in the book. Your story about Ed Boone’s favor surrounding Mortal Kombat was, I mean, again, I keep talking about things that are worth buying the book for, to me, that would have been worth buying the book for. And you have to read the book. It’s a short story. It’s like a paragraph. It’s awesome. You did not disclose what how much was in that envelope? And I don’t know if you’re legally allowed to say, but maybe off air, you can tell. What’s what’s in that envelope. Because I know what Mortal Kombat was, I was alive and well, and frantically playing, shoving money into that game every two seconds when I was at the arcade to at that time I
Warren Davis
share with us, I won’t tell you the number. But I’ll tell you a story that I don’t think is in the book. I don’t I don’t I’m all ears. At the time, I was getting into investing. Okay, because I hadn’t really done much with investing, and not even in the stock market. But with futures trading. And right around this time, I was I was investing in futures. And I had made and I was taught as I was learning how to invest in futures, because they’re very volatile, and they’re very dangerous, is that you always do like, you do one trade, but then you do a trade in the other direction to sort of offset it. So that you so it will eliminate your profits if you gain but it’ll also limit your losses. If you lose, where without, without the second trade, you literally can lose a lot of money anyway. Yeah, I had been doing well. And I had been doing all these trades and safe trades and making a little bit of money here and there. And then I I decided, you know, let me just do this one. I’m going to do this one. And I’m not going to do the safety trade. Because I felt very confident and overly confident. Well, something happened with soybeans, and I and you couldn’t sell they froze the market as they plummet No. And I lost 1000s and 1000s of dollars. And the amount of money I lost was almost the exact same amount that I made for Mortal Kombat unexpectedly, that bonus from Mortal Kombat kind of evened out my losses from the soybean. No. So I don’t know, let that be a lesson. You know, it’s kind of you ever watched Seinfeld? You ever seen that episode of Seinfeld, where every time he loses something, he finds it like he loses $20. But then he finds a $20 bill on the street? That was not the that that’s kind of like that’s,
Shane R. Monroe
that was kind of my lead. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, maybe that’s I should have opened my interviews with that, that would have been perfect. So the history is keep on coming. And I’m trying to abbreviate this as much as I can, because we’re running out of time, and it’s gonna make me crazy. You worked on world a world building system for Revolution X, where music is the weapon, featuring Aerosmith. And again, the story is so good in the book, don’t want to give too much away. But you had some really neat technical moments in there. And I mean, read the damn book, because these are so cool. I mean, just what I mean not you read a book you wrote a book, but I mean, there’s so much great stuff about Aerosmith and Revolution X and I was fascinated by your involvement with it. It didn’t seem like I mean, you weren’t on set with them and I said there were pictures in the book with you with them. It seemed like it was incredibly satisfying the work that you were doing and is there is there anything like one of those great things you wanted to share just to kind of you know, tickle them about your coverage of Revolution X in there
Warren Davis
there’s a lot of there’s a lot of stuff I love to tell my celebrity urination story that that’s my favorite thing. Perfect. Let’s do it just like you’re in the bathroom. Right and you just take a little leak and and who comes in and goes to the urinal right next to you but it’s Tom Hamilton, the other the basis from from Aerosmith. And then he just starts a conversation and like, how do you how do you have a conversation with a rock God you know, All right, yeah. Why you’re being why the two very strange shared moment but yeah, it was my my only celebrity urination story. So, you know,
Shane R. Monroe
well listen, not everybody even has a celebrity urination story so yeah, yeah, true. That’s true, man, there’s so much I’m gonna have to skip, you know you had basically pitched house to the dead before was House of the Dead and they passed on it the Highlander video game story Damn, we could see here for 20 minutes and talk about that. But we’re gonna skip that one read the book, I guess. So like at the end of Revolution X, you know if your story in the book had ended right there, it would have been an amazing book. But we enter chapter 12 of your book and it’s titled loose ends and your work continues. You’re working on the W Targ stuff remotely porting it to Windows, which that sounds like I would lose my head doing that. You’re working with Disney Interactive, not the Imagine your job that you’d sort of, you know, had on your list, your bucket list, but you did work on some tools for them. I was going to ask you more about the tools but I’m afraid we’re kind of running out of time. But is there anything?
Warren Davis
Additionally, I eventually worked for Imagineering? I mean, towards the end of my Disney tenure, I spent four months as an Imagineer.
Shane R. Monroe
So that’s another book, right? I mean, yeah,
Warren Davis
I guess Yeah. I don’t know that there’s enough to fill a book. But yeah, we’ll
Shane R. Monroe
chapters maybe. Yeah. So just real quick, what sort of tools were you working with? Because it was it wasn’t? Were you working on graphic tools? Like the W Targ? stuff? Yeah. For them? Yeah, yeah, pretty
Warren Davis
much. Pretty much. You know, the thing about Disney when I was hired there, they were farming out sells for their video games, farming out to another company, and approved Disney Company, somebody who, you know, had to be approved to, to create cells of animation. And so for their video games accompany was drawing, you know, full size animation cells to do the animations at something ridiculous, like $220 a cell is what Disney was paying my God. And, and then these things would be scanned and reduced to like, you know, 32 pixels by 30. It was, it was insane. It was like, wow, this is not a smart way, or cost effective way to make images for a video game. So it took a lot. But you know, at the beginning, it was like, Well, hey, we’re Disney. We don’t do things the way everybody else does. We do things the way Disney does things, which which I interpreted as me being well, you know, the dumb way and the expensive way. But so no, but eventually, I think, you know, they sort of came around and we we would do things a little bit better, hopefully, you know, with some some off the shelf tools. Because you know, I think you know, there were some off the shelf art tools in that era. But yeah, yeah. Anyway, but it was, you know, I always enjoyed doing tools. It was just, to me, it was always very fun. Because it’s a challenging in a certain way, you know, you’re trying to make something that’s usable, that peep that helps people in their jobs makes their lives easier. You know, that’s appealing to me.
Shane R. Monroe
So cool. You talk in the book, I know I’m watching the clock to you talk in the book about getting faster, harder, more challenging Cubert into Maine. And I was, I don’t know, it’s sort of weird that we sort of crossed paths. I was providing some sound samples to like Mario Brothers, I was kind of involved in the early days of game two. They didn’t like me, because I asked a lot of questions and pointed out problems that the main developer of the application didn’t like being questioned on Was there some catharsis to having that labor of love finally, in the hands of the player? I mean, this is like your it’s your favorite version of Cubert. Right?
Warren Davis
Yeah, yeah. No, it was it was. I mean, it was pretty exciting for me, I never thought I thought it was just last forever. And so again, it was like to have an opportunity to reach an audience that I never thought it would have. That was just hugely enticing to me. So, and it wasn’t like, I wanted to make any money off of it. I, you know, I legally, I don’t think I could have made any money off it. I didn’t own it. So I think I you know, I was as a risk there as well. I didn’t know Sony was gonna jack, but it didn’t seem like you know, Sony had just didn’t seem like Sony had a whole lot of knowledge that they owned Cubert, which is another story in the book, but
Shane R. Monroe
it’s a great story in the book, by the way. Yeah.
Warren Davis
So yeah. So no, I was I was just thrilled that it would it would get to reach an audience.
Shane R. Monroe
Did you know you’d mentioned something in the book. Like, I can’t remember why I put this note in here. But did you know that it’s actually playable in a browser from the Internet Archive site? Did you know that?
Warren Davis
No, but it doesn’t really surprise me nowadays.
Shane R. Monroe
Yeah. I just thought it was kind of good. It’s kind of interesting, because it’s like, I mean, I’ve got I’ve got main builds all over the house, but to actually fire up a pie and plug it into a TV and do all that’s a lot of work. But I looked around I was like, Oh, look at this, I can actually play faster, harder, more challenging Cuba right here on the web. That’s kind of cool. Yeah, well,
Warren Davis
we’re gonna, the existence of meme in the 90s was was just hugely exciting it was because whoever thought you’d be able to play the actual ROMs. You know, it’s, it’s your actual ROM. So that’s driving these these games that you’re playing on your PC, it was a, that was pretty astonishing.
Shane R. Monroe
And to be all, and to be completely fair, as a diehard retro gaming player, the simulations that were being written to capitalize on the IP of these games, they weren’t very good. And so emulation, you know, that’s a whole nother show. I could do. But I mean, emulation was, it was a big deal. It was a big deal. To play these accurately were the patterns used in the arcades still worked. All that good stuff. So it’s very exciting time. Maybe you listen, we’re running out of time, I had like five or six more questions, I’m going to they’re going to go in the bin. We are here with Warren Davis. And again, another hour and a half has just gone like that. His book creating cures and other
Warren Davis
questions we’ll do we’ll do part three next year, sometime.
Shane R. Monroe
We can we can go back to we can I will sit like all day and talk to you. His book creating Cubert and other classic video arcade games is available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and everywhere where books are sold. The I’m waiting patiently for mine and listeners of this show are going to get are going to hear about it. Of course, when I get my copies, I’ll be talking about it. And then please, of course, reach out, let me know when you’re signed copies are available. So I can let my audience know that they can get in on the line there and get that because a lot of people want your your signed copy of it. They don’t want to get it from Amazon. So bless them.
Warren Davis
Well, I’m hoping to have it available as soon as I figure out how I can orders because I
Shane R. Monroe
might tell you the same boat as the rest of us. Well, no,
Warren Davis
everybody else can order it from Amazon, but I have to get them to my publisher. So um, yeah. So yes, there’s, as soon as I know how I can order some I will get some as soon as they’re in my hands, I will make them available probably be in January sometime. But then I will also be trying to do book signings. Any, I would encourage your listeners, if they would like to have me come locally to where they are, and do a book signing, please contact your local independent bookstore and and ask them, how would I get there? How would you arrange for that, and I’m happy to that’s a great idea to that. I’d love to do that. And of course, if there are any retro gaming shows in your local town, please have them reach out to me. And I would love to come and visit your town and bring my books and sign them so
Shane R. Monroe
awesome. Well, sir, thank you again for yet another hour and a half of your time. It’s an incredible book. I loved it. It’s It blows my mind to think that by the time I got done with the book, it was sort of like, only like 10 to 12 years, I felt like I was reading the entire life and times of Warren Davis. And then I started thinking that was like 12 years or something. What a what a career. What I mean, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. Thanks. Thank
Warren Davis
you for thank you for, you know, being interested. That’s like I said, The only reason I wrote the book was it’s just seemed like people were interested in it seemed like these were stories that people enjoyed hearing. So I I hope it I hope it is entertaining. And people, people enjoy it. And I’m always I’m always happy to tell the stories, but now they’re in a book. So I don’t have to.
Shane R. Monroe
You don’t have to keep telling the stories by the book. Here’s the book. Here’s the book. Thank you very much, sir.
Warren Davis
I’ll be looking for the stories that I’ve left out of the book. I’m sure there are some.
Shane R. Monroe
There’s I’m sure there’s I’m sure there are many. I’m sure there are many, like amazingly amazing guy, amazing career. So they’re stuffing.
Warren Davis
I mean, you’re an amazing guy too.
Shane R. Monroe
I appreciate that. I do not have I do not have Cubert merch or passenger seat radio merch out there. So I gotta I gotta tip my hat, sir.
Warren Davis
I’m not a merch guy or a marketing guys. So you know,
Shane R. Monroe
any money from any of that? Anyway, I used to go to
Warren Davis
retro gaming shows and they give me a table and it would just be a big empty table because I just, you know, it’s not like I’m there to sell stuff, but nine books that
Shane R. Monroe
you can fill that with. It’s nice to have the books. Yeah. Well, sir, thank you again so much. Anytime you want to talk on the show, you got something to promote. You want to talk about anything, just let me know. I’d be happy to have you back. This is amazing. And maybe in the new year, we can sit down and cover the other 20 questions I skipped for the purpose.
Warren Davis
We’ll find a time because I just need I just need some recovery time. Now right now.
Shane R. Monroe
I’m draining draining down. Yeah. And thanks again for watching. Have a great rest of your day. Take care and have a good holiday season.
Warren Davis
Happy holidays you do, sir.
Shane R. Monroe
Alright, this is Shane R Monroe, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget Part one is available on YouTube and on the spreaker.com application on passenger seat radio. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you next time. Take care everybody
