Clint Thompson Posted July 11, 2016 Report Share Posted July 11, 2016 Fascinating read provided by The Lost Dragon - Enjoy! The following interview was conducted nearly 18 months ago and wasoriginally planned to be an exclusive for the planned GTW AtariPanther article i was researching, on behalf of the site, however,since said article would not be started by GTW until 2017 at theearliest, I've decided we've sat on the information long enough and itneeds to be put up on Atari I.O forum instead, so the community canenjoy it.It is with the greatest of pleasure I was able to put questions to apreviously unknown, by myself, Atari Panther developer, Mr GuidoHenkel :1)Guido, would you mind starting this interview by talking usthrough just how you became involved with Atari, in terms ofdeveloping for the Panther Console (claims go Atari UK had 20 Pantherdevelopment kits and invited the UK Press and development communityto look at the hardware,with the li likes of The One, Games X etcseeing them.Development kits were believed to of been in the in hands of JeffMinter, Domark and Psygnosis. They'd approached Mev Dinc, but he'ddeclined, due to Atari's poor standing in the industry).What can you tell us? A1) My business partner, Hans-Jürgen Brändle, and I were huge Atari STfans at the time and it was our main development platform. In 1990,during CES we visited Atari’s exhibitor suite to see what news therewas regarding new ST/TT models. By sheer coincidence, we rode theelevator with Atari CEO Jack Tramiel. We introduced ourselves and whenwe left the elevator, Jack instantly put us in touch with one of hisdeveloper relations people. It turned out there was no news regardingthe ST/TT line of computers, but he told us they were working on a newconsole, called Panther.Atari was in the process of signing up developers for the console atthe time and we had just completed an action adventure, which we hadoriginally planned for the ill-fated Konix System also, and wereworking on “Spirit of Adventure” our first full-blown role-playinggame. Atari wanted variety in its launch titles and was veryinterested in getting an RPG on the console, so they added us to theirdeveloper program. We never dealt with Atari UK. All of our contactwas directly with their US division out of Sunnyvale. A couple ofmonths later we received a shipment from them with a Pantherdevelopment kit, consisting of a Panther prototype, an Atari TTworkstation and the developer manual.2)This is fantastic news, no-one I'm aware of UK Press wise orseemingly online, seemed aware you were developing an RPG, it's neverbeen mentioned, just the usual suspects, Pitfighter (which it nowappears was a red herring), possibly Raiden, Plasma Pong, CrescentGalaxy and Cybermorph.I'd love to hear more on just what your RPG game was going to be like,just how far along it got before Atari pulled the plug on the Panther,what features were you planning to exploit, hardware wise and yourthoughts on the hardware itself .....(there's been views expressedonline over the years people though it seemed to think it lackedenough RAM, Atari were considering dropping the Ensoniq Sound chipetc, so any insights would be fantastic) and is there a possiblecode/concept art, anything.... still exists of the game itself?A2) The game we were working on was called “The Crypt.” It was afirst-person dungeon crawler in the vein of “Eye of the Beholder,”with an Egyptian theme throughout. You were essentially exploring theinsides of a pyramid with all its traps and labyrinthian mazes. I wasdesigning and programming the game at the time and I had one artistworking with me on the game’s prototype. We had one level completewhen we received word from Atari that the Panther was cancelled andthat they had a bleeding-edge 64-bit console called Jaguar in themaking that would replace the project.I honestly do not recall a whole lot about the system. RAM may havebeen an issue, but we had just written one of the most incredible datacompressors in our careers, so that I was confident we would not runinto too many problems there.I loved that fact that I could work on a TT as the master workstationbecause it allowed me to instantly use the same toolchain I was usingfor my previous development and did not have to find and learn newtools. So, from the first day, I was essentially ready to work on theconsole, and I remember how cool it felt to see my first sprite on thePanther screen—it was the game’s logo, and with its hardware spritezooming capabilities, it was really cool to see how just a few linesof code created a powerful entrance for that logo on the screen.Regarding our development, I do not believe anything has survived. Imay have the actual hardware in the attic somewhere still, but I nolonger have documentation or source code of the game itself. I’venever been one to archive much of my work, which is bad, inretrospect, but I never really thought any of my work was all thatrelevant to be saved for posterity.3)That's a crying shame, but understandable, so much has been lostover the years.How did you feel i wonder, when Atari (Uk ?) announced Panther wasbeing scrapped in favour of the Jaguar-I ask this as 'officially'Atari's PR were sending out the message they fully supported anyPanther developers to move code/projects onto Jaguar instead (andindeed we saw Cybermorph and Crescent Galaxy jump ship), but JeffMinter for example ditched the Star Raiders-esq game he was working onto start Tempest 2000 from scratch for the Jaguar, so we'd love tohear why your RPG never made it across either.A3) Indeed, Atari offered to enroll us into the Jaguar developerprogram, and they were true to their word. By the time the Jaguarproject opened up for developers, they reached out to us and invitedus to continue our work on the new console. However, by that time wewere completely tied up developing the first of our “Realms ofArkania” games, which left absolutely no resources available for anyother developments, so we passed.“Realms of Arkania” was not only a dream project for us, but it wasalso a huge undertaking for a small developer like ourselves.Q4)Also could i ask you for your, your own personal thoughts on howyou felt regarding the possibility the Panther could have made animpact against the likes of the Mega Drive and SNES and thus as somewithing the Atari Community have felt, bought Atari enough time tofirm up support and hardware (bug testing chipsets etc) for theJaguar.?A4) From a technical standpoint Panther did put Mega Drive and SNES toshame, I remember. They were getting a bit long in the tooth already,especially compared to some of the things you started seeing on theAmiga. The Panther was like an Atari ST on steroids with a consoledesign, meaning without the operating system overhead. Even though thearchitecture was very different than that of the ST-line of computers,it was following the same lean and mean approach. The architecture hadquite a bit in common with Atari’s Lynx, if I recall correctly, andhad some powerful incredibly sprite hardware that exceeded Sega’s andNintendo’s capabilities.However, with the Jaguar’s accelerated development schedule, I thinkthey were smart to cancel Panther and shift focus to Jaguar instead.There, they had the 64-bit selling point, and for a while they reallyhad the superior hardware to anyone else. The reason Jaguar failed wasnot the hardware, it was the marketing and the lack of developersupport.If you look at what was going on at that time, Atari was not really aleading edge game platform in many countries from a developer’sstandpoint. In the UK, where most of the top-tier action games of theera came from, everyone was Amiga fanatic, and in the US, where themore heavy-weight games came from, the PC was really beginning to makean impact with its stunning VGA graphics. So, Atari had a bit of aproblem getting the foot in the door with developers, which I alwaysfound disappointing.I'd like to thank Guido for taking the time to talk us through whatturned out to be a lost game on 2, ill fated consoles and give us hispersonal views and insights.They are very much appreciated. 7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabertooth Posted July 12, 2016 Report Share Posted July 12, 2016 Thank for conducting this interview, @Lost Dragon. The Panther is a platform that I wish we knew more about. It would be great if Guido still had the hardware. I would love to get a photo of that. I wonder how many Panther developers jumped ship after months of work when Atari switched focus to the Jaguar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted July 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2016 Thank for conducting this interview, @Lost Dragon. The Panther is a platform that I wish we knew more about. It would be great if Guido still had the hardware. I would love to get a photo of that. I wonder how many Panther developers jumped ship after months of work when Atari switched focus to the Jaguar? Very curious about the same thing though I imagine the prototype having very little use since it appears to be so limited and so early on. I've only ever seen the one or two pics appearing online from someone apparently stumbling across one at an auction in person. Really makes me regret ridding a lot of my prototypes as I would have liked to document them a lot better, making videos available online for a better overview for people to see. Particularly enjoyed the part meeting Jack Tramiel in the elevator! 7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted July 27, 2016 Author Report Share Posted July 27, 2016 Great news! I really hope he finds it and gets some nice, hi-res photos to be seen. There's really not much of anything in the line of pictures or info for the Panther as a whole outside of the black box seen on the web and the concept rendering of what it could have potentially looked like... 7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.