The Carrie And Ted Tahquechi Interview

[HalStep 855]

we have another great interview from Ross Sillifant a.k.a Chryssalid,except this is a husband and wife double bill,so please enjoy:

 

 GOG Presents The Carrie And Ted Tahquechi Interview

 

Q) Your my 1st ever 'Voice-Over' artist Carrie, so i must start by saying
just how delighted i am to be able to put the following Q's to
you. Could i start by please asking you to introduce yourself to our
readers?

(A)My name is Carrie Tahquechi.  I am married to Ted Tahquechi,
who was a producer at Atari Accolade, and Mattel over the years.
While I suppose I earned the title, I don’t really see myself as
your average Voice over Artist. At the time I did my voice over
work, I was working full time in the veterinary field and doing
a few shows a month as a party DJ.
I did the Voice over work to help out Ted at first and continued with it for fun.  
Life moves on and I retired from Veterinary work.
I am a mom to twin boys, and I am working as a jewelry designer and App developer.

Q)I'm going to start of course by asking just how you came to be
involved in the role of doing voice-overs for Atari, for a number of
reasons...not only because i've often wondered how people 'break-into'
the industry, but also because of Atari's reputation of being very,
ahem...'shrewd' shall we say...when it came to money and not having or
wanting to spend, the money other developers might of.

(A)In the late 80’s I was considering a communications minor and worked
at the college radio station while pursuing my degree in veterinary nursing.
I was an on air Dj for drive time afternoons and a member of the production team.
The production team was responsible for all the recorded on air ads.
It is not nearly as glamorous as being on air but it is an important
part of the radio station. I would sit in the recording booth and make
up voices for each script to try to add a little flair or interest into
the ads and to make it more fun for myself.
I think that the production work set me up for doing voice over work.
It is very similar, you are given a script and sometimes a description
of what your “character” is like or the overall experience of the game or situation.
One evening Ted came home and asked me to record “a few place holder samples” to
put into a game on a temporary basis, they needed something to use while a
game was in early development.  We have had a full recording studio at home
for as long as I can remember, and we had done some folly work previously for
his games so this did not seem like an odd request.
So one night after dinner we sat down and recorded. I can’t even remember
if the first few voice overs remained in game at the end or not.
After that I was asked to do several other projects as well as continuing with sound effects.

Q)Looking back at the Jaguar era, we'd already seen the advent of CD
Drives on systems like the PC Engine, Sega Megad Drive/Genesis, the
CD-i, 3D0 etc and now here was Atari with the Jaguar promising CD
quality sound and of course the CD Drive, so...i wonder if the area of
'Voice work' was something Atari had ever hinted to you, that they saw
as something of a key role in their planned product range?

(A)Sound quality has always been important to Ted and I in our work.
With the Jaguar being able to support larger sound files it made it
a lot easier to produce a quality sound or voice over and have it not
have to be tweaked and compressed nearly as much. This produced a
better end product. I wouldn’t say that anyone ever mentioned to
me how big of a role voice acting would play with each new system or game.
We were just pleased that as the systems evolved we were able to put a
higher quality sound into each progressive game. As you can imagine
the more you have to compress and work with a sound file to make
it “fit” into the size restrictions the harder you have to work to
produce a clean and easy to hear voice over from the start.

Q) Games were becoming ever more 'cinematic' with lengthy intro's/cut
scenes etc, hardware allowing for a lot more speech in-game etc, so it
must have opened up a few avenues for those interested in getting
involved.

(A)We were working during the start of this boom, when games just started
to have longer scripts and they eventually became the cinematic productions
that we see today. It seemed that with each new system the amount of space
available for sound and voice overs jumped drastically.
This did open up a whole new avenue for people looking to get into voice over work.  
If it had been my main job, I can imagine that it could have opened doors for
me to other opportunities. We also saw a rise of celebrity voice over actor’s
start being seen in games instead of just animated movies and tv shows.
While it can be argued that games using more celebrity voice actors could have
hurt the non-celebrity talent in competition for jobs, this also created a whole
new level of brand and voice recognition in the field that boosted game sales overall.

Q)Could you talk us through, well the 'process' i guess is best way of
describing it, of doing voice-over work, in terms of equipment used-we
see all these features these days of artists like Nolan North in
recording studios etc but i wonder if things were a little more 'low
key' back then? and did you simply read phrases etc from a
pre-arranged script without even seeing the game in question/where the
phrases would be used?

(A)Being a Dj and working in radio, I had ready access to quality equipment
that most people do not have at home. While our microphones and recording
equipment were top notch, that we would have been using in a professional
studio, I was doing most of my work in our home office/studio.
Working out of a non-professional studio has its challenges, it may seem
low key My most memorable experience was doing folly work on a game called
dino dudes. We tried for hours in the studio to produce the sound a dinosaur
would make while chewing bones. It just did not have the deep bone crunching
noise with echo we needed after processing.
The final sound was created in our tiny bathtub because we needed an echo,
me chewing uncooked pasta. That’s about as low key, while still using high
tech equipment, as it gets.  It was not a star studded, Hollywood experience
in a sound booth with a boom mike and people to bring you coffee that I would
assume Nolan North had. But I was not a traditional full time voice actor either.
We got the job done though.

Most times when I was doing voice over work, I was given a script to read from.
Be it words or phrases, I would have a description of the character and what they
hoped the character would sound like. I did not have access to the games, photos or
video while it was in production. I would try the phrase and get feedback and if
needed record again. The feedback would vary such as: talk slower, try to whisper
the words,  this is a soldier be more abrasive, or in the case of Tempest 2000,
please try to make it a lot more sexy.

Q) I'd also be interested to hear more about the 'The Process' as it's my
understanding that for Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter simply sent the
musicians at Imagitec various video's of his game and had them come up
with music they felt best suited to what was going on, so anything you
can share with us regarding your work on such a milestone Jaguar title
would be most welcome.

(A)I was so excited to work on Tempest 2000! My favorite arcade game was Tempest,
I could play it for hours. When I was asked to do the voices for this one,
I already knew the original game well.
Knowing that it was Jeff Minter doing the game, and from teds description of what
Imagitec was working on for sound. I knew that the graphics would be bright and
colorful and that the music was upbeat and catchy.  I was not allowed to see the
graphics or hear the music. I was given the phrases and the direction was to make
it as sexy as possible.   I would record it and they would check the recordings and
tell me, nope not sexy enough try again.
Ted also did voiceovers for this game, as a result we laughed a lot creating the
voiceovers for this game. I think the first time I actually saw the game was during
final test. And yes I did play it a lot when it was done, even though I would giggle
every time I heard that Yes, Yes, Yes.

Q)I have to ask, are you the voice of Skylar in Cybermorph? If
so....outstanding :-)

(A)I am sorry to disappoint, I am not Skylar.

Q) Because from there i'd have to ask how does it feel to be associated
with such an iconic part of the Jaguar's history?. She is appreciated
by many, the delivery of crisp, clear and diverse enough soundbites on
the original, 2Mb version of the game, but for those more familiar with
the 1 Mb version, where she's a lot more repetitive, she's often mocked
and people often rant at her and the phrase 'Where did you learn to
fly?' has taken on a life of it's own.

And again assuming you are, how do you feel about Atari basically
crudely hacking out some of your voice work, just to get game to fit
onto a smaller cart to make cost saving measures?

(A)While I am not the artist in question, I always knew when I was working
on voice overs that the sound files would have to be altered and compressed,
and sometimes cut to make the final product. It’s kind of the nature of making
a game that had to fit into a cart. I think that the developers must have it
made now with the ability to not have to have these restrictions.

Q)You also did voice work on Atari's attempt to update Blue Lightning
from the Atari Lynx to the Jaguar CD, something that badly misfired
and ended up doing more harm than good for the Jaguar CD System (game
in itself is ok, but it's not a patch on Lynx original, least of all
something you expected from a 64 Bit CD game....) and i wondered A)IF
you worked alongside the now celb....Rob Brydon (who also voiced
Battlemorph) and if so what he thought of doing game work, ie was it
seen as a 'serious' medium i wonder?

(A) I did not get to meet Rob Brydon. Almost all of my work was done at the home studio.

And (B) Given how ATD would rather forget about the whole affair, if you
had any thoughts on the project, or was it just something else you were
asked to do (and hopefully Atari paid you for)?

(A)As you can imagine, my contract does not allow me to discuss compensation
I was given at all…

When I was doing the work, I really did not have a lot of interaction with the game itself.
I would read my script submit it, wait for changes re-record and that would be it.
I cannot say I remember a lot about the games themselves. with the exception of Tempset 2000,
I did not really play most of the games I worked on all that much, or have a lot of
interaction with how the game itself “performed”

Q)Your credited with: 'Special Thanks to...' in both AVP and Kasumi
Ninja on Jaguar, can you talk us through your involvement on both? no
matter how small, it'd be great to get another voice (no pun intended,
lol) on both games.

(A) Well, I may have done some folly work for these games, but no voice overs that
were not place holders that I remember. My role in these two games was much more of
a “support staff” position. During the production of these two games the teams were
working around the clock, especially the testers near the end.
They had sleeping bags under their desks, and fast food when they could get a break.
I would cook up a crock pot full of Beef Burgundy or chili and a batch of mint brownies
and bring them a home cooked meal. I was also a ride to the airport, or someone to pick
up needed things and deliver them to the office. I do not know if it is still the same,
as I have been out of the business for some time, but those men and women worked hard,
round the clock to produce a great game against a huge deadline to get the games done
in time to be manufactured for release.

Q)I'd like to ask about your involvement in Beyond Games 'Redline'
(AKA...Gang Warfare 2066) on PC, something over-looked by many, but to
myself the spirtual follow up to Lynx Battlewheels, espically given
the fact the Jaguar update never really got beyond concepts for the
game, few 3D models etc.

(A)My part in Redline was very similar to the other voice acting jobs. They gave me a script
and a character description and I recorded the tracks in the home studio.  

Q)This wouldn't be an interview of mine if i didn't ask:Have you ever
been involved in any 'lost games' (any system) that you can tell us
about?

(A)My contract does not allow me to talk about all the work on lost games.

___________________________________________________________________

 

Q) Ted, please, for the benefit of our readers, be so kind as to
introduce yourself and give us a little background history on your
good self :

A) My name is Ted Tahquechi, I started working in the games industry
out of college in the late 1980’s. My first job was a tester at Atari
Corp in Sunnyvale Ca. There I tested many of the Lynx games as well as
some of the ST and Falcon games. While at Atari I worked my way up the
ranks out of the test department and into the development side. I held
the titles of Associate Producer, Producer and finally Senior Producer.
I was responsible for completing some of the later Lynx games, Falcon
games and Jaguar games. The role of the Producer was to oversee all
aspects of the development of a game from concept and design through
development and delivery. Towards the end of the Atari era I departed
and worked for Accolade in San Jose Ca. and then I worked with Mattel
Toys for their electronics division where I was responsible for Hot Wheels
branded games.

Q)I'd like to ask about Kasumi Ninja, if i may?.A title which changed
drastically from what appeared to be a pretty generic looking 2D
fighter in the very early screen shots shown to the UK Press, into
something that seemed to be Atari's answer to needing a Street Fighter
2/Mortal kombat 2 type game on the Jaguar, which also showcased the
machines impressive 2D abilities in terms of parallax scrolling, use
of colour, high resolution backdrops etc, but appeared rushed in true
Atari style, in order to get product on the shelf.

A) Before I go any further, you need to know that I won’t be throwing
anyone under the bus in this interview (sorry), nor will I name names
or place blame in any way. These are my personal observations and
recollections from the years I spent at Atari Corp. If you are looking
for blame or gossip , there is ample information and other interviews
which cover the shortcomings of the Jaguar hardware and the missteps
in the business practices at Atari Corp. Now that I have that off my chest,
here we go…

You are right on target with your observations about Kasumi Ninja, but before
I answer your specific question, lets talk about the state of the games industry,
the Jaguar and Atari Corp. at that time.  

From the early prototype days of the Jaguar console hardware, Atari management
always had the direction that the Jaguar should (as you would expect) stand toe
to toe with any console in the market, and have a compelling line of triple A titles.
There was always a conscious effort to provide variety in the types of games being
developed for the Jaguar so that the customer could find something they recognized
(arcade adaptations) as well as something new and unique to play. As you well know,
the Jaguar was primarily a cartridge based console, at least until the release of
the CD drive,  releasing titles on cartridge has an inherently long lead time compared
to titles released on CD. In order to ensure holiday delivery of titles to retail
stores, most games would have to be code final by the end of July which gave ample
time for manufacture of the cartridges before a November retail availability.
This hard date meant that games that went Release Candidate (RC) after July were
not going to make retail availability for Christmas. With this in mind, the rush
to market in many of the titles might make a bit more sense. In my experience, this
hard date coupled with the immaturity of the Jaguar development environment led to
a lot of the Jaguars early titles being rushed to market before their time.
Development issues and time were not the only problems plaguing the Jaguar
however, there was a large desire and movement internally to sign certain top
tier titles to the console, as the presence of these titles were a checkbox for
many consumers considering the purchase of a new console. Unfortunately,
because of the state of the development environment for the Jaguar, many developers
would require budgets that were out of the scope of consideration by management,
and those that did sign shortly thereafter ceased development due to - in numerous
cases the lack of technical support from Atari.  

During these years in the games industry, fighting games were a hot commodity
for any console. The presence of a top tier fighter and a top tier sports title
could certainly ensure a successful console.  As for Kasumi Ninja, the lack of
a fighting game of any kind was hurting the Jaguar so the decision was made to
push the title to market sooner than it should have been. In any game, especially
fighting games balance is essential for a good play experience for the customer.
In a fighting game, each move should have a counter and the ability of the player
to complete the counter to any attack is a fine balance of skill for the player to
hit the proper combination of buttons  (up, down, forward + A as an example) and timing.
In the rush to market, Kasumi Ninja did not have nearly as much time as I would have
liked in this crucial balancing phase. Towards the end of any project, art and SFX
that were intended as placeholders generally get replaced or updated, this was not
the case for Kasumi Ninja in many respects. Graphically, there was a lot of “it is
good enough” decisions that were made to hit the hard date for retail availability.
This game like most of the Jaguar titles could have done with another six or nine
months of tuning and polish before being released to retail.

Sorry if that was a long answer, I felt that the context surrounding some of the decisions were important.

Q) Could you detail the development process for the game and what hurdles
you had to overcome? for example rumour had it you had something of a
struggle with Atari, to get the cartridge size you needed for the
game....and also IF the game lived up to your initial vision for it and
what further play testing could of addressed...sluggish controls
rectified perhaps?.

A)This title was being done by an external developer in the UK, so day to
day development for Kasumi Ninja for me revolved around constant contact
with the developer ensuring feedback and implementation of new features
were being completed on schedule. Constant review of budgetary concerns and
“feature creep” are an overwhelming portion of day to day producer responsibility.

Cartridge size as I remember it was not really an issue, the higher resolution
images have to have space to live on a cartridge and compression of the asset
catalog can only take you so far before artifacting is present and unacceptable.
The biggest concern for moving to larger cartridge size was of course per-unit
cost increase. My vision for the title was quite a bit different than the one
that was shipped. With any title in development there is a finite budget and
this budget has to be spread across not only the actual programming of the game,
but the creation of the assets for the title. Development costs, and adding more
team members to the title to ensure a holiday retail delivery meant that sacrifices
needed to be made in the talent used for the creation of the in-game characters.
Many non-martial artists had to be used for the characters and this made the
overall look of the characters and the playability suffer in my opinion.
At the end of the day, the developer had never been involved in a fighting game,
and programmatically the sluggish controls for the game were a marked improvement
over their initial implementation, but still were lacking in the quick responsiveness
that any fighting game requires. Testing time would not have helped make the title
better, but overhauling the routines for the controls and refining the timing for
execution of many of the moves would have gone a long way to making the title stronger.
Some would be quick to blame the controller hardware and that the combination of
the switches used and the lacking ergonomic design of the controller would never
lead to a compelling quick response gameplay experience that a fighting game requires.
I however am a firm believer in working with what you have and getting the job done,
and I believe that given a reasonable amount of additional development time in the
polish and tuning phase the game could have been more playable than it ended up being.  

Q)Moving onto Cybermorph, which for many of us was something of a
mixed bag, impressed by the morphing craft, free-roaming nature of the
game, imressive Gourad Shaded landscapes etc, but surprised by the
ugly design on buildings etc which felt out of place, no in-game
music, somewhat abrasive sound fx (sorry) and repetive speech
(something made worse when Atari reduced cart size to 1 MB for in-game
pack on later releases).

Also, navigation was made difficult by lack of a compass or map.

I expect pressure was on to get game ready for launch, but i've always
wondered just how much focus, resource wise was given to the sound FX,
as Atari had been making a big deal out of Jaguars CD-Quality sound
and powerful sound hardware, yet this game lacked in-game music (as
did Doom later) and i wonder if this was because of hardware
limitations (DSP busy doing other tasks) or other factors in play?

A) I didn’t actually have a lot to do with Cybermorph. As an early title
like you mentioned the time crunch for launch was tough on all the titles.
Cybermorph as I remember was a technical demo that got morphed into a
launch title… if you will excuse the pun. Cartridge size and the state of
the development environment like all titles was a huge concern.
The addition of any sound was tough for developers, and I remember that the
development team needed a few sounds to fill in as their budget for SFX was
done. I could not tell you which ones were done by me at the time, I think a
select sound or something was about it. The voice was done by the wife of the
programmer if I remember correctly. Other than contributing a sound or two I
could not tell you the details of this particular title.  

Q) Also, were you aware of the games origins on the ill-fated Atari
Panther i wonder?

If so (very long shot) do you know how far along the Panther version got?

A) If I remember correctly the Panther version was the technical demo that
eventually became Cybermorph. Other than that I was asked not to discuss the
Panther hardware.

Q)You've worked on a number of Jaguar titles that often seem to split
people right down the middle, in terms of opinion, Cybermorph, Kasumi
Ninja, Dino Dudes etc) with those in favor appearing to 'appreciate'
what was being attempted, whilst those against seemingly expecting a
lot more from a 64 Bit System, so i would like to hear your personal
views on whether you feel Atari really 'over-played' the 64 Bit
marketing aspect with the Jaguar and in effect really created a rod
for their own back, as they didn’t have the resources in terms of
funds or teams, let alone development tools, to compete on level
playing field with sega, Nintendo, Sony etc.

A)This is a bit of a philosophical question, and has a lot to do
with the overall performance of the games industry during the transition
from one “bit” platform to another.  When you look at the PS2 and the
Super NES compared to their predecessors, you see significant advances
in console power and graphics, but also execution of the titles.
The teams and management that made the 8-bit consoles built on an
infrastructure of implementation knowledge and a maturing set of
development tools. It was the overall execution of the titles that
made the 16-bit consoles compelling to customers, the games looked
better and played better. The Jaguar didn’t have this history of
completed titles and existing development teams in place when
development on the first round of titles began. Making matters worse,
the developers struggled with the tools required to program the
Jaguar games. Often, while working on the earlier games, the programmers
could not sort out whether a bug they were seeing was in the hardware
or the immature development environment tools. Many of the developers
ended up ditching the tools shipped by Atari and writing their own
development suite for the Jaguar before actually starting on the
scheduled title.

Many of the teams that worked on the early Jaguar games were coming
from the handheld Lynx development which had a vastly different
development environment and graphical expectations. The Jaguar was
jumping into the 64 bit deep end of the pool without learning how
to swim first. Getting Lynx titles out the door was important, but
it wasn’t critical like it was when the Jaguar hit the market.
It keeps coming back to time, and giving the Jaguar the time it
needed to get the first round of titles where they needed to be,
and even more importantly the development environment time to mature
was not as important as getting the first 64-bit console to market.
Consumers expected games that were graphically a quantum leap ahead
of the 16-bit market, and equally mature from a gameplay standpoint.
The Jaguar had the hardware but the execution and title selection was
just not there.

Q)As a tester on likes of Raiden and Crescent Galaxy, BOTH previously
planned for earlier Atari Systems (Raiden The falcon and Crescent
Galaxy The Panther) did it strike you as Atari simply desperate to
have a mix of titles ready for launch, no matter how they'd of been
received/how little they made of the true potential of the Jaguar?

A) I cannot speak to the decisions about which titles were planned for
specific platforms, but from a licensing and development standpoint,
it makes sense to leverage licenses you have already paid for and
amortize work across as many platforms as possible. Variety of titles
is one of the keys to console success, so I would imagine planning to
put as many different kinds of titles on any platform would have been
a priority.

Q) Also similar to earlier question, were you aware of Crescent Galaxy
having started out on the Atari Panther? IF so, any information you
had on the Panther version would be most welcome.

A)Crescent Galaxy was a title developed internally at Atari Corp.
While I cannot speak to specific titles or plans for the Panther,
it would make sense that an internal team would be involved in
developing software for a new platform.

Q)I'd like to enquire about the stunning work done on producing the
sound effects for:Tempest 2000 and Iron solider 1 and 2, in terms of
what sort of 'brief' you were given....i.e just how much free reign
you were given to produce the effects you thought suited the games and
how you worked with the people doing the graphics, same applies really
to Dino Dudes...anything you can share on the working relationship
between codes, artists and yourself would be fantastic.

A) At any given time I was overseeing development of five to ten titles
on the Jaguar, Lynx, PC or other platform while I worked at Atari Corp.
Time, budgets and resources were strained so we tended to help each other
out where we could. I had a background in sound design and Foley work
as well as extensive experience in voice over work, so I would work all
day at Atari then come home and work late into the night on SFX and VO
requirements for the games. SFX for me is an iterative process,
I would ask the developer to implement the sound then review how it
sounded in the game environment and tweak accordingly until it was right.
Most of the time SFX would be preliminary until the later stages of the
projects so I had a chance to play the games and really be able to tune
the sounds until they were right.

Q)Sticking with the area of SFX in games, is it often seen as a lesser
area of importance by marketing etc i wonder? they love flashy still
shots, video sequences as it's all eye candy, but the area of audio, i
find is often treated as a second class citizen and unfairly so.

A) I completely agree with your assessment on this. Audio is a lot
like graphic art, many people don’t really know what needs to be
done to something to make it great, but they know what great is when
they see it, or in this case hear it. Bad audio like bad art sticks
out like a sore thumb. Audio as a whole is just another asset of a
game, but focusing more of the development budget on audio can do as
much for a title as spending more on better art. When asked how
important SFX and Music really are to a project, I just ask the person
to watch a movie like Star Wars without the sound on.   

Q)You've been producer i believe on many a Jaguar title:Skyhammer
(another flagship Jaguar title), Iron Solider 2 (ditto), Highlander,
I-War etc etc.

Could you talk us through just what the 'role' of producer actually
involved and what that role was like, working within the confines of
Atari? for example did you have the resources you asked for/needed to
do what you felt needed to be done, in terms of making the games
happen, be marketed properly etc?

A) Game companies do things differently, here is the way it worked at
Atari for the role of Producer:

The Producer role is easily described as Project Manager.
I was responsible for overseeing a project from start to finish.
In the early days of a project, it is very common to come up with
the concept for the game, create the budget and interview
prospective developers. The early stages of a project are the easiest
to see a game killed before it starts, becoming an advocate for the
project and getting management on your side for initial approval is
a critical step.  It is also at this phase that you give marketing
the chance to add input for features or concepts.

Once the idea is a go, and the development team has been chosen,
securing development equipment (development consoles etc.) and
starting the full design work begins. Once the design is completed
you work with the development team to trim out features that don’t
work within the development timeframe and budget.
This will allow the team to determine  an initial deliverables
(milestone) schedule, and get to work on the game.

The middle of the project is always the toughest; waiting for first
playable demos and getting the engine completed always seems to take
forever. Once you are at first playable, getting others involved for
a second or third set of eyes is always a good plan. The first playable
version of the game gives you an opportunity to scrutinize the teams
work and initial implementation practices.
It is at this stage where you have to take a long hard look at the
demo and compare it to the design. It is here that you determine the
design elements that need to be altered or cut and look into your
crystal ball to see whether the team is really capable of completing
the title with the current design in the expected timeframe and budget.

During the time between builds of the game, keeping marketing and
management hyped on the title is always of utmost importance as well.  
After first playable, the Producer keeps a vigilant eye on the progress
of the team and helps where possible. Alpha follows quickly in many
cases after first playable, this is where the title is feature complete
but chocked full of bugs and the teams really start cranking out the game
content and levels etc. Generally at Alpha is where the press starts
seeing first glimpses of the gameplay with the caveat that there are lots
of placeholder art, sounds, levels etc. Alpha is usually where the first
round of screenshots are delivered to the press, this may explain why
early shots of games can be so radically different than the final product.   

During the Alpha phase, another important job is working with marketing to
develop box art, packaging, and all the marketing materials. Making sure
marketing has the materials they need to complete their portion before the
game was released was sometimes a bit of a balancing act.

The second longest part of the process for me is the time from being feature
complete to Beta or release candidate. This is where all the tuning, testing,
polish and shine go into the title. As an external producer, I found myself
literally living at the developer for weeks at a time helping them to resolve
bugs or gameplay issues.  

Getting the title done on time and on budget and just doing what it takes to
get the title finished becomes the mantra of a Producer. Throughout the process
there is ample opportunity for adding to the project if there is a strength you
have, whether it be in art, sound or level design.

From start to finish during the development of any title, first and foremost
the role of the producer is cheerleader for your product. If at any time you
lose faith in your developer or the team working for you, this will instill
doubt in the likelihood of completing the product.  So even when things are
rough and the tools aren’t working and you are over budget keeping the
“they can do it” attitude was vital.

Q) Also do you feel developers like Imagitec were 'better' suited to
conversion work for Atari, as at least then the games actually
appeared, where as in cases like Freelancer  and Space Junk (Jaguar
CD) they switched formats (Mega CD, Falcon, Jaguar in case of Space
Junk, Jaguar, PS1 etc for Freelancer) and still never seemed to get
very far....word has it screens of Freelancer were from PC not actual
Jaguar screens.I ask as I-War was only original title (off top of my
head) from them on Jaguar.

A) Sorry not going into specific developer relations in this interview.

Q)What was your involvement with Defender 2000?.I have to ask as i
bought the game on day 1 after loving Tempest 2000 and came away
rather disappointed. The bonus rounds were disappointing, the 2K Mode
had a horrible, over-sized main ship, garish visuals etc and i know
atari had planned for it to be on CD and thought as such it should
have huge sprites and Jeff was going through a tough patch, life wise,
but again it chalks up as Atari miss-handling yet another key game.

A) Other than playing it a bunch during the development process I didn’t
have any involvement with Defender 2000.

Q)It often appeared to myself that in terms of Jaguar Games, Atari
were at times doing little more than cloning popular titles on other
systems, so Cheq.Flag 2 was the answer to Sega's Virtua Racing, Fight
For Life the answer to Virtua Fighter/Tekken etc and thus Highlander
was the systems answer to Alone In The Dark and Dino Dudes the answer
to Lemmings etc.Now as far as A) 2D titles, this wasn't such a bad
move, but when it came to texture-mapped 3D, the Jaguar wasn't simply
cut out for it.... and B)Would it not of been better for Atari to push
for more showcase original titles to make the Jaguar stand out?

A) There was a lot of “title-X” is popular, we need one of those too, at Atari.
As I said earlier, the big titles like Mortal Kombat and the like are system
sellers so often the decision was made to make a “title-X” killer, but the
budget for a triple A title was just not available and the time for development
of a triple A title did not work with the operating budget. Making a great title
takes a lot off time and passion from the team and support from the management,
however the times when the big budget was authorized did not work out well for
Atari so they got a bit apprehensive to big titles. This limited developer
selection to small to medium houses with very limited development times and budgets.
As for ports of existing titles versus original titles, focus testing and marketing
surveys led the powers that be to the decision that original titles were not as
profitable as a port of existing title, or sequel to an existing Jaguar title.

Q)If they had, we might of seen a release as planned of Skyhammer and
Iron Solider 2, Black Ice/White Noise being finished etc.

A) I agree about Skyhammer and IS2, as for Black Ice, you would need
to talk to BJ West about that ;-)

Q)It simply seemed as if Atari was knee-jerk reacting to newer, more
powerful threats...ie Jaguar having been designed to take on
SNES/MD/3DO now found itself facing Playstation and Saturn....i'd love
to hear any stories from yourself regarding how Atari viewed the
threat of CD based 32 Bit hardware from Sega+Sony, what pressures they
put on you/your teams and if they really knew just how bad the outcome
of trying to compete would be.

A) Producing the best games possible within the time constraints and
budgets we were given was always the direction we received. There was
always a lot of animosity toward top tier developers that would decide
to not work with Atari, this added a lot more pressure on the development
teams both internal and external to produce triple A titles on a
shoestring budget, immature development tools and little to no technical
support for developers. It was pretty apparent where we were in the
market during the last couple years there. As a last ditch attempt at
saving the Jaguar, management brought in “axemen”  to trim staff for
a leaner workforce and “specialists” to get things back on track.
The end result of these actions was to add excessive delays, approvals
and checkpoints to an already time-strained process of making games.
At the end of the day, with the lack of triple A titles it was clear
the Jaguar could not stand toe to toe with the competition.  

Q) Also, was Atari 'aware' of the consumer etc damage it'd done by
previous miss-handling of hardware, when it came to the Jaguar?.Things
like the 7800, STE being too little, too late, the XEGS being a poorly
conceived idea from the start, the 5200 fiasco etc etc?

then there was the developer trust..telling them to code for Panther,
scrapping that saying, no code for Jaguar.......

A) I can’t really speak to what management was or was not aware of
in that respect. sorry.

Q)You were product development manager for the Atari Lynx range at 1
point if my info is correct, many people have wondered what ever
became of titles like Cabal, 720, Vindicators, Rolling Thunder etc and
even if screens in some cases were even real.Any information on these
or other lost Panther/Lynx/Jaguar titles would be most appreciated.

A)Cabal, 720, and Vindicators were in development, but I believe were
not a top priority for the developer. I had seen all but Rolling Thunder
at one point or another in their development. When i moved out of the
testing department and took over duties as an associate producer I was
assigned many of the old Lynx titles, they called me “the finisher”…
You didn’t mention Kasumi Ninja 2, Cyber Golf, Legion of the Undead… or
even Uncle Oswald’s Invention… These were all titles I worked on for the
Jaguar!

Q) Also there were claims Tiertex were converting (for US Gold) Rotox,
Strider 2, Italia'90 and Leaderboard.Did you ever hear such claims i
wonder?

A)Not that I can confirm.

Q)I personally think Atari did a lot of damage by promising, but failing
to deliver key Lynx titles such as the above, plus it was a massive
missed opportunity not to have finished AVP on Lynx and had a joint AVP
Lynx/Jaguar bundle with Jaguar+AVP, in with Lynx and AVP and ability
to use Lynx in Jaguar AVP as a motion tracker...Atari never seemed to
see the potential in such things.

A) I agree, but I think you have to understand the mindset at the time.
Direction from management was very forward thinking and once the sights
had been set on the Jaguar, everything Lynx was put on the back burner.
Even though the Lynx was a very capable handheld machine, it lacked the
top tier titles to survive against Nintendo and Sega. Unfortunately the
Jaguar and Lynx seemed to share the same fate and lack of titles to have
been able to really compete in a very crowded marketplace.

Q)Also you were producer on the stunning Lynx version of Steel Talons,
which shamed the sega MD version, would you of ideally of liked to
convert a lot more coin-ops to Lynx? if so which ones?

A) I loved the Lynx, and was ultimately the reason I decided to accept
the job at Atari Corp. One of the fondest memories I have of working at
Atari is playing eight player Slime World at lunch with the whole test
crew. I am also a huge fan of classic arcade games. I would have loved
to port games like sinistar, Defender, Tempest, Bump and Jump, Spy Hunter
or Moon Cresta to the Lynx.  

Q)As  a producer, what was your relationship like with:A)The Press
(As a lost games researcher, i find they made so much up it was
unreal) and B)3rd party developers/publishers, in terms of gaining
support for Atari?.I ask as based on comments i made above, many
seemed wary of trusting anything Atari said unless it was seen in
person.

A) I like to think I had a good working relationship with the press
the entire time I was in the games industry. I was always honest and
forthcoming with whatever I was allowed to talk about with them.
In the day, the press were seeing a whole lot of games and many of
them were courted pretty heavily by the marketing departments in the
hopes of swaying a review here and there for a game that was… shall
we say less than great. At trade shows I was required to demo the
games for the press and at any and all events I was responsible for
discussing and answering questions about my titles.

I was responsible for external development of mostly original titles so
I was not part of  negotiations or relations with 3rd party developers
or publishers, however I would say that your assessment of the situation
is fairly accurate.

Q)Any other stories from your time at Atari you could share with us?

A) I loved working at Atari Corp and appreciate them giving me the chance
to break into the industry and become successful. I learned more about
product development from my boss John Skruch during my time at Atari than
I did from anyone, anywhere I have worked. During the early years the entire
crew was like a family and all worked together as a team toward a common goal.

With all the years there I should put all the stories and details down for
all to read… maybe someday.

Thank you for the opportunity to voice my experiences, hopefully I didn’t
bore your readers too much!  I am always willing to sit down and talk with
anyone who will listen… and buy me a drink.
Ted Tahquechi