20 - RealSound™ and Voice Characterisations

08 Nov 2019 — Filed in: Season 3 | Episodes

A screenshot of Dark Castle (Mac, 1986) showing the Fireball 1 level.

How a quest to put sound in an early Mac game helped usher in a revolution in computer game audio design and production.

Features interviews with tech entrepreneur Charlie Jackson and former Adobe and Microsoft executive Eric Zocher, who together co-founded 1980s software company Silicon Beach Software — a pioneer in creative software tools and desktop publishing, as well as the publisher of several popular games (two of which we cover here: Airborne and the original Mac version of Dark Castle).
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Tags: silicon beach, dark castle, airborne, eric zocher, charlie jackson, mark stephen pierce, jonathan gay, mac, 1980s, music, sound, audio design, voice acting, dick noel

Bonus: Game devs on the impact of the original Mac

02 Feb 2019 — Filed in: Interviews

For any of you who aren't aware, last week was the 35th anniversary of the release of the original Mac. I published a Medium article to celebrate the milestone, and here now you can listen to an audio version of that. It's 14 current and former game developers talking about the early Macintosh computer and how it inspired them to make something insanely great.

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Tags: game design, mac, rand miller, robyn miller, the colony, david alan smith, scott kim, tony goodman, bill appleton, macpaint, glenda adams, the manhole, darrell myers, roy harvey, eric zocher, silicon beach, charlie jackson, lisa computer, 1984, ben haller, brian thomas, if monks had macs, gordon walton, secret history of mac gaming