Between 1984-85, you produced a trio of
adventure games, which pioneered a kind of
point-and-click interface, yet you don’t tend to get
any credit for developing that whole genre.
I’m glad you noticed! Mind Shadow, Borrowed Time and
The Tracer Sanction did well for Interplay and brought in
some money to keep us going in those early years, but
we never got the kind of press Sierra did. Once they did
a deal with IBM to do King’s Quest and they used that to
push the PC Junior, King’s Quest became a household
name. They advertised everywhere and we didn’t.
You also collaborated with Mike and Muffy Berlyn
on Tas s Time s in Tonetown. Were you a fan of
their Infocom adventures?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I’d always wanted to work with
them and that project was a dream job. Working with
[them], coming up with game concepts, the wackiness
of the game, the jokes we put in. I remember the tagline,
‘The closest thing to a drug trip without taking drugs.’
You seemed keen to experiment in that game.
Oh, I pioneered a lot of things in my time, like open
world RPGs, point-and-click adventures, multistage
animation, using a mouse with text adventures. Heck,
even in Bard’s Tale on the Apple IIGS, if you equip a new
instrument, the music changes.
We’d call that a dynamic soundtrack nowadays!
It’s like I’m the first esports champion with Space
Invaders before Billy Mitchell and Donkey Kong, then
many years later, he does all the press and people think
he’s the first.
You mentioned The Bard’s Tale. How did you
come to be involved in that series?
Brian [Fargo] had a childhood buddy called Michael
Cranford and he’d done Maze Master, which was
essentially Bard’s Tale-lite. Brian talked him into
becoming an independent contractor, because Cranford
had no desire to become an employee of anybody, so
he did a deal – he’d do the game logic and then use my
tools and Interplay staff to do the art. We all contributed
things like storyline to flesh out the game and
Interplay had some standing by this time, so we
could do a deal with Electronic Arts. Back then,
getting in bed with EA was a gravy train. If they
sold your game, you were almost guaranteed
massive sales. It was going to be ‘win-win’.So what happened?
Over time, I started complaining about stuff
in the game design. For one, Cranford didn’t
have any female characters at all. He said to
me, ‘Girls don’t play these games’. I thought,
‘Ooh, if you only knew!’ Later on, he fell out
with Brian Fargo and ended up doing Bard’s
Tale II pretty much on his own.But you take back control for the third
instalment and that game is a real
technical step up for the series.
I brought in automapping, new classes, modern
weapons... I even wrote a scripting language so I could
pack more in. The Bard’s Tale III is three times larger
than its predecessor but only takes up one more disk.And you introduce female characters!
I did that for me. I wanted to play as a female character
and I didn’t want to be told women didn’t play these
games. I swapped gender roles, too, so the villains
could be women, not just men. I also added people
of colour because I wanted to be inclusive. I was well
aware of the issue of white privilege and I wanted to do
something about it.You carry on innovating with Dragon Wars (1989),
which was supposed to be the fourth instalment
of the series but required a late name change to
avoid a dispute with EA. You seem to be trying to
create an ‘open world’ game before that term had
really been coined.
That’s right. My favourite memory of Dragon Wars is
reading two different reviews. They both said they loved
the game and described some of the adventures they
went through... and they both wrote totally differentthings! The sad part is that we didn’t advertise it properly
and because we had to start a new franchise and not call
it The Bard’s Tale IV as we’d intended, that hurt sales.You also worked on Wasteland, which relocated
The Bard’s Tale style of RPG to a world after a
devastating nuclear war.
Don’t forget the film Mad Max came out in 1984
and that was the inspiration, with the look of Ultima.
Everyone was doing fantasy at the time so this post-
apocalyptic world with desert rangers was something
different. That game was Mike Stackpole, Ken St Andre
and Liz Danforth who came up with stories and game
design and they used my graphics tools. Plus when it got
to the photoshoot, they used my gun collection!We read in an old interview that you always
wanted to do Wasteland 2 and of course that
game did eventually get made in 2014. Were you
asked to work on it?
I was not approached. I would’ve liked to have worked
on but I wasn’t surprised Brian [Fargo] didn’t askFIVE TO PLAY
DRAGON WARS
QAfter some sterling work on
The Bard’s Tale series, especially
the third instalment, Becky helped
bring a more open world feel to
this role-playing games, allowing
hardy adventurers to craft their
own path through this expansive
game world.TASS TIMES IN
TONETOWN
QA collaboration with Mike and
Muffy Berlyn of Infocom fame, this
surreal tale of animal mash-ups
and punk hairdos is an early
example of the point-and-click’
genre. Look out for a full Making
Of piece in a future issue.Games from Burger Becky’s back
catalogue you should check outLONDON BLITZ
QThe Atari 2600 was notoriously
difficult to code for but Rebecca’s
intimate knowledge of its inner
workings allowed her to push
the machine, as seen in this
ambitious, if flawed, effort which
features multiple modes and
pseudo-3D presentaiton.
BORROWED TIME
QOf the trio of adventure games
Becky coded in the mid-Eighties,
this is our favourite. The tale
of private dick Sam Harlow’s
investigations in the New
York underworld is witty and
atmospheric, with impressive
visuals and a clever parser.OUT OF THIS
WORLD
QYou may know it as Another
World and you may well have
first played it on the SNES, a
conversion that Becky is especially
proud of. It’s worth looking at her
3DO port, too, which includes
some lovely visual flourishes.»^ Though never released, Becky held on to the box for
Final Eclipse on C64.RETRO GAMER | 93IN THE CHAIR: REBECCA HEINEMAN