What initially attracted you to computer games?
Well, it was 1979, and I was a sophomore in high school. The first computer that I ever
got a chance to play with was the PDP-11 that we had in our high school. But it was very
hard to get any time on it, and the teacher who was in charge wouldn’t let the students
read the manuals, for fear that would give us the ability to go in and change grades and
stuff like that. So it was this guessing game of trying to learn how to get the computer to
do anything. So when a friend of mine showed me his new Apple II, it was just like a
dream come true — to have a computer in your own house that you could use when-
ever you wanted. And it was completely open; you could pop open the top and see how
it was made and you could read all the manuals that came with it. And of course, the
irony was that at that time I didn’t know of any manuals that explained assembly lan-
guage. So I was just kind of looking through the assembly code of the computer’s
operating system to try to figure out what the different commands meant. Over the
years I picked that up, and more books came out. It was just this great toy.
Did you always want to make games with the computer?
Well, I guess games were the only kind of software that I knew. They were the only kind
that I enjoyed. At that time, I didn’t really see any use for a word processor or a spread-
sheet. I played all the games that I could find, and in my spare time I tried to write
games of my own. That was just the first use that occurred to me.
So that was the origin ofKarateka?
It took a few years to get there. The first really ambitious project I did was a game called
Asteroids. That was my attempt to do forAsteroidswhat a game calledApple Invaders
had done for the other most popular coin-op game of the time. I figured that ifApple
Invaderswas a big hit because it was exactly like the coin-op game, then I could do the
same thing forAsteroids. But my timing was a little off. I actually finished an assembly
language, high-resolution version ofAsteroidsand signed a deal with a publisher. But
just about then Atari woke up to the fact that these computer games were ripping off its
hugely profitable arcade franchises, so their lawyers scared everybody off and that
Asteroidsgame was never published.
So then you didKarateka?
No, then I did a game that bore a strong resemblance toAsteroidsexcept that instead of
rocks you had brightly colored bouncing balls, and instead of wrapping around the edge
of the screen they bounced off, hence its name:Deathbounce. I sent it to Broderbund
(this was 1982, I was a freshman in college) and got a call back from Doug Carlston, who
was at the time handling submissions as well as running the company. I was very
excited to get a call from someone in the computer games industry. He said, “It looks
like it’s well programmed, we’re impressed with the smoothness of the animation and
so on. But it feels kind of old-fashioned. Take a look at our new game,Choplifter.” Doug
was kind enough to send me a copy of Dan Gorlin’sChoplifter, which was the number
one selling game at the time, along with a joystick to play it with. That was the game
that really woke me up to the idea that I didn’t have to copy someone else’s arcade
games, I was allowed to design my own!
Chapter 18: Interview: Jordan Mechner 321