90 | RETRO GAMER
We note you were never asked to write tips about
food storage.
You mean keeping burgers in my desk drawer? [Giggles]
I still do that. It’s the only way to get them just right... it
started off as a necessity and I turned it into an art form.It also led to your nickname, ‘Burger’, which
started out as an insult, but you seem to have
embraced it.
I had a personal reason for that. I’m transgender,
so I had a different name back then and I hated it.
I knew it was only a pen name and I’d drop it one
day. I always knew my real name was Rebecca but
I couldn’t tell anybody. Back in the Eighties, coming
out as transgender was an automatic firing offenceIf we challenged you to a game of Space Invaders
on the Atari 2600, who would win?
[Laughs]. I would destroy you. I won the national Space
Invaders championship in 1980 when I had just turned- If it wasn’t for that contest, my life would be vastly
different. I would probably have gone into retail or gotten
a factory job.
Videogame designer was not on your radar then?
I really wanted to be a train driver! I did have a part-time
job before that tournament repairing videogames at
the Electric Planet Arcade in Montebello, California. I
was opening up cabinets, replacing chips, diagnosing
problems, moving machines... those things were heavy!Didn’t you win a Missile Command cabinet as
your prize?
Yes, but I actually wanted to win the second prize, an
Atari 800, which came with a printer, disk drive and a
bunch of games. If I’d come second, I’m pretty sure I
would have developed games for that computer, not the
Apple II, which I already had at home.After that victory, you ended up writing tips
for Electronic Games magazine, the first US
publication of its kind.
When I won the tournament, I was immediately
swamped by journalists from Time magazine,
Newsweek, the New York Times and lots of others...
I had interviews with national TV networks. I had my
15 minutes of fame! In the crowd was Arnie Katz, Bill
Kunkel and Joyce Whorley and they’d just created this
new magazine. They thought it would be cool to get
me, a ‘champion’, to write articles about how to beat
videogames. I said yes because I didn’t know any better.Her four decades in the games business have seen Rebecca
Heineman go through big changes both on and off-screen. She
tells Retro Gamer about bards, burgers and becoming Becky
Words by Paul DruryREBECCA HEINEMAN
Dubbed ‘Burger’ due to
her penchant for storing
hamburgers in her desk
drawer and feasting on them
during coding sessions,
Rebecca Heineman began
messing about with her
Apple II in the late Seventies
and even created a custom
cable to copy Atari 2600
cartridges. Her hacking
skills led to coding jobs
with Avalon Hill and Boone
Corporation, and she was
one of the four founders of
Interplay, creators of such
titles as Wasteland and The
Bard’s Tale series. She went
on to work at EA on big
name franchises like Medal
of Honor and currently heads
up Old Sküül, an
all-female games dev
team, which includes her
wife Jennell Jaquays. Visit
oldskuul.com to see their
remakes of Descent, Battle
Chess and Lord British’s
debut, Akalabeth.»^ [SNES] Becky worked on many FPS titles, including the SNES version of the daddy
of them all, Wolfenstein 3D.