Atari Gauntlet, APB, IJ Temple Doom Creator - Alan Murphy - Live Chat at 3pm EST

[rotheblog]

Alan Murphy, who had a hand in developing APB, Gauntlet, and Indiana Jones Temple of Doom at Atari, is going to be doing a live chat at Coinopspace.com today (August 8th) at 3pm EST.  Alan has worked in the gaming industry for quite some time, working for both Sega and EA and even helped port / develop a number of games for Atari's 2600 and 5200 consoles.

For a full list of the console games, as well as a link to his full game creation credits, visit the event posting.

http://www.coinopspace.com/events/creator-chat-alan-murphy

The hope is that we'll have specific questions about the games he worked on, remote details, thoughts about the development, whatever it may be....but coming from collectors who love those specific games he developed.  Submit all your questions here;

http://www.coinopspace.com/forum/topics/questions-for-alan-murphy

For a little more about Alan, if you haven't heard of him, and even his work on Atari console games, check out my post;

http://www.rotheblog.com/2009/07/arcade/alan-murphy-live-chat-at-coinopspace-august-8th-2009/

Also would like to hear feedback afterwards if you attend, how it can be better, and who you might like to see in future chats;

http://www.coinopspace.com/forum/topics/arcade-creators-for-chat

~Jeff

[retrometro]

I never got the full story but I met this guy Jack (I forget his last name) that used to work at netscape that claimed that he developed Gauntlet at MIT by networking four 8bit atari computers together for his thesis.  Supposedly Atari bought it from him or the school and he didn't get too much money from it.

Later, he made quite a bit of money from writing ports of Gauntlet for other systems in the 80's.  Here's a photo of him in December 1996.  Can anyone verify any of this?

[tcleary]

is there a transcript?  can't seem to find one on the site.

[retrometro]

I never got the full story but I met this guy Jack (I forget his last name) that used to work at netscape that claimed that he developed Gauntlet at MIT by networking four 8bit atari computers together for his thesis.  Supposedly Atari bought it from him or the school and he didn't get too much money from it.

Later, he made quite a bit of money from writing ports of Gauntlet for other systems in the 80's.  Here's a photo of him in December 1996.  Can anyone verify any of this?

Ah.  Apparently there was a lawsuit.  I guess after all these years, he is still asserting that he created Gauntlet.  At the time he told me he even had the same character names but I don't know if that was in his original MIT version or the later version he released.

The last I heard of him was leaving Netscape in the 90's to work at WebTV.


http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/50

from the wiki:
Origin dispute

Controversy came after the release of the game in the arcade and its subsequent port to the Nintendo Entertainment System. Ed Logg, the creator of Asteroids and Centipede is credited for Original Game Design of Gauntlet in the arcade version, as well as the 1987 NES release version. After its release, John Palevich threatened a lawsuit, asserting that the original concept for the game was from Dandy (later Dandy Dungeon), a game for the Atari 800 computer written by Palevich in 1983. The conflict was settled without any suit being filed, with Atari Games doing business as Tengen allegedly awarding Palevich a Gauntlet game machine.[1] Logg is taken off this credit in versions subsequent to the 1987 NES release. While he is credited as "special thanks" through 1986, his name is entirely removed from credits on later releases.[2] Logg currently claims no involvement in any of the Gauntlet series.[3] The game Dandy which was the basis for the threatened lawsuit was later reworked by Atari and re-published for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800 and Atari XE as Dark Chambers in 1988,[4] subsequent to the release of Gauntlet II in 1987.

[S0L]

There's a good piece about Dandy - and how it influenced Gauntlet in one of the last few months issues of  Retro Gamer. Think it was issue 64.

But apparently Atari did take some concepts from Dandy and use them for Gauntlet. So there's some truth in it. Well according to Retro Gamer that is!

That magazine is well worth tracking down if you're interested in the history behind classic Arcade games, they've done pieces on the making of all sorts of classics.

Website is here: http://www.retrogamer.net/index.php

Don't know if they do subs outside the UK, but here it's quite reasonable. Actually the only game magazine I've subscribed too and stuck with for more than a couple of issues

---
S0L
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[RayB]

No, Gauntlet was created by David R. Foley.

[CheffoJeffo]

No, Gauntlet was created trademarked by David R. Foley.

Fixt

[tcleary]

so no transcript?