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Your first coding project, a conversion of Hercules on the C64 to prove yourself as a coder to Steve Bak. Did you get any say in which of Steve's old games you would be converting?

Exactly - I had a lot of old 6502 demo code behind me, but I'd never written anything major in 68k at this point. The premise of updating Hercules came from Millennium as much as Steve - this was the one out of his older games that had been best received (I could remember having see it awarded a 'Zzap! 64 Sizzling' review when I was a kid!)

What assistance did you get in terms of the original? (Maps, source, video etc)

Bizarrely I don't recall ever getting to see a working copy of the original - I just had print-outs of the original 6502 code! It was weird and kinda fun to see the game coming together as I gradually converted things over to 68k (on the Atari ST).

Have you tried playing the game lately to see how badly it's aged? I'd be interested to know what kind of score you would give to a game like it now!

I don't need to replay it to know that it won't have aged well! ...And although I was always super grateful for Steve giving me that opportunity to prove myself, I was never under the expectation that this would be a well received project (I don't recall ever seeing a review as a matter of fact - I think it was a pretty quiet release!).

Several people reviewing the game have said it's the most difficult game ever! If you stand still for more than a couple of seconds at the start of a level, the land you are standing on bursts into flames and kills you. The jumps often require pixel perfect accuracy. As programmer, were you able to zip through all the levels easily unlike us mere mortals that lose all our lives within 20 seconds?

Yup, it was always one of the most extreme examples of truly punishing old game difficulty levels you could imagine, and that was a point of pride to Steve! ...It would start you on a randomly selected screen - killing you within seconds if you didn't move quickly enough - and should you miraculously complete a screen, the next would be chosen at random too!

I actually got to be very good at it so I can vouch for the fact that it *can* be completed (I even finished it without losing a life once!).

Can you remember how many levels were in the game? (The Hall of Light database currently only has 4 screens - I suspect because nobody can complete more than that!)

There were twelve 'levels' with four screens each because - from its original incarnation - it was all about the twelve challenges of Hercules. The decision to switch to a female lead (and the choice of name) came from Millennium; kind of a weird call when the content of the game is still the same Hercules it ever was!

How happy were you with the graphics that were provided to you for the game?

The artist was a friend of mine - actually an excellent artist, although working in pixels for the first time. I can't say I loved all aspects of the work he did here but I did quite like the character styling and animation (very She Hulk inspired), and really the simplicity and constraints of the project were so great that I don't think we could have achieved too much more :)

Were there any difficulties in converting the game?

Not really - a super simple project, whose strengths and weaknesses were really all in that premise of updating an old C64 project as faithfully as we did.

I'd say not your finest work but it allowed you to create the legendary title James Pond!

Exactly. From this point onwards I finally had the chance to really shape the projects I was working on so as limiting as Yolanda was, it certainly represented a major career turning point for me.