Commodore Free 6/Commodore_Free_Issue_06_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv fisher

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 10KB | 349 lines

u     Interview with Andrew Fisher
    Freelance Writer Musician and
         Commodore Programmer

Q. Please tell our readers a little
about yourself.

A. My name is Andrew Fisher, I'm 32
and a freelance writer. I live in
Cambridge, England.

Q. Tell our readers about your
computer memories.

A. My earliest computer experiences
would be playing games at a friend's
house on his birthday, on his VIC-20
and BBC (he was a lucky kid). As we
were living near Great Yarmouth at the
time, I also started to play arcade
machines like Gorf and Pole Position.

Q. When did you first receive your
Commodore machine?

A. It was October 1985, in a package
with two games and a Datasette. Sadly
the powerpack was faulty, meaning it
was several weeks before we got it
back working and had the chance to
play the games - Arcadia 64 (with
dreadful flickering sprites, and it
took 18 minutes to load!) and 3D Time
Trek (without a joystick).

Q. What machines do you own?

A. I still have that original C64, a
couple of C64C's and a C128. Plus a
Spectrum +3, NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube,
PS1, PS2, Xbox and a JAMMA arcade
cabinet. And a Gameboy Advance,
Gameboy Advance SP and Nintendo DS
Lite. As you can see I own quite a few
machines...

Q. Tell our readers about your writing
work on magazines.

A. Well, back in 1993 I started
writing a technical column for
Commodore Force as "Professor  Brian
Strain", or The Mighty Brian. That was
a caricature based on a real photo of
me. When Commodore Force closed, I
wrote for its rival Commodore Format
for a few issues, mostly on GEOS and
user groups. Then I spent most of the
1990's writing for fanzines like
Commodore Scene, before Retro Gamer
appeared...

Q. You recently worked on Retro Gamer,
tell our readers a little about the
articles you wrote.

A. Well, the first one was sent in on
spec, and printed so I guess you could
say I was lucky! That was THE RETRO
RYDER CUP, looking at golf games
through the years. On a Commodore
theme I wrote about cartridges and the
Commodore 128. I contributed to a
couple of other articles, and had more
underway.

Q. Retro Gamer closed, were you left
unpaid for some of the articles?

A. Yes, I was owed money for one
article.

Q. Did you look to recover your money?

A. Administration is a difficult
process (which I've unfortunately been
dragged into several times with my
magazine work) and there was no chance
of the freelancers being paid back
with the banks and other companies
owed so much. Instead, the freelancers
got together to create the Retro
Survival CD, featuring some of the
articles that would have been in the

issue 19 that was never printed.  The
readers were so enthusiastic, they
pre-ordered enough to cover the cost
of getting the CD produced, so we have
been able to pay money back to all the
writers. If you are interested in
Retro Gamer and want to see some
interesting articles, the CD (which is
compatible with PC or Mac) is
available from:
www.retrosurvival.co.uk

Q. Retro Gamer was purchased by
another publisher, have you written
for this publisher?

A. Yes, Imagine Publishing stepped in
with new editor Darran Jones taking
the helm (he had previously worked on
gamesTM's retro section). I had work
in the first few issues V interviews
with Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris,
plus C64 artist Stephen Robertson
(known as SIR). Then there was my
biggest article ever, a look back at
the history of Gremlin Graphics.
Hopefully I will have more in the
magazine soon.

Q. You work freelance, has this always
been the case?

A. Yes, the freedom is quite nice but
at the same time there are downsides -
like not being paid, tight deadlines
and trying to find an outlet for the
work.

Q. If our readers wanted to break into
writing for a career, what would you
suggest?

A. The first step would be to write as
much as you can - if you want to get
into games reviews, find a website
that is looking for reviewers and
volunteer. (I'm currently writing
reviews for a site called Console
Obsession, for example.) Once you've
built up a few contacts like that and
got some good feedback on what you
write, try approaching editors with
ideas. Rejection is tough at first,
but keep at it. The most important
thing is to make sure you read a lot
and write a lot; over time your work
will get better.

 Q. Do you have any favourite
software?

A. In terms of games, my favourites on
the C64 include The Sentinel, Wizball,
Paradroid, Impossible Mission and Pogo
Joe. On other machines I tend to play
a lot of sports games, like the Tony
Hawk series and American Football
games. Just recently I've been hooked
on the DS puzzle game Meteos,
Nintendogs and the two Lego Star Wars
games for Xbox.

Q. Tell us about POL, how were you
involved and what POL is?

A. People of Liberty is a group formed
by Joerg Droege, a German C64 fan. He
was looking for contacts to help him
with his disk magazine and I
volunteered. It's amazing to think
that is nearly seven years ago.

Q. Do you belong to other groups?

A. Yes, I've been a member of two
other groups. I first joined the Irish
group Ozone back in the mid-90's and
then released a lot of my own demos
under that group. I was also invited
to join ROLE back in 2002/3, writing
music and text for them.

Q. You write music, is this all "SID"
music?

A. Yes, the majority I have written
has been on the C64. I used programmes
like Dutch USA Team's Music
Assembler,Cosine's Electronic Music
System (EMS) and DMC v4 (Demo Music
Creator).  I started out doing a lot
of covers  from sheet music, but then
Warren Pilkington persuaded me to try
writing my own. Over the last couple
of years I've also done a bit of
remixing on the PC, taking my SID
tunes and turning them into music for
Ovine by Design or releasing it on
remix.kwed.org

Q. Can our readers listen to some of
your music, and where would our reader
need to look?

A. The vast majority of my SID tunes
are in the High Voltage SID Collection
at www.hvsc.c64.org. If you already
have the latest update, it's at
/MUSICIANS/M/Merman  (in older
editions it's at /VARIOUS/M-R/MERMAN).
SIDPlay is one of the easiest ways to
listen to it on PC or Mac.
Alternatively, a lot of the tunes are
at:
http://www.geocities.com/andrewrfisher
/ in my old website called "Merman's
Kingdom"

Q. At http://c64goldenyears.com/ you
have announced a book looking at
gaming history, can you enlighten our
readers?

A. This is actually a follow-up to a
Spectrum book that was published in
December 2006. I approached the author
of that book, Andrew Rollings, the
previous year about doing a Commodore
64 version and he agreed. But with
2006 being a busy year for me, I
didn't have the time to work on it.
But a new year proved the perfect
stimulus to get me to start it up
again. The basic format of the book is
that it is split into chapters each
covering year (with smaller chapters
covering 1993-1994, and from 1995
onwards). Each year has a short
introduction and a famous loading
screen from that year, before each
game gets a full page review with
screenshots, trivia about the game or
the programmer and a description of
how it plays. With over 200 games
chosen to be in it (and many
favourites having to be left out to
fit it all in) there is a lot of
reading.

Q. How would our reader order this
book - when will it be available and
what is the intended print run?

A. Pre-ordering can be done with
PayPal or credit card via the website
- http://c64goldenyears.com. The
current plan is to get the book
finished and printed, ready for sale
in summer 2007. Sorry I can't be more
specific than that, because there are
so many factors that will affect how
long it takes. The final number to be
printed has not been decided, but the
nature of the book means it will be a
limited amount.

Q. Who is the publisher of this book
and will it be available over the
counter in our local book shop?

A. Publishing is being done by Hiive
Books, set up by Andrew Rollings to
print the Spectrum book. It won't be
on general sale, but it will have an
ISBN number allowing overseas readers
to find it. (Printing is being done
in the United States, and the books
will be sent from there).

Q. This is a follow-on book; would our
readers need both books?

A. No, it will stand on its own as it
is about Commodore games. The layout
and look of the book will be broadly
similar... but it will have better
graphics and more shades of grey...

Q. Do you have a sample page our
readers could look at?

A. A couple of sample pages are
currently available on the website,
but those are very early previews and
Subject to change.

Q. Do you have any other projects in
the pipeline?

A. I'm doing more work on my website,
www.seuckvault.co.uk I'm writing more
stuff for Retro Gamer. And long term
there could be more books, depending
on how successful this one is.

Q. Any question you wished you had
been asked?

A. Hey, that's my question!
Seriously, good luck with Commodore
Free, and the only question I would
like to have been asked is "Do you
know someone who wants a million
pounds?"

Commodore Free DOH guilty I pinched
one of your questions V I should be
ashamed V although Yes I could use
the Million Pounds I think it would
come in handy

Q. Would you like to plug the book
again to our readers - why should our
readers purchase this book?

A. If you are a Commodore 64 fan who
wants to know more about the great
games, discover games they may have
missed, or find out some fascinating
trivia about the games and machines,
then you need this book. Or even if
you don't like games it's something
you can pick up and flick through
When you're bored.

Q. Thanks for your time. How does it
feel to be on the opposite end of the
interview? :-)

A. It makes a change to be answering
the questions!

...end...