Commodore Free 9/Commodore_Free_Issue_09_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv shaun 2

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 13KB | 443 lines

u   Interview with Shaun Bebbington
      Retro promoter and Writer
PART 2

CF) Were you upset and bitter about
your experience at Live Publishing?

SB) It seems popular to hate Live
Publishing to be honest, and although
there was one or two people I wouldn't
want to speak to again, the vast
majority of the staff there were
friendly, creative and just good
people. I was more frustrated with the
job than anything else if truth be
known.

The freelancers had too much power in
my opinion, however that was Martyn
trying to keep the peace as much as
anything else. But of course loosing
your job is always upsetting; however
there was simply no more I could do
there. I had written all of the
features that I wanted to, and didn't
like penning anything above 3,000
words anyway as I would loose interest
quickly. Live liked long features and
that was that.

The gTM word limits and house style
are more like what suites me, as I
proved with the VIC-20 and ZX81
features that I wrote for them. But
now I really have written all of the
features on my wish list, so there is
nothing else but Micro Mart. It is
time for others to shine.

CF) Are you still owed any money, and
did it all finish on friendly terms?

SB) I'm owed money from Live and
Paragon, not that I care much about
that now or even then. Nothing I can
or could do, you see. Though I wasn't
happy at first when Imagine purchased
gTM as they printed my work without
crediting me. They've reprinted stuff
since without any credit to me, but
this works out for the best anyway.
People ask questions when my name
appears in other places apart from
Micro Mart, and I only intend to write
new work for Micro Mart these days as
I feel much freer that way.

CF) You promote all retro machines.
What is your favourite machine?

SB) Many for different reasons. I have
a real soft spot for the CBM/PET and
especially the VIC-20. The VIC is my
favourite Commodore machine I think,
closely followed by the C128. I'm
probably more of a fan of Jonathan
Cauldwell's work than of the Speccy,
but then I prefer American machines
with real hardware such as sound and
graphic chips. Anyway, that's not
saying that I hate the Speccy. So
there you go, I don't have a
definitive answer, which says a lot.
As long as there's something going on,
I'm interested.

CF) What do you think of the current
retro scene, for example, new releases
from Protovision? And how do you rate
the quality of such software?

SB) I love new software as long as
it's worthwhile. I don't want to pick
on Richard Bayliss specifically, but a
lot of his work seems to be the same
idea again and again with very little
thought put into the whole thing. Move
a sprite and collect diamonds, that
sort of thing. Protovision at least
try to think of what to do next.
Four-player PAC-MAN, for instance, if
you don't like the game at least it's
not just another basic PAC-MAN clone.

 But then I suppose something is worth
doing as long as you get the important
game mechanic right, which happens
more often than not with regard to
home-brew. Take Pinball Dreams C64,
this wouldn't have even been possible
15 years ago, or wouldn't have been
attempted at least. But when you look
at the demo you can see it's going to
be good. So quality is varied, but
that's always been the case for as
long as the software industry has been
in existence.

CF) Protovisions games are of a very
high standard. Do you think they have
a good market or a niche, are there
room for other software producers?

SB) It's a niche, but I want to help
to spread the word and ultimately grow
that niche, which will in turn bring
about more new software, so everyone's
a winner. As for room for others, of
course there is. Cronosoft sell
Commodore software too.

CF) What other current software
creators do you rate for Commodore?
Maybe our reader has missed some
products.

SB) I like Jason Kelk's work. ViColumn
was excellent for the VIC-20, and he
seems to get it right more often than
not even if they're not quite as
original as say a Cauldwell
production. To be fair, I can't think
of many games that are as original as
something that JC has produced for the
Speccy with its non-existent support
hardware. VIC-20 fans should also
check out Astro Nell from Cronosoft,
which is amazing.

There's also CovertBitOps Metal
Warrior games V every C64 fan should
play these, and it feels like everyone
is awaiting Pinball Dreams C64.
Seriously, look around and get
downloading. If you download something
that you don't like then you haven't
lost anything. It's a bit different if
you plan to buy, which is why reviews
are so important. So tell me if you
disagree with any review that I write
please, either by emailing in or using
the Micro Mart forums.

CF) What is your favourite game?

SB) Okay, my five favourites for
8-bits would read something like
Turrican (C64), GameX V The Games
Exchange (ZX Spectrum), Astro Nell
(VIC-20), Stunt Car Racer (C64) and
Delta (C64).

CF) You were a staff writer for
Commodore Scene, are you sad now the
magazine closed?

SB) Staff writer is a bit rich. I was
a semi-regular contributor, yes. It
was a dark day when Allan closed
Commodore Scene, but who could blame
him when no one wanted to support it?
Not I.

CF) Allan said he emailed over 300
users but only 12 took subscription
would you like to comment?

SB) In advertising terms, that's a
good return, but unfortunately not
good enough for Allan to continue,
which is sad.

CF) I know you have been pushing
Commodore Free magazine, and I suspect
this is why I have had so many letters
and readers. How do you feel the
magazine has progressed? And how could
I improve the magazine?

SB) Commodore Free is progressing
really well. It lacks the polish of a
professional production, which is what
you would expect to be honest, but it
has bags of enthusiasm and interesting
features. As for improving, well just
let things flow and if in four or five
issues time you feel you've made
little or no progress, then we can
talk.

CF) Do you read Commodore Free
magazine? I know you are pressed for
time with other projects.

SB) At the moment, I work seven days a
week, but I do read it. Not cover to
cover, I'd have to admit. Time won't
allow unfortunately. I like what I see
though.

CF) Are you still active as a coder
and musician? What was the last thing
you worked on?

SB) I can code a little, and I would
like to finally write something
decent. But I need first my own place
and I think things could happen from
there. As for my music, I haven't
picked up a guitar or bass for a good
while. Again, something I hope to put
right soon.

CF) Can you tell our reader about some
of your coding and music work?

SB) I have a few scraps of code
knocking about. I once wrote a noter
for my own purposes but I've never
really done anything good. Real life
takes over unfortunately. As for my
music, I did compose some SID tunes a
long time ago V 14 years to be exact.
I don't know if they were any good,
but I know that they have been lost
forever at least in their binary form.
I can remember the composition though.
I don't tend to forget a piece of
music that I have written.

CF) Do  have a handle our reader would
recognise?

SB) No.

CF) Why do people use a Handle and not
just your real name, what is the
point?

SB) Something to do with the heritage
of the scene. I don't bother because
I've not actually done anything
worthwhile but write for some
magazines.

CF) My wife thinks your handle should
be "Fuzzy Bear" as you remind her of
the Muppet character because you had a
stubbly beard and long curly hair. I
think it was meant in good jest; maybe
you could use this for your Handle?

SB) Interesting, I'm currently cleanly
shaven with straight hair. Perhaps
people will start calling me that now.

CF) Back to Retro gaming, Retro Gamer
magazine seems to cover platforms and
games that I would consider none retro
for example Tomb Raider. I know
getting revenue is important but the
magazine seems to spend a lot of pages
covering remakes and "new games". I
don't mind new games for retro
machines but covering PlayStation 2
and Xbox games are these really retro
- would you like to comment?

SB) The best period of RG in terms of
balance was the "Vol 2" era between
issues 12 and 18 if I remember
correctly. The current magazine is
doing a lot right, but also missing
something. It seems to react rather
than to pre-empt and there doesn't
seem to be a grand plan for the
magazine. Not that there ever was, but
when Martyn was in the editors chair,
he would edit stuff to death so that
the magazine had a certain flow to it,
which is perhaps what is missing.

CF) I still wish they would change the
magazine to retro computing and cover
retro machines and new hardware and
operating systems. What do you think?

SB) There should be space for
everything in the magazine at some
point. Retro is in itself a niche
market, so why ignore niche parts of
that niche market? That to me doesn't
make sense.

CF) You were trying to publish a retro
magazine, but the backing was pulled.
Can you tell our readers about the
project? Also there was a sample issue
1 that was a really good read. Is this
still available and will there be
others?

SB) The project was called
Retro:Bytes. I was trying to achieve a
publication that had well balanced
content, not necessarily to please
everyone all of the time as this is
simply impossible, but to cover as
many niches as possible, including
demo coding and remakes, even though
I'm not a big fan of either. The idea
was to theme each issue around a few
main subjects and to have regular news
and such like. The sample issue should
still be available from Click Gamer,
but was produced simply as a stop-gap.
As for the future of the project, I'm
unable to comment at the moment.

CF) If you were given 1 million pounds
what would you do with the money?

SB) Clear debts and look to do some
sort of project like the Game
Over(view) Freestyle Gaming Jam, as in
offer money for the best game(s) over
different formats. For me, home-brew
gaming is the future at least for
people who choose to use their old
computers rather than just
sell/collect/trade them.

CF) Commodore Scene's Doom challenge
has now ended because of lack of
interest from developers, but do you
still feel it is a valid project do
you think we will ever see Doom
running on the Commodore 64?

SB) Every project or challenge is
valid. Imagine if Dave Macleod had not
bothered with his little E-11 project,
for instance. The world of climbing
would be a worse place for it. But he
did it in the end, and now the most
difficult traditional rock climb in
the world is officially in Scotland
thanks to his magnanimous efforts. So,
Doom is impossible to do on a C64 with
a SuperCPU; is there definitive proof
for this?

CF) You were promoting a SCPU coding
competition what happened has this
ended? Some users may need reminding
what SCPU is could you enlighten them?

SB) The coding competition was aimed
at simply promoting development for a
piece of Commodore 64 and 128 hardware
called the SuperCPU. This adds a 20Mhz
65c816s processor to the machine and
gives any coder a little bit more
processor time to play around with.
You can also add 16Mb's of RAM, and
there's a whole new set of op-codes to
learn should you want to. The
competition was halted due to the
changes in my life, but it might be
reopened when everything is finally
sorted.

CF) Do you have any final things to
say?

SB) Yes, if you own a piece of
hardware then use it. If you like
playing retro games on your Commodore,
why not try some of the games
available from Protovision or
Cronosoft? You might be surprised. And
don't moan when things disappear.
People moan that they can't buy CMD
hardware anymore.

Fair enough if you've just returned to
Commodore and have just found out
about the hardware, but if you were
using your Commodore when CMD were
still operating, why didn't you buy
the hardware then? You don't know what
you've got until it's gone, never a
truer saying that. Ranting aside for a
minute, I'd like to say thank-you all
for putting up with my ramblings here,
and thank-you to those of you who have
read and enjoyed my work these past
years. I hope to continue for a little
while yet.

CF) Shaun thank you, readers I suggest
you email [e-mail] and
ask why is  there only 1 page
dedicated to retro computing.

You may be interested to learn I wrote
an article for Micromart magazine,
Shaun decided the article was good
enough to publish and so I was famed
in print in a real magazine. If you
would like to read the article it can
be viewed from here

http://www.micromart.co.uk/default.asp
x?contentid=0a437af8-b1f5-4ffc-a6c8-f5
67007946de&featureid=1421

I evaluated the current state of
computer games with the title

"Nigel Parker evaluates retro gaming
for the Commodore 64 and ponders the
future of the technology."

Then it all went downhill and I
started producing Commodore Free
magazine


...end...
www.commodorefree.com