Page 29 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #4

Palevich, worked self?
on it while he was FT: Yes. We are still on a first-name
at MIT. The pro- FT: I did BASIC and basis as I occasionally deal with him on
gram quickly assembler mostly. other business.
passed review as Some Forth just to be-
it was well done come familiar with the CGM: So, you must have a Bill Gates
and fun to play. language. I had one story. Everyone who has met him does.
By the way, it truly techie title in the
later appeared as catalogue [Microsoft FT: At one point I got him to commit to
an Atari arcade BASIC Cross- speak at a user group in Houston I or-
game, but I forget Reference Utility]. It ganized meetings for. It was the Tues-
its name. I got to had something to do day after the OS/2 announcement. He
playing it one Fingerspelling with optimizing BASIC almost felt he was wasting his time. I
evening and thought there programs -- I actually collected brought him into the building through
was something strange about the some royalties on it. Enough to buy a the back. After an amazing interview
shape of the walls on one level. It pizza. with a non-tech reporter, I took him for
turned out they spelled a popular un- a peek at the audience. I had 2600
dergraduate acronym that might not be CGM: What do you do for a living these people there! He suddenly took it seri-
appropriate in a family setting. I pointed days? ously, worked up an outline of his re-
this out to Jack and he changed the marks, and gave a great presentation
walls. FT: I now work as a software consult- while standing on one foot.
Galahad and the Holy Grail, written ant in Houston, Texas and run the local Another time in Albuquerque I
by Doug Crockford, contained some Visual Basic professional programmers showed him a simple game that you
rather risqué scenes when it was ini- organization. could play in well under a minute. I
tially submitted. Palevich and Crockford beat him about 35 out of 37 efforts. I
both eventually worked for Atari. CGM: Do you still use an Atari? came back a month later, and he won
Caverns of Mars came in as an APX or tied every game. He had studied the
submission. A smart mocking-bird FT: I abandoned mine when the disk game until he solved it. That is a com-
could see this was an industrial drive failed. I still miss some of those petitor.
strength game. It was received by APX programs.
in the morning mail. I saw it at CGM: Is there anything else
10:30. We showed it to the presi- about your days at Atari or
dent of the company just after APX that the world needs to
lunch. It was not a tough decision know? Any more stories?
for him. Legal got in touch with
Greg Christensen in short order. FT: APX had monthly meet-
The young man, I think he was a ings which included catered
community college freshman, sud- lunches when times were
denly had a bunch of money in- booming. There were rebel-
flicted upon him. I was never cer- lions, from which I still have
tain whether he benefited from that memorabilia. My story in the
in the long run or not. book "Hackers" [by Steven
Levy] was not atypical.
CGM: How many submissions Sorting out the good guys
would you estimate APX received from the bad was very hard
each week? What percentage to do as the rules of the busi-
made it into the catalog? ness were just being formu-
lated. One summer Steve
FT: At first almost every submis- Ross' son (Steve Ross was
sion was accepted. As the number of president of Warner Communications,
submissions grew, the acceptance rate CGM: How long did you work at Atari? which owned Atari) worked at APX.
dropped to well under 10%, as I recall. That made for an interesting afternoon
Dogs, old and new, got culled on the FT: Three years. When I left I tried to when he visited one day.
basis of sales and better products com- buy APX. There is no end to the stories. I
ing along. have seen several books on the Atari
CGM: What were the circumstances of experience. Only the more bizarre sto-
CGM: How much hand-holding did your trying to buy APX? Why did Atari ries are true. It was a surreal experi-
APX give the contributors? If a program close it down? ence.
was marginal but had potential, would
staffers help the programmer through FT: They had a $2+ billion dollar prob- More information about APX will be
the process of bug-fixes, adding fea- lem. Even though I raised an appropri- available at
tures, and so on? ate amount of money to buy it, I could- www.atariarchives.org/APX/.
n't get their attention. Later on the
FT: We never touched code. It was Tramiels offered it to me in gross disar- Fred Thorlin can be contacted at
always a temptation, but forbidden. ray at a huge price. thorlin@swbell.net.
And a good rule for many reasons.
CGM: You said that you negotiated
with Bill Gates. Did you deal with him
CGM: Did you program the 8-bit your- directly?

Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 29