May 14, 2016
Owen Rubin: Major Havoc, Space Duel
Owen Rubin worked in Atari's coin-op division from 1976 to 1984 — he is best known for his programming work there on Major Havoc, Space Duel, and Battlezone. He also served as a go-between between the arcade division and the consumer division, where the Atari home computers were created. After that, he was a game designer at Nolan Bushnell's Bally Sente.
In this interview, we discuss Ed Rotberg, whom I previously interviewed. This interview contains some coarse language.
It took place on February 12, 2016.
Teaser quotes:
"And I lost it. I just completely lost it with him ... and I slammed the listings down on his desk, basically clearing his desk of just about everything else, and I said, 'Do it yourself, I quit.'"
"I find MAME both very cool that you can see it, and very sad that you don't get the right feel."
"We really wanted coin-op games to be about a 90-second experience. Up to a couple minutes if you got good at it."
Owen's web site: http://www.orubin.com
Owen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/orubin
Ed Rotberg interview: http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-72-ed-rotberg-rotberg-synthesizer