May 1, 2021
Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research
Group
Valerie Atkinson was a member of Atari's Game Research Group. Now
named Valerie Manfull, she was on the team that designed and
programmed the game Excalibur, along with Chris Crawford and Larry
Summers. Excalibur was published by Atari Program Exchange in fall
1983. She is also one of the programmes of Ballsong, along with
Douglas Crockford. Ballsong is a music and graphics demo program
released by Atari, in which a ball bounces on the screen in
response to an improvised tune. She was one of the programmers,
with Ann Marion, of TV Fishtank, a demonstration of an artificially
intelligent fish. (It's unclear if the fishtank program was
released anywhere, though it apparently was shown at the 1984
SIGgraph conference.)
This interview took place on April 22, 2021.
ANTIC Episode 4 - Chris Crawford
ANTIC Interview 240 - Douglas Crockford
TV Fishtank at SIGgraph
Jim Leiterman
describes TV Fishtank
Chris Crawford describes the development of Excalibur in The Art of
Computer Game Design
Excalibur
announced in Atari Program Exchange, fall 1983
Excalibur review in Atari Connection
Excalibur at AtariMania
Video of
Ballsong
Added 2024: A videotape of animation from Atari Research including TV FIshtank and other projects