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Dan Burke Interview
TWZ: Hello. Sorry I've taken so long to reply. I hope you
didn't lose sleep over wondering what I wanted.
Anyways, I have a few Color Dreams questions.
DB: No I can't say I've lost sleep over Color Dreams in general hehe. :)
Not
lately, anyway. When I was there I worked like a madman, in fact it was
in
my contract to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The good thing
was
they paid me well for that effort.
TWZ: What year did you work at Color Dreams?
DB: I started at Color Dreams back in 1989 and worked for them to about
1991. I
did some freelance art later on under the Wisdom Tree banner.
At that time I was the Art Editor for the Saddleback College Lariat,
the
college newspaper. I had met someone on staff, a writer named Leo
Gilreath,
who had met a programmer in an arcade who happened to be affiliated
with
Color Dreams. It was a tenuous connection at best, but Leo thought I
might
like to participate in making Nintendo games. At first, I did not
totally
believe that the programmer was legit, but was willing to me him and
see
what was going on. I figured, it is some kid making games out of his
bedroom...boy was I wrong. Frank turned out to be a very bright
programmer
and the company, COlor Dreams, was a legitimate effort to put out
Nintendo
games, albeit, reverse engineered.
Frank and I became fast friends at Round Table Pizza over some Coke and
Garlic bread, and the three of us became a team...Leo the writer, Frank
the
programmer who was then working at Unisys, and myself, the artist who
was
employed at Sterling Art, a local art store.
TWZ: Were you one of the founders of Color Dreams? Some
sources say it is just Dan Lawton, others say it was
Dan L, Eddy Lin, and you.
DB: No I wasn't a founder, but I was definitely on the ground floor. I
retained
copyrights on my art, which was a good thing, and recieved royalties
for
what I did. The first game I worked on, Raid 2020, was one of the first
put
out by Color Dreams, and I did the cover art, game art, and Frank and
designed the game mostly. Leo did the manual I believe, tho we were
finding
we did not need a full-time writer as most video games don't require
this
skill full-time. I worked like everyone else, on speculation, but after
working at Interplay a bit (freelance) they made me 'the offer' I could
not
refuse.
TWZ: What games did you work on? I know you worked on
Challenge of the Dragon and Exodus. Were there any
others?
DB: In order (as I remember)
Raid 2020 (design 50\50 with Frank Waung, all art, all music, box
cover,
manual art).
RoboDemons (Probably a record for how fast I did art and levels for
this
game. I designed this almost all by myself and had it done under a
month,
but this was while I was under contract to work 7 days a week, 12 hours
a
day, for $555 a day!). The taxes on the amount I made during this time
were
outrageous.
Challenge of the Dragon (Cover design, all art\animation, manual
art\writing, most game design)
Pesterminator (We had a license from Western Exterminator and made a
bug-squashing game).
Crystal Mines for the Lynx. (I did some title screens and stuff for
this).
Wisdom Tree: I did a lot of manual art for several games such as
Exodus,
King of Kings. This is a funny story, because when they asked me to do
Bible
games under the Wisdom Tree banner, I was not into it because I was a
Christian, and did not want to cheapen my beliefs by making money off
them
like that. The odd thing is, because of open discussion on religion
with
many people there I thought my position over and ultimately became an
atheist, and now, I wouldn't work on Bible Games because I don't
believe in
it. I guess me and Bible games don't mix. :)
TWZ: What was/is your favorite Color Dreams game?
DB: I liked Challenge of the Dragon best cuz I thought it was one of the
coolest
and I tons of animation in it. They basically let me run with the art
on
this one...I thought the cover art was excellent too....I designed it
but we
had a painter do the cover, and he did a great job.
Raid 2020 is cool too because it has sentimental value...it was the
first
game I worked on, ever, and I did so much on that...art, music, design,
cover. I had lots of effort wrapped up in this. It was pretty fun to
play as
well.
TWZ: Did you ever work with videogames before/after Color
Dreams?
DB: Yes I have been working on video games for 11 years now, and currently
I
work at Blizzard in the Film Department. I've come a long way...baby.
:)
TWZ: Did you work on any never released games?
DB: There were a few...at Interplay I worked on Lord of the Rings
(commodore)
which never released as far as I know. I worked on Hellraiser at Color
Dreams a bit but that was never released (as far as I know) either.
Glad you liked Challenge of the Dragon
game\artwork...yeah I
basically designed most of it, Dan Lawton and I rolled it around one
night
after coming back from some strip club. :) But Dan, he would let me run
with
the games and I did...I loved doing it too. I did all the art on this
one...I was inspired a lot by Karateka, a game by Jordan Mechner for
the
Atari 800XL. Such a simple game, a simple reward (the girl) but
powerful
motivation nonetheless.
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