TWZ: What year did you start working at Color Dreams?

VC: Early 1990.

TWZ: Why did you start working there?

VC: A childhood friend, Robert Bonifacio, called me at home in Texas to let me know there was an opening at the video game company he was working at. He said I had three days to decide or I would lose out. Three days later, I was on my to California. Ironically, this was the second time this scenario had played out. Seven years before that, Robert set me up with a job in California doing video games for a company called Cosmi. That gig only lasted 8 months or so.

TWZ: What games did you work on before Color Dreams? I've heard of Slinky, but I don't have the right systems to try it out.

VC: Only two that were published. Slinky for the Atari 400/800 platform (1983), and I converted Forbidden Forest, a Commodore 64 title, to run on Atari. There were a few other games I worked on for the Atari platform but none were published.

TWZ: What was it like working at Color Dreams?

VC: In the early days, it was quite fun. There was no schedule and most people were on salary, so the hours and days were very flexible, as well as the work environment and dress code. It was basically a bunch of nerds and artists crammed in a small two room office goofing around 'til the wee hours of the morning. Often times, we practically lived in that place... it wasn't uncommon to see Jim Treadway or Jon Valesh asleep in the oversized "Star Trek" swivel chairs that populated the office.

In the later days, it wasn't so fun. We were making bible games (as Wisdom Tree), which to everyone's surprise, sold very well. The company grew to over 60 employees (mainly sales and production) and game design became very business like. Schedules were enforced and the design/graphics team was very small compared to the Bunch Games / Color Dreams days. Now when programmers slept at the office, it was because of deadlines.

TWZ: What unreleased games did you work on? According to Roger, he said you liked his (Roger's) idea of Gil, agame with larger than normal sprites and such. Any thoughts on this game?

VC: Roger possesses a warped sense of humor, great creativity, and a certain amount of stubbornness, all of which contribute to his unique game designing style. Gil was genius. It's too bad there are no screen shots available. The level design and overall concept wasn't even started -- what made it genius was the Gil character himself, the way he looked and moved.

TWZ: The bonus stage in Menace Beach. What was done for it, and was there any parts of any other games cut?

VC: It's been so long, I don't even remember a bonus stage in Menace Beach.

TWZ: Anything else you want to tell me?

VC: I see a lot of web sites out there slamming Color Dreams, Bunch Games and Wisdom Tree games, and deservedly so... most of them were pretty bad. However, a handful of them are relatively fun to play. A lot of thought went into level design and game play. I'm mainly talking about the Crystal Mines, Exodus, Joshua, Warfare series.

On the other side of the spectrum, you'd be hard pressed to find a video game worse than Pesterminator.

Most of the games were designed using a "state machine" language written by Dan Lawton, that we titled BOGUS (which didn't really stand for anything, but we gave it the nonsensical acronym "binary output game utility system"). It allowed designers to make entire games, down to the level of character behavior, with little or no programming background. The side effect was the game response time was often very slow and jerky.

The most fruitful of these engines was the one used originally in the game "Challenge of the Dragon," internally known as the kungfu state machine (from one of the source files, kungfu.asm). The kungfu state machine was used to make Menace Beach, Secret Scout, Operation Secret Storm, Free Fall (Fish Fall), Bible Adventures, King of Kings and Joshua (original, unreleased). Roger's unreleased games, Gil and Worms, also used this state machine.

For a more complete background on Color Dreams, Jon Valesh's page at here is an excellent source. I should mention that when Jon started doing work for Color Dreams, he was only 14 years old (you'd never guess this by reading his page). We were fortunate enough to have Jon working at StarDot for a while, but he's since moved on to a position with a higher salary. If fate has its way, he'll be back at StarDot after he leaves his next company... poor guy.

There is one correction that should be made on Jon's Color Dreams history page. The proper spelling of the programmer in the poster is Mike Hunley, not Huntly.