TWZ: What made you start working at Tengen?

SW: I was going to go to the coin-op group at Atari to do my first coin-op game and they wanted me to go to their new consumer group "Tengen" because I had consumer game experience.

TWZ: What games did you work on?

SW: I helped Bill Hindorf with Super Sprint for the 8 bit NES. The first Police Academy game for the 8 bit NES.

TWZ: I know you worked on the really interesting game Police Academy. I heard you worked on the first version. Wasn't it then changed or something?

SW: I worked on the first Police Academy game for the 8 bit NES. We focus group tested the game and it did very, very well. So I went back to finish it up and upper management said they wanted me to stop working on it. They then put another group on it and asked them to start again from scratch...The game never got out, it just didn't test well. Go figure.

TWZ: Do you know why Police Academy was cancelled? From what I heard it sounded like a really cool game.

SW: To this day I still don't know why it got cancelled. It play tested well, I just don't know why it got cancelled.

TWZ: Was Police Academy ready to ship or was it just a proto? I know I've seen the box art for it.

SW: I was half way done with the game. I needed about 2 to 3 more months of work to finish it.

TWZ: Did you help on the game Klax? The one stage makes a reference to Police Academy.

SW: I didn't help on Klax, but my friend Dave O'Riva who did the 8 bit version was nice enough to give my game a plug. We used to do Ads for each others games within the games. http://www.adtoit.com/ I've always thought Ads in games looked cool...Ooops I just gave my own stuff a plug :)

TWZ: I just gotta know. Do you have any neat goodies from Tengen such as protos or never released boxarts or anything along that line?

SW: Yes I do :)