ANTIC Interview 413 - Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group - a podcast by Randy Kindig, Kay Savetz, Brad Arnold
from 2021-05-01T16:00
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
Further episodes of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast
Further podcasts by Randy Kindig, Kay Savetz, Brad Arnold
Website of Randy Kindig, Kay Savetz, Brad Arnold