REDO FROM START (USA & JAPAN)

The groundbreaking era of computer game design on the COMMODORE 64

Numerous 8-bit heroes, developers and publishers, marketers and software pioneers from the early 1980s talk about their beginnings and answer in-depth questions about their formative years. The REDO series will contain a total of 64 unpublished interviews focusing on the USA and Japan (Volume 1) as well as Canada and Europe (Volume 2).

• PDF version (1st ed.)
• Optimized for Acrobat Reader
• Layout in digital form
• 168 × 230 mm
• 384 full-colour pages
• Made in Germany

An oral history of the pioneers

Andrea Pachetti, Italian video game researcher, presents his debut work. The author and freelance writer invested 10 years in the project to track down and bring together the visionaries, creators and producers of this turbulent gaming era. 

With introductory words by John Romero and Chris Crawford, both visionaries in the gaming industry, the latter being the founder of the GDC (Game Developers Conference).

Featuring Paul Norman (Forbidden Forest, Aztec Challenge) as the colourful figurehead. Here, innovators such as Jeff Bruette (Wizard of Wor), David Crane (Ghostbusters, Decathlon), Dane Bigham (Choplifter), David S. Maynard (Worms) talk about their specific efforts that paved the way for the Commodore 64 as a gaming machine and why this period was so spectacular for a single producer in the USA and Japan.

Exclusive talks with the industry veterans 

Andrew Kaluzniacki, Bruce Robinson, Chris Crawford, Chris Warling, Chuck Benton, Dane Bigham, David Crane, David Lundberg, David Martin, David S. Maynard, Douglas Carlston, Harry Briley, Hitoshi Suzuki, Jeff Bruette, Jerry W. Jewell, John Marvin, John Romero, Judy Braddick, Ken Madell, Ken Williams, Louis Ewens, Michael Crick, Michael J. Hanson, Mike Blackman, Mike Wacker, Paul Norman, Peter Filiberti, Randall Lockwood, Robert Leff, Satoshi Matsuoka, Scott C. Berk, Steve Hales, Steve Penners, Steven Sidley, Yash Terakura.

From computer engineers and game makers

We accompany entrepreneurs on their journey into an unformed publishing industry and watch spellbound as the first cassettes begin to hiss and floppy disks begin to rattle. While Commodore worked intensively on a designated software library and established a home computer edition from the arcade, countless entrepreneurs tried their luck for the first time on the fabulously engineered machines from Pennsylvania. Their iconic pixel worlds and ports have turned numerous computer games into today’s classics.

With a wealth of classic 8-bit publishers

Activision, Briley Software, Brøderbund, Comm*Data, Commodore, COSMI, Cyberia, Electronic Arts, Epyx, HAL Laboratory, Lucasfilm Games, HESware, Mindscape, Sierra On-Line, Sirius Software, Softsel, Spinnaker, Synapse, T&F Software, The Code Works, Tronix, United Microware Industries (UMI), Victory Software… and more.

Back to the origins of the Commodore 64

REDO FROM START takes us back to the time when Commodore shook the foundations of the computer industry three times over with the PET 2001, the VIC-20, and the C64, reviving the optimism of the early 1980s in exciting eyewitness accounts and photo documentation. Packed with around 1600 images, as well as numerous features and journalistic sidekicks, this comprehensive and thoroughly researched work is equally interesting for beginners and experts in retro gaming history.