Retro Gamer - Lands of Lore

Issue 67 of Retro Gamer is finally out unless you live elsewhere in which case you already missed it. Not sure why the U.S. is a month behind. Why issue 67? Because that is the issue with the long over due "Lands of Lore" article. Damien McFerran actually interviewed Rick Gush and myself over two years ago, back when I was living in Brisbane. Damien's finishing of the article was interrupted by his wife having a baby, his triumphant return to the Tour de France and drafting Obama's Presidential acceptance speech. Did that come off as funny or mean? I was trying for funny. Writing it a little off at the moment, I'm watching the Emmy award show and I'm a bit upset Neil Patrick Harris wasn't in the red and black Dr. Horrible uniform. Why would he go back to the white uniform when the red and black one was so much more evil?

Okay, sorry. Seriously Damien's wife did have a baby. Again, congrats on that! Then the article was originally supposed to be in issue 64, but the editor felt that that issue had to many "making of" articles so he decided to push it back.

Unfortunately, the layout artist of the issue was too smart to publish the picture I gave him of members of the team. Actually, it is a picture of the "Eye of the Beholder" team, though it was pretty much the same people on "Lands of Lore." Note to the guy who wrote the Wiki article, Westwood did not split from SSI over artistic differences. Westwood became a part of Virgin Games, though we still provided a lot of help, support and love to our friends over at SSI while there were doing the EOB III. And if you don't beleive me, you'll have to deal with my bad-ass self from the early 90's in the picture. Oh yeah, don't mess with me!

It might be obvious by now that I am really just typing away trying to add some meat to this post to balance out the two pictures. I don't want to actually post a copy of the article itself until it has been off the shelf for a few months. It a glorious 3 page article with a nice shout out to the late great Rick Parks. I think you should rush right out and buy at least two issues. I did.

Traveling Back to the Past to Save the Future!

I was using my blog this morning as a leaping off point for a few news links to read up on what has been happening out there in on The Internets. (Just did a quick check to see if www.theinternets.com was registered; because if it wasn't I was gonna be all over that. Nothing at the URL but it is registered.)

I realized that I hadn't posted anything in a while. Problem is I haven't really been doing much. I went bowling last weekend, but... really... bowling! Not very exciting. I had a date the weekend before, but she turned out to be a blithering racist pinhead and that's really all I want to say about that.

I thought to myself that what I really needed something to complain about. I'm not really happy unless I'm complaining about something; at least that's what my mother has been telling me for years.

While I am thinking all this, unbeknown to me, Rowan is on Moby Games looking through some Lands of Lore II screen shots. Which leads him to my profile and in turn to my "additional pictures" page where he finds the lovely and embarrassing picture to the left. I just want to say that Oakley Razorblades were very much in style at the time. I remember the picture, it was cut from a team picture for BattleTech II: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge taken out in front of Westwood's building on Sprint Mountain Road circa 1991.

I actually have two cool stories about that picture. The first one was that I used to hang out on a pre-internet, multi-user dial up BBS called Multi-Comm. It was a very social group on the board and we used to meet every Saturday at Bob Baskin Park in the summer and at Shakey's Pizza in the winter (until they threw us out). At one of these gatherings one of the younger kigs had the Battletech II manual which was a big blue print and stat book of all the mechs. At the end of the night I asked him what he was looking at and he excitedly started telling me about the game. I flipped through the manual to the picture at the back, said something clever which escapes me now (and probably wasn't really all that clever - but who am I to let the facts ruin a good story) and handed it back to him.

Now you are thinking, "What an ass! Did you offer to autograph it for him or something you loser?"

No I didn't. But years later after Westwood was shut down I flew up to Seattle to interview for a job a Ubisoft with Tony Van. It just so happen that somebody had sent him their copy of the BattleTech II manual asking him to autograph his picture and that lucky guy also got my autograph as well.

Back to the point, none of that is what I have to complain about. Not even the fact that Rowan decided to send the picture to the entire Perth Interzone office. Note that he didn't just the link it, but actually attached the picture to the email itself. No, not even that. It was what happened once one of the artist, Darren, got a hold of it. I had walked over to the other building with the vending machines and found the picture below taped to the front door of the office when I walked back in.

Excellent work Darren, just know - both you and Rowan - that vengeance will be mine! Further investigation leads me to also blame Christian Klein aka Lightnight for posting the picture on Moby Games. I think I'll try to email Christian and show him what he has wrought. I just love using the word 'wrought' in a sentence.

(It is pretty cool picture though...)

Ode to Rick Parks

I was exchanging emails about Eye of the Beholder with the other day with Irene who goes by the handle Sentinel69. I was pointing out which avatar portrait from the game was based on me and which were other Westwood employees. The portraits were done by the late, great Rick Parks (aka the Center of the Universe). So I got to thinking about him and decided to Google him. I found the dedication video that was included with Lands of Lore 2 after he passed away.



Oh man, watching that gets me right in the chest. He was such a great guy. The way he is laughing and such on the video was the way he always was. He was always in a good mood and just uplifted any situation. If you were wondering why he appears kind of stiff in the video, its because he has some other medical problem that eventually led to his neck being fused so he couldn’t turn his head from side to side.

When Rick first came to Westwood he was so out of our league. He had been playing around on his Amiga drawing pictures, and getting some fame among Amiga users for doing so. I just tried searching for some of his Amiga pictures but struck out. The one that I remember the most was a simple picture of a Mickey Mouse drinking glass. Another had a man and woman holding a torch and walking away from the camera with purple marble pillars on either side.

He also did the mural of the Excalibur casino in the old ‘Strip Joint’ (as in Las Vegas Strip) employee cafeteria in the Mirage Hotel and Casino. The cafeteria used to be full of parody art about the other casinos such as a statue of David representing Caesar’s Palace where the statue is posed as if he was embarrassed and trying to cover his nakedness. Ricks mural was the scene where the young King Arthur is trying to pull Excalibur out of the rock but having trouble and even his horse is holing onto his cloak and trying to help pull.

The mural above the bar in old Mount Charleston lodge above Vegas was his as well done sometime in the 70’s. He did some a lot of work at Siegfried and Roy’s house, some mural on a boat owned by Donald Trump and much more.

Brett and Louis (Westwood’s founders) told him they really couldn’t afford to pay him what he was worth, but they worked out a deal where Rick would get time off to do other projects because he really wanted to do work on the computer because he thought it was so fun.

He brought the quality of Westwood art up so much. Not just with his own work, but just by his presence, everybody else’s work as well. I know I got a whole lot better after he started to work there. I remember thinking my pictures for DragonStrike were much better than anything I thought I was capable of at the time.

Now since all that is making me kind of sad, let me end this with a funny story. I mentioned this all started with the emails I was writing to Irene aka Sentinel69. So I just assumed the 69 was the typical number thrown onto the end of handle as the sexual reference. (In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure voice) “Sixty Nine Dude!”

Years ago one of the in things to do was to steal the yellow plastic table numbers from Carl’s Jr. and put them on the dashboard of your car. I had the number 68 on the dashboard of my very sporty Toyota MR2. (Just tried looking for a picture of the Carl's Jr. Number thing online and again struck out) Several times I would have a girl in my car say something to the effect of, “Shouldn't that be 69?”

I would reply, “No I wasn’t born in 1969, but now that I know where you mind is let’s say we skip dinner and just go back to my place.” I won’t comment on the success of this particular pickup line because a gentleman never tells. (That and I'm sure you are sick of the baseball analogies.)

Anyway, what makes this funny is when I went looking for Rick Parks stuff and found this video I noticed it was actually put onto Youtube by Irene. Except on Youtube she signed up as Sentinel1969. I’ve been busted by my own joke.