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Tuesday - September 22, 2015
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Tuesday - September 22, 2015

Retro Video Gamer - Brian Fargo Interview

by Silver, 05:11

RetroVideoGamer interviews Brian Fargo and talks about his early history in the industry. Some interesting questions are asked about a wide variety of topics.

AmigaJay

Battlechess is still my favourite version of computerized Chess, is there any chance of porting the classic first version to IOS or Android, the touch screens would work a wonder on this type of game (along with making quicker decisions than my Amiga back in the late 80s!)

Brian

I don't own the rights to Battle Chess so that wouldn't be my call but I do have fond memories of this title also. It was so critical that this game was successful as it was the first one that I financed myself and paid for the marketing. We would have been sunk if this didn't' work. I actually created a video for what Battle Chess would have looked like had we had full audio for the characters speaking, it was quite funny. I should try and find it.

TrekMD

You worked on three different Star Trek titles (25th Anniversary, Starfleet Academy, and Judgement Rites). Are you a Star Trek fan or was this just a great opportunity you chose to grab?

Brian

I had to hustle like crazy to get those Star Trek rights and it was not all that popular during the time I was seeking it. I would routinely reach out to Paramount about allowing us to make games on the original series and I couldn't them to acknowledge my existence. Then one day my friend at Konami calls me and says Paramount is bugging him about making Star Trek games and would I be interested in working on it. For the most part we had stopped doing development work for other people but in this case I agreed that I would make an NES Star Trek game only if I could get the PC rights directly from Paramount. Since Konami didn't handle PC they agreed and that's how I managed to get those rights.

TrekMD

How did you decide on the name Interplay for your company?

Brian

I wanted a name that would capture this new medium and the word interactive was certainly a key component for what distinguished a game from other entertainment. Of course the word "play" hit the concept of games head on so it seemed natural to combine the words into Interplay.

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