ANTIC Interview 31 - William Volk, Avalon Hill/Activision

Published: April 11, 2015, 7 a.m.

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William Volk

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William Volk wrote three Atari games for Avalon Hill: Conflict 2500, Voyager 1, and Controller. He also wrote Forth Turtle Graphics Plus, a 3-D graphics library for the Forth language that was released by Atari Program Exchange; ValGraphics for Valpar International; and Super Smart Terminal, an 80-column terminal application which -- may have been released by APX? He later went on to work on Return To Zork for Activision.

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This interview was conducted March 25 2015.

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Teaser quotes:

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\\u201cTrue story, when we did Conflict 2500, we had no documentation, so we literally started poking addresses to find out how to do things. Literally.\\u201d

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\\u201cIt sounded like a good deal but I was still in grad school so I said, \\u2018I would only do that if you paid me X,\\u2019 where X was for the time was some ridiculous amount of money. And they said \\u2018Sure, we\\u2019ll pay you that much.\\u2019\\u201d

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\\u201cIt looked terrible. It looked annoying as hell but it was funny because it made you think you were in a radar room, you know?\\u201d

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\\u201cVoyager 1 was in inspired by Alien. In fact I remember taking my future wife to the premiere of Alien in Philadelphia, thinking that it was going to be like Star Wars: pretty light-hearted. I was kind of shocked. As was she! Our first movie date.\\u201d

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LINKS

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Obsolete Gamer interview with William Volk

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Stick Figure Movie Trivia

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