| Michael Denio Interview |
Captain Comic for NES. The PC version was a game you could download for free...but if you liked it you were encouraged to send money to Michael. Then you had access to the "complete" version.
Screens from Captain Comic. Captain Comic is a really fun game. It sold the best of all of the Color Dreams games, thoug I guess that isn't saying much. Later, Captain Comic spawned a sequal on the PC. It had more interaction with other characters, but it didn't lose the style of the first game.
|
Finally! I finally got to interview Michael Denio, the creator of the awesome NES/PC game series Captain Comic. Oh how I like that game so much. I was quite looking forward to interviewing Michael, but he had seemed to disappear for all the old Color Dreams workers didn't know what happened to him. But finally I was able to track him down, and I'm glad I was able to. After all, being a fan of Captain Comic made this a fun interview to do.
TWZ: Do you ever plan on reviving the Captain Comic game
series? I would love to see this game running on
Gameboy Advance, or even a 3d Captain Comic game.
MD: No. I still enjoy games, but I don't think about writting
them anymore. The amount of work that needs to go into a
modern game is well beyond the abilities of an individual.
Plus now that I'm older, I don't spend 18 hours a day at
the computer :) .
TWZ: Did you actually work at Color Dreams? Or did you
just help with games for them? If you did work at
Color Dreams, can you tell me some information about
the experience?
MD: I didn't work for them, and only met them once at a trade
show. Comic was one of the their first games, before they
developed the game engine. I think you'll find that it has
a different "feel" than their other games. We didn't know
what to expect since everything was so new, but it did get
a few US sales. The person who did the artwork for NES Comic
went on to do several more games for them. All in all, it
seemed like a good bunch of people.
TWZ: Did you work on any unreleased NES games? Did you
have any plans of "porting" Captain Comic 2 to NES?
MD: Yes, I was working on another NES game, but I really wanted
to write Comic II and the artist I was working with knew some
people who wanted to write more NES games, so we decided to
go our own ways. The unfinished NES game was trashed.
TWZ: While playing Captain Comic on the NES (this removed
from the PC version), I noticed this glitch in the
game. When you stand on top of the metal pole thing
in the space area, if you press "up" the game
glitches. Was their any plans for this, such as...a
bonus room for example?
MD: This was a bug. I had "doors" in my code to take you to
different worlds. When a door was unused, I put it at
coordinates 0,0. You'll note you can't actually get to
the far upper left corner of any world (except the space
world). So, you actually went through a door, but where
it put you was random garbage.
TWZ: Do you still have any old graphics/art/media relating
to the Captain Comic games that you would be able to
send me? Some of the old Color Dreams workers sent me
some cool stuff...I almost forgot, do you have any of
the Captain Comic files to be used with the old
graphics program Nindraw? I have a copy of the
program myself, one of the old workers sent it to me.
MD: I didn't use Nindraw. Comic was pre game engine code.
I had my own tools that ran on a graphics processor. I
honestly don't think I have any of the NES game files.
Its been 12 years and I've had a few new PCs since then.
I decided a long time ago that its not worth keeping old
data. Its usually so old that when you go to use it you
don't remember enough about it.
|
