INTERVIEWS
Noah Falstein was the project leader for "Sinistar" and was also one of the main programmers of game. Today Mr. Falstein still works in the videogame industry with his own company, "The Inspiracy".
MAX: As you stated on your company's web-site, before you were hired by
Williams, your senior project in college was a video game you programmed
called, "Koronis Strike". Does Koronis Strike have any relationship with
"Sinistar"?
Noah: Koronis Strike was a game that tried to realistically depict mining
asteroids for minerals and metal. I wrote it in 1979 and the graphics were
very simple by today's standards, but they were the best that had been done
on the computer system at Umass Amherst (shared by my school, Hampshire
College) at the time. You did have to fire a laser beam at asteroids to
find out what they were made of, much like the NASA probe that just hit a
comet on July 4. But other than that, there was not much similarity. I
had intended to put in "ore pirates" and combat, but ran out of time when I
graduated. But that game helped get me my first job in the industry, at
Milton Bradley, which in turn led to the Williams job, so it is all
connected. I recycled part of the name for my first game at LucasArts,
Koronis Rift in 1986.
M: When did you discover the glitch where lose your life twice?
N: I didn't discover that one myself. I think someone in an arcade found it,
and the arcade owner called to let us know - that was the way we heard
about a similar "invulnerable player" bug in Joust the year before.
M: Is it true that you were the one who came up with the name "Sinistar"?
N: That's how I remember it - Jack Haeger who did the artwork says he
remembers suggesting it, but I have a long reputation for puns and remember
clearly writing down a bunch of names that implied a dangerous, evil enemy
- one was "sinister", and since many games at that time had "Star" in the
title, it leapt out at me.
M: Who came up with the idea to make "Sinistar" talk?
N: Ken Fedesna, the head of engineering - he was my boss's boss, and was there
from before I arrived in 1982 until just last year. He suggested it
because they had done a pinball game with voice and he thought it would be
a good fit for the Sinistar to have it speak, and of course he was right.
M: What is the one thing you are most proud of about "Sinistar"?
N: The AI (artificial intelligence), which was my biggest programming
contribution to the game. There are sometimes dozens of workers and
warriors in the range of the scanner, and every one of them is on an
intelligent task, and they spread responsibility (like a hive of bees) so
you never get too many doing any one thing, trading off tasks as
needed. All using just a little bit of the processing power, which was
tiny compared to even a cell phone today. Some warriors are tasked with
escorting the Sinistar, and when you shoot a Sinibomb they try to fire and
hit it before it can reach the Sinistar, or dive into its path. At one
point they were so good at shooting Sinibombs it was impossible to kill it,
and someone came into my office to see why I was so excited that the
Sinistar had killed me - I was so happy the warriors were so good. But
that wouldn't have been any fun, so I had to put in some randomness to make
them less accurate.
M: Like RJ Mical, did you burn your own set of ROMs of the original game
after Williams asked you to make the game harder?
N: No, as far as I know RJ had the only set, and he can't find them!
M: Do you currently own any Sinistar arcade machines?
N: No, but I have the emulator versions for the PC, the PS2, and the
adaptation for the GBA (which isn't very good).
M: What's your high score on "Sinistar"?
N: I don't remember - I could occasionally get to the fourth or fifth
wave. But I was in charge of tuning the game, and I specifically kept
making it tougher until I found it really hard to play for more than about
10 minutes, so it is "by definition" a hard game for me. Then the
management told us to make it harder still (as you mentioned before) which
we did by making the 2nd wave particularly tough, and ever since that I am
lucky to get to the third wave.
M: Are there any funny stories you can share with us about when you were
working on "Sinistar"?
N: Mike Metz did our sound design. They had a very dumb microprocessor that
handled the sound, and Mike had to program different values into its RAM to
make it come up with different things. One morning he realized that when
he powered up his system in the morning there was random garbage in the
RAM, and it could make really odd sounds, although most of them were just
annoying clicks and buzzes. So he started turning it off, turning it on,
and playing the sound, and if it was interesting he saved the RAM
data. That's how he got the "extra ship" sound that is my favorite in the
game, very clear and strange. But after an hour or two his development
system stopped working, and when he told a hardware tech what he'd been
doing, the tech almost had a fit. Apparently repeatedly flipping it on and
off was the worst thing you could do to it, and he'd burnt it out.
M: Are you still in touch with any of the other "Sinistar" crew?
N: I see Sam Dicker and John Meissen very rarely, but RJ and I have stayed
good friends all these years. He and his wife introduced me to the woman
who became my wife, and we got married in their house. He also helped
bring me into the 3DO Company when that was starting up, and the stock I
got from that paid for the down payment for the house I live in today, so I
am forever indebted to him!
M: Did you have anything to do with "Sinistar: Unleashed"?
N: No - they sent me a free copy, but that's it. I would have done it
differently...
M: Can you explain to us what your company "The Inspiracy" does?
N: I do freelance game design, writing, and help with game business
startups. For example, in the last year I did the dialog writing for a
game called Legend of Kay (coming out on the PS2 later this year), did some
consultation and tuning on a RTS game for the PC called Paraworld (also
later this year), and now I'm doing some work on an upcoming Star Wars game
as well as the early design on a game about the Hungarian Revolution in
1956. It keeps me very busy.