Post

This past Friday marked my last day as a full-time engineer at @digitaleclipse.bsky.social. I've decided to reprioritize, but the past five years have been the most illuminating of my career, and I'll miss that incredible team. Feeling nostalgic, so here's a quick look back to toast the occasion. 🧵

Before we were hired, Digital Eclipse connected my friend Dave and me with Intellivision, and we made a game for their Amico console based on the classic "D&D Cloudy Mountain." Sadly the Amico failed to launch, but our game was fully playable. It was never released but here's some exclusive footage!

After Amico didn't work out, Digital Eclipse offered Dave and me spots on staff. We jumped on Blizzard Arcade Collection and I helped with the sexiest possible feature, localization. We injected support for 13 languages and it looked native! I got to watch the real wizards in the company cast magic.

We were given an interesting challenge with Space Jam A New Legacy: The Game -- select two contest submissions and merge them into a single game. I think our tiny team banged out a pretty decent little brawler (still free on Xbox!), all things considered. And hey, I got to code Bugs Bunny!

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration was a big one. A crazy amount of passion and expertise went into this, company wide. I built the main menu and timeline UI, which ended up establishing a template we'd use going forward. The game scored 9/10 from IGN and received numerous awards.

For Atari 50, each engineer was also given free rein to solo design a "Reimagined" game (just like 1970s Atari!). I made VCTR-SCTR, a love letter to classic vector arcade games. I learned a ton, dragged our 2D engine into 3D, and @bob.town made a KILLER soundtrack. I'll always love this one.

In 2022, I was given the opportunity to come up with a holiday-themed game. Jollyball is my homage to Kings of the Beach and Championship V'Ball, but set in the North Pole. I worked with @maenots.bsky.social on art and @bob.town on audio. Dream team. Playing has become a Christmas family tradition.

We put a lot of love into our menus over the years. For "Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story," I rendered the pixels of Jeff's software, emulated in real-time, as floating 3D polygonal squares in the background of the timelines, slowly undulating like on the waves of an ocean. Trippy.

Finally, for the last couple years I was the engineering lead on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind. But we'll save that for a thread of its own.