An Interview with Dale Low of Astrogames August/September 2021 By Paul Thacker Version 1.0 This interview was originally posted to the Bally Alley Astrocade discussion group on Groups.io, here: https://groups.io/g/ballyalley/message/18169 This is a compilation of posts made by Paul Thacker to the group in August and September 2021. ---------- Saturday, August 21, 2021 I recently tracked down Dale Low, programmer for Astrogames. Astrogames published tape collections including games like Multi-Adventure, Defense Pro, Metro Attack, Night Bombers, Star Wahs, Wah's Revenge, and Super Pac. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions for me. You can find Dale at http://gumbypp.com/ Paul: Do you remember how you got interested in the Astrocade system? What made you take the leap from playing to game development? Dale: I don't. I do vaguely remember being excited when Astro BASIC came out, similar to the excitement that I felt when Apple released the first iOS SDK (I'm now a professional iOS developer). Paul: Approximately how many copies of your tapes were you able to sell? Dale: I went through my records and think that I sold a grand total of around 50 tapes over a few years - LOL. It definitely was not a big money-making endeavor! Paul: I've always been particularly intrigued reading about the Multi-Adventure tape. It was pretty rare to attempt platformers in BASIC, but it sounds like The Forest played kind of like Pitfall, with rope swings and leaping between small platforms. How were you able to get that working? Dale: I have no idea :) Paul: Was there a lot of machine language involved? Dale: Unfortunately, I don't remember that either. Paul: Michael Prosise's review said you should make an Extended BASIC version (for one of the RAM expansions). Did you ever consider that? Dale: I don't think that I seriously considered that. It was harder to get stuff in Canada at the time and I was only 17 with a limited budget. But I was definitely pleased with the positive feedback in the Arcadian review. Paul: Are there any games that stand out to you? The reviewers also liked Night Bombers, Defence Pro, and Metro Attack. Dale: Probably Multi-Adventure. I liked the idea of a non-traditional arcade game. Being able to load multiple segments from tape worked well for this type of game given that we only had 1800 bytes to work with at the time! Paul: I see that you went on to do a lot of other software development. Several people have mentioned that the Astrocade was what first got them interested in programming. Would you say the same? Dale: I would. I'm actually a little disappointed that I didn't continue with independent software development after Astrogames. I just went the usual route of going to university, getting a degree (in EE) and then a "normal" job working for a regular company. That said, I have been an independent software developer since mid 2014 as a consultant, not as an indie publisher. Paul: I unfortunately have not actually played the games I'm asking you about, because I've never found one of the tapes. Given the reviews I've read, you might say they're on the "most wanted" list of Astrocade tape games. Have you held onto any of your tapes or documentation? Dale: I have a small folder which has the "ads" and reviews of the tapes, but that's about it. I live in San Francisco now, but there may still be stuff in my parents' basement in Victoria. I'll check the next time I go visit (which might be possible now with Covid border restrictions loosening somewhat). Even if I can find old tapes, I'm not sure that they would be loadable. I guess there's a process that some folks use to convert an audio wave file into a binary? If I find anything, I'll let you know. Paul: Have you kept in touch with any other developers for the system? Dale: I have not. Paul: That's all I can think of for now. I'll pass on your responses to the mailing list and we might have a few followup questions. Dale: Glad to help. I'm really happy to see that the Astrocade still has an active fan base. ---------- Friday, September 3, 2021 I passed on Kevin's questions and here are the responses. Kevin: What did your friends and family think of the system generally and your games? Dale: I'm sure that people thought it was a cheap knockoff of the Atari 2600. It wouldn’t surprise me if my parents got it because it was on sale :). Of course, when I first got it, I had no idea that it would be user-programmable. I actually don't recall getting any specific feedback on my games from friends and family at the time, though I'm sure that they were amused. Kevin: Looking back, what do you think about the Bally Arcade as a game system and as a development platform? Dale: I thought it was amazing at the time. Of course, writing programs using the small keypad with the screen constantly changing colours was challenging, but with only 1800 bytes to fill it wasn't too bad. Kevin: What experiences, if any, did you have with arcades or games on other systems? Did anything from those serve as inspirations for anything you worked on? Dale: I didn't have any other development experiences back then, game or otherwise; going to the arcade as a teenager was always fun and definitely inspired me to try to create my own games. After Astrogrames, I didn't really do any professional game development, but I would say that whatever inspired me to create Astrogrames in the first place "permanently" transformed me into a part-time tinkerer outside of normal work; some of my projects are shared here: https://github.com/gumbypp?tab=repositories. More recently, I have written a few simple games for a joystick-enabled variant of PixArt (https://github.com/gumbypp/PixArt) and its successor (a 20x30 NeoPixel LED board), and also encouraged my son to do the same. In some respects, I've come full circle as writing code in 2021 for a limited memory-constrained environment like the Arduino Uno is not unlike writing code for the Astrocde 35+ (!) years ago. I also enjoy sharing my love of tinkering with kids. I've taught 3 middle school "Coding & Making" tech elective classes at my kids' middle school and had just started teaching the fourth when Covid shut everything down :(. Kevin: Do you remember which of your tapes were the most popular? I would guess Multi-Adventure, but I'm not really sure. Of course, I only sold 50-ish tapes in total, so the term “popular” is relative :)