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HOME / INTERVIEWS  / MATTHIAS BOCK

INTERVIEW WITH MATTHIAS BOCK

This month we have been fortunate to interview Matthias Bock the creative talent behind lazycow games which include Minerunner, Monsters of Terror and Poweroids. 

There seems a strong arcade influence from the late 1980's in the amiga games you made - did you spend a lot of time playing arcade machines and did  this provide inspiration for your games?

My first contact with video games at all was in the early 1980's, where I disovered a Space Invaders machine in the lobby of a hotel.  So I grabbed all my money and about 60 seconds and 3 GAME OVERs later my Mom told me that I won't get any more money and that video games are not intended for kids. (Someone might disagree here).

I grew up in the countryside without any arcades, but I have spent quite some time playing games on the Atari 2600 and on the C64. And the games on these machines are the source of my inspirations.

Who was involved in making the Amiga games available for download
on your site?

Monsters of Terror was a cooperation between me and Andreas Scholl, who also made the graphics for Star Defender and another unfinished game. Axel Pfeuffer made the music for Minerunner, Poweroids and Monsters of Terror.

How did you become involved in the Amiga Public Domain scene?

At that time, I was a fan of aminet. I just uploaded the game to aminet, and from there they spread themselves.

What were the biggest challenges / frustrations when programming a
game on the Amiga?

I remember that it was quite challenging to program the games in a way that they are using a draggable screen without disabling multitasking.

You have to use functions of the operating system to do that.  Unfortunately, the graphics.library is not really prepared to unlock  Amiga's full potential. The blitting functions are slow and flickerfree double buffering is not possible without tricks.

That's why most of the Amiga games disable multitasking and access the custom chips directly, bypassing the operating system. In the end, the games were using some double buffering functions of the operating system, while accessing the blitter directly.

Which of your amiga games are you most proud of?

Monsters of Terror turned out to be the best.

 Were there any unfinished or unreleased Amiga games you were
involved with?

There are some unfinished games for the Amiga. Two of them are somehow related to the other games and might be of interest:

Light'n'Dark: This unfinished game should be a battlechess game, where you can select your creatures from different creaturesets. The project has been aborted, because several artists lost motivation before they have finished the graphics.

There's an old computer player only demo on aminet with the Archon- creatureset:

Zerberk 2: There have been several prototypes of Zerberk 2... One with scrolling, one with rendered 3D graphics (made with cinema4D) and another one with 32 color pixel graphics. (All graphic-sets are
incomplete, though)

There's a mockup with the pixel graphics over here:

Monsters of Terror

Screenshot taken from Lazy Cow website.

Monsters of Terror can be downloaded from here.

Miner Runner

Screenshot taken from Lazy Cow website.

Minerunner can be downloaded from here

Poweroids

Screenshot taken from Lazy Cow website.

Poweroids can be downloaded from here

Star Defender

Screenshot taken from Lazy Cow website.

Star Defender can be downloaded from here

Zerkberk

Screenshot taken from Lazy Cow website.

Zerberk can downloaded from here.

Do you think good gameplay can always compensate for basic presentation
(graphics and sound)?

No, gameplay is only one part of the complete works of a game. Graphics and sound are also important, as well as other things, like the story. (if the game has a story) Graphics and sound need not to be state of the art to make a good game, but they should be decent. I would prefer games with nice pixel graphics over cheap realtime 3D graphics, though.

Do you think the simple game controls (8 directions and one fire button) were one of the main reasons old arcade /computer games are fondly remembered as they were easier to pick and play but hard to master?

No, I think most people just like these games, because they played it in their youth. Ask some kids in 20 years about their favourite games, and they will probably mention Playstation games.

What did you enjoy most about making games for the Amiga?

I miss the guru mediation. These days, the computers just freeze when you played too many tricks with the operating system. How boring.

Are you still involved in the computer industry? If so what are you currently workin on?

I am working on the space shooter Nanovoid as a freetime project for quite some time now. (Probably for the iPhone). You might want to see some info's over here:

Thank you.

AmigaPd would like to thank Matthias Bock for taking the time to answer the questions.  We would also like to say a big thank you for Matthias for taking the time to answer the questions in English which is not his native language. 

AmigaPd Charityware

We hope you enjoyed reading the interview - remember AmigaPd is charityware - please visit our just giving page to support our chosen charity Mencap.