Leonard Tramiel Exclusive Text Interview - Great Commodore & Atari Insight

[Lostdragon]

22 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

In a way, spending the remainder of your days lying to a small group of randoms on the internet - many of which are only following to see the clown show - about a single game from 30 years ago, is a fitting punishment on its own.

Whittaker still has staunch supporters on Twitter, who refuse to accept he's an out and out fraud. 

 

Encountered one who calls it 'gotcha shit' and felt unless Whittaker was guilty of sexual harrasment, he should be left alone. 

 

The irony of the defence wasn't lost on myself, as the individual felt it was all stuff that happened years ago. 

 

 

Yeah... 

 

That's what Jane is promoting on Twitter, games he had small roles in, from over 30 years ago.. 

 

AVP

Dark Seed

Flying Shark

Power Crystal 

 

 

And there are still fresh people coming out with new stories about his behaviour. 

[Lostdragon]

In order to protect a source who recently, kindly came forward, to discuss their personal experiences, dealing with Jane, i won't name them just detail Jane's behaviour. 

 

 

 

When they questioned Jane in private pointing out that apon further research into Jane there was a lot of controversy surrounding Jane and his claims about positions in the games industry, they wanted to put up a small disclaimer, something along lines of.. 

 

 

 

Views expressed within were those of Jane, people should be sensible and not take them at face value at times, given what had been happening online and elsewhere regarding Jane at the time. 

 

 

 

 Jane then proceeded  to behave exactly as he had with Andrew Rosa..

 

 

Suddenly Jane's correspondence had the current company he was with, legal officers name copied in. 

 

Jane wanted the disclaimer removed. 

 

We've seen this countless times, Jane happy to use a platform to spin a narrative, as soon as the platform digs a little deeper, discovers what's connected to Jane, questions him, wants to warn the community things aren't as they appear.. 

 

Jane either cuts contact, wants content pulled, gag orders issued disclaimers removed. 

 

If you tell the truth, you have nothing to fear Jane.. 

[LordKraken]

that sounds related to his latest stunt at the train simulator company, correct?

[JagChris]

Lake Tahoe? Wow I didn't realize he was that close to where I use to be at the time.

[Lostdragon]

23 hours ago, LordKraken said:

that sounds related to his latest stunt at the train simulator company, correct?

That one I haven't even seen yet. 

 

I'm still stumbling across old bullshit Whittaker posted (only he and Beaton coded AVP, no credit given to Mike Pooler, Whittaker making out he was part of the sound team), good lord he infested social media far and wide. 

 

What's the Train Sim company stunt? 

[+MrUnwondering]

22 hours ago, JagChris said:

Lake Tahoe? Wow I didn't realize he was that close to where I use to be at the time.

This was Creative Realms back in 2000, not much information on it other than some companies house documentation and a press release in the Telegraph -

 

And a Gamasutra post

 

[LordKraken]

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

What's the Train Sim company stunt? 

ohh you have so much to discover then. A lot of stuff happened last year. @MrUnwondering has more details I believe but that was a fun story to see unraveled.

[Lostdragon]

So, there's been action taken on this video (and not before time) :

 

 

 

Jane's segment/interview removed. 

 

What I find difficult to swallow however, is the statement issued by Neil. 

 

I think it's fair to say he and Jane clearly engaged in discussions after the video went out, Jane would of made claim of on going police investigation (sounds better than court case, makes Jane appear the victim).. 

 

It's the second part.. Amplification of abuse or misinformation. 

 

Sorry but NO! 

 

So many industry figures coming forward from:

 

Rare

Graftgold 

Perceptions 

Atari

The Tramiel family 

Cyberdreams 

Rebellion

Maelstrom

Mirage

Microprose

Bullfrog

Maxis

Jeff Minter

Etc etc.. 

 

And we are talking household names as it were. 

 

 

All saying they had no recollection of any Jane or Andrew Whittaker, if they did, he certainly  didn't have the role he claimed, was never part of the team behind, never coded anything on.. 

 

 

Come on Neil, there is no way you could for a moment of thought, hmm, it does look like Jane has been the target of a very organised hate campaign, it's obvious to the proverbial blind man, Jane flat out lied and lied and lied. 

 

That's way beyond simple misinformation. 

 

You got played Neil. 

 

Just as Jer Horwitz, Nick Thorpe Andrew Rosa, Waffling Taylors, Wireframe Magazine, Pocket, Alive 8,myself at the start, Gamestm Magazine, many others who gave Jane a platform in good faith. 

 

You've seen sense, removed Jane. 

 

 

More than can be said for these Press Reader sites, which still have the interviews with Jane or Retrogamer Magazine, who never apologised to the likes of Steve Turner. 

 

But please, say it as it is.. 

 

 

 

Edited February 19 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Mentioned this before, but when you look back at old interviews with Jason Kingsley of Rebellion, he honestly does give Jane Whittaker a run for his money, the amount of similar character traits between them is uncanny. 

 

Kingsley taking credit for Doug Neubauer coding A8 Star Raiders (come on, the interviewer should of asked how old Kingsley was at the time then). 

 

Kingsley hinting he still had assets for the 1997 version of AVP (then PC, Saturn and PlayStation) and Jaguar Legions Of The Undead, sites would gently nudge Kingsley, to see if he'd recovered anything the community might be able to preserve and share, lines of communication would go dead. 

 

 

But it's his how we got the Jaguar development contract, story, he really falls down. 

 

His original claim was that The Tramiel family had seen the 3D work Kingsley and Team had done on PC/Amiga Eye Of The Storm, been suitably impressed, sought them out for the Jaguar. 

 

That's now changed to Kingsley taking a game concept demo to Atari UK, looking for Falcon development work, Dragons VS Viking Longboats.. 

 

But he's also added.. 

 

 

"but for some reason we found ourselves presenting our wares directly to Atari's UK boss, who offered us the chance to become the first team outside of the US to write games for his company's new cartridge-based games machine... the Atari Alpine. (Later, thankfully, this name was changed to the more threatening 'Jaguar'.)"

 

Now I have seen Whittaker tweet about original name for the Jaguar, but it's the talk of being the first team outside the UK to develop for the Jaguar, that raised eyebrows. 

 

ATD were debugging the Jaguar hardware, asking for hardware changes, which Atari implemented, AVP used.. 

 

Atari had them turn the rolling landscape demo. into a fully fledged game, Cybermorph, so ATD would of beaten Rebellion to the punch? 

 

 

As for Eye Of The Storm, it literally bombed. 

 

They had hyped it up, talking about the direction their games were going to take, and proposed a semi-sequel to Eye of the Storm, perhaps set on Mars, and with more scientific accuracy. 

 

But the Press destroyed it, calling it completely redundant as likes of Elite II were doing everything it did and so, so much more.. 

 

But if it was what caught the eyes of the Tramiel's, convinced them Rebellion were the people to do likes of Checkered Flag 2 and AVP, explain this.. 

 

"Back in 1993 I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Rebellion, in Oxford, England, to see Eye of the Storm; to have it demo-ed to me by Jason himself, and then to take it away for review. Luckily, at the time I was working in Oxford (at Maverick Magazines), so it was only a short walk from our offices to theirs. I spent probably three or fours hours with Jason, playing the game, discussing it with him, and later being given a sneak peek of the Aliens vs. Predator game they were also working on for the Atari Jaguar… It was a memorable day."

https://thekingofgrabs.com/2019/

 

 

Whittaker claimed he helped Flare design and test the Jaguar well lookie here, Kingsley does the exact same.. 

 

 

 

 

 

56.21 mark. 

 

 

I just don't get why people like Kingsley and Whittaker constantly abused interview platforms, made such claims just be open and honest about your work, your development. 

 

The very press you played, always comes back to bite you. 

 

 

 

Nobody is promoting a campaign of hate Jane, it's a simple, established fact that both you and Jason Kingsley, have constantly fabricated claims, when asked about your careers. 

 

Edited February 25 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Kingsley happy to take credit for work of Images Software, led by Karl Jeffery on Lynx AVP, when talking to Retro Hour Podcast,plus again claiming the 3 separate campaigns was the idea/innovation of him and his brother 🙄

 

It didn't fizzle out, it was canned before you were awarded the contact for the Jaguar game. 

 

Purple Hampton took the concept from it over to Jaguar AVP. 

 

 

The Retro Hour Podcast guys are as bad as the magazines that let likes of Whittaker and Kingsley dictate the narrative. 

 

It's simply shameful. 

[Cyprian]

interesting story

 

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

Now I have seen Whittaker tweet about original name for the Jaguar,

what was that name?

 

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

ATD were debugging the Jaguar hardware, asking for hardware changes, which Atari implemented, AVP used..

do you know what hardware changes were requested?

[Lostdragon]

4 hours ago, Cyprian said:

interesting story

 

what was that name?

 

do you know what hardware changes were requested?

Can't think of the name off top of my head. It's still on @whittakergames Twitter feed, if that helps?

 

Fred  Gill of ATD talked of there being a couple of unused bits here and there in the Blitter chip and ATD asked ATARI  if they could include a mode where,when Texture-Mapping,you could add a constant value to the pixels, for the depth shading you see used in AVP..

[Lostdragon]

Not that we needed it in the end, but yet another Cyberdreams source talking about doing the graphics on Dark Seed and how Mike Dawson was digitised for the main character. 

 

 

 

No idea how Jane's mind works but did he honestly not realise many from Cyberdreams had already been interviewed about the game and more would come forward in the years since the games release? 

 

To claim you were responsible for the art, is unfair to Joby.. 

 

To claim you were digitised for the main character, is just insane.