Power Crystal [M2 – Tech Demo / Proto / Cancelled]

Power Crystal [M2 – Tech Demo / Proto / Cancelled]

ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)

ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)

Images:


What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading...


Would you like to add more info, screens or videos to this page? Add a comment below!

(your first comment will be moderated before to be published)

U64 Staff & Contributors




44 thoughts on “Power Crystal [M2 – Tech Demo / Proto / Cancelled]

  1. Ross Sillifant

    Power Crystal’s developers, Perceptions, became an early choice to be a 3DO M2 developer because of the teams track record (everyone taken on had to have a major game to their credit-although exceptions were made for 2 team memembers) and because co-founder Andrew Whittaker had worked on Jaguar AVP, which was one of 3DO’s favourite titles!.

    1. john Duncan-Wells

      Exceptions were made for 2 team memembers, or yes Me. john Wells and Dave Fox. Whata great time we had. Loved the job.

      Shame about Andrew Whittaker, Now called Jane Whittaker.

  2. Ross Sillifant

    Screens you see here were done using a early M2 development kit, which only had 1X Power PC Chip, final version was to use 2 and perception were told the 2X chips would run at least twice the speed the PowerPC chip they were using so far ran at, but even on the early kit, game was seen running at 60 FPS, every in-game object would of eatured Goiuraud shading, been effected by sunlight, shadows etc.

    Power Crystal engine was also being used on an un-named 3D puzzle game and a 3D tank-Shooter called Flagfight (working title).

  3. Ross Sillifant

    Game actually started out under codename of ‘Artemis’

    Once Jaguar AVP was finished, Andrew Whittaker left Rebellion and joined with John Taylor to form Springer SpanielSoftware.

    The team’s first was what Andrew has classed as ‘a revolutionary, fantasy role-playing game’ planned initally for PC CD ROM and had a planned release date of early ’96 with conversions to:Jaguar CD/Playstation and Saturn by end of ’96.

    These plans changed when 3DO gave support and the game underwent a transformation as did the company.

  4. Ross Sillifant

    I’ve seen this game, in it’s original, Artemis form, crop up online on various sites listing it as a Lost Jaguar CD game (janatari.de etc)

    But that’s really streching it as it’s no more a Lost Jaguar CD game than it is a Lost PS1 or Saturn title, as like i said earlier all 3 of these versions were only planned and would’nt of been started until the PC CD version was finished.

    So, Artemis is nothing more than a lost PC CD game that switched formats and ended up a revamped title and became a lost 3DO M2 title.

    How much of the original design concepts for the PC CD game remained in the 3DO M2 revamp i’d love to know, but no, you cannot class this a Lost Jaguar etc title IMO as it’s not like it was signed, coding started or game itself even finished on original planned format.

    It’s streching the claim way too far and wide.

  5. Ross Sillifant

    Um, you are aware some of the more ‘Eye-Candy’ screens your using here (and appeared in UK Press at the time) are mock-ups?.

    All rendered in 3DS and done in a higher resolution than actual 3DO M2 game would of run at.

  6. monokoma

    From: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=811435

    Preview of POWER CRYSTAL for M2 (Feb 6/97)
    NEXT GENERATION MAGAZINE

    Following the completion of Alien vs. Predator for Jaguar
    , Andrew Whittaker left Rebellion (the company which
    developed it) and joined John Taylor to form Springer
    Spaniel Software, a new development outfit.

    At that time, Whittaker had in his mind a new and, as he
    saw it, revolutionary orthogonal RPG. The original
    project name was Artemis. A PC version was expected
    first with 32-bit console versions to follow, but when
    3DO (which at the time still owned the M2 hardware
    rights) extended some support, the project underwent a
    transformation as did the company.

    Whittaker became the managing director of a new
    development team called Perceptions. The game itself
    changed from an orthogonal design to a complete 3D
    realm and the name was changed to Power Crystal.
    Whittaker was completely floored by the M2’s hardware
    (which at that time possessed only a single PPC 602 CPU
    as compared to the dual processor set-up it now
    possesses). “M2 really is the single finest piece of
    hardware we’ve worked with. Its power will hit the world
    of entertainment software like a tidal wave.” said
    Whittaker. “To call it a quantum leap forward is such a
    gross understatement that it does it injustice.”

    At this point in time, Power Crystal is one of the few
    known M2 projects being developed in the UK. Take a
    look at today’s Special for more M2 information.

    From: http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/list-of-all-m2-games.11454/

    “On a side note, the game “Power Crystal” is lost forever, sadly. :-( Still need to get in contact with Andrew Whittaker, but it’s unlikely that he has something left. The programmer which I talked to hadn’t, and since the dev systems went into liquidation and are long scrapped, there’s virtually no chance that something survived. ”

    From: https://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/panasonic-3do-hits-the-desk/

    “Yep, great post. I was part of the Perceptions development team creating ‘Power Crystal’ for the 3DO – M2, it was pretty amazing for the time. Shame the M2 died before release…”

    From: https://archive.org/stream/ng_unedited/ng_29_unedited_djvu.txt

    Every object in Power Crystal will feature Gourard shading and will be
    affected by sunlight and shadows, which is a breeze for the M2

    Miles of game area have been put together using single tiles. A contour map
    converts the data into tables. All the graphics are 3D polygons except lamp
    posts, bushes, and birds which are implemented as sprites

    around six months perfecting their
    skills. Once mastered, however,
    Whittaker insists that it’s a
    programmer’s dream. The majority of
    Power Crystal is being created in C
    using M2’s own compiler, while the
    polygon graphics are created using 3D
    Studio and 3D Studio Max. The only
    part of the game written in assembly
    language is a small section of the 3D
    engine, though even that is mostly in C.

    From: http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_June_1997.pdf

    Matsushita wants its M2 machine to be a major RPG platform. It recently showed off a M2 RPG, POWER CRYSTAL, from U.K. devel-opment house Perceptions. The screen shots alone should spark many fans’ inter-est in RPGs on the M2.
    Interplay and Sierra are planning several big RPG products, too. Sierra has DAEMON ISLE and BETRAYAL AT ANTARA, and Interplay
    has a major AD&D product, IRON THRONE, that will be launched online.
    The RPG category benefits from larger storage capacity on consoles. The demand for persistant and interactive worlds and
    perhaps just a general pendulum swing back to deeper titles is also helping the genre’s popularity. In any case it’s interest-
    ing to note how important the specific RPG titles are to a number of heavyweights.

  7. Ross Sillifant

    The Next Generation Mag.text seems nigh on identical to wording that UK equiv.magazine EDGE, had, along with those Fake/Mocked Up higher resolution M2 images.

    M2 would of been an interesting platform, for a while at least until Dreamcast eclipsed it….

    Read on Atari Age the other day that in Ps1 Tempest X’s hidden T2K cheat mode there’s a message saying a version of Tempest 2000 was ported in part to the M2, just for fun of it, now that i’d loved to of seen running.

    Also going from what World Tour Racing Jaguar CD coder has said in online interviews, M2 would of been far more impressive than what Atari’s Jaguar MK 2 would of been (coder talks of rival systems planned for same time, which really brings M2 into play).

  8. Hazy

    In issue 92 of GamesTM (Oct 17) there’s an interview with Jane Whitaker (Andrew’s real name) where he states that Power Crystal was “finished and got 100% reviews in Edge and stuff like that”. Hmm I think he’s mistaken to be very generous to him.

  9. Ross Sillifant

    As an avid Edge subscriber right up until the PS4 era, there was no such review and Edge scores are out of 10, not 100…

    He must be confusing it with something else, understandable given amount of titles worked on and number of years passed.

  10. Alex

    From Retro Gamer Magazine Issue 178:

    RG: Just so we’re clear, since there’s no release to check, was the cancelled M2 game Power Crystal something you did for MGM?

    Jane Whittaker:
    No, that was a side project for 3DO, because in those days you could still do projects in your own time. I was approached by Trip Hawkins and Dave Maynard, and they said, ‘We’ve got this new M2 console coming, you did the best game for the Jaguar, do you want to come and do the launch game for the M2?’ I was already in the process of moving across to MGM, so I told MGM about this and they said, ‘As long as you do your day job with us, this isn’t competitive so it’s fine.’

    RG: Power Crystal was an open world RPG – how much of that was drawn from your Midwinter experience?

    Jane Whittaker:
    Oh a ton of it. The whole way of building 3D worlds, I’d learned how to do quest structure from Mike Singleton. It didn’t play like Midwinter, it was a traditional fantasy RPG. People who played it later said it was like an early Zelda – not Wind Waker… Ocarina of Time? That’s sort of how it played like. It was finished and ready to go out, and they cancelled the console. They had some really quality stuff, it was a lovely console – it wasn’t the quality of the console or the games, it was purely a financial decision, and it was really sad.

  11. Ross Sillifant

    Luca and myself have put the question of why Jane now chooses to say Power Crystal WAS finished. .when (as Andrew) they claimed the exact opposite some years ago.

    But Jane has yet to reply.

    Here’s Andrew talking about it at the time when asked:

    Q.Hi, Andrew! I was wondering…what happened to Power Crystal? It looked like
    an interesting game. Will you be resurrecting it for any of the newer systems, or has it been put on the shelf?.

    9/1/98 Andrew Whittaker
    Hi,
    Still to be decided. I still own all the rights to the code and graphics etc, so it may well find a home in a new product.

    It was either unfinished as Andrew stated back then or it was finished…

    Going on fact it’s previews used fake screens and as an avid Edge reader at the time, the game was not reviewed as Jane now claims. .i know which version of events i believe.

  12. Ross Sillifant

    Just to be clear (and i did attempt to post this earlier, but comments haven’t appeared)..The following comments from (then Andrew) Whittaker are what have made me question accounts given and put Q’s about them direct to the source:

    Whittaker at 1 stage was publically warning people not to become involved with Atari and the Jaguar, as pay hadn’t been forth coming on work done on AVP:

    Andrew Whittaker
    Alien Vs Predator Programmer, now signed to your local friendly 3do corp.

    Well minor little things to consider like getting paid, despite Atari promises
    I still havent received any income from AVP sales..

    I for one am not telling all my friends to sign up for the Jaguar, I want them to be able to feed their families

    Andrew Whittaker
    Coder AVP

    That’s a pretty strong allegation to make in itself.

    Atari’s response:

    For the record, I have forwarded this statement internally at Atari and it was received with surprise and disappointment. Upon review of any and all materials related to AvP and Andrew’s relationship to that project, no one at Atari believes the above statement to be true. In more blunt terms, the statements relating to Atari owing Andrew money are untrue.

    Atari has an obligation to protect Andrew’s rights to privacy regarding his personal matters, however, I felt I should respond to the public remarks on the net as they were passed on to me.

    — Don Thomas
    Atari Corporation

    And it was met with an equally strong response.

    Andrew replied with:

    Dear all,
    I want to clear up some confusion after reading this.

    There is no argument between myself and Atari, neither did I criticise the machine,in fact I am an ardent supporter of it. I left Atari simply because they;thought it cheaper to buy product from independants than to pay monthly
    salaries to development teams in the UK.
    There is no animosity between myself and Atari. I am not the sort of person to bear a grudge. They made the decision on cost saving alone with no ill-will between either party. I am of-course bitterly disappointed that I cannot continue to do what I love doing with Atari but wish the machine well in the,future and it deserves to do well as you all deserve good games for your
    money.
    thank you for taking the time to read this.

    Andrew Whittaker
    Ardent Jaguar Fan

    It’s hard to know what to make of it.

    Whittaker’s claims on non-payment strongly denied by Atari and for someone who didn’t hold a grudge, Whittaker made a pretty strong claim at the time about warning his friends not to get involved with Atari.

    And rather than try and resolve the issue in private, posted the warning online for all to see.

    Something just doesn’t ring right with a lot of the material on Janes bio online…

    So at this stage we have given Jane the opportunity to clear up any and all confusion over several claims.

  13. Ross Sillifant

    Andrew Whittaker:
    AvP really can be considered an Atari product rather than a Rebellion one. I was intially asked to write AvP by Rebellion, but I had so much problem with Rebellion, and Atari did too, I wrote the code as an Atari employee, and
    stayed on at Atari after completion in a senior position. If you look at the credits you will notice the Rebellion people are credited as Name
    (Rebellion). The other programmer Mike Beaton, although on the Rebellion payroll also had huge problems with Rebellion and relocated to Sunnyvale to complete the project with me, and left Rebellion shortly after completion..
    I wont go into the details of the difficulties Mike, myself and Atari had with Rebellion, but that explains why you see those (Rebellion) comments
    after peoples names. Much of the art also got retouched at Sunnyvale.

  14. Ross Sillifant

    Rebellions Response:

    Jason Kingsley, Rebellion MD here, just in case anyone was wondering:

    “We currently have no plans to rehire Andrew Whittaker.

    He did his job on the alien AI in AvP, and that’s what he was hired to
    do; he was no longer needed at Rebellion, and went back to being
    freelance, and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours.”

    So Whittaker attacks Rebellion, tries to claim AVP was an Atari product more than Rebellion one.

    Then attacks Atari claiming he was never paid for his work on AVP. .Atari rebuke that and Whittaker does a complete U-turn.

    So i have doubts about what was claimed in RetroGamer based on past experience.

  15. Ross Sillifant

    I also think Andrew over stated his role on AVP..he was asked to write the A.I routines and the computer text logs,but stating he was asked to write AVP for Rebellion didn’t make that clear.

    Rebellion did publicly put things straight :

    Just to make this clear (and feel free to object, Andrew, if you think this isn’t fair):

    Andrew Whittaker wrote the alien (marine, predator, as appropriate) AI
    code, and the code for the computers.

    A programmer at Atari wrote part of the startup code.

    Mike Beaton wrote everything else (graphics engine, HUD code, etc).
    Calling either of them ‘lead coder’ isn’t really fair.

    — dan @ Rebellion

  16. Ross Sillifant

    Andrew/Jane has been kind enough to explain the comments made about not being paid by Atari for AVP did not come from themselves,but some idiot pretending to be them,just to cause trouble at Atari.

    I would like to thank Jane for the time and manner in which they put the record straight this afternoon.

    So much lost games research sadly involves sorting false claims out.

  17. Ross Sillifant

    Jane Whittaker Again been kind enough to answer a few Q’s put by myself:

    Jane Whittaker

    On Power Crystal, it was in fact reviewed by a number of magazines, including Edge, although those reviews were never printed. Most magazines, as you know, have a significant lead time so they review ahead of time. 3DO had all the reviews pulled from publication once it was announced they were no longer going ahead with the hardware console. Yes, it did get top marks in the Edge review, I am really proud of that, although to this day really sad that the M2 console itself was scrapped. We had the reviewer from Edge visit us regularly in the office and I got to know him really well. (although it earned me the worst dressed developer award in Edge! but that is another story :) ) On Artemis, there is a misconception that it was an early version of Power Crystal. In fact, the two games are totally unrelated. Artemis never stretched beyond paper design for Jaguar CD and wasn’t actually a fantasy RPG. Artemis was open world exploration but in a modern setting. Actual production of Artemis was never started beyond initial concept ideas. Artemis actually was a joint idea with my friend Jon from New York, with Artemis being the working title as that was the name of his dog! So Project Artemis was always a bit of an in-joke.

    1. Anthony Edwards

      Ross,

      Email me @ VideoGameEsoterica @ Gmail if you can. I am the guy who put up the recent entire series of M2 videos on YouTube, from my ten plus years of collecting for the platform.

      I’d love to chat a bit

  18. Ross Sillifant

    We must now sadly discredit Andrew Whittaker as a reliable source on any project he was involved in.

    This is the real story regarding Power Crystal.

    Source details passed onto Luca in private.

    “As for Power Crystal on the M2, the game was never finished. We had several parts of the game in development, such as the terrain system, some of the global commerce tracking and a parts of the UI. The artwork was also progressing but wasn’t even 10% done. It was a massive project and would have take a lot more time to complete than the time we spent on it before 3DO pulled the plug on the system.”

  19. The Crestfallen

    A second member of the Perceptions team who worked on Power Crystal has confirmed the game was nowhere near finished.

    Not coding
    Not in terms of manual written
    Boxes produced.
    No reviews done.

    He wishes to remain anonymous,but said it was only a matter of time before Janes lies found Jane out.

  20. Ross Sillifant

    London Gazette, 14th March 1997 addition which reported Perception’s liquidation –

    Company Number: 2988110.
    Name of Company: OMCOURT LIMITED.
    Nature of Business: Computer Software Developers.
    Type of Liquidation: Creditors.
    Address of Registered Office: Maclaren House, Skerne Road,
    Driffield, East Yorkshire YO25 7QB.
    Liquidator’s Name and Address: Andrew James Nichols, Redman
    Nichols, Maclaren House, Skerne Road, Driffield, East Yorkshire
    YO25 7QB.
    Office Holder Number: 8367.
    Date of Appointment: 28th February 1997.
    By whom Appointed: Members and Creditors. (527)

    Perceptions were liquidated 28th February, 6 months before the M2 was cancelled.

  21. Ross Sillifant

    Time to draw a line under claims Power Crystal was ever reviewed by Edge/Next Generation magazines.

    Power Crystal..

    https://archive.org/details/NextGeneration33Sep1997

    Article clearly states even the 3DO Company doing IMSA Racing had no idea M2 had been canned.

    Power Crystal had been RECENTLY REVEALED… ( not REVIEWED).. and probably only done so, in order to bring attention to it, so conversion rights to other platforms could be secured.

    Any/all claims Edge and sibling publication Next Generation Reviewed it, are utter fabrications.

  22. Ross Sillifant

    The cold, hard truth about what EDGE actually thought about Power Crystal is here:

    https://archive.org/details/EDGE.N045.1997.05

    Reader, Richard Johnson, wrote in expressing concerns over supposed real imagery of Power Crystal and the contrast between the eye candy screens and those featuring blocky, bland, cardboard looking imagery, sprite based trees.

    Edge admitted they had used fake screens in E42 and E43

    Power Crystal lacked the visual clout of Zelda 64

    Perceptions had considerably less artistic resources than Nintendo..

    And the version of Power Crystal they had seen, was running on an incomplete M2 development kit.

    In the same issue, Silicon Dreams Andy Herse talked about M2 development, saying 3DO had updated the dev kits 3 times in the past 2 years, with a 4th Revision on the way.

    This was May 1997

    Perceptions went UNDER in February 1997

    Jane Whittaker has twisted actual events.

    Niether Next Generation Magazine or Edge ever reviewed the game.

    It was never classed as a Zelda beater.

    Next Generation Magazine speculated it was only shown in an attempt to gather publisher interest to save it from being lost.

  23. Ross Sillifant

    Gamepro Issue 59 had an interview with Andrew Whittaker as part of the Jaguar AVP Preview.

    Andrew lies to Jer Horwitz.,claimung credit for no less than 8 Graftgold Amiga titles, including:

    URIDIUM and MORPHEUS.

    Andrew Braybrook made 2 attempts to bring Uridium to the Amiga, but abandoned both.

    Steve Turner of Graftgold told us Andrew Whittaker pitched a PC version of Uridium to Graftgold, a coder friend of Whittaker’s had been working on, but an early demo was all that they saw.

    And MORPHEUS stayed a C64 exclusive, there never were conversions to any other platforms.

    Andrew Whittaker also claimed to be part of the team at Rebellion working on Legions Of The Undead and that creature designs were being done by Stan Winston.

    Whittaker then told people on Newsgroups Legions was nothing to do with him.

    Waiting for Legions of the Undead,

    nothing to do with me that one

    all the best

    Andrew Whittaker

    Programmer AVP

    Nobody from REBELLION has ever mentioned Stan Winston or the studio, being involved in any creature design

    From Rebellion:

    Legions of the Undead

    ——- — — ——

    Programmers: Dan Mitchell, Jamie Lokier

    Artists: Rebellion art team. (Toby Harrison-Banfield, Stuart Wilson,

    Justin Rae).

    Director: Jason Kingsley

    General nice guys: Brainstorm

  24. Ross Sillifant

    Next Generation Magazine were pretty clear they never reviewed Power Crystal, pointing out to a reader that it, along with pretty much every other title in the works for the M2, had simply been scrapped.

    Considering it was the sister publication of Edge and Edge scored out of 10,not 100…

    Jane Whittaker’s comments to Gamestm and others about it being finished and scoring 100% are an utter disgrace.

    Shame on Gamestm staff for not doing the most basic fact checking.

  25. Ross Sillifant

    Tapp-Anders Sikvall talking about Jane Whittaker :

    I worked together with him and several other very interesting guys back in 1995 under the name of Perceptions which was developing the game Power Crystal for the M2 console which unfortunately got scrapped before it saw the light of day.

    Unfortunately I have for several reasons not had much contact with him since the closing down of Perceptions

  26. Ross Sillifant

    Andrew Whittaker

    1/31/95

    Im not planning a sequel to AVP but am working on a huge RPG game called
    Artemis, which I will also be publishing, it will be available on Jaguar CD
    early next year. all being well….

    best regards

    Andrew Whittaker
    Programmer AVP

    Yet in every interview, Andrew, now Jane Whittaker claims a career path of leaving Atari and going straight to MGM.

    Utter TOSH.

    Springer Spaniel software and Project ARTEMIS occurred in between.

  27. Ross Sillifant

    We now have sufficient evidence (press coverage, court documentation and testimonials from multiple ex-Perceptions staff) to put together the Power Crystal saga.

    3DO signed a publishing deal with Perceptions to have Power Crystal as a M2 exclusive.

    Work was well underway on an early and incomplete M2 development kit, when 3DO suddenly notified Perceptions the publishing deal was OFF.

    We suspect due to 3DO selling the M2 technology to Matsushita/Panasonic.

    With the deal off, Perceptions finds itself in financial difficulty, so a rescue attempt is made to get publisher interest in the title…

    Cue the lavish Previews in both Edge and Next Generation magazines.

    No new publisher deal is secured, Perceptions fall victim to bankruptcy.

    6 months later Panasonic annouced the M2 hardware itself is now canned.

  28. Ross Sillifant

    Update.:

    New information has come to light.

    f

    Power Crystal reached the stage where a big chunk of environmental art had been finished.

    It had a basic landscape system, basic economic system, so you could buy/sell items, some basic characters, but no interaction.

    It was nowhere near the stage where it could be reviewed.

    Jane Whittaker claiming it was 100% finished, reviewed by GamePro, Edge and Next Generation magazines and recieved 100% scores and described as a Zelda 64 Killer, is a complete lie and we have had the games actual status now confirmed by multiple ex-perceptions sources.

  29. Ross Sillifant

    Curious to note that after the above information has come to light, Archive. Org has removed the issues of Edge and Next Generation Magazine mentioned.

    Where Power Crystal is Previewed, other W. I. P Perceptions titles talked about and Next Generation magazine letters page points out the game was no Zelda Killer and Perceptions no Nintendo

    🤔

  30. Ross Sillifant

    Jeff Minter has kindly confirmed the claims Jane made about coding AVP at Sunnyvale with Jeff to one side, John Carmack the other, were completely false as we suspected already :

    Hm, well T2K was pretty much all done in Wales, I used to upload builds to the Atari server in Sunnyvale using a pretty slow modem. I only went out to Sunnyvale with T2K for a few weeks of final test, IIRC for about 3 weeks before Xmas of 1993, then home for Xmas, and for a couple of weeks right after Xmas, finishing in Jan ’94. Don’t think I saw any of AvP at that time (I guess it would have been really early to see any of it anyway in Jan 1994). Don’t recall seeing Carmack there either.

    I *do* remember DOOM came out while I was in Sunnyvale pre-Xmas, and I couldn’t wait to get T2K finished off so I could go back to Wales and do nothing but play DOOM for a month. :D

    IIRC the next time I was in Sunnyvale was in June ’94, I’d been supposed to go back there in May to work on VLM, but I got ill with pneumonia and couldn’t fly until that had cleared up enough so I was delayed till June.

  31. Ross Sillifant

    Thiese made for some curious reading:

    https://atariage.com/forums/topic/3506-my-15-minutes-of-atari-fame/

    Mindfield

    Posted January 21, 2002

    “About my only other claim to fame is being hired by Andrew Whittaker (Jaguar Aliens vs. Predator, with Rebellion Software) to write the music for his then-upcoming Jaguar RPG. Unfortunately the Jag crashed and burned and the project got canned before he actually needed my musical talents, so nothing ever came of it. I can at least take pride in the fact that out of 20 people elected for the job, which then got winnowed down to 3 to be sent to Electronic Arts (the publisher) for final judging, I got picked, with the only criticism being that I should work with more channels. (I only did MODs, which were 4 channel) Even more ironic was that the tunes I sent for consideration were 5 of the tunes I’d written for my at-the-time-upcoming game Mystic Tiles, which were not my usual large-file, big-sample tunes, but were written for their small size, and therefore used a lot of tiny (128-byte) waveform-generated sounds. Go figure…”

    And:

    https://atariage.com/forums/topic/89078-share-your-past-musical-experiences/

    Mindfield

     
    Posted June 11, 2006

    I’ve never been in a band, but I’ve written plenty of songs. I started out with 4-track MODs back in the day, and eventually migrated to 32-track XMs and, currently, softsynths/samplers like Fruity Loops and Native Instruments.

     

    Anyway, back in the mid-90s I used to hang out in the #atari channel on IRC using my Atari ST (on which I wrote the aforementioned MODs). I was also writing a game that was to feature digital MOD music of my own composition. One of the regulars in the channel was one Andrew Whittaker, writer of Spectrum games like Quazitron and Magnetron, member of Rebellion Software in the 90s (during the time when they wrote Alien vs. Predator on the Jag) and, at the time I spoke to him, owner of his own company Perceptions, who were embrioled in a new RPG for the Jag. It eventually came up that they were going to be on the prowl for someone to do the music for the game, and I casually submitted that I thought that would be tremendously cool, me being into writing music on the computer and all. He invited me to submit some of my work, so I set up a temporary web page and posted the 5 tracks I’d written for my game so he could download and review them. They were all very small tunes, 80-150k apiece, being designed to fit, along with the game, on one 720k disk. But I thought they were some pretty good works, so figured they’d be ripe for the impromptu portfolio.

     

    Now, I was only one of probably a few dozen who were also being considered. Andrew didn’t have the final say though; ultimately, that went to Electronic Arts, who provided much of the game’s financial backing and were to be its publishers. Andrew eventually submitted everyone’s entries and EA reviewed and judged. Eventually, I made it into the top 3. Stoked and anxious, I waited for the final judgement to be passed, which took few weeks, and the word was passed: I was in like flynn. Woohoo! I rule! My music was going to be in a cool Jag RPG! Andrew advised me of the commissions I was to get on a per-song basis (which was quiet a packet for someone like me) but that I probably wouldn’t be needed until close to the end of the dev cycle (which was estimated at the time to be some 6-8 months down the road), so that was perfectly fine with me. I could tinker and play and come up with some ideas in the interim.

     

    Sadly, that was the most that ever came of it. The Jag, and Atari itself, died before I was needed, and the game died an ignominous death when EA pulled out of the Jag business, leaving Andrew and Perceptions in the lurch and me rather disappointed, but at least satisfied in the knowledge that — hey, my stuff ain’t half bad

    So here we have an individual who Whittaker clearly blindsided by telling him he’d written both Magnetron and Quazitron for Graftgold, when in fact he hadn’t touched either..

    Jane is telling him Perceptions planned RPG is for the Atari Jaguar, not the 3DO M2 Console, which brings me straight back to my firm belief Power Crystal was indeed a rebranded Project Artemis from the brief Springer Spaniel days…

    Jane promised the individual good rates of pay for his music, then blames Electronic Arts for pulling out of the Jaguar market as a reason for no longer requiring the individuals services.

    E. A were never in the Jaguar business.

    So no talk of game being 100% finished, receiving 100% scores in magazines.

    No talk of Panasonic killing the M2 being to blame for game being canned.

    No talk of it being on the M2 at all.

    So now we have the games musician becoming the 4th Person who was working on content for the game, to detail Jane’s Power Crystal claims as utter bulls#it and give even more evidence about just how many Graftgold titles he lied about working on.

  32. Ross Sillifant

    Even more coming to light.
    MrMaddog
    #266
    Posted 21 hours ago
    Sigh, I might as well add my own two cents here since I also had some dealings with “Jane” 25 years ago. He was on the #atari IRC channel and of course I was young & naive when he was recruiting people to work at his Perceptions studio. And of course he promised me a programming job in England which was a dream of mine, but after two or three years of not hearing back, and working a crappy low wage job, I just gave up and went back to school to finish my CS degree. By that time I found out that Perceptions was long closed up and “Jane” was in a game mag saying he’s working for MGM. Glad I never took the offer or I would have been stranded in the UK with no money!

    Anyway here’s what I can knew you about “Jane” at the time…

    He never used his real name Jane but called himself Andrew, nor mentioned anything about being a hermaphrodite or a conjoined twin.
    He said he wore socks because he spilled scolding hot water on his feet so he can’t wear shoes, also wears nylon leggings instead of pants.
    This is the weirdest part, and a major red flag…he expected all his employees to wear socks & leggings as a form of “solidarity”. I made a joke about wearing a Scottish kilt to go along with the leggings and he seriously told me what plaid skirts to wear. For a Job Interview!!!!!

    After finding out the whole truth about Jane Whittaker, I literally thank God that I never got a job in the game industry through that con artist. Plus it burns me that to this day he still tricks people who want to get started in the business like some sick pimp preying on innocent young children…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *