interview

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In May 2008, mrmark0673 found a working prototype of Hoppin Mad, an unreleased NES game developed by Elite. The game was previously unknown to the public and when it was found, the NES community was really happy to check all the infos and screens that were freely shared online by its new owner. We had a little interview with Mr. Mark, to talk about Hoppin Mad, the preservation of unseen games, the delicate relationship between collectors / developers / gaming community, the future release of the game and some of his personal tastes.

U64: Thanks for your time Mark! Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers? :)

Mark: Thanks for having me, it’s great to be able to share info with such a great group of people. My name is Mark and I’m 24 years old. I live with my twin brother just outside of Boston and I currently work as a 7th grade Science teacher.

U64: Can you tell us a little bit about the Hoppin Mad prototype and how you found it? 

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Continuing our trip through the  various websites and communities related to beta & cancelled games, this time we had the chance to make some questions to Frank Gasking, main webmaster of Games That Weren’t. As always, in this new Unseen Interview we’ll try to better understand who are these lovely geeks that work under the site, to talk about the  story of GTW, the unseen gaming world, digital preservation and to discover some of their personal tastes.

U64: Thanks for your time Frank! Would you like to introduce yourself and your site to our readers?

Frank: Hi there – I’m Frank Gasking – 27yrs old and from England. During the day i’m a web developer, and outside of work i’m a retro gaming enthusiast with a particular interest in the Vic 20 and C64 platforms, as well as games that never saw the light of day.

Our site “Games That Weren’t” is a project dedicated to documenting and finding lost/unreleased games which have been subject to mystery for many years across many platforms. Our main site covers news across all platforms, then breaks down into sister projects that focus primarily on a particular system (My own personal focus being the Commodore 64 platform). The current sister sites we have specifically cover the C64, Amiga, PC and 3DO platforms. This year the project is 10 years old, and started out originally as a C64 specific article for Commodore Zone fanzine.

U64: The GTW site organization is in sub-categories, each one with its own webmaster, it’s probably a great way to have more and better content for every section, as each editor can concentrate to work on his specific platform: how did this kind of organization start? 

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On October 2008, a playable prototype of Happy Camper, an unreleased NES game that was in development at Color Dreams, was discovered between various  remains of the studio. NGD was the lucky collector that got his hands on this legendary game and he decided to share his find with all the other NES fans: infos and screens from HC were soon released, so that documents of its existence can now be preserved. But that’s not all. The next week (February 2009), Happy Camper will be finally released to the public, complete with a phisical cart, a paper manual and much more! We had a little interview with NGD, to talk about his discovery, the release of the game and the thoughs of a collector on the wonderful world of unseen games.

Warning: sorry for the spelling  errors, we’ll fix them asap ;)

U64: Thanks for your time NGD! Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?

NGD: My name is Jason aka NationalGameDepot or NGD for short. I have been collecting NES for around 10 years or so now. I had a fully CIB NES set minus a Stadium Event box until this month, when I sold my CIB Myraid 6 in 1. So I am missing the SE box, and a Myriad now for a full set. I also have a few hundred PAL games, around 100 multi-carts, the test carts, Sachen stuff, and pile of other random crap. I am also the guy that has the giant 8ft Nintendo and 7ft Gameboy :) Check out my site @ www.nationalgamedepot.zoomshare.com for some old pics.

U64: Can you tell us about Happy Camper and how did you find it?