Cinemaware: backdoor to game industry

As long as I have been hanging around in front of flickering screens, watching demos and playing games I wanted to be part of this creative process. Sadly my coding skills did not went very far – I am to fuzzy and get lost in typos and nahh.. let’s say I am too wild for that kind of work. Little envy arouse, when my cousin landed a job at Electronic Arts, a few years back and he was really not that much into the computer stuff like I was. Nowadays I am quite happy not to be in such a big undertaking and getting lost in some studio, with hundreds of people, working away in some corner of a big office space.

But as mindset creates reality and you just have to keep up dreaming and do what you love, your chance will probably knock on your door. In my case it came in the form of Sven Vössing, MD of Cinemaware Retro. He needed some help with retouching the old boxart of those mighty titles like Defender of the Crown for the ZX Spectrum and Rocket Ranger. Our ways crossed on several retro occasions and so he knew what I was up to. So far I did the cover for the forthcoming Defender of the Crown and did all the extras, like layouts of sticker, poster and manual and there are more games in the pipeline…

It stuck me with awe and makes me really happy, to work on those classics. Jim Sachs, who did all the graphics on Defender of the Crown, is just one of the best pixelartists, I adore. R.J. Mical, the genius guy from the original Amiga development team, saved the project and coded the engine for it. I was lucky to have a beer with him… I mean those people rocked the entire home computer history and so it is an honor to work on those masterpieces, even if in a tiny manner.

I retouched the original boxart, took out all fonts, restored all scratches and dents, replaced ruined spots, retouched all stickers and set everything new.