Interview:Kevin Seghetti
From Game Developer Research Institute
GDRI: I noticed you programmed Stormlord and Pigskin Footbrawl for the Genesis. These two games appear to fall into the time period you were working as a freelance contractor [according to his résumé].
You posted on the SMS Power (Master System site) forums back in 2005 that SMS Rampart was subcontracted to you by RazorSoft. Presumably that's the case with Stormlord and Pigskin.
KS: Stormlord and Pigskin were games that RazorSoft was directly financing porting, so [it] wasn't a subcontract.
GDRI: In that same SMS Power thread, you said you started Developer Resources while working on Rampart. So I am assuming Stormlord and Pigskin were done before that company was established.
KS: Remember, this was 15 years ago, so some of the details are fuzzy. I have a timeline which might help with some of this stuff. The sequence was: Stormlord, Rampart, Pigskin.
I first became involved with Punk/RazorSoft through Jeff Spangenberg sometime in 1990. He wanted to develop a ROM emulator for the Genesis which could be used for developing games. I helped breadboard some test circuits, and then he had Joe Peter design and lay out a circuit board. I also started on a sound driver for the Genesis around that time. The details are fuzzy, but for some reason, Joe didn't finish the board layout, and another friend of mine, Scott Statton, was brought in to finish [it].
Around then, Jeff brokered a deal with RazorSoft to start Punk, and office space was acquired in Mountain View.
Then I started on the Stormlord port (I think it [was] around Sept. 1990; I remember it took 3 months at the end of the year). [It] was ported from the Amiga version by me under a contract, but the work was done at the Punk offices. I am pretty sure the contract was just between me and RazorSoft. RazorSoft was in Oklahoma; Punk was in Mountain View, CA. RazorSoft entirely funded Punk; the only development done at Punk was for RazorSoft (officially).
After Stormlord was finished, I then took the contract to do the [SMS] version of Rampart (must have been either late December 1990 or January 1991 - at the same time, Bruce Hammond took the contract to do the Genesis version). That work was begun at the Punk offices.
During that same time, Scott was debugging the Genesis development boards (called the "red board" because Scott spec'ed a red solder mask for fun). I assisted somewhat in this endeavor.
Then one day, Jeff and I had a disagreement about what I should be working on (I was helping Scott, and he thought I should be working on Rampart), and he kicked me out of Punk. Seems like it was around Valentine's Day, around Feb. 14th, 1991.
So I finished development of Rampart out of my house. Scott wasn't very happy at Punk, either, so the two of us decided to form Developer Resources with the financial assistance of another friend of ours, Erik Anderson.
The purpose of Developer Resources was to develop game development systems for both the Genesis and the SNES. Not just a ROM emulator, but [a] source level debugger, assembler, graphics tools, game libraries, sample games, etc. (most of that code is available on SourceForge under drdevtools, if anyone cares)
Developer Resources negotiated the contract for Pigskin (sometime between March and July 1991), so their name was probably on [it], but I did all of the work (with the graphics conversion subcontracted to my wife, Melanie Scouten, and the music subcontracted to another friend, Lars Norpchen).
In the middle of the Pigskin project, Developer Resources pretty much fell apart (partially because I moved to Denver). I finished Pigskin from home in Denver.
GDRI: In your opinion, what "entity" should be credited as the developer of those Genesis titles? Kevin Seghetti? Punk Development? Developer Resources?
KS: Well, I did all of the programming for all of them, so I should get the developer (as a person) credit. My name was on all 3 contracts, and all 3 contracts were directly with RazorSoft.
Developer (company) credit is harder to sort out, as the story above shows (but I don't think it matters as much as the actual people involved). Since all of the Stormlord work was done at Punk, I guess Punk should get the development company credit for that one. Rampart was mostly done out of my house, but I was promoting Developer Resources by the time it was finished. So either me or Developer Resources is fine (what does it say about DR in the Rampart cartridge? I don't remember). Pigskin was started at Developer Resources, but finished by me, so it is also a toss-up whether it should be credited just to me or to DR.
CRV: Thank you for such a thorough and interesting reply. I do understand that this was all many years ago, but your help is appreciated.
KS: It doesn't seem that long ago until I look back on it. Since I stopped making video games in 1997, and the stuff I work on now has longer cycles, time seems to pass by much more quickly (or maybe that is just an effect of getting older; I will be 40 this year!).
CRV: There is one minor discrepancy that may be no fault of your own. You recalled that you worked on Pigskin in 1991. However, it has a copyright date of 1990.
KS: Interesting. We must have failed to update the copyright notice. It was late, the code was really bad and unlike Stormlord (which I was able to port in about 3 months), it took a very long time (I basically lost money on the contract due to late penalties). And I need to amend that Pigskin contract date. As I wrote that, I was working out the timeline. Once I got all of the pieces in order, the Pigskin contract was sometime between me leaving Punk and moving to Denver (which happened in 1992, not 1991 like I was thinking when I wrote that). So I am confident that I finished Pigskin in 1992 (since I finished it in Denver).
CRV: As for Rampart, the title screen says "Conversion by Developer Resources."
KS: Interesting. I have no recollection of doing that, but it makes sense that I did (I am just surprised they let me; on-screen credit is usually hard to get).
GDRI: You mentioned that Bruce Hammond got the contract for Genesis Rampart. I was going to ask if this was Punk Development, but I noticed him and the other programmers also worked together on SNES California Games II and are credited as "Silicon Sorcery". Do you happen to know anything about those guys?
KS: Yes. To start at the beginning:
Bruce Hammond grew up on a ranch near Gazelle, CA, and started a software company called StarPoint Software, which sold disk recovery utilities for the Commodore 64. Scott Statton, Erik Anderson, myself, [and] Jeff Spangenberg (founder of Punk and other companies to follow) all worked out at the ranch at some point (1986-1987 time frame).
Later, we all ended up in the Bay Area doing various things. I am not sure of the details, but one of the things Punk did was to hire European programmers on work visas (so they could hold that over their head if they got uppity). I am pretty sure that is how John [Cumming] and Dave [O'Connor] ended up in the country, and I think they met Bruce when he was doing Rampart on the Genesis.
Anyhow, Bruce, John, and Dave moved back to the ranch and started Silicon Sorcery and did a couple of games before that fell apart. John stayed at the ranch and still lives up in that area.
GDRI: Developer Resources is given special thanks in Sylvester & Tweety in Cagey Capers. Why is this? I thought DR was gone by that point.
KS: Yeah, I guess I need to revise the statement that DR was gone. When I moved to Denver, we abandoned our office in Mountain View. Scott, Erik, and I went separate ways at that time (as business partners; we remained friends).
I met Will Norris through DR selling a SNES development system to a company called Radiance Software (I [am] pretty sure that was their name) in Thousand Oaks. He liked what we were doing with the development tools, so when his deal with Radiance ended, he moved up to Mountain View and started working with us. Around that time, Will and I took a contract to do the firmware for the SNES version of the Game Genie. So when DR was ending, Will, my wife, and I moved to Denver for a change of scenery (we didn't like it there and came back to California five months later). Anyhow, Will and I kept working on some DR stuff, trying to promote the development systems, etc. It never really went anywhere, but we did license the game libraries I had written to Alexandria, which is why S&T has a thanks in it.
GDRI: So was Hammond working for Punk when he started on Rampart, or was he a freelancer brought in like you?
KS: I think everyone at Punk actually had contracts with RazorSoft, but I am not positive (at the time I was there; Punk went on for a while after that before Jeff went off and started Iguana).
GDRI: I just had a look inside the Super NES Ballz ROM (which both you and Mr. Norris worked on), and in it is the following: "Ballz (SNES Version) Copyright 1994 Cave Logic Studios. All Rights Reserved." Could you talk a little about Cave Logic?
KS: Cave Logic was founded by Will and myself in 1994. We were tired of doing games under contract and having all of the code belong to the publisher, so we wanted to be able to negotiate shared ownership of engines, libraries, everything which wasn't game specific.
Our contract for Ballz wasn't actually with Cave Logic, although we had the idea about that time.
After Ballz, Cave Logic worked with PF.Magic on a 3D game originally for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn called Velocity [ED: Screenshots can be found here.]. For many reasons, that project took several years and was eventually canceled. Cave Logic became Recombinant Limited, and we used the same 3D engine (which we called World Foundry) to start on a project for MGM Interactive called Cyberthug. But a few months into that, MGM Interactive was canceled by MGM, so that game didn't get finished, either. By that time, I had about had it with the game industry, so [I] went and got a programming job doing embedded control systems instead (and never looked back). I did take the 3D game engine, port it to Linux, and release it on SourceForge. There was some interest in it there for a while, but I have been too busy to maintain it. And at this point, the technology is over 10 years old, so it is pretty much obsolete.
GDRI: Do you know anything about this incident ["Video Game Manufacturer Sues City Firm RazorSoft"]?
KS: Some, if it is what I am thinking of (and the timing seems right). This is all just what I recall, so any portion of it could be incorrect.
RazorSoft didn't like how much Sega charged to make cartridges. The minimum order was 30,000 units and IIRC, they cost $17 each. So publishers had to pony up about a half million dollars, and the risk was all theirs if the product didn't sell. I never saw the contract between Sega and RazorSoft, but apparently it specified a royalty rate for cartridges (I don't know if that $17 per cart included the royalty or not).
So RazorSoft decided to manufacture their own cartridges for Stormlord instead of paying Sega to do it because they could do a smaller run, it was cheaper, and they could turn them around faster. They paid all of the royalties to Sega, just didn't have Sega make them (if you get your hand on a Stormlord cartridge, you will see they are shaped differently than Sega cartridges were).
Sega was annoyed because they obviously make a profit on making the cartridges and also like to maintain tight control over what gets made when.
IIRC, the final outcome was they settled out of court, RazorSoft agreed to buy carts from Sega in the future, and Sega dropped the suit.
GDRI: I just noticed this text string in the SMS Rampart ROM: "Jeff Spangenberg is a weenie." Do you remember anything about that?
I had forgotten about that. I was in the middle of doing Rampart for RazorSoft at Punk Development when Jeff and I had a disagreement. I was helping Scott Statton debug the latest Genesis development system boards which had just come back from fab, and Jeff told me to get back to work on Rampart. I reminded him that I was doing Rampart under contract, I wasn't his employee, and he [didn't] get to tell me what to do. After a few more rounds of comments, which included him standing directly in front of me (he is quite tall) in an attempt at physical intimidation (which ended with me saying, "Go ahead and hit me, I could use the money"), he took the only action he could, which was to tell me I was no longer welcome in the Punk Development offices. So I packed up my stuff and moved it home and finished development of Rampart from there. So that comment is just a good-natured jab at him.
I was going to point you to some choice comments others had about Jeff on fatbabies.com back in July of 2001 (they clearly didn't like him), but the forums appear to be gone, and the Internet Archive missed it. The only post I can find is this one, which is in answer to the question, "Who are the top 5 assholes in the industry?"
GDRI: You worked on the sound driver for Technocop (Sega Genesis). Was the rest of the game developed by Punk Development?
KS: Yes. Jeff Spangenberg did the port from the Amiga game.
Mr. Seghetti currently works for Russound. You can visit his home page here.