Difference between revisions of "Interview:Tom Sloper"

Revision as of 12:45, 18 August 2008

GDRI: What was Sega's presence in America at the time you were working there (this was before Sega of America had been established, but they obviously had a division in the US)?

TS: I see on your website that you have this written about Sega Enterprises, Inc.:

"American subsidiary in the early eighties. Published and supervised the ports of Sega games to home computers and consoles. Did they have any in-house programmers? Did they make any arcade games of their own? Shows up on arcade flyers and home releases from 1982-1984."

Your site also mentioned Sega Electronics, Inc. That would have been the arcade company. After David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama formed Sega in Japan as an amusement machine company, the first US operation was in the San Diego area - Sega and some other arcade company initially merged, but I'm blanking on the name of the other San Diego company. I'm pretty sure Sega Electronics Inc. is the company that made the Star Trek arcade game, if that helps.

I don't know if this is entirely correct, but it appears that Sega Electronics, Inc. went away when Sega Enterprises Inc. (hereafter, "SEI") was formed as a result of the acquisition of Sega by Gulf+Western (slash Paramount Pictures).

The company list on your website doesn't mention the closure of SEI at the end of 1984 and the creation of "Ages" (Sega backwards) to clean up the remaining financial issues, IP ownership matters, etc. SEI was headed by Jeff Rochlis, who'd formerly been a partner of GCE's Ed Krakauer I think, and one of the SEI VPs was Gary Niles, who'd been Jay Smith's VP at Western Technologies.

Yes, there were in-house programmers at SEI and yes, they were working on an arcade game (Congo Bongo III). My design for Congo Bongo III, in which the hunter pursued the gorilla through a lost valley of dinosaurs, was rejected because Rochlis wanted the game to take place on amusement park rides. Sam Palahnuk wrote an approved design, and it was being worked on at the end when the video game industry crashed and burned.

The Japanese office, Sega Enterprises Ltd., saw the writing on the wall and bought itself back from Gulf+Western before the boom fell. SEL then opened its new American office in northern California in '85 or '86. My friend Steve Hanawa was an SEL employee. He'd originally worked at Sega in Japan, then was transferred to San Diego. He moved to L.A. after the Gulf+Western acquisition. His office was across the hall from mine at SEI until I was laid off, and Steve moved up north when SOA opened. I interviewed with David Rosen for a job at the new SOA, but it wasn't one of my better interviews.

That said, I don't know if I've actually answered your question. My job at SEI was "game designer," but mainly what I did was work with external developers on ports of arcade games to consoles and personal computers.

GDRI: Congo Bongo III? But there wasn't a Congo Bongo II - was there?

TS: You're right. Please change the III to a II. I called my treatment "The Revenge of Congo Bongo."

GDRI: The Sega Master System games you produced at Activision say on the front of the box "Distributed by Activision." Did Activision and Sega have a special deal in place (i.e. Sega published, Activision merely distributed)?

TS: Sort of. [Then head of Activision] Bruce Davis met with Nakayama-san and hatched a deal so Activision (Mediagenic) could be the first publisher on all three platform holders' systems at the same time. Until this, Nintendo apparently held a tight rein on its licensed publishers. Publish on our system and our system only, that kinda thing.

The games were developed by Sega and published in Japan by Sega, but published/distributed by Activision in North America. I worked (by fax) with Sega R&D 2 on localizing the games for North America. One thing I remember in particular was the cockpit-view outer space game (title escapes me at the moment) [ED: Galaxy Force]. It had a flaw in that it was hard to know when you'd been hit by enemy fire. All of a sudden, you'd unfairly be dead. So I went back and forth with them (by fax, remember) a few times until we hit on a solution - I wanted them to make the view of black outer space flash white, and that was too hard technically, so they made the whole screen flash white whenever you got hit. That fixed the problem.

GDRI: So was Sega R&D2 the division charged with developing those Master System games?

TS: You surmise correctly.

GDRI: Was Joe Montana Football/Hyperball being developed completely internally?

TS: Yes.

GDRI: You co-produced the Genesis version of Mondu's Fight Palace (which eventually was released as Slaughter Sport). Do you know who developed that? Can I assume that was another victim of the problems at Mediagenic?

TS: It was developed completely internally. Bruce had the studio kick off development on video game consoles internally, and at the time, I was the only producer in video games. I was the guy who was supposed to oversee all those internal projects and all the video game projects we were doing in Japan. I was sent to work in the Japan office, thank goodness, so I wasn't present for the fun that followed.

GDRI: Do you know who developed the Game Boy version of Alien vs. Predator?

TS: I don't remember offhand, but that project is one of my favorite horror stories I tell to my design/production students at USC.

GDRI: I ask this not knowing if you were privy to what was going on at these Japanese companies (our research indicates that the Japanese publisher of the Super NES version [IGS] outsourced development to another company [Jorudan]).

TS: I don't remember the details offhand. Maybe we sublicensed AvP to one company for the two platforms. I vaguely recall working with two different Japanese companies to get the SNES and GB versions localized and approved for US publication.