1) So, first question: how come it's taken Rare till now to get involved in Xbox Live Arcade? Was there interest from the start?
JR: We were busy with our launch titles, so these had to be finished before we could start with anything new. But we think Xbox Live Arcade is an exciting platform for new and innovative games, so this was a perfect opportunity to develop a Rare game for it.
2) Describe the original Jetpac in 10 words or less for the underprivileged majority who never played it.
NB: Simple yet deeply satisfying laser based fun!
3) Weren't you tempted to stick with a straight port rather than creating what's basically a new game based on the same principles?
JR: I think people have high expectations for a Rare-developed title, so we couldn't just stick the Spectrum code into an emulator and charge money for that. We planned some kind of expansion from the beginning, but we had to experiment a bit in which direction we should take it. We didn't want to change it into a completely different game so the original mechanics had to stay at the core, but we wanted to introduce new features for players to enjoy.
NB: I remember Jetpac very well from the 8-bit days as it was the first game I bought for my Spectrum, and I remember how intense an experience it was at the time. I wanted to recapture that feeling for Live Arcade, so as Jens says we needed to keep the original core mechanics with a simple, easy-to-learn premise but with new features in keeping with the original. That was harder to achieve than it sounds, as it's pretty easy to keep adding stuff to the point where it becomes too complex and loses something of that instant arcade-like 'learn to play in five seconds', 'learn to master over many hours'.
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