Sega-16: Many people dont know just how integral Polygames was in the making of Sonic Spinball. Ive heard that Roger Hector called on your company because he needed the game done quickly. How did the scenario actually play out? When did Hector contact you?
Lee Actor: Roger is an old friend of both Dennis and mine, and I first started working with him back in about 1982. What happened was that Roger was the head of the Sega Technical Institute, and Sega of Japan was working on the next Sonic game
I think it was number three? Sometime in the spring they realized that they werent going to have it ready for Christmas. Now, the way this usually works is that you have to have a major product for Christmas, which is where most of your sales come from. So, Peter Morawiec of STI had done a Sonic game design, but they didnt have the resources in-house to get it done. Roger called us and said that it was an emergency product that they needed yesterday, and that theyd put any kind of resources and money that they had to get it done.
Basically, we programmed most of it; we managed all of it, and we did what would normally take about twelve months in a normal development process and did it in about four and a half to five. We had exactly one meeting with Sega and the STI. They did assign a couple of programmers to help us out. In fact, STI put them up in a hotel so they wouldnt be distracted by other people at work. We designed the software structure, did the bulk of the programming, and we also did it in such a way so that we could hand pieces off to other guys on the project. They did do a couple of levels, I think
I mean I dont exactly remember the exact extent of their involvement (Ed. note: read our interview with programmer Steve Woita to find out!). We designed the software in a modular way so that other programmers could work on levels independently, and we were then able to hook it in and integrate their work to the rest of the game. STI provided the art and sound. Of course, in all the projects that we worked on we had a third party take care of the art. Dennis and I did the software design, the bulk of the programming and the project management.
The game went out on time, and I wouldnt say it was the best game we ever did, because of the time frame. So from my perspective, yeah, we were definitely involved, to make an understatement we were primarily responsible for bringing Sonic Spinball into existence as a top-selling product.
Sega-16: So you and Dennis had little interaction with STI members?
Lee Actor: We didnt have much interaction with anybody. I started working, and I dont exactly remember the details of how it was organized, but I do remember that that summer I left my house one time. We worked seven days a week, no breaks. We didnt do anything else, of course.
Sega-16: You pride yourself on producing bug-free code, and this was quite hard to do with Sonic Spinball because of its short development cycle. How do you feel about the final product in terms of overall quality?
Lee Actor: Well, like I mentioned to you, I wouldnt say that it was the best work weve ever done. I still think that PGA Tour Golf III was our best work. But its a playable game
I think its a fun game. Obviously, some people dont think its a very good game, and there are others who find it a lot of fun. We could probably argue about it, but like I said, you have to take into account the development time. It was a pretty complex game as well; it was a big game. I would give it a B as far as the game quality is concerned. As a product, Id give it an A++ because they sold a lot of them.
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