The following is an edited interview with Chris Capener, who (among other cool 
things) programmed the game "Funky Fish" for the Arcadia 2001 family of 
consoles. The interview was originally conducted in April 2002 by two people 
(Ward Shrake and Michael Davidson) across multiple back-and-forth e-mails, 
making it necessary to edit the raw texts for clarity, space and orderly sequence, 
to become the interview below.

All of Mr. Capener's comments are included here; nothing was held back if it had 
anything to do with the Arcadia 2001's history. To keep this text on-topic as much 
as possible, much of the back-story about the Arcadia 2001 console group's 
history was intentionally left out. Interested readers can read up on that through 
other sources, such as the recently printed book -- the "Digital Press Collectors 
Guide" (version seven) -- or on the "Yahoo! Groups" message boards where we 
hobbyist game researchers meet.

Please note: often enough, it has been this game researcher's experience that a 
person's memory of long-ago events may at times be partially inaccurate, even if 
they had correct information to begin with, which is not always the case. I 
therefore mildly caution readers to take this interview as a good starting point for 
continued research, and not as finished "Gospel". For instance, Mr. Capener 
once says that "UA Limited" may have been a "contract manufacturer for 
Emerson". While UAL may have indeed been a contractor of some sorts, recent 
research makes it appear unlikely that Emerson was in charge of much of 
anything. Emerson was a (rather late) licensee in the United States, and that 
appears to be all. Philips, Signetics, and UA Limited were really the decision-
making companies behind the global spread of this console and its game carts. 
But they may all have allowed or encouraged misleading information by various 
global licensees, making modern research difficult even when you are talking to a 
person like Chris Capener who helped write part of the console group's game 
software library.

Enjoy the interview! We continue to be grateful to Mr. Capener for talking to us.

                                                                    -- Ward Shrake, November 2002 --




[Matt Reichert acquired an original copy of the hard-to-find cartridge game called 
"Funky Fish," made by Tunix of New Zealand for their local version of the Arcadia 
2001 game console. He graciously loaned it to Ward Shrake for archiving 
purposes. Ward dumped the game's ROM image, then as is his habit, he looked 
through the ROM code for any hidden ASCII text messages. Such a message 
was found; it reads exactly as follows.]


"GAME COPYRIGHT 1983 UA LTD; GRAPHICS COPYRIGHT 1983 CHRIS 
CAPENER".


[Ward Shrake then passed this information to a small group of amateur video 
game history researchers he knew from the Internet. Michael Davidson then set 
out to see if he could track this named individual down, using the Google search 
engine and other resources. When Michael had successfully located the correct 
individual, he asked some brief initial questions. Mr. Capener's full response to 
Michael is as follows.]


"Yes, I worked on Funky Fish and Jumpman Jr. (ColecoVision).  UA Limited was 
a Hong Kong based company.  I think they did OEM electronics manufacturing 
for various companies.  So, I believe they were the contract manufacturer for 
Emerson. Funky Fish was the reason I first came to Silicon Valley.  I had a three 
month contract to write the game for the Arcadia console.  I took a leave of 
absence from my current job and moved out to the San Jose, CA area.  During 
that time I met a programmer at StarPath and took a job there when Funky Fish 
was done.  StarPath was later bought out by Epyx, where I ported Jumpman Jr. 
from the Commodore to Colecovision.  All these games were written in assembly 
language.  So porting meant playing it on one console and then writing the code 
and re-creating the graphics for the target system.  Once I was here in Silicon 
Valley, I never went back."


[Feeling he was not entirely sure what questions to ask next, Michael then turned 
the interview over to Ward. Ward introduced himself to Mr. Capener, noting that 
he was then writing the Arcadia 2001 section of the "Digital Press Collectors 
Guide" and would like to include whatever information he could get, in version 
seven of that printed book. The press deadline for that version was just a few 
weeks away, so Ward attempted to prioritize his questions and keep them 
relatively light. Ward first asked about the source materials that were supplied to 
Mr. Capener, during the conversion process from an original arcade game, to a 
cartridge game that would run on a home gaming console.]
 

"This goes back a long time.  I remember having the arcade game and some 
notes to work from."


[Ward then asked about the specific hiring process, explaining that we 
researchers have only a very limited amount of knowledge about the currently 
mysterious "UA Limited" company, who seem to have been responsible for much 
of the Arcadia's game library.]


"A former college roommate was related to an officer (president?) of UA.  He 
approached me with the contract offer."


[When asked about the hardware and software tools and training materials that 
were made available for writing the game, Mr. Capener responded as follows.]


"I had a development system from Signetics with manuals for the processor and 
chipset of the console.  I did not have contact with any other programmers.  It 
was pretty much learn as you go.  I believe that some utility routines and sample 
code came with the development system."


[Figuring it was a long-shot but worth asking anyway, Ward asked if Mr. Capener 
knew anything about the overall licensing process itself, as it applied to other 
UAL games. Also, if he knew anything about the three games - Funky Fish, Cat 
Trax, and Pleiades -- that were later ported by UAL to the rival Atari 2600 
machine, sometime during 1983.]


"Sorry, I have no information on licensing or other ports of the games."


[Ward asked for a clarification on the game ROM's hidden ASCII text message.]


"I am not sure why the copyright is stated the way it is.  Certainly the graphics 
had to be re-interpreted for the different resolution of the Arcadia.  Perhaps since 
this was a port, it was felt that the overall copyright covering the game concept 
and game play should remain with UA.  But I do know that I was the only one 
working on the port and that I did also write the code.  (Except for the supplied 
utility routines.)"


[Ward asked for a more specific date of creation, since most of the games for this 
home console were done in either 1982 or 1983, making a detailed timeline hard 
to create.]


"As far as I can reconstruct, the port was done in the late summer/early fall of 
1982."


[Ward then asked for clarification on the actual hardware and/or software that 
made up the "development system from Signetics" mentioned above, but never 
got an answer on that. He was not overly surprised at its absence, given the way 
information about this console group was originally handled by those who were 
behind making it all. It seems that these secretive people-in-charge felt that 
"compartmentalization" was often a wise policy? In other words, sub-contractors 
or other non-insiders were rarely given much more information than they each 
really needed. Each separate outsider we meet seems to have been given a few 
pieces of the global puzzle, but they seldom had more. Some may be surprised, 
when they find out what consoles are now proven to be related to others, or to 
hear how widely these consoles managed to spread, globally. Modern 
researchers are only piecing things together as well as we have, because the 
Internet makes Global information-sharing much easier than it once was. In any 
case, at this point Ward felt that he ran a real risk of being a nuisance if he kept 
questioning Mr. Capener much longer. The book's press deadline was also 
rapidly approaching, so Ward decided to just leave Mr. Capener alone for awhile. 
Later, if and when we are able to uncover more raw information from other 
sources, maybe we will have additional good questions to ask? For now, it 
seems we're better off saving up for a "Round Two" when we have run out of 
sources like outside contractors to find more puzzle pieces. It is this author's 
opinion that until we compare notes from many such sources, we won't have 
enough new information ourselves, to be able to ask well-educated questions. An 
example of this is the three ported games that went to the rival Atari 2600 in 
1983. It is still a mystery how "Cat Trax" ended up being included on an 
overseas, perhaps Atari-made "2600 Jr." console, which had 128 games built into 
it from the factory. The true relationships between the Elektor computer, the 
Interton VC-4000, and the Arcadia console groups are still cloudy, since people 
that worked on one machine rarely saw the others, thereby making things like 
identifying a "development system" difficult at best. So Ward now thanked Mr. 
Capener again for his time and answers, and left him alone.]


End of interview
