Simeon Pashley The statements and expressions in this interview are the opinion of Simeon Pashley and do not represent those of any other company or individual.
When you think of the PlayStation's elitists, some names that might come to your mind are Jason Rubin (Crash Bandicoot), Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) or David Jaffe (Warhawk). For me, one name that comes to mind is Simeon Pashley. Simeon is one of the most talented and most humble programmers that I had the pleasure to talk with. I have the utmost respect for this man because he was the lead programmer for two of my favorite PAL PlayStation games: X-Com Terror From the Deep and Z. Both of these games are still popular sellers on eBay to this day. Although he undoubtedly did a great job on X-Com and Z, he will be the first to tell you that he merely converted the game data to PlayStation and credit should go to the original designers of the game.
Simeon is currently a technical director at Kuju (www.kuju.com), developers of some of the hottest PS2 games. Prior to this he had worked at Runecraft Ltd and Krisalis Software Ltd. Although his stint at Runecraft was brief, it was his many years and contributions at Krisalis that made him a PlayStation elitist.
I hope you enjoy the Museum's first full-fledged interview.
PSM: At what age did you start programming?
Pashley: Programming at home. 1st 5-line piece of code on ZX81 around 81-82, a simple 'avoid the monster' game written in basic. You stepped X+1 from the left, monster went X-1 from the right. You pressed up/down to choose your path at each turn, and it just moved towards you.
PSM: What computer did you learn how to program on?
Pashley: Dabbled around with 'demo' coding on BBC Micro but it just wasn't up to it. I did do quite a lot of 6502 on it though. I'd put down Atari ST was where I really started games programming when I was part of the 'scene'.
PSM: You developed for both Saturn and PlayStation. Which platform was easier to program?
Pashley: Initially Saturn was my weapon of choice and expertise having come from Megadrive/Genesis. But it's achilles heel of not being able to render triangles (only quads) was where it got really messy.
PSM: If a novice programmer wanted to start programming on the PlayStation, would you recommend purchasing a Net Yaroze or an official Sony development kit (assuming proper software and libraries were included)?
Pashley: Net Yaroze is the only real option. PS1 had a steep learning curve and Yaroze hid all that away plus it left the real programming to the paid developers. Hard-core programmers threw away more and more of the standard libraries as the ps1 experience expanded late in it's life. Yaroze never even offered GTE/assembler/macro programming as an option.
PSM: What Sony development setup did you use or prefer to use?
Pashley: PC+Sn Systems (later called ProDG). 'Brief' was the programmers editor and a real 'mans' tool all of which was in DOS. No multi-tasking windows operating system for us. A network was a luxury in the early days.
PSM: Your resume lists Black & White, Driving Game #1 and #2, and a Shoot’em Up. Why was Black & White never released? Was Black & White near completion? Were either of the other 3 games mentioned above ever released or why not?
Pashley: Sorry, I can't comment on any of the above.
PSM: On eBay, Z and X-Com Terror of the Deep are still hot sellers. How does it feel to work on such hit games?
Pashley: TBH, I'm proud of what I've done and I've got framed copies of all my games on my home office wall but it's quite normal really as I work with people in the games industry who mostly have a similar colourful past and/or even more impressive.
Being in the games industry there's so much focus on what's coming next and what's on the horizon there's little time to reflect. Also, the time between us finishing the game and it appearing on the shelves is quite large so we're usually well into the next game and don't get time to rest.
PSM: How does it feel to work on a much anticipated game such as Black & White and then never have it released?
Pashley: Again, it's pretty normal really within the games industry. These decisions are often made by marketing people and it simply comes down to money. I.e., will I get more money for the game than I'm going to spend to produce it? If that's a 'No' then that's it. Maybe sales forecasts drop? Maybe a competing product comes out? Maybe an opportunity is missed?
For me it was always about programming and it didn't really matter what I was working on as long as someone paid me to do what I really liked doing. I loved hacking about, trying new things, trying to prove to someone it was possible to get that extra 10% of performance, or emulate the latest feature from PC graphics cards on the lowly PS1. TBH, I'd have done it for free. I always left the design and art to others who were (and still are) much better at it than me although I still get involved with it to this day.
PSM: I appreciate you taking your time to respond and supporting the PlayStation Museum.
Pashley: In short, ps1 offered some exciting opportunities, kept me employed and companies I worked for generated quite a bit of cash. I can probably attribute a large part of the house I'm sitting in right now to the success of PS1 though so I owe them some allegiance.
If only someone would pay me to do just what I wanted but the games industry has changed so much these days into a process of making money. Sadly, I spend most of my days now looking at spreadsheets and the odd VB script is about the extent of my programming experience.
Be sure to visit the Black & White prototype page to read an article about Simeon and Black & White.
|   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
