The following is an extract from an interview with Jeff Lee by Michael Thommasson from Good Deal Games, on
12.March 2000. Jeff Lee, besides being the Caveman video graphics creator, also created the legendary Q*Bert game character. MT: "Your first job for Gottlieb was a variation of pinball and a videogame. Please tell us about the game Caveman."
The available memory for sprites and colors (4) was very limited. The graphics were created on an Apple II. I think one of programmers wrote a little utility for sprite creation, but I had no tool to check out the 2 or 3 step animation, other than flipping paper. I had to burn the set onto EPROMs and then we could check it out on the wirerap hardware once the code was in place." Comments from Howie Rubin: |
JL: "A standard pinball machine was equipped with a small color monitor mounted into the upper playfield. "Caveman" commences and finishes with standard pinball play, however when the ball was snared by 1 or 2 capture holes, the video game started on the monitor. At this point the player switched to a joystick to control the Caveman who raced around a maze. I'm a little hazy on the gameplay, but it was essentially Pac-Man style. (I don't remember if Pac-Man was released in the U.S. at the time or not) The Caveman alternately chased or was chased by dinosaurs and a mammoth. The player racked up points and when a life was lost, the video turned off, the pinball was ejected from the capture hole and the pin game continued.