![]() ![]() But I lucked into this job through a little asterisk I put on my resume that got my foot in the door to be a pinball programmer, which kind of led me to being able to do video games. So when I went to school I was like, “Well that will probably be my hobby all the time, but I’ll have a real job, a regular job to pay the bills.” That was kind of like my artistic output thing. This thing called player-missile graphics and all these things. Trying to figure out how graphics work and where to write in memory to get a pixel to show up on the screen. I do remember I did have an Atari 800 and I was programming in Basic, and then I started learning assembly language, and I started getting into that. All those kind of personal computers were becoming available. When I was in high school, there was the Atari 800, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the VIC-20. What were you envisioning as your potential career? I was going to be an artist and draw Punisher comics. Reiner: Obviously, when we go to school we have a vision of a different future for ourselves. Reiner: So you’ve never lived anywhere outside of Illinois? It’s probably about a two-hour, two-and-a-half hour drive from Chicago. I lived there for about the first two years of my job as a pinball programmer, I was saving up to buy a condo because I was on this big kick of “I’m never going to pay rent in my life.”įor college, I went to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. I basically lived there until I went away to college – and then got this job, as a matter of fact. ![]() I was born in Rogers Park, which is in Chicago, and we moved to Evanston/Skokie which is like a suburb of Chicago when I was in grade school. Reiner: Where did you grow up and go to that pinball arcade? There’s very few arcade-type things like that anymore. A furniture design store or something like that. Reiner: Do you know what took its place? Do you know if it’s there right now? ![]() I think it might have been called East of Eden’s Bowling Alley because there was an Eden’s Expressway. Because I remember it was down one main street from my house. So you would get good at a game and the whole theory was “play on this for long a time with a quarter.” At the time, there was a concept called winning a free game. Our bowling alley had a bunch of pinball machines and we would play them. From way, way back in the days of grade school. Take us through that day.Įd Boon: I think my first interaction with any kind of interactive game, per se, would probably be pinball machines. To get a full view of what such a storied career looks like, we talked with Boon about his early days at Williams Electronics, some of the names Mortal Kombat could have had, and what it’s like working on the same series for over two decades.Īndrew Reiner: Let’s go all the way back, way back to first time you saw some kind of interactive entertainment like this. But despite his over 30-year history in the industry, he’s only ever really had one job. Years before he became the steward of the Mortal Kombat franchise, Boon was programming pinball and arcade games for companies that no longer exist. It was originally published on December 1, 2016.Įd Boon has likely been making video games longer than you’ve been alive. This interview was conducted by Andrew Reiner and Suriel Vazquez, and transcribed by Michael Leri. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |