Programmers of the Bally Arcade/Astrocade Built-in Programs August 17, 2016 Compiled by Adam Trionfo I'm making an attempt here to see who programmed the four programs built into the Bally Arcade. Tony Miller wrote in Yahoo message #1150, "In fact, Terse (Terse Efficient Re- entrant Stack Engine) was written by Al McNeil, who also wrote the Gunfight built-in code for the arcade, and such coin-op classics as Berzerk and Frenzy. Terse was at one time planned as an alternate language for the Arcade computer add-on, before ZGrass gained popularity at DNA." In Message #2092, Rickey Spiece wrote: "Tony, you are correct that Alan McNeil wrote the original Terse engine. However, Terse stands for Terse Efficient Recursive Stack Engine." In message #2093, Tony Miller wrote: "I remember asking him what it stood for, and he said reentrant. But then again, they say that memory is the second thing you lose. I forget what the first is. Al was actually the 1st guy I stole from DNA when we were staffing up URL, followed by Terry Coleman, Jim Hemmer and Bill Jahnke. When we started Xtar, he joined us for a while, working on a 3D game, and then decided to move on. Great guy, wish I had kept in touch with him." Also, in message #1592, Tony wrote, "Thanx, Jay (Fenton, HVGSYS, Scribbling) Al (McNeil, Gunfight ) Ken (Freund, miscellaneous code), Lou (can't remember his last name, Checkmate), and Jeff (Fredricksen, Calculator, and the 'brains' behind the project) for sharing it with the world!" According to Tony's information, this means these are the programmers of the Bally's 8K on-board ROM: Jay Fenton: HVGSYS, Scribbling Alan McNeil: Gunfight Ken Freund: Miscellaneous code Lou (or possibly correctly spelled "Low") Harp (?): Checkmate Jeff Fredricksen: Calculator, and the 'brains' behind the project In message #6461, Tony Miller wrote, "Alan McNeil: Game design & programming for Berzerk, Gunfight for BPA from DNA. Terry Coleman: Hardware design for Berzerk, custom chip design for BPA from DNA. Jim Hemmer: Printed circuit board design for Berzerk and BPA. Tony Miller (me):managed the Berzerk development, named 'Evil Otto', did the original Add-on design for BPA at DNA." I ran across Alan McNeil's resume here: http://a9k.info/Resume.html Here's his Astrocade-related material: March 1977 - April 1979 Dave Nutting Associates (part of Bally/Midway) Programmer Major Projects: Sea Wolf II, A color coin-op video game written mostly in TERSE TERSE, A Z80 direct threaded code version of FORTH Bally Arcade (a home video game pre-dating the Atari 2600): DEMO, Bingo Math & Speed Math, Gunfight, & System ROM interrupt and sound routines