Dan Condon Jones - the mystery man of RetroSPEC, it truly is hard to find any sort of image of the man himself - well at least without stalking him and taking a photograph when he isn't looking, which we wouldn't do...next subject. Dan is responsible for the gory remake of the timless classic Turmoil, of course the graphics and sound have been improved but once again the gameplay remains the same.

While Turmoil has not had as much media coverage as some of the other classic Spectrum remakes the game is still out there and re-eally kicks butt. The best way to describe the game is by grabbing a copy of Reload on the PlayStation and adding it to the strategic elemens of Command & Conquer and a little bit of retro-gameplay.

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Turmoil - PC

Yep, you guessed it - ANOTHER great Spectrum game is in the process of being ported accross to your beloved PC and it looks great. Using a much better array of colour and sound this game will not disappoint fans of the original.

Malc	Hi Dan!
Dan	Hi
Malc	When did you own or do you own a Spectrum Computer?
Dan	From some time in the early to mid eighties until about 1994 I have had at least one spectrum - Starting with rubber keys, and then onto +3 with multiface 3. I still prefered the rubber keyboard, but it was nice to be able to put my games on disk.
Malc	What made you decide to remake a Spectrum game?
Dan	Chaos is the best game in the world and it needs to be shared with people who don't own spectrums. I always wanted to convert Chaos to the PC, but considered it a pipe dream. Then one day I got hold of a copy of Delphi and thought I'd give it a bash. Somewhere along the way I realised that it was genuinely going to happen.
Malc	How long have you been developing remakes?
Dan	Sometime early in 1999 I got hold of a book to teach myself Delphi with the sole purpose of writing a remake of Chaos, so I'd really say then. I went through the book in a month or so and then straight into the game.
Malc	Are there any other projects you are working on, either remakes or otherwise?
Dan	No. Well insurance programs for my job, but nothing interesting.
Malc	How high do you rank yourself as a member of the Retrospec team?
Dan	In level of output, experience, and time of membership, pretty low. In the level of emails I send, pretty high.
Malc	Which classic Spectrum games can we expect to see on our PCs in the future?
Dan	Several more conversions of Chaos - I know of two more versions in progress that don't yet have websites. I have a few I might try to take on - I Ball, I Ball 2, Tilt, Fat Worm Blows a Sparky. I think most of the really popular and genuinely good (ie not Ghostbusters) games will make it there in the end.
Malc	For our technical friends out there, what programming language do you use to develop your games and roughly how long does it take before a release is made available to the public?
Dan	I use Delphi which is based around object pascal. My first release went out a few months after I started. The full release is probably still 6 months to a year away.
Malc	Do you take suggestions from the public on how the new re-vamped game should look and what it should include or is that side of the development left to yourself?
Dan	I keep in contact with people all the time. The Midnight Engine has a definite direction that I set, but I like to take input from as many people as possible.
Dan	Which projects are you responsible for at Retrospec and are you currently working on any remakes?
Dan	The only game I'm involved in is Turmoil - though I help out the testing of any others when asked.
Malc	How do you feel about the legalities surrounding the re-development of early software?
Dan	Luckily it doesn't really apply to me, because Julian Gollop has publicly stated that he doesn't mind people remaking his games. I don't think there really should be any legal problem for anyone though. No-one is charging money for the games. Is there anything to stop fans of Star Trek, etc putting fan fiction on the internet? As far as I can see, this is our equivelant of doing that. Basically, we want to show our appreciation for classic old games and the likes of Hewson and Vortex want to slap us in the face for it.
Malc	How do you feel about the current state of the emulation scene (fake emulators etc)?
Dan	I have no problem (and quite like) emulators for arcade games/spectrum/megadrive as all of these things are old now. Playstation and N64 emus are a bit dodgy though. I noticed you mentioned fake emulators in your interview with the ZX32 guy, and like him, I haven't a clue wat they are - Has someone made an emulator to emulate Mame? that would be weird.
Malc	How would you feel if the Spectrum computer made a come back with modern technology?
Dan	I'd be interested, but I have my doubts about how feasible it would be. If it was good enough to compete with modern computers it would have to be virtuably unrecognisable anyway
Dan	What is your favourite Spectrum game?
Dan	Chaos is the best computer game of all time.
Malc	What is your most memorable Spectrum game?
Dan	Chaos. Though Deus Ex Machina deserves an honorable mention too for the high concept and the music which I think really was quite good.
Malc	What is the name of the first game you ever played?
Dan	The first computer game I ever played would have been whatever the first game was on the 1k games tape for the ZX81. The first proper game would have been Gulp for the same machine.
Malc	Have you ever developed software for any machine other than the PC?
Dan	Not really. I did a few games in Basic as a kid which I was proud of at the time. The Fruit Machine was probably the slickest. I had all the graphics for several fruit, bars and bells in 3x4, 4x3 and 4x4 and the machine itself out of the 21 user defined graphics - Mel Croucher would have been proud.
Malc	Thats it!, thank you for your time. I wish you and all of the Retrospec team the best of luck in the future and hope you keep up the good work.
Dan	Thanks
Malc	If you haven't downloaded/seen Chaos PC yet then I recommend you pay a visit to the lovely RetroSPEC web site.