Chapter 5a: Hunchback at the Olympics

A small addendum to Chapter 5, from the same period.

Another story from the Software Projects era concerns the game Hunchback at the Olympics, published by Century Electronics in 1984.

1984 was an Olympic year, and everyone was trying to cash in. This game featured Quasimodo competing in seven decathlon events. A septathlon, if you will.

Century Electronics came to the SP office to discuss a home computer port. I wasn’t involved, but I do remember two red sports cars parked outside that day.

Soon after, an arcade cabinet appeared in the development area. It seemed important to investigate, and it quickly became clear that the only meaningful question was the fastest possible 100m time.

So we found one of these.

And one of these. I don’t know where we found a hammer drill, but we did.

And made one of these (excuse the shoddy Photoshop skills).

And then we let the hammer drill handle the running, mashing the button in track-and-field style.

We completed the port for the C64. I don’t think the arcade game was very good, and the home version probably did about as well as you might expect.

On that day, however, Quasimodo had the run of his life.

This little anecdote sits alongside the main memoir chapters, which are collected here.