ANTIC Interview 413 - Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group

Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group Valerie Atkinson was a member of Atari's Game Research Group. Now named Valerie Manfull, she was on the team that designed and programmed the game Excalibur, along with Chris Crawford and Larry Summers. Excalibur was published by Atari Program Exchange in fall 1983. She is also one of the programmes of Ballsong, along with Douglas Crockford. Ballsong is a music and graphics demo program released by Atari, in which a ball bounces on the screen in response to an improvised tune. She was one of the programmers, with Ann Marion, of TV Fishtank, a demonstration of an artificially intelligent fish. (It's unclear if the fishtank program was released anywhere, though it apparently was shown at the 1984 SIGgraph conference.) This interview took place on April 22, 2021. ANTIC Episode 4 - Chris Crawford ANTIC Interview 240 - Douglas Crockford TV Fishtank at SIGgraph Jim Leiterman describes TV Fishtank Chris Crawford describes the development of Excalibur in The Art of Computer Game Design Excalibur announced in Atari Program Exchange, fall 1983 Excalibur review in Atari Connection Excalibur at AtariMania Video of Ballsong

Added 2024: A videotape of animation from Atari Research including TV FIshtank and other projects