Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Peter Liepa was co-creator and programmer of Boulder Dash and Boulder Dash 2 for the Atari computers. Boulder Dash was published by First Star Software in 1984 and is regarded as a seminal game for the Atari 8-bit machines.
This interview took place on June 16, 2015
Teaser quotes:
“I sat there playing these games and the idea of ‘I can do this’ or ‘I can build one of these’ welled up in my head.”
“All of the pleasure of this project was in developing the game. I got very little pleasure out of the business aspect of it.”
Peter's web site: brainjam.ca
2005 interview with Peter: http://www.boulder-dash.nl/interview.php
2011 interview with Peter: electrondance.com/the-creative-urge-peter-liepa
10-line BASIC Boulderdash clone: newbreedsoftware.com/atari/nomam2014/minidash
Peter Liepa was co-creator and programmer of Boulder Dash and Boulder Dash 2 for the Atari computers. Boulder Dash was published by First Star Software in 1984 and is regarded as a seminal game for the Atari 8-bit machines.
This interview took place on June 16, 2015
Teaser quotes:
“I sat there playing these games and the idea of ‘I can do this’ or ‘I can build one of these’ welled up in my head.”
“All of the pleasure of this project was in developing the game. I got very little pleasure out of the business aspect of it.”
Peter's web site: brainjam.ca
2005 interview with Peter: http://www.boulder-dash.nl/interview.php
2011 interview with Peter: electrondance.com/the-creative-urge-peter-liepa
10-line BASIC Boulderdash clone: newbreedsoftware.com/atari/nomam2014/minidash

![Gerri Brioso: Halftime Battlin Bands, Coco-Notes, Movie Musical Madness — interview
Gerri Brioso is part of The Dovetail Group, a company that created three children’s games for the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 computers. All three games were released in 1984: they were Halftime Battlin Bands, Coco-Notes, and Movie Musical Madness, all of which were released by CBS software.
Wikipedia says These games are notable as they represent some of the earliest examples of the music management subgenre of music video games. The games were also notable because each of those games included a plastic record album, playable on a phonograph, which served as the games’ instruction manuals. The characters in the games and records — Swivel Hips, Wahoo, and Mr. Bass Man — made up a fictional band called The Jazz Scats.
This interview occurred on July 30 and 31, 2015.
Check the show notes at AtariPodcast.com for a great picture of the Jazz Scats, and the full audio from all three game records. In fact, there are two versions of each record — the versions that I digitized from the records, and the versions that Gerri sent me from the master recordings. The lyrics are different!
Teaser quotes
“They made it doubly hard for us because they suddenly wanted us to not just create for the Atari platform, but to also create for the Commodore platform. So the work became double ... and suddenly deadlines were not being met.”
“Rich had to hold me back because my hands were going around the computer programmer’s throat. I thought I would kill him. ... Where’s the backup? He said, ‘I was just getting ready to back it up.’ I was like, “You didn’t back it up in stages? What, are you crazy?!”
Links:
Brioso’s web site: http://www.richardfreitas.com/Richard_Freitas_Music/Home.html
Wikipedia on The Dovetail Group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dovetail_Group
Jazz Scats record albums: https://archive.org/details/@savetz?and[]=jazz%20scats
Photo of the Jazz Scats: https://archive.org/details/Coconotes Gerri Brioso: Halftime Battlin Bands, Coco-Notes, Movie Musical Madness — interview](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IRrQqo1AvpM/mqdefault.jpg)








