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