Randy Linden

Randal (Randy) Linden is a software developer known for various software ports and versions of video games, as well as emulators.

Taking up development in the early 1980s, Linden first developed commercial titles for the Commodore 64 and Amiga, including a version of Dragon's Lair which demonstrated full-screen animation and audio being streamed from floppy disks for the first time. Branching into game consoles, his version of Doom for the Super NES has been regarded as "impossible" due to the disparity in computing power between the SNES and the game's original PC specifications.

He is also known for developing Bleem!, an emulator for the Sony PlayStation released for Microsoft Windows, and its Dreamcast counterpart, Bleemcast!.

His work has included a Quake II inspired shooter known as Cyboid for portable consoles and mobile devices, as well as working for Microsoft on projects including the Xbox 360 and Kinect. He contracted with Limited Run Games to work on Jurassic Park: Classic Games Collection, a collection of ports of various games of the Jurassic Park franchise, released in 2023.

Early life
Linden's introduction to computers came in the late 1970s, when his school received a Commodore PET and permitted students to book time on the machine to learn how to program. He began programming in 1983, and the first game he wrote for the PET was called Barriers.

Career
The first game he had published professionally was Bubbles, a Centipede clone for the Commodore 64, when he was 13 years old. He had received a bundle containing the C64, a monitor and a desk for his birthday. The game was released by Syntax Software, a startup based in Toronto, owned by another individual named Randy. After contacting him and working as a part-time programmer for Syntax for a while, Linden successfully persuaded them to publish his game.

In addition to games, Linden developed non-gaming software, such as a database application named Paperback Filer (subsequently rebranded as Pocket Filer) for the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128, and a Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga known as The 64 Emulator. Possibly the first emulator software to be sold commercially, The 64 Emulator necessitated a specially designed parallel port cable to link the Commodore 1541 disk drive with an Amiga; these peripherals were manually crafted in a Toronto basement by a group of hobbyists.

Linden started Visionary Design Technologies (VDT) from his mother's basement. VDT's first release was a version of Dragon's Lair for the Amiga. This was the first time that full-screen video and audio was streamed from floppy disks on any computer system. During the game's development, Linden utilized a digitizer from Sunrize Industries. After reaching out to discuss his project, they provided him with an upgraded version that eliminated the necessity for multiple passes with color filters. Sunrize was established by Anthony Wood, who would later found Roku.

Following Dragon's Lair, Linden worked on Home Alone and Where's Waldo? for the NES, alongside programmer Paul Colleta. Both games, published by THQ and Bethesda Softworks, were poorly received.

After witnessing Nintendo's Super FX co-processor chip at a show exclusively for developers, Linden believed that he could surpass Star Fox (the chip's launch title) by creating a version of Doom, a computationally-complex PC title, for the Super NES. Linden initially created his version independently, showing it to Sculptured Software once he had a working demo. Sculptured Software subsequently assigned a team of developers to the project so that it could be released for the holiday season. One of the challenges of creating said version of Doom was that there were no development systems for the Super FX at the time, thus requiring Linden to write his own assembler, linker and debugger before he could even commence development. He programmed on an Amiga, using modified Super NES controllers to connect to it along with a disassembled Star Fox cartridge for access to the Super FX. Linden did not have access to the source code of Doom's PC version, making the Super NES version not a traditional port but rather a programming effort undertaken ab initio. DOOM-FX, as it became known, has been called an "impossible port" as the Super NES, even with the help of the Super FX2 co-processor, fell well short of the original minimum specifications of the PC version (a 66 MHz CPU and 8 MB of RAM).

Linden decided on a project to emulate the Sony PlayStation on Microsoft Windows after seeing the system's extensive library of high-quality games, and noting that he could explore the contents of a PlayStation disc from his PC. He bought a reference manual for the MIPS architecture CPU the system used from a local bookstore and began reverse-engineering the game code. Titled Bleem!, it took roughly a year to develop.

The Dreamcast version was the idea of David Herpolsheimer, Linden's partner on Bleem. Linden noted that the system's advanced capabilities meant that it was potentially even more suitable for making enhancements to the games being emulated than Windows had been. Herpolsheimer liaised with multiple Sega staff, including flying to Japan to meet with Sega's president and board of directors, in the process of developing the system. After the visit, however, Sega were unwilling to permit the software to be officially published, which meant that the developers had to load it without using the official Sega software libraries, though Sega did provide substantial low-level system documentation. Along with reverse engineering the Dreamcast's BIOS in order to figure out the MIL-CD, Linden also reverse engineered some of the Dreamcast libraries in order to isolate a hardware bug that appeared in only one of the emulated games. The software was rewritten from scratch for the Dreamcast in assembly language targeting the Dreamcast's Hitachi SH4 processor, re-using none of the Windows code, and took around a year to complete. Despite their initial reluctance, Sega mentioned Bleemcast! during their keynote speech at E3 in 2000.

Linden has stated that Bleem! was "the original demo used to pitch the Xbox concept to Bill Gates". He was requested to create a demo of Bleem! that removed referenced to the software, which he says was used internally to persuade Gates that a console could be built from PC hardware, which was convincing. Furthermore, he had heard a rumor that the "X" in "Xbox" meant "cross", implying cross-compatibility with software for other consoles.

In 2002, Linden worked on a prototype of Quake for the Game Boy Advance. As with the Super NES version of Doom, he created the prototype as a technical demo to court publishers. The demo comprised the first level of the game, known as E1M1, and consisted of 200,000 lines of ARM7 assembly language. Linden used his own tools to import the game level files, and the source contains no references to the Quake engine codebase. Linden was unsuccessful in securing a publisher, resulting in the game's non-release. However, a more advanced version of the underlying engine, aimed to attract publishers, showcased enhanced animations, point lighting effects, and advancements in camera usage and underwater segment management. This version later became the foundation for Cyboid, a first-person shooter inspired by Quake II, which Linden eventually launched for the Game Boy Advance and Symbian phones.

Following this, Linden was contacted by two different teams within Microsoft, and chose to join a team responsible for developer outreach and tools. He worked on a number of projects for Microsoft, including the Xbox 360, Kinect and the Microsoft Band. He left to start a new company called R and R Digital after almost ten years at Microsoft, following Microsoft's cancellation of further work on the Band. R and R Digital released Cyboid for Android on 25 March 2017.

During the global lockdown following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Linden rediscovered and released the source for the tools he used to develop the Super NES version of Doom. In 2022, Linden stumbled upon the Quake GBA project on a flash drive, leading to its exposure in the media. He likewise released the more advanced engine without id's game assets around the same time.

Linden contracted with Limited Run Games to work on Jurassic Park: Classic Games Collection, a collection of ports of various games for the Jurassic Park franchise, released in 2023. His work was on the Carbon Engine, a collection of video game emulators used in conjunction with (occasionally modified) versions of the original game ROMs to allow them to run on modern game consoles.

Personal life
A native of Toronto, Linden is based in Seattle, Washington.