Talk:Beast (video game)/Dan Baker Letters

Emails between WP user Cyborg and Dan Baker
User cyborg made a JS port of the original game (though the link was recently removed as the remake is not yet complete by a strict editor).

Permissions
Hello again,

shortly after adding the history details into the article, it was removed because there's no way to prove the facts are true. I assume showing them the email thread between us would be helpful. Though I'm not showing them the email unless you allow me to as I regard emails/mail in general to be personal. Especially when there's personal info in it (obviously). I hope you will let me copy the thread so I can back up the facts.

Thanks, Anders

Please feel free to use these emails, after removing all personal information (like email addresses, school and company names).

DanB

Original thread
Hi, my name is Dan Baker, and I wrote Beast a long time ago. Someone pointed me to the Wikipedia article about Beast, and that led me to your Javascript version of the game. I played your Javascript version -- good job. I just wanted to say Hello, and I think it is pretty neat that you rewrote Beast into Javascript. DanB

Hi,

glad you like the game! Alhough I'm very excited to recieve email from the legend, how do I know you're really Dan Baker, the mysterious lead programmer of the classic computer game Beast? As you know, anyone can fake an identity these days by putting up a site like danbaker.com or bakercrew.com and claim to be him. There's just nothing there to prove you're actually him... the sections were missing (blog) or locked (pics). Unfortunately even with a pic, there's no way for me to verify your id because searching the net for "Dan Baker" only gives me pages related to Beast, not about the person. If you could tell me a bit about yourself that would probably help a lot though.

I know there are others out there that would like to know who DB is and think it's a pitty there's no info at all about him. He deserves a wikipedia article! So, if you're really him, do let me know :-)

I was wondering if you would be skeptical, when I was writing the email. It is very difficult to prove anything via email.

A brief history: I write computer games during Junior High and High School on the schools mainframe computer (teletype). My brother is an electrical engineer, and he bought a TRS-80 when they first came out. We wrote games on that thing all the time. I went to college (*** University) in 1980, and got a job at a little software company called ***, which turned into ***. Eventually the IBM-PC came out, and I started working on it. The first thing I did was write a game (Beast). The PC only came with a BASIC interpreter, so the first version was written in BASIC, and didn't work very well. After we got the assembler, I started re-writing Beast in ASM. Alan Brown wrote a routine that would make sound, Derrick wrote a disk I/O routine for saving the high scores, and Mark wrote a random number generator for me. I distributed Beast as shareware for a few years, and made some money (not much, maybe $100). After WordPerfect came out with the Shell (which allowed multiple programs to be loaded at the same time, but the user could only interact with one at time), I fixed Beast to be "Shell Compatible". WordPerfect bought Beast from me for about $1000 (which my wife and I quickly spent on a video camera), and Beast started shipping with Shell (or Library, what ever they called it). That was kind-a the end of Beast for me.

After WordPerfect, I worked at a little software company called ***. Then I worked for ***,a local video game company. Now I'm working for a place called ***.

I didn't write, or even know of, the Wikipedia Beast article until just recently. I was talking to Derrick, and he mentioned the Wikipedia article, so I looked it up. Funny how things work.

I don't know how you will ever really know if I'm the "real" Dan Baker. I still talk to Mark, Alan, and Derrick from time to time. A friend of mine, ***, worked at *** with me. He has his own video game company called ***. You could send him an email ***, he would vouch for my "realness".

DanB

Note: all (direct) personal information was censored as requested. Cyborg 06:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)