ANTIC Interview 413 - Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, Atari Game Research Group ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast

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