The Minds Behind the Maddness
by Evan Shultz
RedFence staff writer and resident game enthusiast Evan Shultz interviewed the creators of
Retro Sabotage, a fairly ingenious site that spoofs classic video games. See his artist spotlight for details.
RF: How many of you are there?
Rico: As far as I know there are only two of us.
RF: What are your names/ages/whereabouts/secret aliases? (No problem if you wish to remain anonymous.)
Rico & Tof: We go by Tof and Rico and not a day goes by without regretting choosing these aliases in 20 seconds at 3 in the morning! We are your average 30-something European semi-nerds.
RF: Why did you make your first sabotage?
Rico & Tof: We were chatting together about a game idea and, like always, we digressed and ended with Retro Sabotage’s current concept. It’s the weird offspring of our love-hate relationship with video games: The idea is to use games against themselves to have gamers think about the medium (Verfremdungseffekt and all that). Then, once the gamers are enlightened by the brilliance of our work, they can help us slap the game industry into maturity! Hum… yeah…
RF: What convinced you to keep making sabotages?
Rico: Right from the start, we decided the site should have regular updates, like a web comic, so it was more a matter of staying motivated really. Much to my surprise, I remained motivated when there were weeks with less than ten people a day. I guess the almost unanimously positive feedback helped a lot.
RF: What else have you done?
Rico: I have been a kind of digital jack-of-all-trades for some artist and film maker friends, all the while being a video game and film critic. I guess this answer can mean “a lot” or “nothing else.”
Tof: I fell into the internet pit by accident in the late 90s. Never really managed to get out. I’ve been working mostly with editorial content.
RF: What’s it like trying to keep up with a weekly deadline? How has it helped or hindered you?
Rico: Being a veteran member of the international league of procrastinators, the weekly deadline helped me tremendously. Without the deadline, there probably would be about two and a half sabotages instead of seventeen. On the other hand, some sabotages have seen their scope reduced or focus changed to be ready for the deadline. It’s not necessarily a bad thing and it’s probably more a side effect of my inability to do things before the last minute than a consequence of the weekly deadline.
RF: Is there anything you’d like to say to other cutting-edge artists out there?
Rico: Challenge everything! Oh wait… that’s EA’s slogan.
RF: Is there anything you’d like to see from other cutting edge artists out there?
Rico: That’s a tough question to answer! Let’s just say that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to answer it.
RF: Is there anything else you’d like us to know about you or your work?
Rico: I would just like to say that in this day and age, computers are so powerful that it’s possible to have a program run well (or at least well enough) even if it’s very poorly coded. On top of that, there are tons of tutorial and FAQs on the web, so really, anyone with a little creativity and a logical mind can quickly start making softwares. Don’t be scared!
Tof: On top of that, if your work can be recorded or scanned in any way, it only takes a couple minutes to put it online. Comments and suggestions — mainly thanks to the “world” part of “www” — are well worth the effort, if only to tell you that somebody else, somewhere, is working on a similar concept. We experienced it through Retro Sabotage, and it proved worthwhile.
RF: Are you ever going to sabotage Centipede? Because that would be awesome.
Rico: It’s not on our target list at this time, but that might be because we do not really have a target list. So… who knows?
Images courtesy of retrosabotage.com
