this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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How a 1980s Atari creator with cystic fibrosis crafted a story of salmon survival (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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Williams' success with APX led him to create several games for Synapse Software, including the beloved Alley Cat and the incomprehensible fantasy masterpiece Necromancer, before moving to the Amiga, where he created the experimental Mind Walker and his ambitious "cultural simulation" Knights of the Crystallion.

Necromancer, Williams' later creation for the Atari 800, plays like a fever dream—you control a druid fighting off spiders while growing magic trees and battling an undead wizard. It makes absolutely no sense by conventional standards, but it's brilliant in its otherworldliness.

"The first games that I did were very hard to explain to people and they just kind of bought it on faith," Williams said in a 1989 interview with YAAM (Yet Another Amiga Magazine), suggesting this unconventional approach started early. That willingness to create deeply personal, almost surreal experiences defined Williams' work throughout his career.

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[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago

Loved Alley Cat on my moms work IBM PC in very early 90s. It didn’t age well but I load it up on archive.org sometimes and play a couple of rounds because it’s one of the first games played in my life together with Barbarian and Digger. Maybe if I had Amiga I’d know more of this guy. Bittersweet ending to that story.