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FANTASTIC JOURNEY
PRESS RELEASES!!!

04-11-99 Exclusive interview to GRAHAM RICE!

Graham Rice works for Cunning Developments, a division of Empire Interactive. He is currently working on "Pro Pinball - Fantastic Journey". He is one of the designers and lead artist in the Cunning Developments team.

The Pro Pinball Players Center has the pleasure of having him as a member since July 1999.

You can check his site at http://www.cix.co.uk/~jacks/ to find more information about his work with Pro Pinball and his interests.

He and his team are in the final stage of their work with FJ and with a tight schedule he agreed to aswer a couple of question to us so lets see what he has to say about FANTASTIC JOURNEY!:

We now know that you are the lead artist in the Cunning team but could you describe to us what is it that you have done so far as a part of this team that is developing Fantastic Journey?

I joined Empire in 1993 and have worked on...Space Ace (SNES), Hanna Barberas Turbo Toons (SNES), Hanna Barberas Animation Workshop (Amiga, PC), Pro Pinball The Web, timeshock!, Brusa and Fantastic Journey (PC, Playstation, Mac and even Saturn...)

My main task on the pinball project is the creation of the table, all the models, materials, lighting etc...

Tom Beesley, our animation wizard, handles all the Dot Matrix graphics... Peter Richardson did the Backglass artwork on Fantastic Journey (and Brusa).

Back in march we heard the new about the upcoming Pro Pinball but could you tell us when did exactly your team started to work on the creation of FJ??

Around February, but we were mulling over a few ideas before then...

Some of the new features are an unique COLOR & multi-lingual dot matrix display... were this or any other feature of this new pinball some kind of a challenge to the team??

The COLOUR dot matrix was something we thought about putting into Brusa, but time constraints prevented us. So that was one of the first things on our wish list for FJ. The real challenge with FJ has been displaying the toys and improved lighting effects, both are much larger than we've used in the past.

I've also used some new lighting techniques when rendering the table, which have given us much more realistic graphics...Unfortunately this has a nasty effect on rendering times..

You told me some days ago that you were working on the SLIDESHOW and you send us a part of it (thank you for that!)... Does this mean your part of this project is almost complete??

It's getting VERY close...

What can you tell us about the others members of the teams that are working to finish FJ and their progress? (like programmer, sound, beta testesting, you name it!)

Well... Ade, Champie and Adrian are all work 7 days a week. Broadly speaking, Ade is working on the final rules and polish of the game.

Champie is processing all the graphics (about 20 Gbs...) and Adrian is working on the Playstation version...Final versions of the music should be with us in the next couple of days and final speech was recorded on Monday.

Tom and I are working on the Slideshow and Options graphics. As I said, we're getting very close.

And of course... last but not least... we are less than 60 days away from the end of this millennium... would it be any chance of us putting our hands on FJ (demo or completed version) before the Y2K Bug takes over our computers??? ;-)

I hope so...

Well... i think that's the end of the interview! Thank you very much for your time GRAHAM and thank you for sharing with us a little bit more about FANTASTIC JOURNEY!

Anytime 8?)
Graham

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