John Harris: Jawbreaker, Frogger, Mouskattack

John Harris created the games Jawbreaker, Frogger, and Mouskattack for the Atari 8-bit computers. He worked at Sierra On-Line and later Synapse Software. He later created video character generator systems based on the Atari machines.

This interview took place June 10, 2016.

Teaser quotes:

"Literally — I mean, a day or two difference could have made — gosh, my goodness, what a huge difference in my life if I had gone into that store a couple of days earlier."

"He just said, you know, 'I'll give you $1,500 a month to live on for two months, and if you haven't finished a game in two months, you won't make it in this industry anyway.'"

"The general public opinion was, 'Oh, this is just more Jawbreaker.' ... But I still kind of have a fondness for it."

AtariMania's list of John's software

John in Halcyon Days: http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/HARRIS.HTM

Jawbreaker in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawbreaker_(video_game)

John Harris in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harris_(software_developer)