World Cup 98

I was back at Software Creations in 1998, and things had changed significantly. The company had grown much bigger and had become an early Nintendo 64 (N64) developer. I'd spent time learning the N64 architecture working on various projects, but one day the announcement came - Electronic Arts (EA) was visiting to see if we could handle the N64 port of World Cup 98.

Landing the Lead Role

Even back in '98, I was considered a veteran programmer. My experience combined with my genuine love for football made me the natural choice to lead the project. The discussions with EA went well - I even knew some of their executives from earlier work I'd done. A couple of months later, we got the green light and work began.

Leading a Full Team

This was my first project leading a programming team. We had a full crew - project manager, programmers, artists, and Quality Assurance (QA). It was a proper setup. I'd been working with Visual Source Safe on other projects, and making it the first thing I introduced to the programming team felt right. Version control was essential for what we were about to undertake.

The Monthly Code Drop Challenge

I started the initial port to the N64. We received Personal Computer (PC) code drops which we converted to run on the N64. The catch was that the PC version was still in active development, so every month we got a fresh code drop that had to be merged into our N64 version.

This was laborious, time-consuming work - sometimes taking weeks to complete. I handled the merges for the first couple of months, but eventually another programmer took over as I got busier with other lead duties. It was the kind of grunt work that had to be done right, or everything would fall apart.

A Team of Football Fans

World Cup 98 was a great experience despite the long hours. Almost everyone on the team was a football fan, which made the late nights more bearable. We ended up adding a Software Creations team as an unlockable bonus in the game. The Software Creations team had great stats, naturally.

Funnily enough, there was a real Software Creations football team that played against other game developers in the north west of England. The overlap between the game we were making and our actual kickabouts wasn't lost on anyone.