On to his latest project, the Pet People Discovery Kit. How did it come about? 'Here we have a project that began with many different people, all of whom believed that these little people might really exist in your computer. Activision were the only firm who really had the gumption to put together a project to find these little guys, and find them we did!

'Once they'd been discovered, what we had to do was to create a consumer product-something that would work on the Commodore 64 so that you could take one home and have your own little computer Pet Person to entertain or entertain you.

'The burning question which I was just dying to ask was about the mysterious 'death' of Adam, ZZAP!'s very own Pet Person. What happened to him and will it ever happen again? David explained: 'We found some of the little Pet People were of a very nervous disposition. Sometimes, on hearing that they are to be publicised, they get very scared. A couple of the little guys who came over to Britain were of that disposition, and as soon as they found out that they would be seen by tens of thousands of people they ran inside the computer to hide. Adam was one of these.'

He went on to explain. 'Adam was in there all along, he just got scared and hid. Tell the guy who thought he'd killed him that Adam is in fact alive and well. We've found him, and soothed him, and now he feels much better about being publicised - so I'll send him back and he'll be much happier.'

Little Computer People Activision
Little Computer People by Activision
With that joyous news I asked about further additions to the Pet People Kit: houses, a facility for extra people and the like. 'The research is still continuing and at the time of this interview I'm still very busy' David said,'In fact I almost didn't take your call! What we've discovered is that computer persons tend to be solitary people, and once a Pet Person has taken residence in a computer others tend not to come round.

If we can discover a way to make them more gregarious then maybe other Pet People will be able to come round. We are considering the market for other houses. At the moment your Adam has one of the best ones, but we are certainly considering making other houses which could well bring out different Pet People.'

Might Pet People be found in the new Amiga or the Atari 520 ST? David confidently said 'I'm sure there are. We feel that they probably live in every computer in the world. We've found them in other computers, including those that you're asking about, although it does take a while for us to build a house and to get it out to the market.

The Commodore was the machine that we worked on first and you've seen the house on that. Following our researches on the Apple Ile, we should have an Apple house available very soon.' Expanding Upon the Amiga subject David said 'we design software generally for any computer that we like, and we like the new machines which have a lot of power like the 68000 microprocessor based computers.

They may result in much more detailed graphics and much more diverse software due to the computer's power. We can only wait and see. One thing you can be assured of, is that at Activision we look at every machine which comes out long before many other people have even heard about it. We know exactly what it's capable of and what machines we'll be interested in the future.'
Little Computer People Atari 520ST
Little Computer People (Atari 520ST) by Activision

There's no doubt, however, that Activision will be continuing to support the C64. 'We don't intend to stop creating software for the 64, or any other systems we are currently working for. Two existing titles have already been converted for the Amiga, and we plan to do original work for the Amiga as well. The 64 is still one of the strongest computers in the market right now, and there is a strong following for it Charlotte Taylor, public relations person explained.

With that I thanked them for their time and rang off with plenty to think about. Most importantly - Adam's coming home. YIPPPEEEEE!


Article reproduced from Zzap!64 magazine December 1985 edition.
Although all text appears unchanged, some photographs or images have been added or modified for aesthetic purposes.

Thank you to the following websites which were used for sourcing some images that appear in this article:
Moby Games, Atari Age.