So I always - me and John always say we're like the Tom Sawyers of the ocean because, you know, we grew up in little skiffs and stuff. HILLSTRAND: Well, we grew up around the water our whole lives. It's about a full day's worth of traveling.ĬONAN: Tell me, Andy, what is it about the place you grew up in - Homer, Alaska - that makes you, well, want to take on the incredible risks that you guys do every season? Good afternoon.ĬONAN: And we don't think of Alaskan fishermen living in Indiana, Andy. ANDY HILLSTRAND (Co-Captain, Time Bandit): Thanks, Neal. JOHNATHAN HILLSTRAND (Co-Captain, Time Bandit): Hey, thanks for having us.ĬONAN: And his brother Andy is on the phone from his home in Indiana. Johnathan Hillstrand joins us today from member station KUOW in Seattle. Email us, You can also join the conversation on our Web site, that's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. If you're a fan of "Deadliest Catch" and you'd like to talk with the Hillstrands about their difficult and sometimes brutal profession, give us a call. Two of them, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, captains of the Time Bandit, join us today. The show "Deadliest Catch" documents one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, fishing for Alaskan King and Opilio crabs. Each fall this fleets set out from Dutch Harbor in Alaska and millions follow them into the stormy, frigid waters of the Bering Sea on the Discovery Channel. I’ve since found actual Sanyo MBC-550 screenshots and have included them at the bottom of the screenshot list.The Time Bandit, the Northwestern, the Cornelia Marie, and the Wizard. UPDATE: I’ve discovered that the screenshots I had been hosting, labelled as the Sanyo MBC-550 version were, in fact, Photoshop fan renderings of the CoCo screens, made to show an improvement over the CoCo versions in order to loosely represent the Sanyo version of the game. I finally found a few, as well as screenshots of the TRS-80 Model I original. UPDATE: I’ve searched and searched over the years for screenshots of Time Bandit coded for the unique PC-compatibleish Sanyo MBC-550 computer, with then-impressive 8-color display. UPDATE: I have scanned the Time Bandit instruction pamphlet and placed it online as a PDF document, for those interested. I’m sure one day I will put together an ST system, and largely to reexperience this particular title in its “purest” form. After getting my hands on a new Amiga 2000 a few years ago, I happily managed to find a copy of the Amiga Time Bandit after months of searching however, I still prefer the Atari ST version because of several subtle differences. In the 80’s I had Time Bandit for both the Amiga and Atari ST, but sold it along with those systems years ago. The Atari Legend also has a details page online, complete with screenshots and trivia. The interview also provides a rare glimpse at the interworkings and eventual demise of MichTron, the company behind the game, that many 16-bit gamers of the 80’s will remember with fondness. Within, the game’s co-creator tells the tale of Time Bandit‘s evolution from its first incarnation on the Tandy TRS-80 Model I, followed by a port to the Tandy CoCo which brought color graphics to the game, and then on to the 8-color, pseudo-PC-compatible Sanyo MBC-55x, arriving at its best incarnation, on the Atari ST, and finally from there its port to the Amiga and PC. Time Bandit was truly a departure from other games of the day.Ītari Legend has published an interview with Harry Lafnear who created the graphics for Time Bandit as well as a variety of other games for the Atari and other platforms. The variety that the various worlds and levels and character interaction provided was enormous, instilling in the player a sense of vastness to the game world. Unexpected in this type of action-adventure, arcade-style game was the inclusion of the occasional text-based interaction with characters in the game by way of a simple text parser, adding a deeper, problem-solving aspect to the game experience. Time Bandit is basically a “ Gauntlet style” (thought it preceeded Gauntlet by two years), top-down perspective shooter where you, the Time Bandit, travel through time among 16 different worlds, all but one of which each have 16 different levels, searching for various artifacts along the way. But, of all the game I ever owned for the Atari ST, my favorite was easily Time Bandit, published by MichTron and created by Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear. It was great fun going down to the local Games ‘n’ Gadgets and buying new titles for this machine. The ST was fast, with its 8MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, and provided impressive visuals with its then-impressive 512 color palette. I moved from an Apple IIe to this new 16-bit graphics machine in late 1986. One of the more exciting machines I’ve owned was the Atari 520ST.
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