Bartman:  After I sold my Amiga 4000 in 1996, I thought a Pentium-133 PC. It was pretty interesting to code a demo on the PC, because, compared to the Amiga, as there was much more graphical power and the CPU was more powerful too. That made it easier to create a 3D-engine. On the other hand, coding for MS-DOS is pretty ugly due to all the specialities and limitations. This only changed with Windows 95 and DirectX.

Bobic:  What's your opinion about changes in the scene? What has changed in the years when you were part of it? What's good and what's bad about that?

Bartman:  In the Amiga-times it has always been a fact, that demos were superior to games - technically and also the graphics. Unfortunately that's not the same thing with the PC demoscene anymore today. PC demos often can't follow the high-speed hardware evolution. Today, you often have to say "I saw that in some game and it looked better there". The restraint against new technologies like pixel- and vertex-shader doesn't help with that either. On the other hand, it's still surprising how many good demos get released. If you look at the winner of the big demoparties, there is a lot where you can say "that's really good" - if you make it work on your hardware.

Bobic:  Which are your favourite demos? And why?

Bartman:  Honestly, I don't remember a lot right now, so here's just a small selection: "Nexus 7" by Andromeda (Amiga 1200, TP 94) - you can still watch it today and wonder about how they did it. "Arte!" by Sanity (Amiga 500, TP 93): Superb graphics, excellent music and sync. "We Cell" by Kewlers (PC, Assembly 04): It's crazy what you can do with a "simple" particle engine.

Bobic:  How did your demoscene experience help you getting into the games business?

Bartman:  Thanks to our demoscene experience, the technical side was easier and we managed to create some "Wow"-

Pink showed his coding skills with the Amiga demo "Wildlife" in 1998.

Bobic:  Why did you decide to create games for Nintendo's handheld consoles? Will there be console- or PC-versions of your games?

Bartman:  Due to the size of our team, it's simply not possible to create large console- or PC-games. Handhelds make it possible to create cool stuff even with a small team because you don't need the same time and effort.

Bobic:  Will you stick with Nintendo, are are you having a shy glimpse at the PSP?

Bartman:  Of course we'll also develip DS-games in the future, but we're also heavily interested in creating games for the PSP.

Bobic:  You finished Nanostray for the DS a short while ago. Why is this game better than similar shoot-'em-up stuff?

Bartman:  Of course, there's the technical side. I think, Nanostray is the best you can get when it comes to graphics on the DS up to now. Then we also have a clever scoring system and the world-ranking feature, where you can publish your highscores on www.nanostray.com and compare them to scores from other players all around the world.