Hi Chris!

First of all I'd like to thank you for taking time out for allowing me to do this interview. I hope you don't mind but I would like to ask you a few questions regarding SWOS 96/97 and SWOS 07.

When you where programming SWOS 96/97 did you have any idea how big it would become?

Well the original Sensi Soccer was having incredible success so we all hoped it would do well but never expected what happened.

Was it difficult to program SWOS 96/97?

It was programmed in 68K assembler which at the time was not really difficult but very time-consuming. Now that we all program in C, C++ etc. it seems like assembler programming was really hard work.

You may or may not know that many SWOS fans like myself have tried to edit the game and have failed due to the game crashing at the end of the season, do you have any advice or tips on how to prevent this from happening?

Haha you are kidding aren't you. I can't remember what I worked on last week!

Why does SWOS 96/97 only have 20 seasons?

Being a good, honest, reliable programmer I worked strictly to the design from Jops, which must have said 20 seasons. I can't see why it couldn't have been more though.

How did you decide on the player skills, why are the skills out of 15, why do the prices only value from -£25k to £15m+?

Jops was the main brain behind the player skills although we had many late nights tweaking and revising everything. There is a major big fat calculation in there somewhere which looks at all the player skills and how they interact with the opposing player skills in all the different areas of the pitch. This was what drove the computer team skills (and computer vs computer results).

I guess back then a £15M max seemed OK.

How come the computer never got sent off during game play, made substitutions or had match bans?

Hmmm, I think we hoped that nobody would notice.

Why can't we control the goalkeepers?

We felt the game was just so damn fast that it would always be complete luck whether or not you saved anything.

Do you play SWOS 96/97? If so what console do you use?

I'm well out of the games business now so I haven't been near SWOS for years.

Have you ever used any of the fans updates for SWOS 96/97? If so whose and what did you think of them?

Ditto.

Is there anything in SWOS 96/97 you wish you could change?

Just the royalty rate that was negotiated. That Jops was a tight bastard and I could really do with another major cash injection !

Are you still involved in programming SWOS?

No

How well do you think SWOS 07 will do?

I hope that SWOS 07 will do great. I guess I'm a bit sad that we couldn't have got the whole of the old team back together to create it but we've all moved on.

Thanks very much for answering these questions Chris, I hope it will shine some light for the fans!

No probs, feel free to add any suitable funny comments, if it all seems rather dull !!!!!

Cheers
Chris