Andreas Axelsson (AXL) is one of the founders of Digital Illusions, the swedish programming company that made the famous pinball trilogy consisting of: Pinball Dreams (1992), Pinball Fantasies (1992) and Pinball Illusions (1994). They also released True Pinball (1996) for playstation, TP is a 3D version of Pinball Illusions.

Today Digital Illusions consist of 19 people working full time. The founders and owners are Andreas Axelsson och Fredrik Liliegren.

B I O G R A P H Y

Q Introduce yourself a little! Who are you, where do you live, etc...

A Ah, well, I'm 24 years old, and I live in Gothenburg, Sweden. Apart from working at DI, I work out with my guitar, watch action-movies, meet my friends and try to do all the stuff I never had time to do when I was younger.

Q How was your youth, where did you grow up, family?

A I was brought up far out in the middle of nowhere, a place called BlΣdinge, in the south of Sweden. I don't care much about that place now, but I had lots of time to hack away on the computer. My parents have moved away from there anyway. I have a brother and a sister, both younger than me. Thanks to my dad who bought my early computers. I owe him one!

Q What was your relation to pinballs (real ones and/or sims), did you play them a lot? Which one was/is your favourite?

A The place where I lived didn't have many real pinball-games, so each time I got near one I just had to play it. I compensated by playing a lot of sims. Pinball Wizard (amiga) and Night Mission (C64) are the ones I remember the most. Right now I play Twilight Zone, Attack from Mars and some others.

Q How did you come in contact with computers? Did you use them a lot?

A I was parked in front of an ABC80 once when my mom was having a meeting with someone. I believe I played "masken" without interrupt for the whole hour. I was nine or ten years old then. Soon after my dad bought an ABC80, cause I'd been begging for a computer since that day. After that I was hooked. I used it as often as possible.

Q When did you start programming and how come you got interested in programming at all?

A With the ABC80 came a few books on BASIC-programming, and since the computer was swedish, the manual was in swedish too. I think I made my first <print "hello"> about a month after I got the ABC80.

Q Did you make any early programs or games that you still remember?

A I got halfway through a conversion of Boulder Dash (C64) on the Amiga, but I made a lot of small tools and utils before that. A paint-program on ZX Spectrum was the first real utility. I was 12 then I think.

Q What did you do before you started Digital Illusions? Read you had a demo group, The Silents?

A I never cared too much about the "scene". I was in it for about two years, before I thought games would be more interesting. I was a member of The Silents, but I didn't give it much effort. I had come to know Fredrik (Animal) since he lived in Alvesta, close to where I come from, and I joined Silents cause he wanted me to. I only made one or two demos for them, nothing spectacular. Pinball Dreams was originally supposed to be a Silents product though.

D I G I T A L   I L L U S I O N S

Q How come Digitall Illusions was formed. I understand Pinball Dreams had a lot to do with it, tell me more.

A Digital Illusions was, quite simply, formed from members of The Silents, when we discovered that Pinball Dreams would actually be a real game that we could sell.

Q Where did the name Digital Illusions come from?

A Two boxes of beer and a hard night. :)

Q When you formed DI, what were the future plans? Did you have a lot of trouble finding someone who would publish your first product (Pinball Dreams)?

A The only plan right then was to get Dreams published. We were turned down by a lot of companies before 21st Century picked us up. I still remember Gary Bracey at Ocean who didn't even want to look at it. Ocean later bought True Pinball though, and I heard Gary got fired.

Q Of course since you had seen what a big success PD was you could safely release a sequel. But still, how come you at DI dared to enter this unsafe territory from the beginning, a territory where it might be hard to make your products name a name all gamers knew. Maybe I am wrong and it wasnÆt that risky and unsafe, how was it?

A It wasn't at all risky, since we'd done everything as a hobby project. If nobody had bought it, we'd probably released it as a Silents game and made something else. All of us were still in school, so getting PD published was nothing we depended on.

Q Who were the original members of DI, did anyone join in as the company made a name? Who are the members today? Introduce them briefly.

A DI started out with me (programming), Fredrik Liliegren (moral, design, testing), Olof Gustafsson (music, sfx) and Ulf Mandorff (ball-handler programming). We tested a few different graphics-artists before we settled on Markus Nystr÷m, who was a new recrute in Silents at the time. During the next two years we added four new people and Ulf quit. The new people were two coders (Bosse, Thomas) and two graphics-artists (Joakim, Patrik), working on two projects. After that we've grown quite a lot, and during the last year (96-97) we've become 19 people working full-time.

Q What was your role in Digital Illusions? I understand you were one of the two owners but I wonder more about your role in the team. I understand you where the main programmer, what was it like?

A I'm mainly a programmer, but the role is going more towards a project manager, since I've been in the business so long. Right now I'm coding utility libraries for our future projects, as well as finishing off the AI routines for our new racing-game.

Q DI programmed a lot of games for the Amiga, did you program for other computers too? Also I understand you went over to program only for the PC, how come?

A Personally I programmed whatever got in my way, but the games were just for Amiga back then. When we left the Amiga, it was dying. There was no way a game could have sold enough for us to make a living. All eight people at that time were all working solely for DI and had no other income. We didn't go for the PC right away, but we needed the PC to do games for Saturn and Playstation. The development hardware wasn't available for any other platform. Last year we started working on our first in-house PC game ever.

Q I read you worked on a version of Pinball Dreams for GameBoy, was that ever finished?

A Both PD and PF were released for Gameboy, but the conversion was done by Spidersoft Ltd. DI had nothing to do with that.

Q Is Digital Illusions still in the business? I canÆt remember hearing anything about DI in the last few years. If so, what are DI working on now? If not, why, what happened, DI seemed to be going well!?

A Our last product was S40 Racing for PC, which was released about a month ago. It's a branch of a much larger game which're finishing right now. Before that we released True Pinball for Saturn and Playstation. It's mainly a 3d prerendered version of PI, but it's got completely reworked code, modes, sounds and graphics.

Q What are you and the rest of DI doing today? Still living in Sweden?

A We've got our head office in Gothenburg and we're currently 19 people.

Q What is your best memory from the time you have been working with Digital Illusions?

A I hope I haven't experienced it yet! But if I have to choose then getting Pinball Dreams published was probably the most exiting thing so far, even if I might have enjoyed other things more.

P I N B A L L   T R I L O G Y

Q Tell me the background for Pinball Dreams, I guess you didnÆt just decide to make a pinball and then sat down and started doing one.

A You just wrote the answer right there, though I'd say the starting spark was a friend who'd drawn a few pinball-tables for fun. It was just something to do instead of another demo.

Q Pinball Dreams really was impressing both in feeling and layout when it came out. Where did the ideas for the table designs and such come from (also where did the I deas for the other pinballs tables come from)?

A I guess we've been influenced from every pinball-game there is. You can probably find constructs that look quite a lot like parts from various tables on our designs, but there is just so much you can do with steel wire and plastic. We usually got a basic idea which we created as an outline in black and white, and adjusted until it felt good to hit all spots. The ball-handler was written before we even considered making anything else, and thus we could test the tables from scratch.

Q You released Pinball Fantasies, the second pinball in your trilogy, the same year as Pinball Dreams got out. Where you that sure Pinball Dreams would be a success that you had a sequel ready or where you just fast programmers? Just curious :)

A Fast programmers! No, to be honest, we'd been working for over three years with PD and we had to get it finished, but we had so many ideas left that we couldn't cram into PD that PF was more of a 1.5 code with 2.0 tables than a complete 2.0. As soon as we finished PD we went to USA and spent three months with some friends in Seattle while working on PF. It was almost finished when we got back home.

Q If now Pinball Dreams had impressed people, Pinball Fantasies did a even better job. How did it feel to have made a pinball that stayed at Top Lists for months and yet more months.

A Great!

Q What do you think was the reason that Pinball Fantasies became so popular?

A It stayed true to it's objective of creating a good simulation of a pinball-game, and there wasn't really any competition back then.

Q Your third pinball, Pinball Illusions, has recived some mixed reviews, but is often mentioned as the best one in the trilogy (I like PF more somehow). It really is different from Dreams and Fantasies. How come it became so different?

A We'd lost the one of our programmers, Ulf, that originally made the ball-handler, and to be honest, I didn't understand how it worked, so I had to make a new one. I think that's the biggest difference really. The fact that we had a lot more processing-power added more to the scoring-system and effects than to the gameplay.

Q Pinball Illusions also became your last pinball (at least you havenÆt released any more at the time), how come?

A Pinball Illusions evolved into True Pinball for Saturn and Playstation, so there is a new game, but to the point. When we released True Pinball, I'd personally been working, or spending nearly all my available free time on the pinball projects for about seven years. We thought there was time to do something different. The market got flooded with crappy immitations too, and we didn't think our name was big enough for people to raise an eye for the right one.

Q Still I wonder, are there any plans to make another, fourth, pinball?

A Hehe, have I tried to sneak away from that question over the years... I wouldn't leap with joy over the opportunity, and we defenitely haven't got any plans that I know of. Never say never though.

O T H E R

Q Some years back you wrote a kind of diary for a time in the swedish computer magazine DMZ (r.i.p), I know because I still have some of the issues (not all) with it left! I read there that you were working on lots of things, pc versions of some of your pinballs, Malfunction, Benefactor, Hardcore and some car game. What more games did you develop?

A Malfunction was canned, 'cause I got bored with it. It would have been a little like System Shock on the PC if it had been finished. Benefactor was released for Amiga and CD32 and Hardcore was almost finished for Sega Megadrive, but was canned byt the publisher when 16-bit suddenly died overnight. Honestly, I don't remember what we did all that time, cause we lived some kind of life outside the real world. I sometimes had problems telling what month it was, and we were often working until 8 o'clock in the morning.

Q Benefactor I bought, kinda liked it, fun puzzling but too easy (ok, maybe I sat with it a while then ;)). But what happened to all those other games you were working on? Did anything become as popular as PD, anything that you were especially satisfied with?

A See last question. Additionally I can say that Hardcore would've kicked major ass if it had been released on the Megadrive. It was the best shoot-em up ever on that machine. I'd buy a Megadrive today, solely to play that game if we could get it on a cartridge.

Q What do you think of the pinball simulations that has been released today? Got any favourites? btw. Funny how some of them almost always have layouts that in some way resembles your pinballs tables! :)

A To be honest, I haven't played them. I can afford real pinball now and when playing games I prefer flight-sims or racing-games.

Q Got anything else to add?

A I'd like to thank everyone who bought our games (and spit in the face of those who pirated them). BTW, FMV sucks and I can't imagine how I'd ever be able to fill an entire DVD-disc without making it an advertisement for music or real film. Realtime rules. Check out our www-site on http://www.bdi.bonnier.se (slowest update on the net, but at last it's there!) The diary is back there too!

B T W

Q Could you email me your autograph (or autographs, the others at DI can send theirs too)? ;) Perhaps a color outprint of one of the Pinball Dreams tables with the names of those who made it on it. Hey, maybe it will get collectors value some day!! Ok, don't take me that seriously on this question, just kidding ;) (my adress: sam gabrielsson, nowhere, sverige, spicyroad 77, 911 11, Palace).

A I'll just not take this question seriously then.

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Thanks for answering!!

A pleasure indeed.

/axl