Star Wars Insider 218 is out now, and as well as my interviews with Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s young Princess Leia Vivien Lyra Blair and a very rare chat with Kitik Keed’kak controller Andy Purvis from A New Hope, the issue is packed with the regulation great content Insider always delivers including a fascinating dive into the history of Atari’s Star Wars arcade game written by Dan Brooks.
In 1977, the year of Star Wars: A New Hope’s release, Hally was a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University in California. Atari, the gaming giant behind arcade megahits like Space Invaders, was located in nearby Sunnyvale. As Hally neared graduation and needed to find a job, a seemingly fated opportunity would arise. “In my senior year, Atari sent a representative to my college to recruit people,” Hally says. “One of those guys was recruiting mechanical engineers for their pinball division, so I applied.” After attaining his degree, Hally accepted a job offer and joined the company.
Hally cut his teeth on pinball games like Middle Earth, Time 2000, and Superman, but after a couple of years the California pinball division was shuttered, and Hally was transferred to the coin-op arcade games group. “I loved games and liked to design stuff, so they must have seen something in me,” he remembers. “I joined them as a project leader.”
In 1982, Atari and Lucasfilm reached an agreement to produce arcade games based on the entire Star Wars trilogy. Hally—a rising star at Atari and a fan of Star Wars himself—was determined to get the gig.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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Star Wars Insider 218 is out now, and as well as my interviews with Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s young Princess Leia Vivien Lyra Blair and a very rare chat with Kitik Keed’kak controller Andy Purvis from A New Hope, the issue is packed with the regulation great content Insider always delivers including a fascinating dive into the history of Atari’s Star Wars arcade game written by Dan Brooks.
In 1977, the year of Star Wars: A New Hope’s release, Hally was a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University in California. Atari, the gaming giant behind arcade megahits like Space Invaders, was located in nearby Sunnyvale. As Hally neared graduation and needed to find a job, a seemingly fated opportunity would arise. “In my senior year, Atari sent a representative to my college to recruit people,” Hally says. “One of those guys was recruiting mechanical engineers for their pinball division, so I applied.” After attaining his degree, Hally accepted a job offer and joined the company.
Hally cut his teeth on pinball games like Middle Earth, Time 2000, and Superman, but after a couple of years the California pinball division was shuttered, and Hally was transferred to the coin-op arcade games group. “I loved games and liked to design stuff, so they must have seen something in me,” he remembers. “I joined them as a project leader.”
In 1982, Atari and Lucasfilm reached an agreement to produce arcade games based on the entire Star Wars trilogy. Hally—a rising star at Atari and a fan of Star Wars himself—was determined to get the gig.
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
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In 1977, the year of Star Wars: A New Hope’s release, Hally was a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University in California. Atari, the gaming giant behind arcade megahits like Space Invaders, was located in nearby Sunnyvale. As Hally neared graduation and needed to find a job, a seemingly fated opportunity would arise. “In my senior year, Atari sent a representative to my college to recruit people,” Hally says. “One of those guys was recruiting mechanical engineers for their pinball division, so I applied.” After attaining his degree, Hally accepted a job offer and joined the company.
