For over a decade, Matt Barton has been looking to interview Winston Douglas Wood, creator of the Phantasie series from the 1980s. Thanks to our very own zwanzig_zwoelf, he was finally able to arrange one this week. The first episode of the interview is sort of random, hopping between questions about the original Phantasie trilogy and the 1988 sci-fi RPG Star Command, which Winston created with his cousin Eric Liebenauer. Topics covered include Phantasie's incorporation of elements from the RuneQuest tabletop ruleset, its implementation of an overhead automap which was uncommon at the time, and Winston's relationships with SSI and Origin (the latter of which were interested in publishing Star Command at one point).


Winston has clearly left his game development days behind and is disengaged from the current state of the industry. On Twitter, Matt revealed that he actually owns the rights to Phantasie and Star Command but has no idea about GOG. Hopefully this interview will lead to the rerelease of these increasingly forgotten classics.