[Beam Software: interview with Bill McIntosh]

Beam Software produced a series of groundbreaking games in the 1980s, most notably the seminal games of ‘The Hobbit’, which allowed characters to direct other characters, and ‘The Way of the exploding fist’, one of the first one-on-one fighting games developed for the home computer. Beam was sold to Krome Studios in 2006 which, in turn, ceased operations in 2010. These unedited interviews with some of the key members of Beam Software were filmed at ACMI in April 2006.

Beam Software programmer, Bill McIntosh, left a boring job in the Royal Air Force to join Beam after his wife bought him a computer, which he equates with “plugging in his brain”. He discusses the games he worked on and the culture at Beam, and the financial conditions in Australia that put such companies at risk.