Bill Kunkel's Railroad Game idea

[JaredCenter]

I remember reading the book "Inside Electronic Game Design" (Arnie Katz w. Laurie Yates, 1996) and in the book, a sample proposal game was used from June 15, 1995 called "Highballin': Electronic Model Railroading." In the Appendix under the game title, it says "Design Proposal Submitted By Subway Software (Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, and Joyce Worley)."

If Bill Kunkel is in the forum, I'd like to ask if the game was ever completed and published. I read over the design proposal and it makes you imagine what this game plays like as a completed product. The samples are very well laid out and it makes me wonder if the product was actually done.

I know there have been other railroad games that have come out in the past(Railway Tycoon and A-train come to mind), but was Highballin' ever completed as a playable product?

[JaredCenter]

I know there have been other railroad games that have come out in the past(Railway Tycoon and A-train come to mind),

Railroad Tycoon! I got carried away and thought "Railway" for some reason.

[BillKunkel]

No, that simulation was never developed beyond the document you reference. It was part of a five product "lifestyle game" package that also included the first serious simulated chemistry set. I believe we sold the whole deal to NEC where they were to be developed for the TurboGrafx. Whoever it was, they paid us an awful lot of money for the intellectual property but quickly determined that, despite optimistic predictions, the development was beyond the capabilities of the company's programmers on that system at that time.

Since we had sold them the games -- which were never designed (the kind of glorified pitch document which appears in the book that Arnie and my wife Laurie wrote was all we generated for any of the games) -- we were unable to resell them for several years, by which time it wasn't pursued for reasons which elude me at the moment.

I still think it was a really cool idea. I remember our agent, Barry Friedman, was discussing a license deal with Lionel where we would have used a tiny videocamera (which some other group was developing at the time) mounted on the engine of an actual Lionel train to produce digitized, first-person footage. Of course, that was one of those deals that kind of ignored the reality of data storage at the time.

[BillKunkel]

Btw, Jared, the "1995" date on that document is as bogus as the address and phone number. "Highballin'" was actually conceived and proposed at a point when the PC Engine had not yet been transported to the US, so it was probably in the late 80s -- before Railroad Tycoon, I remember that.

[SoulBlazer]

Interesting. I'm a big fan of simulation games, so I've played all the railroad games that have come out -- from the original Microprose and AH games to the more modern ones by Mircrosoft and GOD. I'm sorry that your game never actually got developed, because I'm sure that I would have bought it.

Now we just need a good sim game on the video game industry.....

[BillKunkel]

Now we just need a good sim game on the video game industry.....

Interesting you should mention that. Subway Software was in negotiations with the late, lamented ICOM Simulations around 1986 (before founder Tod Zipnick died so tragically young) to develop an adventure game that would take place at an industry trade show. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the ICOM interface was that it didn't handle human interaction well so too much of the game would have been set after hours. Still, using ICOM's point-and-click interface, it would have been fun to go from booth to booth and check out all the stuff there.

[hydr0x]

Now we just need a good sim game on the video game industry.....

at least there is a sim games on the video game magazine industry, i don't know if it was released outside of Germany but it's name was Mag! and i think it must have been either a Software 2000 or a Ascaron product...