Eric Parker

Developer BIO

In 1991, Parsoft built Hellcats Over the Pacific, released by Graphic Simulations. It not only used the basic Mac to its fullest, but allowed you to play it at any resolution and on up to three monitors (the other two represented right and left views). All of the artwork was "drawn" at the proper resolution and then cached for speed. The game had the best algorithm for screen updates at the time, and as a result you had full screen solid terrain, aircraft, etc.

In addition the game showed the hallmarks of every Parsoft release from that date on, attention to little details. For instance you could simply ignore your mission and fly off onto the map, and yet you'd still find buildings, guns, etc., even on the far side of the map. Flight dynamics were likewise good, better than anything out at the time. It was a groundbreaking effort, the best flight sim with the possible exception of Red Baron, which had lousy sound and graphics, but made up for that with a superb mission engine and storyline.

Parsoft followed that up with a patch/mission set called Leyte Gulf. The game was even faster now, and as a result the missions included all sorts of new things, jeeps and trucks driving around, rockets and torps for your plane, submarines, new ships, all sorts of things. There were also a lot more planes in the air at once, so the action was considerably more frenzied.

Work then started on an F-18 simulator. At some point there was a falling out and Eric left Graphic Simulations with a half finished product. They would later go on to finish this as F/A-18 Hornet, using hired guns who knew nothing of sims. The game was pathetic in comparison, the physics were very poor, radar saw through hills, etc. GraphSim has done nothing since, releasing newer versions of the same game. It is a sad

GraphSim did sell the basic graphics engine to the WarBirds people however, so if you remember the early WB days, you're seeing Eric's engine at work.

Then he started work on his masterpiece, A-10 Attack. You started seeing hints of A-10 here and there, but there was no company web site, no posts in the newsgroups, nothing. Phones, faxes and e-mails all went unanswered. Eric seems to be a recluse.

When A-10 eventually shipped it was astounding. On top of the Hellcat's basic system he added a complete physics engine that's still second to none (well, aside from his later releases). The planes in the game simply feel more real than other games, there's no other way to say it. The missions system was also greatly enhanced with a superb mission planning/in-game map where little icons moved about and you could interact with them as you would any Mac program. Terrain covered all of northern Germany and parts of Denmark in excellent detail. The radar simulation was likewise superb, flying behind hills really did hide you. The only weak point was the missions themselves, there were only 12 and that was that - a problem that was in Hellcats as well.

This was followed up by another mission disk, A-10 Cuba. At first it was said this would be a simple plug-in for the original game, but instead it was released as a whole new game without many of the features of the original - including the suberb mission system! A few patches later and it finally turned into a plug-in, allowing you to play either mission set from one game.

A-10 Cuba was later released on the PC as a standalone game, again missing the mission engine. It had the bad luck of being released at the same time that 3D cards were becoming popular, and thus got stuck in a netherworld along with Su-27, games that were technically superb but looked old.

He then turned to a new simulator that was going to be the best of the best. This was Screaming Demons over Europe, but when it became clear no one knew what that meant they changed it to Fighter Sqaudron. This game would address the graphics issue, and fix all the little things from the original game. He had a team put together for the PC port of A-10, so they stayed on. Luckily one of these people, Michael Harrison, was more interactive and made sure to drop by the newsgroups every so often.

The game was getting late. And then later. And later. At some point Eric burned out and left, selling the rights off to a new company formed by the other employees, Inertia Games.

Eric Parker is now CTO of Pixelux Entertainment SA. He is the main engineer behind Digital Molecular Matter.

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Games Credited

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (2008), LucasArts
Fighter Squadron: The Screaming Demons over Europe (1999), Activision, Inc.
A-10 Cuba! (1996), Activision, Inc.
A-10 Attack! (1995), Parsoft Interactive
Hellcats Over the Pacific (1991), Graphic Simulations Corporation