Whiz Kid Hopes to Design Video Game for Nintendo - Cibola County Beacon 1994

By Carolyn Rogers

Beacon Staff Writer 

While most fourteen year old boys are playing video games, Michael Ian Randrup is in the process of developing one for Nintendo.

The Sword of Old lights up the computer screen with this statement, "It is a dark time in the land of Xonia, for a great evil has come to power. This vile tyranny has destroyed the once tranquil countryside with its terrible armies of plague and destruction.  All the people of Xonia can do is dream of a more peaceful time and that time may never come.  Or will it?"

Randrup says, "I owe the loan of this computer to Keith Thomas, a Science teacher at Grants High School.  He has allowed me to use it for the duration of this project."

From here, Randrup takes us into the computer game he has developed.  There you find yourself in a cell inside a castle.  Leaving the cell you find dungeons and doors leading to people who can aide your journey if you allow them.  But the castle also contains pitfalls.

Says Randrup, "this game is a bit slow on the Amiga Computer so I am hoping to become an authorized developer of Nintendo of America and be able to develop it on the Super Nintendo system.  With that, I would have a character which I could actually move around."

According to Randrup, this would allow you to be able to run, jump, go through doors and move around with more ease.  It would also make it harder to get lost in the dungeons.  Says Randrup, "In the Nintendo version of the game I plan to make it so that each time you have to do a task, like picking a lock, it will zoom in to show your hand picking the lock."

Randrup has not only developed the game icons, he has also developed the music which is upbeat video.  Throughout the game, you are given instructions and clues leading you to the outside of the castle where you can escape.  But, even when you escape, you still face other stages each more difficult than the last.

According to Randrup, he became involved in computers when he attended a seminar in Los Vegas, New Mexico at Highland University with his teacher and another student.

We got a grant for the schools which included a two year loan of the computer.  I became quite fluent with the computer and I got to borrow it a few times.  When I started to work on these programs, Mr. Thomas let me keep it for quite a while."

Randrup continues, "there is a lot more I have done besides the games.  I started this game around January 27 with hopes of selling it to Nintendo."  Randrup has had contacts with Nintendo but says, "this is not the version I intend to sell.  I intend to distribute this version through my own company until I have more experience."  Randrup is planning to enter his computer game in the local science fair.  He has a quantity of computer art including a logo that contains two and three dimensional special effects he designed.

The first time Randrup used a computer was when he was about eight years old.  He now hopes to market his work to raise money to buy a computer and other equipment he would need which would be used to start his own business.