You have made a bunch of original titles before now. What has been your favorite so far and why?

Oh geez.....tough question. I have a lot of love for each of my games in different ways, but, if there is one that I am the most proud of, it'd probably have to be "Mean Kathleen & The Great Quack Machine." This title was my entry into the 2010 Independent Games Festival, and I feel it represents a lot of my unique game design perspectives while also remaining a standard of independent game development. The soundtrack is some of my "cuter" work, and the actual game play and control make it enjoyable and addicting. During development, I also got a chance to work with musician Kurt Hunter (famed for his e-surance TV commercial) on the theme song, which turned out to be a real gem. So, for everyone who downloads the game to check it out, be sure to listen to the title screen theme song featuring Kurt Hunter with some amazing vocals!

How did the idea come about to make an NES-style version of the original Left 4 Dead?

I don't know, really. I think I was talking to my friend and the words just popped out of my mouth. "Wouldn't it be cool if I re-made Left 4 Dead..but like, as an NES style game?" His response was pretty straight forward: "Hell yeah!" At the time, I was still finishing "Mean Kathleen", but on occasion, I'd pop open a new file in Photoshop and start screwing around with some pixel art. Before the end of "Mean Kathleen," I successfully made a sprite sheet that showed each survivor and all the infected/special infected. It looked pretty good, so I just went ahead and started sprite sheets for each individual character. If the sprites didn't come out so well, I may never have gone forward with it, but not only did the characters look good, but my preliminary work on the tiles was turning out pretty faboo as well.

How hard has it been to make the artwork and code work so that it was a recognizable version of Left 4 Dead?

Well, I have to say that the top-down 4 directional translation wasn't that hard. I already had a boat load of experience with it on my earlier titles (namely the "Space Cowboy" series), so I kinda had a thought process for it already in place. In keeping authenticity, the hardest part wasn't actually the coding OR the art. It was the music. All of the tunes in the original game are composed with heavy string sections, some dabs of brass and an array of effects and digital choruses. I had to try and accurately recreate those songs with 4 channels of sound: 2 square waves, a triangle wave and a noise channel, just like the NES had. In the video, you can hear these recreations on the title screen, mission screen, and the safehouse/checkpoint screen. Those songs are all recreates of Valve's original audio work, and probably the most challenging part of keeping the "Left 4 Dead" feel.