After reviewing the amazing Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan, we decided it was time to sit down with John Lester, co-owner of CollectorVision Games to talk about the game, the company, and the future.
For those among us that do not know you by name, our first question is always about you, so tell us a little about yourself and where we may know you from?
My name is John Lester and I’m co-owner of CollectorVision Games. Back in 2008 I created a YouTube channel called Gamester81, and on that channel, I review obscure and rare video game consoles, and talk about gaming overall. I joined CollectorVision Games back in 2013, and I’m also one of the Project Leads for Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan. CollectorVision Games itself has been around since 2008 as well, and we’ve made over a hundred games for retro consoles including; the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, NES, SNES, Commodore 64, Sega Master System, and more. Our website is www.collectorvision.com.
Where can our readers find and follow you and your projects?
They can follow CollectorVision Games on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter under CollectorVision, and on Instagram under CollectorVisionGames. For me personally, I can also be found on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all under Gamester81.
I personally love your work and was in awe with how great Sydney Hunter played, how do you do the quality control on a game like this? How do you get it just right?
Thanks for the kind words. Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan is our love letter for the classic games we grew up playing. There are five of us who worked on this game, and we spent time playing it over and over to make sure we captured what we felt was the right feel for the game. We wanted solid controls, a unique story, and we threw in a lot of Easter eggs within the game as well. We want people to play it and feel like the game feels familiar to them, but we didn’t want it to be a ripoff.
Could you shed some light on the thought process behind creating a game? Do you plan everything out or does it just come to you along the way?
Good question. Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan started off back in 2014 as an NES game, and it was an NES clone for a game we all love called Montezuma’s Revenge. Sivak who had programmed the two Battle Kid NES games, was the initial programmer for this game. The game eventually evolved into its current form, and in 2015 we decided to switch the focus of this game to be made on modern platforms. At that time the Wii U was Nintendo’s home console, so we first got approved by Nintendo to be developers for the Wii U. Once the Switch came out, we “switched” to that console instead. In hindsight, we should have come up with the story, levels, enemies, and the overall layout of the game prior to programming. Instead, we did it along the way which caused the development to take five years.
Which other developers do you look up to? Which are the ones you think we should all follow too!
We absolutely admire and respect Yacht Club who are well known for their work on the Shovel Knight series. I’ve spoken to those guys a lot to get advice on marketing, etc, and they are definitely top-notch guys over there. We also look up to the guys over at Retrotainment Games who have made the Haunted Halloween games. They’re similar to us where they produce new games for classic consoles, as well as new platforms too.
If anything, what would you do differently with past games in your repertoire?
Hmm…Every game we’ve released we could find something we could have done differently. Even with Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan, if we had a time machine we’d go back and redo the launch of the game. This was our first endeavor into releasing a new game for modern platforms, and we had no idea what to expect and how to promote it.
With the entire physical collection hype happening and the introduction of digital-only media (like Google Stadia and Apple Arcade), do you feel the industry is changing and does it affect you as a company?
Naturally, we as a whole are all retro gamers and grew up having physical copies of games that we’d play. I can understand why game companies want to push digital as it’s A LOT less expensive to produce, however thanks to companies like Limited Run and others, even smaller companies now can produce physical games. I believe we’re still a ways away from going to all-digital, as there are a lot of gamers out there who prefer a physical copy of a game compared to a digital one.
Are you planning a physical edition of Sydney Hunter or is it too early for this? I can highly recommend Super Rare Games for this!
We are planning on doing a physical run of Sydney Hunter, and thanks for the recommendation on Super Rare Games. We’ll definitely reach out to them.
Final question: What is your personal favorite game right now?
That’s a loaded question and a hard one to answer. My all-time favorite games are Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda: A Link to the Past, and DuckTales for the NES.
