I imagine they made these games mostly for themselves and didnt have to explain to family why they were called Booby Master.
This might be less funny than it first appears, since companies often had a policy where developers were required to be listed under pseudonyms or worse, go completely uncredited.
No idea if that’s the case here, but it’s plausible “Booby Master” was basically a form of protest, or at least making a joke out of a bad situation.
Wait, wat? Srsly? What for? Anti poaching?
Keep in mind that the skills needed for game development were pretty much dark arts at the time. There was little to no formal education for them and few tools that weren’t made in-house. So not only was the pool of people they could put to work immediately pretty small, the competitive market meant that companies were incentivised to produce the most impressive-looking games, meaning they didn’t need merely competent people, but the freaks who could pull the most out of the limited hardware.
So they were worth their weight in gold, but companies didn’t actually want to pay them that much.
Variety of reasons I believe: anti-poaching, preferring to go by their gamer tag, not really industry standard at the time (Yoko Shimomura for example did a lot of iconic early Capcom stuff but it was credited as “Capcom Music Team”), gaming seen as a “lesser” industry so people didn’t want to be associated with it, corporate egos, anti-doxxing (yes, even back in the day. Gaming was a small industry). It really depends on the country/company etc.
It’s actually gotten to a point where certain older games getting ported are actually entirely credited to the porting team rather than the OG creators. I know the Metroid ports had their OG creator credits removed (not sure if they were patched back in or not), and it was a minor kerfuffle. It’s a topic discussed in game preservation spaces with some frequency.
you’re right it was primarily due to anti-poaching. Many Japanese publishers forbade their devs to use their real names out of fear that another company would try to hire the devs for their own games: https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-heres-why-japanese-video-game-companies-often-didnt-credit-their-developers
Old ports are iffy. Often they were written from scratch with new assets resembling the originals thrown in. I could see limited storage and memory making a lot of extra work, cleaning up code to make room for crediting people who basically only served as inspiration for this version of the game. Meanwhile, the publishers are breathing down the devs’ necks, trying to get the ports to market as quickly as possible.
It’s a dick move to remove existing credits, though.
I was wondering if “Booby Master” got his nickname from having BRA initials that would show up on high-score tables.
Somewhat off-topic: I was in another post about Colecovision and thought this was funny: Donkey Kong by Nintendo ported to Atari 2600 by Coleco and distributed by Sega. Around the time of the big video game crash, everyone’s just doing whatever they can for a paycheck.
Guges d. Is an asshole he owes me money.
I did a websearch (don’t worry, Search was set to SafeSearch: Moderate) and found this Booby Master is known for 2 games: Hyper Duel 1993 for Buster Gear Mechanic Design, and Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar 1992 for Graphics. From the list of the other developers, I assume this screenshot is credits for Lightening Force.
don’t worry, Search was set to SafeSearch: Moderate
Wimp!
Ikr? I have a custom addon to set mine to strictest possible!
You are laughing now, wait until the great Booby Master unleashes his flock of hundreds of angry marine birds at you.
Not if my legion of Great Tits get him first!
Flock of Seagulls? Oh, wait, no.
Reads like some sort of government special committee.
Obviously because they’ve finally mastered managing their own pair.
