Translation of the interview straight from the OCR text in the PDF, courtesy of Google Translate:

This month, the first levels of the PC game JazzJackRabbit will appear as shareware on the international bulletin boards and will be bundled on disk with magazines such as the American PC Format. A short time later, the platform game will be released in its official version worldwide. It doesn't seem very special, after all, dozens of games appear this way every month. Only in this case is a Dutchman, barely out of his teens, responsible for the media blitz to come.

BINARY WONDERCHILD

Arjan Brusee is a 21-year-old business administration student at the University of Rotterdam. However, he is not often found in lectures because he has better things to do. Such as programming computer games for the American games manufacturer Epic MegaGames. Since Arjan took his first steps into the binary universe at the age of eight with the Commodore 64 and the TRS 80, he has not been away from a keyboard for a day, so to speak. He used to even lock himself up at school so he could work all night on the then ultra-modern XT. With the help of books and a lot of patience and perseverance, he learned how the device worked and developed a refined instinct for programming.

GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY

In the late 1980s he met the UltraForce collective, a group of digital pioneers, average age about 17 years, who pushed the graphical limits of the PC with the demo videos they made. One of the demos that Arjan made, in which Tintin's rocket is rotated in all directions in real time, became famous among the global subculture of computer freaks because it ended up on the Internet via bulletin boards, where it spread like a chain letter throughout the world. Arjan had scored the required cyber credit with his universal peers in one go, his 'handle' (term for username) had been created. "I'm a CyberFreak: recently my modem didn't work, I felt completely isolated." Every day he visits the Coders Conference on InterNet via his modem, where other programmers meet to exchange tips and discoveries. "Like?", I ask. "Hmm, about how to do the fastest graphics on a PC. Speed, that's what it's all about. But also, and this is interesting for the readers, that the sound card Gravis UltraSound has the ultimate configuration and that we all hate Windows. The Conference is a source of knowledge; you find out how other people do it." It?

CHIPS CHEAT

Two years ago, the game shareware giant EpicMegaGames knocked on its virtual door in cyberspace. Did he perhaps want to make his arts available to them for the necessary dollars? "I started writing a separate development environment for Epic that would make it possible to create a platform game for the PC." "Huh, a development what?" I interrupt. Unperturbed, Arjan continues: "That is how the data is structured towards the computer." "Tjeempie," I mumble due to the lack of text. "It is the tool to write a game," Arjan explains, "a word processor to make a game. Last June I started programming JazzJackRabbit. This game is one big trick, in fact I'm fooling the chips. They do things they didn't even know they could do themselves," laughs Arjan. "You don't make a game alone: there is a creative designer who writes the script, there are illustrators, musicians and about 30 playtesters. I started by making the moving backgrounds, then placed the main character in it, then started letting the environment interact with him, etc. More and more are being added. There are a lot of routines that ultimately form the game."

MY FIRST SONIC

Arjan has just returned from America where he was working on the latest bugs (errors) from the beta version of his game. On the SuperVGA screen of its 486-66 MHz, a rabbit in a 3D landscape similar to the Sonic CD landscape is impatiently drumming its foot. It is his creation JazzJackRabbit in the bonus round of the game. I can play for a while. The rabbit takes on a legion of turtles to finally save a princess. On one of the levels, JazzJack is yo-yoed through a tube system. I find it funny the floating opponents who chase the rabbit and attack from the back. Only because I'm in God mode can I progress in this tough platform game. Smiling, Arjan looks over my shoulder, the man said he finished both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 in one day. Yet Sonic is his favorite game ("Get real, Mario doesn't look like much") and he calls his game "my Sonic 1". JazzJackRabbit is indeed very similar to the Sega blockbuster, but has one very big difference and that is that it is a game for the PC.

3D DREAMS

"Maybe we will do a conversion of the game to the 64-bit Jaguar." I ask him what he thinks of the current new gaming systems, starting with CD-i. "Oh well." Silence. "What do you mean?" I ask and he bursts out: "The processor is shit, there are absolutely too few graphics processors in it and the chips are outdated." About 3DO: "I hope the device makes it, but right now it's not worth the price." CD32? "I prefer an Amiga with CD-Rom. By the way, I am allergic to devices without a keyboard, because I type faster than I write." CD-Rom? "Perfect, you can store a ridiculous amount of information on it, which eliminates all kinds of limits, but so far the speed is disappointing." And the Sega 32-bit Saturn? "My next project will probably be a game for this system. Together with a group of Finns and Danes for a company in Boston. The Virtua Racing cabinet that is now in the arcade is a good example of the possibilities of the Saturn. But in any case, it is the programmers who have to utilize the capacity of any machine. The dream game I would like to make has the graphics of a space game like X-Wing, a Comanche-like landscape and Doom buildings. All that in 3D."

THE MAN OF THE FUTURE

"The most important thing as a programmer is that you have an idea of what the gameplay is. Games should draw you into the game and should not be frustrating. Good games like Zelda and Dune 2 already have the Virtual Reality effect; you can fully immerse yourself in an environment where you are not physically present. I find the phenomenon of Virtual Reality fantastic and scary at the same time. I think we have to be careful that after a game of Doom VR we will not find 10% of the kids on the street as serial killers. I expect that within ten years the first VR products will become generally available to consumers. Images like in Jurassic Park. What am I doing? According to Ken Williams, the director of Sierra, programmers are at their best at the age of 19. I already notice that young boys are overtaking me on all sides. So in ten years I want to have my own company where those guys work for me." When I leave I want to make an appointment with Arjan: he takes out his Psion Organizer, an electronic agenda. Of course he has one of those, I think to myself, how could a man of the future live without it?