An interview with Samuel Blanchard

STS : Hi  Samuel, can you tell us about you in a few words?
Sam : Hi, my name is Samuel Blanchard, I am in my fifties and I am French (note of STS : the interview was originally carried in French then translated by me so that I should be blamed for any mistake). I have been a professional programmer for more than 3 decades, mostly coding C# and of course I have been working for fun on creating emulators and games since 2000 or so.

STS : what’s your own story with ATARI products? Something going back to teen years or a late revelation? What is your current setting? 
Sam : It all started when I was a teenager. Back then I was lucky enough to get an Atari Ste, the computer I dreamt of. It was my 17th birthday present even though I shared it with my 16 year old brother. He was pretty unlucky however since I kept the beast to myselft and spent hours working on games, first in GFA then ASM 68K. 

I wanted to create games as good as the Japanese ones that could be found on Sega’s Master System that we enjoyed playing with a lot, especially WonderBoy in Dragon Land. 

Alas, my attempts failed yet they allowed me to try and code many scrolling and sprite routines in ASM. 
I currently own and use 2 Atari STEs (1040 and 4Mb). I mostly use them to test the latest build of my game as well as watching some demos.

STS : note to the readers out there who may not be aware about who you are and why we carry this interview. Let me tell them that you have been working on Miracle Boy In Dragon Land for a couple of years now and what we have seen of the game so far looks so impressive! How did it all start? Was it your first release, ever?

Sam : I came back on the ST in 2023 with a project in mind: code the game I had dreamt of as a teenager.  I already knew what could not be done and what the machine was up to. 

This was my first big production on the ST so I started with coding a test program to make sure I could get a 320*180 smooth scrolling with another 20 pixels for the upper panel. 

Since I wanted the game to be fully compatible I only used the CPU. Thanks to a pretty simple double tile technique for the scrolling I realized that I could also display more than a dozen sprites while still running at 25fps and spare some resources for other things such as AI, hitboxes, rasters…

I was pretty happy with the first results so that I decided to give it a go and start development.

STS : I have to confess that I was not familiar with the original game but what I saw and could test is so amazing! I really miss words to say how great the game looks and that’s almost a one member project! 
Sam : Indeed I am the only coder yet I received some help by gurus such as RATI/OVR, Vincent Rivière not to forget members of the ASM section at Atari Forum when I was stuck and had no clue how to solve a problem. Examples that come to mind include stabilizing rasters or packing data. Without their help and support that game could not have been. 
The Miracle Boy In Dragon Land logo was painted by PepePeekPoke while I used CoPilot to create some graphic elements.
Sound was also boosted by gWem’s MaxYMiser great music routs.

DMA-SC handled the musical score, no need to tell more about such a famous musician but I can add that at the moment he has already composed 8 original tracks and his work is not over yet!

Also a group of testers help me make sure every level is of top quality (and you are STS one of them). I would like to thank all of them for such involvement.

 Last but not least David Gervais is in charge of publishing the game (design as well as manufacturing) and will also be responsible for sales and shipping.

To put it in a nutshell a whole team has emerged around Miracle Boy in Dragon Land enabling the project become reality.

STS : when you witness such a treat on a simple ST you feel a lot of respect! By the way what config is required, anything more for Ste owners? Will it run on Falcon?
Sam : I would like the game to run on a 1Mb STf and hope to raise compatibility up to the Falcon even though I don’t own the machine what makes things a bit tricky at times. 
The game will run both on flopppy and from harddrive. Ste owners will enjoy sampled fx added to music but that’s it.

STS : even though working through an emulator and using different platforms makes thing a lot easier than in the 80s or 90s I feel that you have managed to squeeze undetected power from our old ST. How can it be? What is your secret? 
Sam : beyond modern technologies that make things faster and the many Atari ST online resources available, I think that my two secrets are:

First make proper use of what the ST can do. Handling horizontal scrolling is not easy for the machine so let’s use precalculation so that it goes as fast as possible. However it is very good at handling 16 pixel blocks upward and downward. This is a feature I take advantage of to create wave effects underwater or fake sprite rotations applied to  a ship.
 
My other secret is ‘time’. I am in no rush, I take the time I need to make things the way I want them to be. Think about developers back in the 80s and 90s who had to work under heavy time constraints defined by publishing houses.

STS : any idea about a release date? I know that physical is on the way, great news for old school gamers! Will the downloadable version be free then?
Sam : according to my project management the game is 70% completed. In Autumn and Winter I usually work a lot on the game and of course a bit less when the sun is out there. If things keep going as planned the game should be out by mid 2026. Regarding the downloadable version I have not made my mind yet but since this is a several year project I think that some support from players would be greatly appreciated, be it to show the love for their favourite computer. We will talk about that in due times.  

STS : with respect to all that I have seen from you I think you fully deserve to be part of the Elite of the Atari Demoscene! Ok, that was a silly joke, more seriously have you ever attended a convention, any plans in a near future?
Sam : creating games and demos are two different things in spite of some common points. For instance gameplay is a keystone in games while there is not such a thing in demos. However a game needs to be smooth enough as slowdowns can kill the gamer’s dive into the adventure and that’s similar to a demo here.
Talking about conventions I would like to attend GemTos, maybe in 2026. I may also take part to a convention around Nice this year (South of France). Should I enjoy more spare time I wish I could attend SillyVenture 😊  

STS : what’s your point of view about the current ATARI community. Let’s talk about homebrews, demos or new hardware.
Sam : the community is sure alive and kicking! I am not familiar with hardware developers but as far as homebrews are concerned we have enjoyed a lot of quality releases. I have been really impressed by Grind (note of STS: let’s refer to it as Dread on the ST). Doom on a 4Mb Ste? What a treat! (note of STS : afaik Dread works on plain ST with 2Mb, not sure though as the game has vanished from the web at the moment). 

I could also name FaSTEr by Jonathan Thomas. I wish he had brought us a full game though with various tracks and championships. Yet it perfectly shows what the Atari Ste is up to.
Other smaller games such as ShotGun by Anarcholab show that the GFA Basic and STOS developers are still here and doing things..

Should you compare the Atari ST situation to the Amiga, being much more active, you will admit that we miss creation tools made available to the public, something like the Scorpion Engine that allows to create new games so easily.  On the Atari ST I am pretty sure that we could have a nice framework such as the AGT but it would imply quite a lot of work before we could easily use it … 
As far as demos are concerned 'FirST Love' by Overlanders is one of my latest “coup de coeur” as it is such a technical perfection.

STS : Any last words? This is your moment, grab it and speak out loud!
Sam : Only a handful of thanks to the Miracle Boy in Dragon Land community on FB. You bring me not only support but also new ideas to make the game even better. It is essential to keep motivated over the years spent developing such a game. See you in 2026 when the game comes out!

🔗Download the first demo 

🔗 Official page at Facebook

🔗 Youtube channel