Despite being the author of retro-classic Dropzone, Archer is most famous for his pool and snooker games and his collaborations with Jimmy "The Whirlwind" White. His latest offering, Jimmy White's 2: Cueball, is out on PC at the start of April and PlayStation in the autumn. He's also working on The Pool Room, based on a '50s-style bar, with a championship pool table as the main feature, supporting a number of pool game varieties.
Neil West

FG: Played any good games lately?
AM: No, not really. To be honest, these days I don't seem to get quite the time to play loads of games that I used to, which is why I usually like simple "pick up and get straight into it" games.

FG: What do you think of Lara Croft?
AM: More of a handful than ever, but a bit over-pumped now.

FG: What name or initials do you enter on high-score tables?
AM: AM, strangely. I have an ancient Williams Robotron arcade machine at home, which is still more frantic and addictive than any modern 3D gee-whizz cabinet. I once spent four exhausting hours standing there getting to level 350 or so and was completely buzzing, but then became totally pissed off when I realised my bloody score had wrapped round after 10,000,000 points. So I let my spare lives get wasted until Game Over. But, by a quirk of programming, the high score table still showed my truncated small score at the top of the list, and I took a photo of AM at the top to prove it! Sad, eh?

FG: Okay... what games systems do you have at home?
AM: PC, PSX, N64, Gameboy Color, Dreamcast soon, and three full-size arcade machines.

FG: If you could keep just one, which would it be?
AM: I can't decide, but it would be a toss-up between two of the arcade cabinets, perhaps Robotron or Stargate.

FG: What's your favourite bit in Super Mario 64?
AM: Nothing in particular, but I totally admire how many synthetic worlds they managed to cram into a relatively lowly ROM cart. Just think how big it would have been with 600mb instead. Bit of a missed opportunity by Nintendo, methinks.

FG: Who'd win in a fight, Sonic or Mario?
AM: Dunno. Maybe Mario, 'cos he'd give Sonic a good whacking with a spanner.

FG: Were games better in the "good old days"?
AM: In terms of playing satisfaction, yes. Despite the now huge effort to create them, few recent offerings draw you back for more as much as some older games did.

FG: Describe Dreamcast in five words.
AM: Grey Gamesbox Running Windows. Oops.

FG: What's the most overrated game ever?
AM: Tiberian Sun? I don't know, it's hard to say. There are too many to choose from. For example, there are so many 3D racing games that seem to have been written for high-end PCs that don't even exist at release time, and as a result run like a dog at under one frame per second and completely miss the point of fast reaction racing simulation!

FG: What's the most underrated game ever?
AM: Tetris. It was dismissed by many too easily because it looked so simple. But few other games have made so many people in the street dream of blocks falling down and left them gagging to have another go. Loads of women seem to like Tetris, too.