Classic Jonny Quest
Jonny Quest PC Game: Curse of the Mayan Warriors

After some detective work, ClassicJQ.com was able to locate and converse with David Jennings, the man behind the game! Following are David's comments about how it all came to be. Thanks to David for allowing us to post his comments here!


Actually when I wrote the game I didn't know anything about Jonny Quest - I was just a contract programmer for hire. But as a result of doing the game I got into Jonny Quest and came to love the characters.

The original game was called "Jonny Quest and the Temple of Doom" (I think) and it was developed around 1989 by MicroIllusions. I was the sole programmer, and the graphic artist was a guy named Jim Haldy. It was a licensed product. The producer was a guy named Dave Boyles. I finished the game (1990-era technology) and delivered it, but the company went broke ... and never released the game. So I kept the source code and we went our separate ways.

The game was interesting because it did 8-way scrolling movement with a split screen and 2.5D "perspective" including the ability to walk behind semi-transparent objects such as jungle foliage - all technically very hard to do in those days. I made extensive use of the EGA register hardware - the whole game was written in hand tuned assembler. It ran at 320x200 resolution and could do 5 fps on a 4.77 MHz 8086 PC! On a 16 MHz 286 it ran 20-30 fps or better which was impressive for back then.

The original graphic artist of the game was a guy named Curtis Norris. Later, another artist named Jim Haldy took over and finished the rest of the graphics. I don't know who did the most work for the opening sequence but Jim Haldy spent the most overall time doing graphics for the original game. I'm not sure if the graphics were redone for the "Curse Of The Mayan Warriors" version - they may have been.

The sound was done by a contract programmer from Microillusions whom I never met and don't know his name. There might be a credit in the game.

Also the game has a few easter eggs that I programmed into it :-) But I need to look at the source to recall what they are. It is also buried somewhere.

About 4 years later, David Boyles formed Hollyware and picked up some of the licenses/contracts from the now defunct MicroIllusions and tried again to release some of the dead titles, including my Jonny Quest game. He purchased the source code from me, hired another developer to update the game, and it became "Jonny Quest and the Curse of the Mayan Warriors." It was basically the same game I wrote originally, but had added support for VGA color and a few other updates.



Jonny Quest and distinctive likenesses © Hanna-Barbera. All other images, image designs and other image work on this site are © ClassicJQ.com, © Hanna-Barbera or as noted. Text content is © ClassicJQ.com, except where noted otherwise, and may not be shared or re-published without the consent of the author. This is strictly a fan-based site, and is in no way affiliated with or approved by Hanna-Barbera or any other organizations, unless specifically indicated otherwise.