This week has given us the sad news that Rebecca Heineman has lost her battle with cancer at the age of 62.
A legend in the world of video game design and development, Heineman won the Space Invaders National Championship in 1980 before moving into coding and design.
She co-founded Interplay and designed titles such as The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate, Dragon Wars, Tass Times in Tonetown, Borrowed Time and Mindshadow, and would later handle console ports of titles like Out of This World / Another World on the SNES and DOOM on 3DO.
Video game tech artist and art director Delaney King – who has credits such as Unreal Tournament, Dragon Age and God of War: Chains of Olympus to her name – has now revealed that, right up to the time of her passing, Heineman was working on a remaster of the aforementioned Dragon Wars.
King also confirmed that Heineman's wife, Jennell Jaquays, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 67, was working as the art director on the project.
Released in 1989, Dragon Wars is a fantasy RPG which eventually came to a wide range of systems, including Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Famicom, NEC PC-98 and X68000. You can purchase the original game on Steam.