I am big fan of reading and I spend a lot of time with books. I also like bibliographic book and this is one of the best book of this genre I ever read.
Book cover two Johns who create Doom and also Quake or Commander Keen: John Carmack and John Romero. It starts in their childhood where Carmack tried to burgle a school to stole Apple II and Romero spent all his time playing games in arcades around the town.
Story continues with their first games (both of them makes a lot of games alone (maybe 30 - 60 of them)) and then they finally get together while working in Softdisc publishing company writing games together. Later they created Commander Keen and they create ID software and then is all well known story.
Book is great and author must spent enormous time of researching the topics. I do not see much biographic books which have this depth and also still funny and pleasure to read it. And it also cost as low as $10 on Amazon
I’m sure you know the feeling. You’ve just finished a great game and you want to feel that you are the winner. You’re so good, that you was able to finish such a game! And now you need just a second to enjoy this winner feeling.
BUM! You’ve just killed the main enemy in your favourite FPS or destroyed enemy’s army in your favourite RTS. It doesn’t matter what game it is, but if it has at least some kind of story, it’s good to have some time in the end to think about the game and to enjoy the feeling, that this is end. You’re happy, that you’ve finished the game, but you’re sad, because there’s nothing more, too.
And now what should make a good game? Good game gives you time! Good game shows you some nice ending animation and of course credits and some good music. Most times I don’t care who created the game, but if I finished the game, it means that it was good and I’m glad to know what people were behind it. For example take Gears of War. I had big problems with last boss. And when I finally got him, there were quite long credits and I sat and watched. Just to enjoy the wonderful feeling.
And what about bad gameending? Few days ago I wrote about Bioshock. The game was really good, I loved it. But the ending? C’mon! I killed the last enemy, got a half minute animation and the game kicked me to menu! No “Thanks for playing!”. No credits (but you can run them from menu). And of course no time to stop for a while and think about what you’ve just done. No time to think about all what happened in the game.
So. Game creators. If you read this - please, please! Give us more time to enjoy the feeling that we’re the winners!
I found interesting article about restoration of 25 yrs old Pac Man machine. As you probably know, I am interested by this things and I can resist to share this link.
I like all the weird stuff like Steampunk computer or Piss screen. I found another great gadget today. It is home made giant NES controller in size of coffee table (and if you do not play on the console you can use it for this purpose).
See the video:
Author of this controller have blog with detailed description of how to build this controller or also arcade cabinet. Click here to visit the blog.
Because I have recently bought a new gamepad (actually it’s my first PC gamepad, second one if I count the one I used for a DDR controler), I’m trying to play a few games with it. And right now I got addicted to Test Drive Unlimited.
It’s exactly the example of a game, that is better now, than in the time it was released. Why? Two years ago it was almost impossible to run it smoothly. And what about now? Even on my non-gaming laptop with an ATI2600 it looks good and there are no problems while running. Besides, the game got a patch that’s repairing many bugs and even adds some new cars.
So here we are. Games are somehow like wine - sometimes if you wait a year or two, it gets better and better.
There is no doubt that casual games totally dominate the portal sales, but which type of game mechanics is most profitable?
For few years was Bejeweled (and clones) the Bestseller no. 1, another years there was Zuma and their clones and now it is hidden objects. It was surprise me a lot, because I do not like this type of game, but I am probably not typical costumer. Hidden objects dominate on most portals during whole year.
Second big genre is Click Management (Cake Mania, Diner Dash and clones) and during end of the year 2007 there pop up fewSim games like Alice Greenfingers or Virtual Villagers which takes a lot of attention too (23% on Yahoo Games).
It’s Christmas and just like everyone, even I’ve got more time than usually. Of course I spend quite much time with my parents and sister, but there’s time for gaming too. And so I blew of the dust from my Morrowind CD.
Do you at least remember that game? You know Oblivion for sure. And before The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion there was TES: Morrowind. I’ve never played it very much. I always got stuck after few hours, but because I finished Oblivion with both datadiscs, I told myself why don’t give Morrowind one more chance?
In the times Morrowind was released I had just old 433MHz Celeron with Riva TNT2 and so I even could’t play at home. It was the same thing like with Crysis now. And we all were excited by Morrowind’s graphic same way. It was fantastic. So realistic!
But what about now. It looks terrible…And the same thing about the gameplay. I couldn’t find out how to do the easiest things. I tried what I did in Oblivion, but it didn’t work. Actually there’s really big step between Morrowind and Oblivion. But there are old games that I can play again and again and even if they are old, they still look great.
So I ask myself - what’s the thing that makes some games so unforgettable? Where is the magic?:o) And will we remember and PLAY games like Crysis or Assasin’s Creed?
