Quake may be the most influential game of all time. Not the best game, not the most innovative, but the most influential. Without it, the industry would be a very different place today. It gave rise to many of aspects of modern gaming that we take for granted. Its developers, modders, and even the very code of the game itself are ubiquitous in the industry today. Id software’s 1996 FPS gave rise to 3D gaming, client/server online play, the most prolific mod scene in history, multiplayer clans, server browsers, eSports, mouse-look as the PC control standard, Valve and dozens of other companies, and even 1UP’s sister website, GameSpy. Without Quake, it’s unlikely another game that featured the same suite of innovations would have come along. We would have had to wait for each of those things one at a time.
Quake came together almost by accident. There was no design document for the first half of its development, and the game that shipped was very different from what the creators first held in their minds in the beginning (if they had anything in mind). In 1994 id Software released Doom II. The company was riding high and seemed unstoppable. They announced that their next game would be Quake, a project they had started and abandoned years earlier, according to John Romero, id co-founder and the game’s Tools Programmer and level designer, “When we finished our first Commander Keen series on December 14th, 1990, we immediately started working on Quake in January. It was a top-down RPG because it was like D&D.” The entire game was based on a tabletop campaign played by id founders. “The character of Quake was in this group called the Silver Shadow Band. It was a very small elite group of super badass characters. He was this Thor-like guy, and he had this amazing hammer, and this thing called the Hellgate Cube — which was a sentient inter-dimensional cube that would rotate around him and go do its own thing depending on what was going on.” He continues “We worked on it for two weeks and it was like, ‘you know what, there’s no way that this thing is looking as awesome as Quake really is, so let’s just stop making Quake right now. So we decided to just sort of shelve it and wait until we had really great technology to make this a reality.”
When Mega Man Ruled the World: An Anniversary Tribute
A look back at the games that saved Mega Man… at least, for a while.
By: Jeremy Parish October 9, 2011
When the original Mega Man hit the NES in 1987, it was a revelation: The slickest, most open-ended platform shooter ever made. With only ten stages, it was short compared to standards like Super Mario Bros. and Wonder Boy, but what it lacked in length it made up for with replayability… not to mention sheer challenge. Its sequel, 1989’s Mega Man 2, was even more spectacular. Together, the two games defined a genre and became high-water marks for 8-bit game design.
Sadly, a decade later, Mega Man had practically become a mockery of itself. The old-school sprites of Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4 were comforting to gamers who weren’t completely convinced that the PlayStation’s chunky polygons should be an absolute replacement for classic game design; yet at the same time, the 2D Mega Man titles felt like relics, doing nothing to push the limits of technology or play mechanics. Mega Man had become iterative, where once he was innovative. Meanwhile, the Legends spin-off actually did introduce new ideas, including an early form of Zelda’s Z-targeting and real-time story cutscenes with lip-synched facial animations, but it was largely dismissed by Mega Man fans and detractors alike: By the former for being too different from the older games, and by the latter for wearing the name “Mega Man.”
Though he started as a mere clone of his sibling, Luigi’s role has grown far more complex.
By: Francesco Dagostino October 5, 2011
Ah, the neverending struggle for video game heroes to keep abreast of the times. From their humble, pixel-based roots, these digital characters evolved into complex, emotional individuals — seemingly, in the blink of an eye. After all, strengthening the connection between avatar and player became a necessity as the ever-changing medium of video games increased in complexity over the years.
And this process went well beyond mere design: appealing color palettes, fancy clothes and spikey hairstyles weren’t enough to make a character stand out. And thus, some became tarnished by the pitiless course of time, some faded, while others survived and matured thanks to the skillfull planning of their creators — and some even grew spontaneously, like ivy creeping its way up a damp stone wall.
Perhaps From Software’s devilishly dark fantasy role-playing game Demon’s Souls caught your eye back in 2009. It received nothing short of unanimous critical acclaim, after all. But one crucial caveat kept you at bay: its fiendish and unforgiving difficulty level. Here was a game that dared to brazenly buck modern-day accessibility trends, testing its audience’s patience and self-control in ways that made even the good ol’ 8-bit era look downright tame. Demon’s Souls never held your hand; it lopped your hand right off, beat you to death with it, took all your stuff, and forced you to get right back to work (sans said hand).
Two years later, spiritual successor Dark Souls remixes its forebear’s merciless mechanics, enticing you to eat that same saucer of crow once again. This time, you give in; you’ve steeled yourself for the inevitable torment, determined to prove your mettle against this game that dares to flaunt its unforgiving reputation front-and-center, with a foreboding “Prepare to die” tagline. Conquer this, and you can conquer anything, right? Well, welcome to the most hellish fun you could possibly have with a video game. You’re going to earn those bragging rights.
When GamePro asked Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon in 2008 if he’d continue to reinvent the brand (after MK vs. DC Universe), or take the iterative approach of the Tekken series, his answer points to an interesting truth: “Out of our competitors, my favorite fighting series is Tekken. When I pick up a new Tekken game and play as Hwoarang or Jin Kazama, I feel like my character gained a few new moves but overall retained the same strategy. Prettier graphics, but the same basic gameplay… I feel like I’ve played them all before.”
“Coincidentally, their sales aren’t nearly as big as they were back in the days of Tekken 3,” Boon says, “I think that’s something all fighting games, especially ones with multiple sequels, need to do: add something dramatically different.”
Missing Mascots: Gaming Personalities that Slipped Off the Radar
Mario and Sonic might have made it, but these guys definitely didn’t.
By: Todd Ciolek September 30, 2011
Once upon a time, they were important. They were more than just video-game characters scrambling to be the next Pac-Man or Mario. They were the symbols of game companies, seen in logos and commercials and as many cameo appearances as possible. Then they dropped out of the spotlight, thrown aside by a game industry that just didn’t have a place for a bald cave-child or a cross-eyed pink dinosaur.
They’re the fallen mascots of game generations past. Some were too bland to survive. Some hit a streak of lousy games. Some were just hitched to the wrong company. But all of them were mascots in the true sense. They served as the public faces of developers and publishers, and that makes the difference between a Bonk and a Battletoad. Here’s a chronicle of the once-proud mascots worth remembering today.
Re-imagining the Star Wars MMO through a flannel filter.
By: Dennis Farrell September 28, 2011
Having spent the last fifteen years compulsively adding random cgi aliens to the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas is taking a much deserved vacation following the release of The Complete Saga.
Meanwhile, The Old Republic is closing in on its recently announced release date of December 20th. Since the Star Wars MMO carves out a niche some 3,500 years before the events of the films, BioWare has enjoyed a great deal of creative freedom up to this point. With a restless George Lucas roaming the wild, however, it’s only natural to wonder what would happen if he turned his attention toward The Old Republic and gave it the “Special Edition” treatment.
