Well god i thought i already did this, um i guess i can pad out the middle bit a litle.
After Quake i discovered Unreal Tournament although it was rendered in treacle vision due to my comp barely meeting the minimum spec at the time, 200mhz and 32megs of ram baby!
Anywho i pretty much converted to that and then continued to play that religiously - i loved the variation in map designs how you could jump from an ancient castle to a space station to some kind of hybrid space castle thing floating on is own exclusive lump'O rock in the middle of nowhere. I eventually got my computer upgraded to something approaching decent for the time and was capable of running modern games, before i had been lagging behind but now i could run with the big boi's! Ahem...yes a 450mhz P2 and a 32 meg tnt2 worked wonders at the time when shaders were something you'd uh um do something humourous with. Anywho i continued on this first person shooter ride sampling some Mortyr here, blururghh to some Unreal there, odd really never got that game. But it was Quake 3 that well changed my life i suppose - lame and cliched as it sounds it probaly did if unreal tounrnament captivated me in terms of its variations in map designs quake 3 dazzled me with its pure gameplay brilliance yes it was just deathmatch to people who were'nt watching it closely but everyting from the way in which the doorways were constructed to allow people to fly through propelled by rockets to the timings of the powerups and the placement of the weapons or the specific stats of each weapon that ensured that even with the most powerful weapon a player could never dominate the map on just firepower.
Quake 3 pretty much taught me about how games were made - i learnt how maps were made with its map editor and even today can pretty much map out a room with my eyes closed, woo thats a party trick right there, i learnt about textures and there specific resolutions light placement, optimization and triggers to me it was a huge keg of pretty much undocumented wonder.
After that i was firmly cemented in the fps genre of games i played online games like everyone else sampled some mods and you basically end up at the last section of hte previous segment of this.
Hope this has been inteesting but i keep gicing myself aheadache thinking back this far
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Growing pains
The ‘middle ages’ or the periods between the 1980’s to 1990’s saw a huge leap in games with a shift away from traditional arcades to home-centric consoles and the introduction of now familiar companies and genres.
It was Atari, Nolan Bushells company one of the key players during the initial rise of consoles during the late 70’s that gained the most popularity during the early 80’s with the introduction of the Atari 2600 this went up against its competitors the Colecovision and Mattels first entry into the competitive console market the Intellivision. All consoles gained popularity with there perfect reprsentation of popular arcade games, in fact this emulation of arcade games was probably one of the main reasons the consoles proved to be most popular, ‘why waste dozens of quarters/ten pence in a grotty arcade with snotty kids when you can play all these games for free as many times as you like in the comfort of your own home?’ they seemed to ask, it was Atari following from there tradition of copying games from there copyright infringing copy of space invaders that was the clear cut winner due to the release of "major" titles for the machine, including rushed home ports of arcade hits Asteroids and Defender, as well as original titles such as Adventure and Haunted House. The 2600 was the clear-cut winner of the race, but would also suffer a bit because of Atari's poor business decisions. When the time came to get a home port of Pac-Man licensed, Atari released it to much fanfare, before fans realized just how big of a loser it was. The entire formula was tweaked with, and the arcade experience just never came through. Regardless of this Atari became a house hold name and was the spokes-company for the entire industry, like any other huge corporation in a popular position Atari cocked up, big time.
On the back of Steven Spielberg’s supremely popular E.T the extra terrestrial Atari decided it would develop the licensed game, even though the details of the transaction were never fully divulged it was widely reported that Atari had paid US$20–25 million for the rights—an abnormally high figure for video game licensing at the time and one that would take until the late 90’s to become the norm. Due to the extended length and the high number of delays in agreeing to the licence Atari only had only five weeks in order to meet the September 1 deadline necessary to ship in time for Christmas shopping season. By comparison previous Atari games, Yar’s revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, each took around 4 to 7 months to complete. An arcade game based on the E.T. property had also been planned, but this was deemed to be impossible given the short deadline. Warsaw who had previously worked on the fore mentioned games accepted the assignment, and was reportedly offered 200,000 USD as well as an prepaid Hawaiian holiday. This to me just shows Atari’s ignorance at the time, if something didn’t work or someone was under pressure they simply threw money at it until it solved the problem, a 2 million dollar bonus and a luxury holiday does not make a good game. Due to the extreme time limit involved the game was rushed throughout all stages of its development - the game play plan for example took just two days to create and testing was skipped completely.
Unsurprisingly the game was a complete failure, Atari bolstered by its previous success on earlier releases forced retailers to accept one year orders in advance for the entire year. At that time, Atari had dominated the software and hardware market, and Atari was routinely unable to fill orders because of this. At first, retailers responded by placing orders for more supplies than they actually expected to sell, but gradually, as new competitors began to enter the market and word of mouth spread about the quality of the game, Atari started receiving an increasing number of order cancellations for which the company was simply not prepared eventually Atari had a huge surplus of surplus cartridges, these cartridges numbering over 2 million in number were eventually buried in a landfill in new Mexico.
E.T. is seen by many as the death knell for Atari and is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever produced as well as one of the biggest commercial failures in videogame history. A major contributing factor to Atari's demise, the game's failure epitomizes the video game crash of 1983.
Following the crash of ‘83 personal computers took hold spurred on by companies such as IBM and Compaq these PC-clones of popular more expensive computers where equally as powerful as previous consoles and since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after power-on, they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles.
However the PC’s reign was short lived with the introduction of the NES from Japanese newcomer Nintendo. Known to the western world as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was bundled with Super Mario Bros. ( Cor I wonder how that did…) and was an over night success, retailers more than cautious of introducing another console system so soon after the crash of 83 simply placed it on there shelves with no advertising or market exposure regardless of this the NES was a colossal success in America while in other territories other newcomers were as successful including the Sega Master system in Europe and the PC Engine in Japan. This introduction also saw the advent of new methods of control with the old fashioned joystick of the arcades synonymous with the market crash of 83 replaced with console pads with many more buttons and a 8 way directional or D’ pad.
During this time many popular games where born although they would be unrecognizable from there current form, Squaresoft maker of the now supremely popular Final Fantasy was struggling and decided to make their final game, titled Final Fantasy (1987), a role-playing game modelled after the previously successful game Dragon Quest, the games success saved Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy series was born as a result going on to become one of the most successful RPG franchises . At around the same time, the Legend of Zelda series made its debut on the NES with The Legend of Zelda (1986). Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series also made its debut with the release of Metal Gear (1987) on the MSX2 computer, giving birth to the stealth-based game genre. Metal Gear was ported to the NES shortly after. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home (1989) on the NES, which served as a precursor to the survival horror game genre, in particulaur the original Resident Evil.
Due to ever spiralling prices and market exposure the 90’s were about games maturing into a Hollywood-esque landscape of ever-increasing budgets and increasingly wary publishers. At this time, the wide variety of games that existed in the 1980s, traditional arcade game such as space invaders or missile command faded away, with the larger corporations desiring to maximize profitability and lower risk in the form of sequel after sequel to popular franchises.
The introduction of the 3d accelerator and the huge increase in size of cd-roms meant developers could squeeze more data into there games, at first developers were unsure of what to do with this seemingly infinite space relying on full motion video or FMV games to fill the space requirement, with the advent of 3d acellerators and higher resoltion textures and sounds the cd-rom's quickly filled up.
When the 16-bit and 32-bit in the form of the SNES and Playstation respectively consoles arrived offering superior graphics and sound to the arcades. By this time, video arcades had earned a reputation for being seedy, unsafe places. An increasing number of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than going out. Arcades had a last hurrah in the early 90s with Street Fighter II and the one-on-one fighting game genre, although arcades in Japan are still just as popular with many games getting arcade only releases amd a special culture developing over the fighting games, the best players even developing into minor celebrities. As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down. Classic coin-operated games have become largely the province of dedicated hobbyists. The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centres dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and expensive game control systems not available to home users, although these have never been able to once draw in the crowds as much as the original arcades did.
1989-1994
At this time, America was dominated by the Sega Genesis, known to me as the Megadrive (woo!) Nintendo debuted there SNES console in 1991 running on the same naming conventions as the NES, but this one was a SUPER nintendo entertainment system kids. The two consoles battled for market supremacy with the two consoles acheiving roughly half the marketshare each. The NEC Turbografx 16 also debuted around this time but a lack of English supported games and poor advertising in the face of Sega and Nintendo ensured it nver achieved a foothold in America.
The high levels of competition between the 3 companies ensured the marketting plan was more than a ittle harsh thoroughout with Sega producing the slogan, 'Sega does what Nintendon't and bth companies flinging around buzz words and slogans informing the general public there console was ultimately better because of 'blast processing' or some crap.
It was Atari, Nolan Bushells company one of the key players during the initial rise of consoles during the late 70’s that gained the most popularity during the early 80’s with the introduction of the Atari 2600 this went up against its competitors the Colecovision and Mattels first entry into the competitive console market the Intellivision. All consoles gained popularity with there perfect reprsentation of popular arcade games, in fact this emulation of arcade games was probably one of the main reasons the consoles proved to be most popular, ‘why waste dozens of quarters/ten pence in a grotty arcade with snotty kids when you can play all these games for free as many times as you like in the comfort of your own home?’ they seemed to ask, it was Atari following from there tradition of copying games from there copyright infringing copy of space invaders that was the clear cut winner due to the release of "major" titles for the machine, including rushed home ports of arcade hits Asteroids and Defender, as well as original titles such as Adventure and Haunted House. The 2600 was the clear-cut winner of the race, but would also suffer a bit because of Atari's poor business decisions. When the time came to get a home port of Pac-Man licensed, Atari released it to much fanfare, before fans realized just how big of a loser it was. The entire formula was tweaked with, and the arcade experience just never came through. Regardless of this Atari became a house hold name and was the spokes-company for the entire industry, like any other huge corporation in a popular position Atari cocked up, big time.
On the back of Steven Spielberg’s supremely popular E.T the extra terrestrial Atari decided it would develop the licensed game, even though the details of the transaction were never fully divulged it was widely reported that Atari had paid US$20–25 million for the rights—an abnormally high figure for video game licensing at the time and one that would take until the late 90’s to become the norm. Due to the extended length and the high number of delays in agreeing to the licence Atari only had only five weeks in order to meet the September 1 deadline necessary to ship in time for Christmas shopping season. By comparison previous Atari games, Yar’s revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, each took around 4 to 7 months to complete. An arcade game based on the E.T. property had also been planned, but this was deemed to be impossible given the short deadline. Warsaw who had previously worked on the fore mentioned games accepted the assignment, and was reportedly offered 200,000 USD as well as an prepaid Hawaiian holiday. This to me just shows Atari’s ignorance at the time, if something didn’t work or someone was under pressure they simply threw money at it until it solved the problem, a 2 million dollar bonus and a luxury holiday does not make a good game. Due to the extreme time limit involved the game was rushed throughout all stages of its development - the game play plan for example took just two days to create and testing was skipped completely.
Unsurprisingly the game was a complete failure, Atari bolstered by its previous success on earlier releases forced retailers to accept one year orders in advance for the entire year. At that time, Atari had dominated the software and hardware market, and Atari was routinely unable to fill orders because of this. At first, retailers responded by placing orders for more supplies than they actually expected to sell, but gradually, as new competitors began to enter the market and word of mouth spread about the quality of the game, Atari started receiving an increasing number of order cancellations for which the company was simply not prepared eventually Atari had a huge surplus of surplus cartridges, these cartridges numbering over 2 million in number were eventually buried in a landfill in new Mexico.
E.T. is seen by many as the death knell for Atari and is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever produced as well as one of the biggest commercial failures in videogame history. A major contributing factor to Atari's demise, the game's failure epitomizes the video game crash of 1983.
Following the crash of ‘83 personal computers took hold spurred on by companies such as IBM and Compaq these PC-clones of popular more expensive computers where equally as powerful as previous consoles and since their simple design allowed games to take complete command of the hardware after power-on, they were nearly as simple to start playing with as consoles.
However the PC’s reign was short lived with the introduction of the NES from Japanese newcomer Nintendo. Known to the western world as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was bundled with Super Mario Bros. ( Cor I wonder how that did…) and was an over night success, retailers more than cautious of introducing another console system so soon after the crash of 83 simply placed it on there shelves with no advertising or market exposure regardless of this the NES was a colossal success in America while in other territories other newcomers were as successful including the Sega Master system in Europe and the PC Engine in Japan. This introduction also saw the advent of new methods of control with the old fashioned joystick of the arcades synonymous with the market crash of 83 replaced with console pads with many more buttons and a 8 way directional or D’ pad.
During this time many popular games where born although they would be unrecognizable from there current form, Squaresoft maker of the now supremely popular Final Fantasy was struggling and decided to make their final game, titled Final Fantasy (1987), a role-playing game modelled after the previously successful game Dragon Quest, the games success saved Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy series was born as a result going on to become one of the most successful RPG franchises . At around the same time, the Legend of Zelda series made its debut on the NES with The Legend of Zelda (1986). Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series also made its debut with the release of Metal Gear (1987) on the MSX2 computer, giving birth to the stealth-based game genre. Metal Gear was ported to the NES shortly after. In 1989, Capcom released Sweet Home (1989) on the NES, which served as a precursor to the survival horror game genre, in particulaur the original Resident Evil.
Due to ever spiralling prices and market exposure the 90’s were about games maturing into a Hollywood-esque landscape of ever-increasing budgets and increasingly wary publishers. At this time, the wide variety of games that existed in the 1980s, traditional arcade game such as space invaders or missile command faded away, with the larger corporations desiring to maximize profitability and lower risk in the form of sequel after sequel to popular franchises.
The introduction of the 3d accelerator and the huge increase in size of cd-roms meant developers could squeeze more data into there games, at first developers were unsure of what to do with this seemingly infinite space relying on full motion video or FMV games to fill the space requirement, with the advent of 3d acellerators and higher resoltion textures and sounds the cd-rom's quickly filled up.
When the 16-bit and 32-bit in the form of the SNES and Playstation respectively consoles arrived offering superior graphics and sound to the arcades. By this time, video arcades had earned a reputation for being seedy, unsafe places. An increasing number of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than going out. Arcades had a last hurrah in the early 90s with Street Fighter II and the one-on-one fighting game genre, although arcades in Japan are still just as popular with many games getting arcade only releases amd a special culture developing over the fighting games, the best players even developing into minor celebrities. As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down. Classic coin-operated games have become largely the province of dedicated hobbyists. The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centres dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and expensive game control systems not available to home users, although these have never been able to once draw in the crowds as much as the original arcades did.
1989-1994
At this time, America was dominated by the Sega Genesis, known to me as the Megadrive (woo!) Nintendo debuted there SNES console in 1991 running on the same naming conventions as the NES, but this one was a SUPER nintendo entertainment system kids. The two consoles battled for market supremacy with the two consoles acheiving roughly half the marketshare each. The NEC Turbografx 16 also debuted around this time but a lack of English supported games and poor advertising in the face of Sega and Nintendo ensured it nver achieved a foothold in America.
The high levels of competition between the 3 companies ensured the marketting plan was more than a ittle harsh thoroughout with Sega producing the slogan, 'Sega does what Nintendon't and bth companies flinging around buzz words and slogans informing the general public there console was ultimately better because of 'blast processing' or some crap.
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