John Romero

Alfonso John Romero is a well-known game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and lead designer of their groundbreaking personal computer games (all subsequently ported to consoles) Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. His unique game designs and development tools, along with the revolutionary programming techniques created and implemented by id Software’s lead programmer John Carmack, led to a mass-popularization of the first person shooter, or FPS, in the 1990s. He is also credited with coining the multiplayer term “deathmatch.”

John Romero’s first game, Scout Search, was published in 1984 by inCider magazine, a popular Apple II magazine during the 1980s. Romero’s first company, Capitol Ideas Software, was listed as the developer for at least 12 of his earliest published games. Romero captured the December cover of the Apple II magazine Nibble for three years in a row starting in 1987. He also won a programming contest in A+ magazine during its first year of publishing with his game Cavern Crusader.

Romero’s first industry job was at Origin Systems in 1987 after programming games for 8 years. He worked on the Apple II to Commodore 64 port of 2400 A.D., which was eventually scrapped due to slow sales of the Apple II version. John then moved onto Space Rogue, a game by Paul Neurath. During this time, Romero was asked if he would be interested in joining Paul’s soon-to-start company Blue Sky Productions, eventually renamed Looking Glass Technologies. Instead, Romero left Origin Systems to co-found a game company named Inside Out Software, where he ported Might & Magic II from the Apple II to the Commodore 64. He had almost finished the Commodore 64 to Apple II port of Tower Toppler, but Epyx unexpectedly cancelled all its ports industrywide due to their tremendous investment in the first round of games for the upcoming Atari Lynx.

During this short time, Romero did the artwork for the Apple IIGS version of Dark Castle, a port from the Macintosh. Also during this time, John and his friend Lane Roathe co-founded a company named Ideas From The Deep and wrote versions of a game named Zappa Roids for the Apple II, PC and Apple IIGS. Their last collaboration together was an Apple II disk operating system for Infocom’s games Zork Zero, Arthur, Shogun and Journey. Ideas From The Deep still exists to this day at IFD.

Romero moved to Shreveport, Louisiana in March 1989 and joined Softdisk as a programmer in its Special Projects division. After several months of helping the PC monthly disk magazine Big Blue Disk, he officially moved into the department until he started a PC gaming division in July 1990 named Gamer’s Edge (originally titled PCRcade). Romero hired John Carmack into the department from his freelancing in Kansas City, moved Adrian Carmack into the division from Softdisk’s art department, and convinced Tom Hall to come in at night and help with game design. Romero and the others then left Softdisk to form id Software.^[2]

Romero worked at id Software from its incorporation in 1991 until 1996. He was involved in the creation of several milestone games, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II and Quake. He also served as Executive Producer (and Game Designer) on Heretic and HeXen.

Romero later co-founded Ion Storm Inc. in Dallas, Texas with id co-worker Tom Hall, where he designed and produced Daikatana. This ambitious shooter was announced in 1997 with a release date for the Christmas shopping season of that year. However, this release date slipped repeatedly in the coming months, and the game began to accrue negative press.

In particular, a 1997 advertisement boasted, “John Romero’s About To Make You His Bitch….Suck it down” alienating many gamers. The massive pre-hype for the game and the subsequent delays (it was not released until April 2000) led reviewers to lash out at the game much harder than had it been released on time. Upon release, Daikatana was critically panned and appeared on numerous “top 10 worst games” listings. However, it sold over 200,000 copies worldwide in its first year of sales. Romero has since claimed that the game generated enough sales to recoup its extensive production costs.

During this time, Romero was also rumored to have been killed (aptly enough, with a headshot) and a photograph of his corpse with a bullet wound was also spread through the Internet – Romero himself later stated that the picture was taken for Texas Monthly, and that “maybe he shouldn’t have taken it”.

Romero departed with Tom Hall immediately after the release of Hall’s Anachronox game and the subsequent closing of the Dallas Ion office.

Hellgate: London PC game

Portals to hell are opening all over the place, and demons are roaming free in such numbers that the land teeters on the edge of the abyss. Sound familiar? It should – it’s the same basic premise that set the amazing Diablo series rolling.

What’s unfortunate about Hellgate is that it’s neither as fun nor as memorable as its spiritual predecessor.

Dark pedigree

Hellgate starts off well, with a character-creation system that offers six unique classes, but once you actually hop into the game, the faults become immediately apparent. For instance, once you make a decision in the skill tree, you’re stuck with that choice forever, which is an anachronistic design decision that effectively kills the possibility of experimentation. The available quests are boring, unimaginative and, worst of all, repetitive. Having an NPC require you to kill ten – and only ten – demons in a specific area doesn’t make any sense, even in a virtual world.

It’s a (pre)fabulous life

The game also suffers from a lack of tension and atmosphere; unlike the two Diablo games, Hellgate has no personality. The world looks sterile and prefabricated, probably because it is prefabricated, with environments slapped together literally at random. While in theory this might imbue a game with infinite replayability, in practice – at least as presented here – it leads to worlds that lack the cunning creativity that a human designer might have come up with. Think of it this way: a cat walking across a piano might compose something new each time, but would you rather listen to that or a piece of Beethoven?

The banality of evil

Working in Hellgate’s favour, however, is the fact that the six classes complement each other so well in multiplayer. Gathering five friends, permanent or temporary, into a single band of brothers is definitely the way to go, leading as it does to a fast-paced stomp through any environment and an unrelenting display of trippy pyrotechnics.

It also incorporates some interesting ideas – loot that drops separately for every player in a party, a weapon modification and upgrade system that turns even useless items into collectible trinkets and a context-sensitive shift button that puts active skills within easy reach – but every single play session, regardless of whether it’s solo or with friends, will invariably boil down to holding the attack button and heading off on yet another “kill x to get y” quest.

PROS: Class variety is interesting. Loot drops will keep obsessive gamers occupied.

CONS: Randomised levels, endless combat and quest repetition, locked progression choices, lack of atmosphere.

Verdict

Hellgate: London does offer some simple-minded entertainment, but it falls well short of its lofty goals, a fact that is made all the more galling when you consider the fact that the developer, Flagship Studios, was founded by two of Diablo’s creators. You might get sucked into the online world of competing slayers and level grinding for a while, but the tedium will kill you far quicker than any member of Hell’s vast army.

Nintendo Releases the Wii Zapper

One of the best elements of the Nintendo Wii is the unique set of controllers. Not only that, there have been aftermarket attachments that turn the controller into a more-realistic racket, for example. Today Nintendo released the Zapper, a controller shell for both the Nunchuk and Wii Remote that looks like, well, what do you think it looks like?

The Zapper ships with a game, Link’s Crossbow Training, which is really a training ground for use of the Zapper, though it is derived from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. You play as Link in 27 mini-games which fall into two genres: target practice and protecting Link from enemies.

Nintendo plans to come out with more controller shells, but the one I (and other people looking for more exercise with their Wii) am looking forward to is the Wii Fit along with the Wii Balance Board.

The Crysis Challenge

With the imminent arrival of Crysis, PC gamers all over the world gearing up for some high quality FPS goodness by uninstalling old games, defragging drives, double checking connections, and stocking up on caffeine and sugar treats for a couple (or more) 24 hour days to frag it up.

Of course, Crysis is also being hotly anticipated because of its kick ass graphics that will surely set a new bar for developers and gamers alike. Crysis will surely be a true test for gaming systems. I myself am not sure if my PC has the muscle to handle Crysis. I have an AMD X2 3800+, 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM, and an HD2600XT graphics card. A few of my friends told me that it will be enough but having seen the screnshots of Crysis I am not going to get my hopes up. Crysis looks like it’s going to eat up my computer. It’s that gorgeous.

Star Wars arcade game

You’re not dreaming, a British company has begun refurbishing original Star Wars arcade cabinets and selling them to the general public, for a “mere” £3,495.00 (about $7,000 at current exchange rates). This is the original vector-graphic Star Wars X-wing game, with the audio clips from the movie, which Atari used to kick my childhood into hyperspace in 1983. I know I’m not alone in this, as this particular arcade game made the write-in list for greatest arcade game of the 1980s.

Sonic

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