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... as a sequel to RoboSport.

(of course, a FPS would completely screw up that game)

Now, if they could figure out how to make a FPS out of Marble Drop, I'd be scared.

"Note that currently no Apple II emulator emulates NTSC decoding"

I beg to differ.

Who's wrong here, a consumer thinking companies should use code that's cross platform compatible (SDL makes it easy) ...

In this unique situation the consumer who thinks he knows how "easy" it is to develop a AAA title for three platforms using SDL is wrong. You do realize that the person who wrote SDL, Sam Lantinga, is also part of the team at Blizzard the developed World of Warcraft, and Warcraft III before that? Perhaps it is more complicated than you believe? Perhaps AAA titles can't necessarily go with a least common denominator approach and need to use platform specific APIs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_La yer
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/deve loperId,1199

... the game developer not only supporting a monopoly but doing what they can to ensure the monopoly continues?

Blizzard has been supporting Mac for over a decade. They did not use DirectX components like DirectPlay that have a vendor lock, rather they developed their own networking, Battle.net. You "supporting a monopoly" argument is complete nonsense. Additionally, it is irrelevant. It is not the game developer's role to advocate operating system platforms, they follow customers to whatever platforms customers lead them too. Your gripe is with fellow Linux gamers who buy the Win32 versions of games, not with developers who are spending their development and support monies wisely.

Well they did one better... Stephen Spielberg and my buddy John O'Neill worked on "E.T. Phone Home" for Atari home computers!
http://www.mobygames.com/game/et-phone-home
I hear it's alright.

in name it reminds me of another game. There was a sequel to that one, too, but I heard it was bad (a quote from moby: "A horrible travesty, both of the space-empire genre in general and of the remarkable, but flawed original Macintosh Pax Imperia") and didn't buy it.

which made me think if I was stuck on an island with a mac (particularly an old one), what would I take? Probably in order:
Spaceward Ho!
Escape Velocity
Pax Imperia (if you limit the size of the star systems it's usually semi-stable)
Civilization (color mac version)

for PC I would probably take Civilization or one of the Total War games - as much as I love replaying Fallout 2, I've gotten to the point where there is nothing new (I've tried extremes such as Int of 1 and Luck 10 and I've pretty much seen/done it all).

F-18 was good... Falcon was even better. The sound of starting up your engine, then going to full afterburner, was.... awesome.

Never hearing of Another World is possibly because it was never an Amiga game in the US (and then it would have been called Out Of This World instead)...atleast according to Moby Games.

Chaos Engine and Superfrog are probably my favorite Amiga games. I've completed CE with all six characters, and done about three to four miscellaneous playthroughs. Superfrog is still my favorite platform game.

On a somewhat related note, when I noticed this post I was listening to music from the old Amiga demo 'Sequential' by Andromeda. I can't say I've seen too many demos in my lifetime, but Sequential is my favorite by far. The modern PC demos I've seen have been underwhelming and not very interesting.

Chaos Engine and Superfrog are probably my favorite Amiga games. I've completed CE with all six characters, and done about three to four miscellaneous playthroughs. Superfrog is still my favorite platform game.

On a somewhat related note, when I noticed this post I was listening to music from the old Amiga demo 'Sequential' by Andromeda. I can't say I've seen too many demos in my lifetime, but Sequential is my favorite by far. The modern PC demos I've seen have been underwhelming and not very interesting.

>This game was released in 1988?!

Compare with Spectrum Holobyte's F-16 Falcon of the same time. Those were good years.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/falcon/screens hots

Wow, after finding these screenshots... well... that is insane. This game was released in 1988?! Very impressive graphics... :)

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/virus-the-ga me

Another great (though only dating back to 1990) design-your-own game was a racing simulation called Stunts:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/stunts

Pinball Construction Set was easy to use for pretty much anybody. As was Racing Destruction Set. Adventure Construction Set was more complex but still didn't require anything like scripting.
This "Games 3.0" concept has been around just about as long as the industry. I think the question of ease of use and making it mainstream is complicated. The more you dumb down the editor, the less you can do with it.

Pinball Construction Set was easy to use for pretty much anybody. As was Racing Destruction Set. Adventure Construction Set was more complex but still didn't require anything like scripting.
This "Games 3.0" concept has been around just about as long as the industry. I think the question of ease of use and making it mainstream is complicated. The more you dumb down the editor, the less you can do with it.

Pinball Construction Set was easy to use for pretty much anybody. As was Racing Destruction Set. Adventure Construction Set was more complex but still didn't require anything like scripting.
This "Games 3.0" concept has been around just about as long as the industry. I think the question of ease of use and making it mainstream is complicated. The more you dumb down the editor, the less you can do with it.

This was the cover for the Activision game "Tongue of the Fatman", released back in the 80s.

I can imagine being one of the developers of this - you spend long months coding and testing, only to have some idiot in the marketing department slap this lousy excuse for a cover on it. Cripes.

It's funny. Now that I think of it, one of my favorite games of all time, Starflight II, had great box art. I bought the game simply because I loved the original game; no thought as to the artwork. But I do remember how intensely the pictures captured my imagination on the long car ride home from the store in the back of the family minivan (I lived in the boonies of Maine at the time). In fact, when I pictured what my own crew looked like, I pictured the crew shown on the cover.

Of course one of my other favorite games, Spaceward Ho!... not so good. IIRC, the "packaging" was photocopied (which explains why I can't find an example on the web). The game itself was fantastic.

that doesn't mean they should go ahead and do it anyway.

And this one isn't even a particularly good list of bad box covers. I mean, the Castlevania re-issue looks more or less like every other "Classics" box.

Whereas this is actually hideous.

Actually, people continued producing games for the Apple][ long after the Macintosh came out (in 1984, one might note) although they were largely educational titles.

You may find MobyGames enlightening on the subject.

Over a hundred games were produced for the Apple][ after 1987.

The only problem was that the *good* games at the time were either being produced for the major game consoles (for the superior interface and faster load times), arcade machines (greatly enhanced power and graphics), or the PC (far greater home market saturation.)

So in short, your point on video games is completely off-base.

Finally, there's no way in hell that net piracy could at any time in the near future make it unprofitable to sell video - even if it were legalized - for the simple reason that the downloads are nonpermanent (even if you burn them), not easily loaned to friends, prohibitively slow (hours to download a movie, faster to get to the video rental store), and nontechnical people can't do it easily (and we've seen that most nontechnical people don't like doing ANYTHING that isn't easy - including voting.)

Operation: Inner Space. Not sure why, but I really felt for those little flying ships.

Ah, reminds me of Gunship 2000. If your helicopter ends up disabled in enemy territory, you can always enable the "maintain altitude at 100 ft" flying help, turn on your engines, and the chopper will hover to 100ft. Push the joystick forwards and you'll start falling to the ground again, but you'll land a few hundred meters in front of where you were before. Rinse and repeat, and make like a frog back to the base.

Good ol' times...

Will they be competing against Gronk and Glunk?

zOMG!!11

So you're the evil genius who stole years away from my life!! Oh, god, it's all coming back to me...

Heh, on the home page it even says: "Warning: Empire has been known to be addictive. Typical games can take several hours." I remember when a _single turn_ would take hours! Moving all those gazillion units and trying to keep sane while remembering what maneuver were each of them part of!

I still remember what the unit logos represent! Moby Games seems to have a nice little page about Empire http://www.mobygames.com/game/empire-wargame-of-th e-century

Love it or hate it, it's a classic. Or should I say, THE classic!

*MUST -- NOT -- REDOWNLOAD -- OH NO-- IT -- BECKONS -- TO -- ME*

I don't agree with his idiotic statements, but:

1) He has apparently been involved with a number of successful games.
2) Maxis did some great stuff, pre-Sims. Sim{City 2000,Ant,Farm,Earth,Tower} were all unique, enjoyable games.

From a commercial basis, Rogue-a-likes just evolved into games like Diablo picking up the action element from games like the arcade Gauntlet and Gateway to Apshai.
The most recent commercial examples include be Titan Quest and Fate. Fate even borrows the pet concept from Nethack (I'm sure it was in other Rogue-a-likes - I'm not expert).

>>How about the 6 day war?

Janes' IAF was a flightsim based on that. Of course, you are no-so-much an arab in that one.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/janes-combat-simulat ions-israeli-air-force

>>Or what about Gulf War II?

Falcon Allied Force was about the first Bosnia invasion. Circa 1995. They got the title wrong, but whatever. These have been several GW2 games. A few flight sims and several shooters. None of them were any good. I'd love to see something like a driving sim in a humvee through the red zone. Or multiplayer with a driver and gunner.

>>A cross between command and conquer and simcity2000. See if you can stabilize Iraq before it can happen in real life.

Easy, cut the country up into three parts and move each tribe into a diff part. Pump the oil dry so they don't fight over who gets that part. Threaten Turkey to keep them from invading Northern Iraq.

Lunar hotels? He3 mining? Did someone say Moonbase? http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/moonbase That was one of my favorite games ever...seventeen years ago.

Dude, Ken Levine doesn't need to prove himself. He designed Thief and System Shock II, and he executive produced Freedom Force, three of the most innovative big-budget games of the last decade. If he has criticisms of the rest of the industry, the man has earned the right to speak up.

(No, I have never met Ken Levine. I have nothing personal invested in this. But to say of the lead designer of System Shock II "If he wants to make himself look better than his peers, perhaps he should do so by proving himself"...well, you should be embarrassed, frankly.)

I found it: Laser Surgeon: The Microscopic Mission. Man, looking at those screenshots, I'm not sure how I could have stared at the screen for so long. :)

Starflight II: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula is one of my all-time favorite games, and arguably better than the original. There was even a version made for Sega Genesis, IIRC (I had the Mac versions). I know that there have been some half-hearted attempts from fans to make another sequel, but they're obviously more caught up in dreaming about the ultimate sequel than actually doing any work. The original designers may be a bunch of old guys by now, but it would be great to have them on board with some younger programmers. They really understood how to make a great, open-ended game. If Sid Meier can still do it, these guys should be able to.

The versions of Starflight that I owned were EA titles. EA, if you're looking for a ground-breaking subject for future video games, look into your own back catalog!

But can we all agree, at least, that the NES was completely worthless and awful?

As Fallout and X-Com have already been mentioned, I'd next have to go with Autoduel, based on the Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars.

Yes, it was a little cheesy top-down type game, but before the MechWarrior series was Crescent Hawk's Revenge

You could do Car Wars / Autoduel as an open-ended environment, where you could elect to participate in the autoduel circuit, a courier running jobs, looks for wrecks to scrounge, a go criminal and create wrecks to scrounge, or go vigilante and wait for people to try to create wrecks and shoot them. With today's improved computers, you might be able to make it massively multiplayer, and have caravans and whole posses of criminals lying in wait to ambush people.

As Fallout and X-Com have already been mentioned, I'd next have to go with Autoduel, based on the Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars.

Yes, it was a little cheesy top-down type game, but before the MechWarrior series was Crescent Hawk's Revenge

You could do Car Wars / Autoduel as an open-ended environment, where you could elect to participate in the autoduel circuit, a courier running jobs, looks for wrecks to scrounge, a go criminal and create wrecks to scrounge, or go vigilante and wait for people to try to create wrecks and shoot them. With today's improved computers, you might be able to make it massively multiplayer, and have caravans and whole posses of criminals lying in wait to ambush people.

The game was developed by Mad Doc Software and published by Bethesda Softworks according to MobyGames. (The review has the roles reversed as of this posting.)

Upgraded graphics have driven the entire console industry for twenty years. Look at the 2600 or NES. Are modern consoles that different?

Yes, they are. 2600 to NES was a revolutionary step forward in graphics. Super Mario Brothers is a leap forward in graphics compared to Pong.

The SNES couldn't really muster 3D graphics (remember Star Fox?) so the best SNES games look like Pong compared to Playstation's Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VIII or Gran Turismo 3

And you're again skipping intermediate steps -- Sega 32X, Jaguar, and 3DO had better 3D than the SNES.

Other than that, I think you have a point. Game machines have reached the "good enough" stage. Besides, to truly see the improvements, you'd need a high definition TV, which most people don't have yet.

Upgraded graphics have driven the entire console industry for twenty years. Look at the 2600 or NES. Are modern consoles that different?

Yes, they are. 2600 to NES was a revolutionary step forward in graphics. Super Mario Brothers is a leap forward in graphics compared to Pong.

The SNES couldn't really muster 3D graphics (remember Star Fox?) so the best SNES games look like Pong compared to Playstation's Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VIII or Gran Turismo 3

And you're again skipping intermediate steps -- Sega 32X, Jaguar, and 3DO had better 3D than the SNES.

Other than that, I think you have a point. Game machines have reached the "good enough" stage. Besides, to truly see the improvements, you'd need a high definition TV, which most people don't have yet.

Ever played The Dig? The ending of that adventure game made me cry.

Also, at least one of the games listed as using the SA-1 wasn't even a SNES release. Try out that PGA Tour '96 link. It was a Genesis/MD game. [...] Moral: Don't just blindly trust Wikipedia.

The world could really use a remake of that game (the '96 sequel sucked), and the subject matter is perfect. And it would lend itself perfectly to co-op network play.

The Aliens FPS has been done to death. Why not something a little different?

Why won't they remake it for a modern system?

So far, the closest "recent" game that I've found to MoM is Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. AoW games always had some similarity to MoM, and this latest incarnation includes a random scenario generator which brings it that much closer. Too bad the AI isn't all that great (why does it refuse to use unit enchantments?), but online multiplayer capability covers that!

It's also all right for a game to be relatively short, if there's enough replay value. A great example is Master of Magic. A single game, even with the maximum of 4 opponents and a large world, would usually only take a few hours or less. And yet I must have spent at least 150 hours on that game.

Nor Activision

See here..

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/mechwarrior- 3/cover-art/gameCoverId,63884/

Personally it's my favorite, along with the original and often overlooked Mechwarrior 1.

Out of curiosity, did you know that Eric Wolpaw from Old Man Murray helped write Psychonauts?

Here you are.

You know that Diablo is basically a real-time Roguelike. Also, a neat little game called Dungeon Hack came out in the early 90s which melded Roguelikes with AD&D (Eye of the Beholder style). I still play it once in a while with DOSBox.

http://www.mobygames.com/company/id-software-inc/l ogos

Initially the logo said "ID," which lead some people, myself included, to think it was an acronym or short for "identification." Way back then a lot of people also started writing the name as "iD." I don't think it was ever officially iD though. Looks like on the Wolf 3D box, for instance, they had ID Software, but references in the game say id Software.

Anyhow, I remember writing iD Software quite a lot when referring to the company during the pre-doom days, and probably even after that out of habit. Just a dorky misrepresentation that took off for some reason.

It's funny, I can picture the logo itself as iD, clear as day. I couldn't find it actually drawn that way though.

Replying to myself here, but the name I was looking for was "Street Hassle" (apparently also released as "Bop'n'Rumble" in the U.S.). Looking at the screenshots it seems the NES version also replaced the blind, stick-wielding old guys with baseball-bat wielding hooligans. Removing the game's over-the-top humour really robs the NES version of its only saving grace so it's no wonder it is so poorly rated.

"A search for 'stephen ford' came up empty."

I mean, sheesh, even the hairdresser of the next-door neighbour of a QA temp is mentioned in the credits somewhere on that site under publisher special thanks (probably)...

Although my employer has an "anti-poaching" attitude to credits, dagnabbit!