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The Art of LucasArts
Gamasutra has a piece talking with Michael Rubin about his new book, Droidmaker. From the article: "GS: Why do you think George Lucas saw the importance of games so early, and why was he able to capitalize on it so relatively well? MR: I think he actually didn't see the importance early. He had to be convinced that a games effort wasn't going to be a distraction. Quickly though, he was able to integrate his personal interest with education and using technology to aid in education, with the research going on in the games group. Making video games was only one aspect of that groups' work."
Hundreds of books on how to win at Pac-man? My god... I think most of them would be along the lines of:
1- Collect as many yellow dots as you can.
2- If an encounter with a ghost occurs: 3- When no yellow dot remains, next level (NL) is achieved. return to 1-.GS: Why do you think George Lucas saw the importance of games so early, and why was he able to capitalize on it so relatively well? MR: I think he actually didn't see the importance early.
GS: George Lucas is a god! I want him to have meh babiez!
MR: Actually, he had no vision and isn't that great of a director and didn't even LIKE video games. Star Wars was literally ripped from Kurosawa, Empire was directed by someone else, in RotJ he brought us Ewoks, in TPM he brought us Jar Jar and the last movie could be entirely summed up by the word "younglings". What crack are you smoking that you love him so?
(fairly loose translation)
-Styopa
Memorizing certain patterns could also help a lot when playing Pac-Man.
For more information check out How to Win at Pac-Man.
Ah, those were the days...
Not that it's changed much - most "boss" encounters in games these days rely on finding the "pattern" of attack and repeating it until the big guy falls over.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Lucasarts adventure games were and always will be my childhood. You can't beat stuff like Maniac Mansion, Loom, both Indy adventures, the Monkey Island series (excluding 4), Grim Fandango, Zak McKracken, Sam & Max, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and so forth. The only Star Wars games I care about are the old X-Wing series.
Of course by todays standard they are truly horrible and the flight and combat is a joke BUT at the time it was great. Shooting pixels at pixels. Sitting in a bomber with a bloody rocket after you are trying to fly under a bomber to use your upward firing missles. Great stuff.
Oh also a game that had a manual that not only told you about the game but also the history of the era you were fighting in and a whole chapter in SWOTL about the impact the various real strategies had. You could even follow them and see the effect. Like concentrating on bombing oil installations really worked!
X-wing was a nice game and all but it came with a couple of stencil sheets for a manual. Sigh. The beginning of the end. Soon we would have games that didn't even need a manual. Or PDF's.
I am sad now and must cuddle my F-16 Fighting Falcon 3.0 manual.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In a good way. X-wing was the bomb. Later games would be like The Phantom Menace but X-wing showed us what a movie tie-in was meant to be. Not just the endless disney tie-ins where a bad sidescoller has the sprites replaced with the latest chars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1. Rescue on Fractalus
2. BallBlazer
3. The Eidolon
4. Koronis Rift
Not to troll, but LA has also ended up like EA. If either has a game I want, it is more by wild coincidence than any concious effort on their part. I wish there was a publisher (like early LA/early EA) that actually sought out a limited number of fantastic games.
Maybe I'm ill-informed... does anyone know of any such publisher?
KOTOR was game of the year, and the Battlefront series is highly sucessful as well.
I wish there was a publisher (like early LA/early EA) that actually sought out a limited number of fantastic games
:)
There have been a few studios from whom I have always been impressed. Not all of them are "current", but have all been similar as faras providing great games.
Bioware. I may not always like their games,and Neverwinter Nights does show its age, but it (and the KOTOR) series have been unmatched in my game library for replays, short of Fallout and Fallout2.
Monolith. I loved SHOGO, and aparently several of their more recent games (No one lives forever, etc) have been good too. I haven't played them, though.
Bethesda Softworks. Creators of the Elder Scrolls games, which are simply mindblowingly immense. Oblivion (Elder scrolls IV, I believe) looks simply stunning. LOTS of opportunities for exploration, advancement, etc, are a staple of the elder scrolls games. Almost the whole game could be considered a giant side-quest, but in a good way.
They also created Sea Dogs (which was fun!), and the Pirates of the Caribbean game (which I didn't hear as much good stuff about). The games may sometimes need polish, but often they are pretty original, and/or do a VERY good job of getting the core gameplay down well.
UbiSoft: They've changed a bit now, but I remember when they were the Rainbow Six people still. Now, they've started brancing out into new series, some of which are awesome (Prince of Persia), some are less so. Still, if you haven't played Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell (or at least demos), you have missed out.
Bungie: OK, owned by MS now, I think. Still, Oni was pretty interesting, and the Halo/Marathon series are hard to beat as far as story. Tho, I hear they dropped the ball with Halo 2...