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Five That Fell

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the insert-quarter dept.

Ground Glass writes "The games industry is as cutthroat as any in entertainment or tech, and it so happens that many loved, respected, and influential companies nevertheless get crushed in the waves of hardware transitions or left behind by market forces. Given that one of those shifts is rapidly approaching, now is as good a time as any to look at five such companies that are no longer with us, but are still remembered and revered by their fans."

4 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Manic....the person I missed by Elik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I missed playing the Wing Commander series, especially dealing with Manic, who came in it own as our own hated Biff from Back to Future Series in the 3rd series. Gotta love watching the videos of watching him getting slapped.

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    -- Amazing how the Internet still humms along.... -- Dispite all the flaws of Micro$oft in their software!
  2. As a longtime mac user... by tpjunkie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bungie.

    I'm still pissed at microsoft for having the insight/monopolistic impulse to buy them. They put out some great titles, Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, and of course Halo, originally demoed in the late 90s on a powermac.

  3. Re:Don't forget LucasArts by actor_au · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Lucas didn't think that people would want to buy Star Wars games as much after the movies were finished so he intentionally set up LucasArts to publish and make non-star wars games so that when one source of revenue died up(Star Wars) another would be available to him.
    Also I think he didn't want to put all his eggs in one basket.
    Once the earlier Star Wars games began to greatly outsell the rest LucasArts began to withdraw from that area.
    Oddly enough the non-star wars game Armed and Dangerous was published by LucasArts a few years back and it was brilliant.

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    Read Errant Story.
  4. This industry is missing Infocom by ianscot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Infocom did more with text inside of five years than the entire first person shooter genre has done in its lifetime.

    My personal favorite was "Suspended." You were in a cryogenic state, only able to interact with remote robots to bring a group of out-of-whack computers into working shape again. Each robot had its own abilities and senses -- they rolled or walked, one could smell, and so on. The puzzles made you work at them, and this was one game where the packaging and manual and so on really helped and were necessary. I remember the laminated map vividly. It was the complete package.

    The gaming industry should be looking to people like those Infocom writers and Dani Bunten as its prophets. Instead we get John Carmack opinion in nauseating detail about the latest graphic cards.

    (Dang kids! Get off my lawn!)

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    "Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.