I have a full time job (game developer) and I'm part of one of the high end WoW guilds here in the US, http://www.elitistjerks.com/
We raid four or five nights a week. It's scheduled during the evenings and we try to keep our raids to a maximum of four hours. I get home from work, eat dinner, then raid in the evening. I'd rather be doing that then watching mindless television or something. I'd say I play around 12 to 20 hours of WoW a week and quite enjoy it. Sure, that's more than a casual player who plays it a couple hours a week, but I'm not putting 80 to 100 hours a week into the game.
I was trying to explain to a friend who's a non-gamer why I wasn't going to be available for a dinner gathering because I had already scheduled myself to attend a raid in WoW. The best anology I could come up with is that it was the same as if I "signed up for a bowling night with my bowling team." It was an analogy my friend understood immediately. Of course, my bowling team in WoW is a team of 39 other people in the raid, but its essentially the same thing. It's a gathering of people together to play a game.
I've found that people who didn't find Ico to be one of the best games they played is because they didn't really buy into the feelings between Ico and the princess. A big part of the game is the sense of being alone with just the two of you and that she was entirely dependent on you. I've found people who thought she was annoying or didn't enjoy interacting with her generally didn't like the game.
I left id Software in early 2000 about six months after Quake3 came out. Counterstrike was starting to really catch on and I personally don't enjoy "realistic" weapon based first person games. I really like playing with completely unrealistic rocket launchers, laser guns, etc. Counterstrike never appealed to me as there's only so many variations on hit scan weapons (such as glocks, rifles, etc). With Quake3 done, the next game was Castle Wolfenstein with the Quake3 engine. The entire industry was headed for war simulation games, mostly fueled on the popularity of Counterstrike. I didn't want to work on these games--they weren't something I was interested in. I like an arcade game like feel to the game, not a slow tactical game. I'm not saying these were bad games, just not the type of games I enjoy playing or making.
id excelled at making amazing technology and simple addictive arcade like gameplay with that technology. The original DOOM is an arcade game--its incredibly fast with dozens of monsters on the screen. Quake and its sequels were also arcade games, except you can play over the internet against other people.
Doom3 wasn't an arcade game. id attemped something different by building a game that followed a story and because of limitations of the engine, could only allow interaction with a few creatures at once. They tired to do this with some the mechanics from the older single player games (such as monster closets) and while the game is both incredible from a visual and technological standpoint, the gameplay to match this just isn't there. Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.
I hope id realizes their strengths and return to focusing on games with great visuals and technology with simple and addictive arcade like gameplay. That's the id I know and want to play.
But Microsoft plans to change all this. Starting February 28, Microsoft will indefinitely begin to disable Internet product activation on OEM keys used by the top 20 worldwide PC makers.
They are only disabling activation for the most widely used OEM keys that are typically stolen for Piracy. From what I understand, this doesn't affect normal retail keys that are individually printed and used.
I still play Robotron a couple times a week. Simply one of the most amazing, intense video gaming experiences ever made. I've found few games that give me the same powerful feelings I get playing it.
He pioneered some of the best action gaming ever to grace video games. Simply an outstanding choice for this award.
I would say they intentionally made it very interactive because its a lot more fun than just watching your character do his auto attack until the mob is dead.
Rogue's are the most amazing at this. You're be tapping keys several times a second when playing a rogue since you're building up combo points to unless abilities. It's like doing combos in a fighting game--its rewarding and damn fun when you pull them off.
I'm currently in my 14th hour at work. E3 is next week.
Working on a triple-AAA title requires that effort. The guys who made the LOTR movies put insane hours in as well. When you're making outstanding triple-AAA quality entertainment based media, be it movies, games, televisions shows, etc, you've got put the effort in to make it as good as it can be.
There are horror stories about publishers fucking developers with unreasonable deadlines. Fortunately, I work for a publisher that doesn't do that--the extended effort is for quality, not just for making the deadline. I count myself lucky, and I hope guys who did get fucked can find themselves working for a developer who has a good relationship with a publisher.
For me, I'm still here because I want to make the best game I can.
It's amusing Ballon Fight is rated that highly when it was essentially a Joust clone. Nintendo prides itself on original games, but this was their first real blatent clone of another game. Was Joust itself ever released for the NES?
Joust came out in arcades in 1983, Balloon Fight on the NES in 1986.
One of the major things I focused on in new QuakeWorld releases was getting the physics to match the original NetQuake as close as possible. I pretty much succeeded in the later versions of Quakeworld. As people probably remember, QW's initial physics model was quite messed up compared to the original Quake. The bunny-hopping, ramp acceleration jumping and fast in-air decceleration were all features of the original Quake physics.
The idea of bringing QuakeWorld to match NetQuake physics was because those were what the original maps were built and designed with. It's also what players were acustomed to.
I wonder how many people remember my attempt to bring NetQuake physics to Quake2. Quake2's initial model was very simple. In my 3.15 Quake2 patch, I tired to add air decceleration and other features of Quake's physics to the engine (because players wanted them, hell I wanted them since I played the game all the damn time). I had to pull them out in 3.16 and restore the original Quake2 physics because of fears I may break the original maps that came with the game.
Quake3 was a mix of both physics models from the mind of Carmack. I think it was a good mix and felt pretty good. Probably should have fixed bunny hopping, however. I feel bunny-hopping was the worst thing to happen to Quake. Quake is about running and killing people, not bouncing everywhere.
(1) Halo sold a mere 5,000 copies in the most recent week in Japan. The most of any XBox title.
Halo was never launched in Japan. Microsoft knows that FPS games don't sell at all in Japan. There is no Halo over there.
You must have been thinking about Dead or Alive 3. It's not selling very well either. A couple weeks ago I saw the XBox sales chart where the Wonderswan was outselling the XBox.
I had just recently installed the public beta of OS X on my G4 Cube. A friend of mine and his girlfriend dropped by to visit and take a peek at it. His girlfriend was a Mac user and wanted to see what OS X would be like.
I was demonstrating some of the new features of the dock, etc and she turned to her boyfriend and whispered, "I want oh-ess-ex." He heard it as "I want oh sex." and answered, "What? Here?!"
Seems confusing OS X with OH-SEX can happen. Perhaps its not a bad thing to make an note to refer to it as oh-ess-ten.
It's not a usage log. It's a local cache of DVD contents.
Read the advisory. Each time a new DVD/CD is put in, media player asks Microsoft for a title and track listing, gets the result and stores it in a local database file. It does not request again if you insert the same movie. So other than 'first use' there is no usage log.
I'm not clear on what the id-string is used on the request. Microsoft is no different than Gracenote who gets your IP, operating system, etc if you put a CD in when you're running XMCD and its configured to asks CDDB/Gracenote for CD track listings.
I've been using CDDB for years. This is no different than before. It's a bunch of privacy concerns for an established method of CD title/track requests (extended to DVDs now apparantly).
If you read the article all this "database" is a copy from the CDDB records (or whatever CDDB is called these days) used for caching. You stick a CD in, it generates a checksum and asks CDDB for the artist/track listing and stores it locally, so it doesn't have to ask again later. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any sending of this database.
It appears they extended to DVDs as well as CDs (just a bigger database I suppose).
The article is a bunch of fluff for a functionality we've used for a long time with numerous programs such as XMCD, AudioCatalyst, etc etc. Microsoft adds it to media player and omg, privacy for getting the disc information for you. I'm pretty sure there's a button to turn it off.
(Gracenote is probably using the CD request data anyway for marketting purposes these days).
Unforunately, Panasonic has no plans to release this unit in the US. For now, it's a Japan area only device.
It's too bad, the idea of a shiny gamecube that can play DVDs is pretty cool. I'm also wondering if the lack of sales outside of Japan is related to piracy issues--you can fit 5.25" discs into it. One of the reasons the Gamecube uses smaller 3" discs is to prevent piracy since it's hard to get a hold of something that will make them.
Lik Sang (a company that make mod and game copying kits) also disassembled the Panasonic Gamecube including probably better pictures. They also modified it to play US games (remove the territory lock out). They mentioned it was a bitch to open--something like 45 special screws. Doesn't sound like a fun job to modify.
The demo scene is much more important than people and Americans generally acknowledge. It is, truly, the last subculture where people code for the love of it. This explains the strength of the scene in Europe, and its nonexistence in America.
Actually, there are many people who are coding for the love of it here in the US and Canada. Just look at the modification seen for games.
Look at the mods for games such as Quake (and its breathen), Half-Life and Unreal. Some have gone commercial, much like Remedy Entertainment went commercial and produced Max Payne. From what I understand, a lot of the people at Remedy were from the european demo scene.
I didn't build ThreeWave Capture The Flag for Quake for money. I built it for the sheer joy of writing a fun game for people to play. Later on, it got me a job and changed my career for the better, but that was simply a perq. Even when I was employed I still continued making modifications to CTF and supporting it because it was FUN.
I imagine Gooseman didn't make Counterstrike for monetary gain either. I'm sure he did it because its fun to make and watch people enjoy. It's the same feeling demo coders get when they watch people get wowed by the demos they make.
So, you're wrong. There is a THRIVING community of coders and content developers who are doing it just for the fun of it here in the US and Canada. Just a slightly different focus between doing a standalone non-interactive demo or a modification of a game. People build them for exactly the same reasons.
Just a note about dying. Diablo2 has a hardcore mode where if you die, you are DEAD.
It is possible to ressurrect your dead guy in the single player hardcore mode, but if you play hardcore on the secure battle.net servers--dying is permanent.
I had a level 20 Barbarian a couple nights ago due to a firewall spell from the Summoner, a mage boss.
You want a challenge? Go play Diablo2 in hardcore mode.
Hmm, it seems more and more to me that anyone who still thinks manga/anime isn't mainstream in America is living about eight years in the past. No offense intended, of course, but I just happen to be typing this with English-dubbed Saturday-morning Digimon annoying the hell out of me from the TV in the other room.
DigiMon isn't a good example. It's not really anime. It's Saban's answer to the PokeMon threat.
Saban is the producer of the Power Rangers. He was the next best thing for kids shows after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He held #1 on the kids radar for several years and produced several clones of this own show (Beetle Borgs and other bad versions).
But then PokeMon showed up. This started taking away the kids audience from the Power Rangers. Saban immediately saw this threat and comissioned an animation studio in Japan to produce a clone show. The result was DigiMon which tries to be anime in look, but is very american in feel. Saban's show isn't nearly as successful as PokeMon either. He's lost the war of kids viewing, but he's still trying to beat a dead horse.
If anything, Saban had an affect on the influence of Japanese culture or anime like shows. The original Power Rangers was made by purchasing a bunch of action footage from a live action super hero show from Japan. If you've ever watched the original Power Rangers, you'll see a bunch of american kids running around, then suddenly cut to wearing costumes and the video quality changes from NTSC original to PAL converted japanese film--the quality change was drastic that you could immediately tell they were entirely different shoots edited together. But it worked and millions of kids watched it.
Even though Power Rangers was a shitty show, its Japanese influence was there. I think this really set up television viewing for anime related titles. Cartoon Network here is showing Dragonball Z, Tenchi Muyo, Gundam Wing and other anime titles. I know that anime has really started to catch on here when a national channel starts showing Tenchi.:)
I watch Anime because I love animation, but I hate dumb downed kids based animation. My favorite anime shows are stuff like Ghost in the Shell, Tenchi, El Hazard. Of course, for shock value there's always a showing of my Urotsukidoji [Lengend of the Overfiend] Perfect Collection DVD--Definitely NOT FOR CHILDREN stamped on it.
If anything, all this recent popularity of anime related shows just gives me more reasons to actually watch TV. I'm not sure that's a good thing.:)
Doom 2 had a funny one: at the very end of the game, if you weren't cheating, you had to make it to an elevator in the center of the room and shoot at a hole across the room once the elevator was as high as it would go. If you were cheating, and I couldn't beat the game without doing so, you could get into the little chamber you were shooting at. Inside was (I think) John Carmack's bloody head on a stake.
Actually, it was John Romero's head. You can tell by the hair.:)
It was funny--the head even had pain animations so it would scream when you damaged it.
Another easter egg in Doom2 was the sound that played when you entered the final room that had the hole where you had to shoot into (and damage the head). The sound was some bizarre language being spoken. If you take the sound sample and reversed it, you'll find it's Romero with lots of heavy reverb saying, "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero."
Slashdot Mirror
I have a full time job (game developer) and I'm part of one of the high end WoW guilds here in the US, http://www.elitistjerks.com/
We raid four or five nights a week. It's scheduled during the evenings and we try to keep our raids to a maximum of four hours. I get home from work, eat dinner, then raid in the evening. I'd rather be doing that then watching mindless television or something. I'd say I play around 12 to 20 hours of WoW a week and quite enjoy it. Sure, that's more than a casual player who plays it a couple hours a week, but I'm not putting 80 to 100 hours a week into the game.
I was trying to explain to a friend who's a non-gamer why I wasn't going to be available for a dinner gathering because I had already scheduled myself to attend a raid in WoW. The best anology I could come up with is that it was the same as if I "signed up for a bowling night with my bowling team." It was an analogy my friend understood immediately. Of course, my bowling team in WoW is a team of 39 other people in the raid, but its essentially the same thing. It's a gathering of people together to play a game.
I've found that people who didn't find Ico to be one of the best games they played is because they didn't really buy into the feelings between Ico and the princess. A big part of the game is the sense of being alone with just the two of you and that she was entirely dependent on you. I've found people who thought she was annoying or didn't enjoy interacting with her generally didn't like the game.
I left id Software in early 2000 about six months after Quake3 came out. Counterstrike was starting to really catch on and I personally don't enjoy "realistic" weapon based first person games. I really like playing with completely unrealistic rocket launchers, laser guns, etc. Counterstrike never appealed to me as there's only so many variations on hit scan weapons (such as glocks, rifles, etc). With Quake3 done, the next game was Castle Wolfenstein with the Quake3 engine. The entire industry was headed for war simulation games, mostly fueled on the popularity of Counterstrike. I didn't want to work on these games--they weren't something I was interested in. I like an arcade game like feel to the game, not a slow tactical game. I'm not saying these were bad games, just not the type of games I enjoy playing or making.
id excelled at making amazing technology and simple addictive arcade like gameplay with that technology. The original DOOM is an arcade game--its incredibly fast with dozens of monsters on the screen. Quake and its sequels were also arcade games, except you can play over the internet against other people.
Doom3 wasn't an arcade game. id attemped something different by building a game that followed a story and because of limitations of the engine, could only allow interaction with a few creatures at once. They tired to do this with some the mechanics from the older single player games (such as monster closets) and while the game is both incredible from a visual and technological standpoint, the gameplay to match this just isn't there. Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.
I hope id realizes their strengths and return to focusing on games with great visuals and technology with simple and addictive arcade like gameplay. That's the id I know and want to play.
I still play Robotron a couple times a week. Simply one of the most amazing, intense video gaming experiences ever made. I've found few games that give me the same powerful feelings I get playing it.
He pioneered some of the best action gaming ever to grace video games. Simply an outstanding choice for this award.
Ion Storm Austin was not responsibile for Daikatana. That was Ion Storm Dallas.
I would say they intentionally made it very interactive because its a lot more fun than just watching your character do his auto attack until the mob is dead.
Rogue's are the most amazing at this. You're be tapping keys several times a second when playing a rogue since you're building up combo points to unless abilities. It's like doing combos in a fighting game--its rewarding and damn fun when you pull them off.
I'm currently in my 14th hour at work. E3 is next week.
Working on a triple-AAA title requires that effort. The guys who made the LOTR movies put insane hours in as well. When you're making outstanding triple-AAA quality entertainment based media, be it movies, games, televisions shows, etc, you've got put the effort in to make it as good as it can be.
There are horror stories about publishers fucking developers with unreasonable deadlines. Fortunately, I work for a publisher that doesn't do that--the extended effort is for quality, not just for making the deadline. I count myself lucky, and I hope guys who did get fucked can find themselves working for a developer who has a good relationship with a publisher.
For me, I'm still here because I want to make the best game I can.
It's amusing Ballon Fight is rated that highly when it was essentially a Joust clone. Nintendo prides itself on original games, but this was their first real blatent clone of another game. Was Joust itself ever released for the NES?
Joust came out in arcades in 1983, Balloon Fight on the NES in 1986.
Ogg plugin for Quicktime (mac and win32):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtcomponents/
iTunes uses Quicktime for decoding. I haven't tested it yet (I'm still at work).
The player move module is shared between the server and the client.
I know, I worked on it for two years. The server is authoritive however, the client only uses the same simluation for prediction.
Ah, the days of changing Quake physics.
One of the major things I focused on in new QuakeWorld releases was getting the physics to match the original NetQuake as close as possible. I pretty much succeeded in the later versions of Quakeworld. As people probably remember, QW's initial physics model was quite messed up compared to the original Quake. The bunny-hopping, ramp acceleration jumping and fast in-air decceleration were all features of the original Quake physics.
The idea of bringing QuakeWorld to match NetQuake physics was because those were what the original maps were built and designed with. It's also what players were acustomed to.
I wonder how many people remember my attempt to bring NetQuake physics to Quake2. Quake2's initial model was very simple. In my 3.15 Quake2 patch, I tired to add air decceleration and other features of Quake's physics to the engine (because players wanted them, hell I wanted them since I played the game all the damn time). I had to pull them out in 3.16 and restore the original Quake2 physics because of fears I may break the original maps that came with the game.
Quake3 was a mix of both physics models from the mind of Carmack. I think it was a good mix and felt pretty good. Probably should have fixed bunny hopping, however. I feel bunny-hopping was the worst thing to happen to Quake. Quake is about running and killing people, not bouncing everywhere.
480 version
http://www.willowdesign.com/
They have a large number of monitor and LCD display cases. They also have a specific line for the Apple Cinema Displays as well.
Ah, I was incorrect. Halo was released last week. It wasn't a launch title. Wow, it only sold 5,000 copies in its first week? That's just laughable.
Halo was never launched in Japan. Microsoft knows that FPS games don't sell at all in Japan. There is no Halo over there.
You must have been thinking about Dead or Alive 3. It's not selling very well either. A couple weeks ago I saw the XBox sales chart where the Wonderswan was outselling the XBox.
The XBox is dead in Japan.
That actually reminds me of a funny story.
I had just recently installed the public beta of OS X on my G4 Cube. A friend of mine and his girlfriend dropped by to visit and take a peek at it. His girlfriend was a Mac user and wanted to see what OS X would be like.
I was demonstrating some of the new features of the dock, etc and she turned to her boyfriend and whispered, "I want oh-ess-ex." He heard it as "I want oh sex." and answered, "What? Here?!"
Seems confusing OS X with OH-SEX can happen. Perhaps its not a bad thing to make an note to refer to it as oh-ess-ten.
It's not a usage log. It's a local cache of DVD contents.
Read the advisory. Each time a new DVD/CD is put in, media player asks Microsoft for a title and track listing, gets the result and stores it in a local database file. It does not request again if you insert the same movie. So other than 'first use' there is no usage log.
I'm not clear on what the id-string is used on the request. Microsoft is no different than Gracenote who gets your IP, operating system, etc if you put a CD in when you're running XMCD and its configured to asks CDDB/Gracenote for CD track listings.
I've been using CDDB for years. This is no different than before. It's a bunch of privacy concerns for an established method of CD title/track requests (extended to DVDs now apparantly).
If you read the article all this "database" is a copy from the CDDB records (or whatever CDDB is called these days) used for caching. You stick a CD in, it generates a checksum and asks CDDB for the artist/track listing and stores it locally, so it doesn't have to ask again later. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any sending of this database.
It appears they extended to DVDs as well as CDs (just a bigger database I suppose).
The article is a bunch of fluff for a functionality we've used for a long time with numerous programs such as XMCD, AudioCatalyst, etc etc. Microsoft adds it to media player and omg, privacy for getting the disc information for you. I'm pretty sure there's a button to turn it off.
(Gracenote is probably using the CD request data anyway for marketting purposes these days).
Unforunately, Panasonic has no plans to release this unit in the US. For now, it's a Japan area only device.
It's too bad, the idea of a shiny gamecube that can play DVDs is pretty cool. I'm also wondering if the lack of sales outside of Japan is related to piracy issues--you can fit 5.25" discs into it. One of the reasons the Gamecube uses smaller 3" discs is to prevent piracy since it's hard to get a hold of something that will make them.
Lik Sang (a company that make mod and game copying kits) also disassembled the Panasonic Gamecube including probably better pictures. They also modified it to play US games (remove the territory lock out). They mentioned it was a bitch to open--something like 45 special screws. Doesn't sound like a fun job to modify.
The demo scene is much more important than people and Americans generally acknowledge. It is, truly, the last subculture where people code for the love of it. This explains the strength of the scene in Europe, and its nonexistence in America.
Actually, there are many people who are coding for the love of it here in the US and Canada. Just look at the modification seen for games.
Look at the mods for games such as Quake (and its breathen), Half-Life and Unreal. Some have gone commercial, much like Remedy Entertainment went commercial and produced Max Payne. From what I understand, a lot of the people at Remedy were from the european demo scene.
I didn't build ThreeWave Capture The Flag for Quake for money. I built it for the sheer joy of writing a fun game for people to play. Later on, it got me a job and changed my career for the better, but that was simply a perq. Even when I was employed I still continued making modifications to CTF and supporting it because it was FUN.
I imagine Gooseman didn't make Counterstrike for monetary gain either. I'm sure he did it because its fun to make and watch people enjoy. It's the same feeling demo coders get when they watch people get wowed by the demos they make.
So, you're wrong. There is a THRIVING community of coders and content developers who are doing it just for the fun of it here in the US and Canada. Just a slightly different focus between doing a standalone non-interactive demo or a modification of a game. People build them for exactly the same reasons.
Just a note about dying. Diablo2 has a hardcore mode where if you die, you are DEAD.
It is possible to ressurrect your dead guy in the single player hardcore mode, but if you play hardcore on the secure battle.net servers--dying is permanent.
I had a level 20 Barbarian a couple nights ago due to a firewall spell from the Summoner, a mage boss.
You want a challenge? Go play Diablo2 in hardcore mode.
DigiMon isn't a good example. It's not really anime. It's Saban's answer to the PokeMon threat.
Saban is the producer of the Power Rangers. He was the next best thing for kids shows after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He held #1 on the kids radar for several years and produced several clones of this own show (Beetle Borgs and other bad versions).
But then PokeMon showed up. This started taking away the kids audience from the Power Rangers. Saban immediately saw this threat and comissioned an animation studio in Japan to produce a clone show. The result was DigiMon which tries to be anime in look, but is very american in feel. Saban's show isn't nearly as successful as PokeMon either. He's lost the war of kids viewing, but he's still trying to beat a dead horse.
If anything, Saban had an affect on the influence of Japanese culture or anime like shows. The original Power Rangers was made by purchasing a bunch of action footage from a live action super hero show from Japan. If you've ever watched the original Power Rangers, you'll see a bunch of american kids running around, then suddenly cut to wearing costumes and the video quality changes from NTSC original to PAL converted japanese film--the quality change was drastic that you could immediately tell they were entirely different shoots edited together. But it worked and millions of kids watched it.
Even though Power Rangers was a shitty show, its Japanese influence was there. I think this really set up television viewing for anime related titles. Cartoon Network here is showing Dragonball Z, Tenchi Muyo, Gundam Wing and other anime titles. I know that anime has really started to catch on here when a national channel starts showing Tenchi.
I watch Anime because I love animation, but I hate dumb downed kids based animation. My favorite anime shows are stuff like Ghost in the Shell, Tenchi, El Hazard. Of course, for shock value there's always a showing of my Urotsukidoji [Lengend of the Overfiend] Perfect Collection DVD--Definitely NOT FOR CHILDREN stamped on it.
If anything, all this recent popularity of anime related shows just gives me more reasons to actually watch TV. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Doom 2 had a funny one: at the very end of the game, if you weren't cheating, you had to make it to an elevator in the center of the room and shoot at a hole across the room once the elevator was as high as it would go. If you were cheating, and I couldn't beat the game without doing so, you could get into the little chamber you were shooting at. Inside was (I think) John Carmack's bloody head on a stake.
:)
Actually, it was John Romero's head. You can tell by the hair.
It was funny--the head even had pain animations so it would scream when you damaged it.
Another easter egg in Doom2 was the sound that played when you entered the final room that had the hole where you had to shoot into (and damage the head). The sound was some bizarre language being spoken. If you take the sound sample and reversed it, you'll find it's Romero with lots of heavy reverb saying, "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero."