3 Years Running!

Apocalypso’s Atomic Arcade is my first ever blog.

After writing on HubPages for a few months, I went about learning the ins and outs of Blogger/Blogspot. AAA was a guinea pig of sorts where I tested things out. Every conceivable widget out there was added in to this blog, and I had nothing but copy and paste stories mainly from other gaming blogs and websites, before finally settling on writing more original content, which actually worked a bit more in my favour as it turns out.

AAA is a place where I can publish all my weird and wacky observations about games, gaming, and other such things. I’ll likely never shut it down as long as I live. Over the past while I’ve slowly been taking a look at my blog and getting rid of superfluous crap that isn’t needed and sort of starting from scratch; tidying things up a bit. I actually prefer going for a more minimalist approach nowadays to having a lot of space taken up by rubbish.

So maybe in the near future we’ll see an unpolluted AAA, near as can be to being new and fresh again.

Hopefully this year is going to be a good one. I need to give it my all. I’ve got various projects on the go – some have been dormant for a while and need to be resurrected, and others actually have yet to be brought to life finally. More and more websites out there beckon my attention as a self-proclaimed “online adventurer”; publisher; supposed freelancer.

I mean, after all, 2012 might be my last year to get all of this done, if the end-is-nigh predictions are anything to go by. It also just so happens as it is that January 24 is D-Day for this SOPA and PIPA business – whether it is put in to motion or not.

3 Years Running!

RoboDuke: The Story of RoboCop and Duke Nukem

When Duke Nukem II came out in 1993 when 2D sidescrollers were being quickly replaced by pseudo-3D shooters like Doom, we saw Duke Nukem in a firing range taking shots at a target. This was a scene that was in homage to RoboCop so they say – a film and character not often associated with Duke Nukem along with all his other pop culture references and inspirations.

Joe Siegler did the voice for the character who uttered the phrase: “I’m back!” which is obviously a reference to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Duke Nukem’s name is often said to have been used in the first game and later changed to Duke Nukum later on after it was discovered that there was an action figure with the same name. But it was found out later that this character’s name was not trademarked and so Apogee went back to using the name Nukem instead.

But where did they get the name Nukem in the first place? RoboCop. If you’ve seen the film and watched through you’ve have noticed a scene where a TV commercial is seen, which depicts a family playing a modernised boardgame of sorts. This game turned out to be called “Nukem”. And the font used was similar to how it would appear in the early Duke Nukem games. Probably later, Duke was used because it’s not only a cool sounding name, but it rhymes with the surname too.

So this is just an interesting thing I thought I would bring to your attention. Hell, it could even be argued that Duke even looked a bit like Alex J. Murphy in the film. Maybe that’s why he started wearing the sunglasses.

RoboDuke: The Story of RoboCop and Duke Nukem

Classic Game Collecting: Diablo II Gold

I’ve been looking at all the brochures that come with the newspapers just lately, seeing as it’s Christmas soon. I also went online to view several retail websites, too. Why? to see all the games on offer, of course.

One thing caught my eye though: Diablo II Gold. In preparation for the release of Diablo III, Blizzard seems to have re-released a lot of their classics, but in some killer bundles. In addition to Diablo II, there’s StarCraft Gold and WarCraft III Gold – and these all come with the available expansions for said games.

Then it was off to the actual stores to take a look. At most places, such as Musica, CNA, and Look & Listen, I mainly spotted the expansion pack, Lords of Destruction, and the price was usually around R99.

Eventually I had to ask a salesperson if they had the Gold edition I was looking for in stock. It wasn’t even on the shelves. They’d been hiding copies in the back room. But I managed to get one for R99. And to think that on the shelves, they had either Diablo II or the expansion pack both going for the same price, separately. One wonders if they intentionally try to screw you over, sometimes. So instead of getting both for R198 and upwards, Diablo II Gold is at least half price.

Score. Now I’m going to play this old classic along with all the mods and unofficial expansions that have been made over the years. Like I always say, sometimes it pays to wait – in this case more than a decade.

Classic Game Collecting: Diablo II Gold

2011: Full of Video Game Anniversaries

In the latest issue of NAG magazine, I had a rare read of Miktar’s column. In addition to being a columnist and overseas correspondent (East coast of the USA), he is also a former moderator on the NAG Online forum – although was shunted out of the job, probably because he was a massive troll, according to some. It was bad for business.

But he brought up an interesting conversation piece. 2011 is chock full of anniversaries relating to video games. Landmark, revolutionary titles that paved the way for all the games you play today.

Let’s have a look at those he listed:

30th Anniversary: Ultima, Castle Wolfenstein, Frogger, Ms. Pacman

25th Anniversary: The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castelvania

20th Anniversary: Street Fighter II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Civilization

15th Anniversary: Resident Evil, Pokémon, Diablo, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot

10th Anniversary: Grand Theft Auto III, Halo, Devil May Cry

The ones I care about most here are probably Castle Wolfenstein (without it we wouldn’t have had Wolf 3D, RTCW, and every other game that followed in that series); Frogger (played it a hell of a lot as a child); Street Fighter II (hailed as one of the best fighting games of all time – the measuring stick to which all other fighters to this day are compared); Sonic the Hedgehog (come on…); Resident Evil (made survival horror the popular genre that it is – or was, anyway); Tomb Raider (without it, you probably wouldn’t have Uncharted, maybe even Assassin’s Creed either); Crash Bandicoot (played this a lot as a kid, too); Grand Theft Auto III (one of the best games ever).

But suspiciously there were a few left off the list at some point. I think most of the games he mentioned were released in November or December (I know because I looked them up). So there was some sort of trend he was adhering to.

I’d add in Duke Nukem 3D. It’s the last truly great game in that series, which even DNF failed to topple this year. Released at a time when people still used the term “Doom Clone”, it proved that it wasn’t just another rip-off title – it was THE rip-off title; the undisputed king of rip-offs, taking “inspiration” from several films and other games, as well as pop culture. But it had enough going for it to make it pound for pound the best FPS I’ve played to date, honestly.

Quake wasn’t brought up either. Major oversight there. Also released in 1996 like DN3D, it was the first fully 3D FPS, and debuted the Quake engine. Without this engine, we might not have had every other id Tech engine released to date, and probably every other id game released to date, either. Every Doom, Quake, and even Wolfenstein title to follow used a version of the id Tech engine. Many, many games from other developers to date have used id Tech engines as well. You wouldn’t even have Call of Duty, seeing as all CoD games to date have used snippets of id Tech code in the engines that power them.

Final Doom. All right, so it was a glorified double expansion pack for Doom II: Hell on Earth – but what expansion packs at that!

The Plutonia Experiment was particularly challenging. Created by the Casali brothers, it made Doom and Doom II seem like child’s play for the most part. TNT: Evilution wasn’t that spectacular, but it did see one of the most beloved guys at id get hired – and that man is Tim Willits, who still serves as creative director at id today. He started off as just a mapper, and fan of the original games.

If anything, Final Doom showed that fans could make a decent game, filled with challenging maps and maybe tad innovation that impressed developers so much that they hired them and put them on the payroll. This trend has continued to this day, with modders and mappers being picked from the modding community and given jobs. You often see this with companies such as Valve – Valve is predominantly made of former modders.

So anyway, 2011: what a year – for new games and old!

2011: Full of Video Game Anniversaries

400th Episode of The Verge, The Verge Turns 3

If you haven’t heard of or seen The Verge before, it’s a show about video gaming on DSTV, channel 123 (Vuzu). It’s been running for nearly the past 3 years, since late 2008. Wednesday the 23rd of November, 2011 marks the 400th episode of this show.

Yes, 400 episodes of news; trailers; reviews; looking at Pippa and her various “interesting” hairstyles; changing timeslots; putting up with Mo (and more recently Thomas), and even the odd bit of the old mockery from Lala – odd coming from a show whose target audience happens to be gamers.

The 400th episode will have reviews on Rage, Battlefield 3, and will feature Pippa’s top 5 iPhone games.
December 1st marks the show’s 3rd birthday – but there likely won’t be an episode of either The Verge or PlayR on that night, seeing as Dec 1 is a Thursday, and neither show airs any episodes on a Thursday.

Source: The Verge

400th Episode of The Verge, The Verge Turns 3

New Review Published: Stealth Bastard

The latest and biggest thing to hit the indie PC game scene is Stealth Bastard. You’ve read about it; you’ve heard of it; you’ve played it. Yes, you have. It’s free. That’s how I know you know about it.

To summarise, it’s a freeware 2D platforming title developed by London-based developer, Curve Studios. It’s similar to Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell in theme, but more like Abuse (that old game for MS-DOS) or even Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey in the way that it plays. There’s stealth, death, and that sort of thing, but much more fast-paced than any stealthy FPS title.

Anyway, I downloaded it recently and gave it a go, and managed to actually write a 1500 word review on it. Don’t quite know how, though. You can go through to the piece on HP, if you care.

New Review Published: Stealth Bastard

Dead Cyborg Episode 2: Halfway To Release

I was taking a look through my bookmarks and saw on Dead Cyborg’s Twitter account that Episode 2 of this free-to-play beggarware title is getting a little closer to being released. It’s halfway there to be exact – as far as donations go. Endre, the one-man developer behind the project, claims that the donation meter is 50% full.

The actual development on Episode 2 is coming along too. There was a trailer of it released not too long ago, and it’s looking pretty good. This time, the player ascends to the surface and sees first hand the aftermath of the apocalyptic war that took place, and drove people down in to bunkers in the first place.

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Source: Dead Cyborg on Twitter

Dead Cyborg Episode 2: Halfway To Release