Apocalypse Then: Daikatana

10 Years of Daikatana

On this day in gaming, Daikatana was released. It was developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos. The game was released on PC, N64, and Game Boy.

The brainchild of John Romero, who previously co-founded id Software and worked on classics like Doom and Quake, Daikatana was a FPS that used the Quake II engine, and is also known as one of the biggest flops of the video game industry. It was technologically outdated way before its release, which was delayed several times over a period of three years. And not to mention numerous team members working on the game quitting while still in development.

John Romero recently, nearing the ten year anniversary of the game, commented on the controversial ad for the game, which had the slogan: “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch.”

"I knew it was risky, and I didn't want to do it. It didn't make sense. I mean, there's the whole culture of smack talk that goes with games and especially an FPS, and that was something I was known for. You know, I never wanted to make you my bitch, not you, not them, not any of the other players and, most importantly, not any of my fans.

"I should have stopped that ad. I didn't, and I'm sorry for that. Our head of marketing tells me that they spent a lot of time working on it, and ... all these other things. I should have said fucking no. I've looked back on that three minute meeting a hundred times."

"Up until that ad, I felt I had a great relationship with the gamer and the game development community and that ad changed everything.The game insulted nearly everyone who read it. It was a terrible marketing decision. I apologize for letting it loose in the first place."

"It's a miracle it was released at all. There were issues on the inside and the outside. Half the team left. ... that's not the best way to make a game."

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Source: News: Romero "regrets" Daikatana ad campaign [Eurogamer via Gamesauce]

Apocalypse Then: Daikatana

Tom Hall, man Behind Rise of the Triad, Suffers Stroke

Tom Hall, known as the man and mind behind games like Commander Keen, and Rise of the Triad, along with others, suffered a stroke recently.  He’s currently in hospital undergoing rehabilitation.

I was surprised to see, while checking through the feeds of twitter accounts that I follow that contained a tweet where Tom admitted to having a stroke yesterday.

“Um, had a stroke. Yeah, I know right! The hospital food is decent though. (Excuse if I don't respond quickly though--lotsa tests.)”

“Thx for all the good thoughts. Start rehab tomorrow to fix strength/coordination in right hand/foot. Woo hoo! Rockin' the rehab! Oh yeeeah!”

“Thx for the love but don't send flowers! Hay fever! Send a card if you must. But facebook love is enough!”

“They took 20 vials of blood this morning. My arml went flat like apiece of paper. Lucky I had that inflation tube installed.”

George Broussard of 3DR Realms tweeted the following:

“Tom Hall, @tommune, had a stroke and is in hospital. Designed Keen, ROTT, Anachronox, more. id, 3dr, ion and king's isle. Wish him well.”

John Romero tweeted the following as well:

“@tommune had a stroke yesterday. He's in the hospital. Send him well wishes, please.”

George and Tom know each other quite well seeing Tom worked at Apogee Software back in the 90’s after leaving id Software supposedly after a disagreement with John Carmack over the creative direction Doom was taking.

Tom and John are friends who co-founded id Software along with John Carmack and Adrian Carmack.
Tom, in addition to being credited to working on ROTT and the Keen series, also worked at id Software on Wolf 3D, Spear of Destiny. After leaving Apogee after working on Duke Nukem II, ROTT, Terminal Velocity and Duke Nukem 3D, later on he worked on a little game called Deus Ex as well as Anachronox at Ion Storm with his friend John Romero.

He’s now at KingsIsle Entertainment.

Tom is also credited with naming the popular file format WAD, or "Where's All the Data?".
On a personal note, I wish Tom all the best. I’ve enjoyed playing his games over the years.
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Source: Twitter

Tom Hall, man Behind Rise of the Triad, Suffers Stroke

Another Developing Craze: Formspring

First it was social networking sites like Facebook. Then along came micro-blogging with Twitter. Now another developing craze seems to be coming along with something called Formspring – which I’ve seen popping up in the last week or so.

And all ready I’ve noticed two legends in the video game industry on there, answering questions. Because that’s what Formspring is about. Apparently it’s a social networking site that allows people to ask a person questions, and then they answer them. It’s like a big open interview.

Those two legends I mentioned are George Broussard of 3D Realms, whom some cite as the failure behind Duke Nukem Forever, and none other than John “The” Romero, formerly of id Software, Ion Storm, and now Slipgate Ironworks, and creator of Daikatana and other greats.

Examples of some questions for John:

Q:Of all your cars, which was your favorite?

Q:Are you and Tom Hall still friends?

Q:Steve Jobs or Bill Gates ?

Q:Do you play Quake Live?

And George:

Q:Why wasn't there a sequel to shadow warrior?

Q:What happened to LevelLord?

Q:What makes Duke such a badass? And what's your favorite Duke quote?

Q:Why don't you answer all the questions you get here?

And of course, as you can imagine, George will answer anything… that isn’t about Duke Nukem Forever.

So, if you have any questions for these guys or anyone else, then head over to Formspring. Likely some other well-known industry vets will crop up there sometime, or all ready are.

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formspring.me

Another Developing Craze: Formspring

John Romero Reminisces, Drops Some Doom Trivia

John Romero was the designer on Doom while he was still at id Software, the company he co-founded, back in the nineties.

John often tweets some interesting little titbits, and recently on John’s twitter account he left a few tweets related to Doom, seeing as it was Doom’s 16th birthday recently:

“instead of making Doom, we almost ended up making Aliens instead, after the movie. An hour later we decided not to.”

“It's DOOM's 16 birthday today - Happy Birthday DOOM!
Happy Birthday DOOM!”

“DOOM only cost id Software about $700k to produce in 1993”

There you are, some Doom trivia. I like video game trivia. Don’t you? Maybe John will leave some more Doom tweets this month.

I noticed how Tom Hall didn’t have anything to tweet about Doom. Perhaps he’s bitter, and understandably, seeing as he was fired from id by John Carmack during the development process of Doom. He was the one who made the infamous Doom Bible, the original design document for the game.

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John Romero on Twitter

Tom Hall on Twitter

John Romero Reminisces, Drops Some Doom Trivia

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has a Problem Shutting his Mouth, it Seems

Randy Pitchford has brought up some arguments recently about Valve owning Steam being a bad idea, especially for small indie developers, not once, but twice. And Pitchford has also said that Gabe Newells’s refusal to develop on the PS3 is foolish.

Not to mention, earlier on in the year, he called out both Infinity Ward and Bungie, and told them to do something different, instead of Call of Duty and Halo, respectively, all the time.

All could be considered valid arguments, although I personally think that sticking up for the PC like Gabe does is admirable, but I still think to myself, damn, talk about biting the hand that feeds. Gearbox only got into the game industry, and is only where it is, because of Valve and Half-Life. If it hadn’t been for Opposing Force, and all the subsequent expansions it was involved in because Valve threw them a bone, Borderlands might not have even been released the other day.

I mean, I think that this is nothing new. Randy has had a big mouth, and an inflated ego since day one. Proof of this? In Opposing Force at the end of the game, when you fight that ugly beast, there’s a message played backwards, which says: “To win the game, you must kill me, Randy Pitchford”. Of course, this line was taken from Doom II, copying another attention seeker looking for the limelight, John Romero.

Speaking of Borderlands , I should go and get it sometime soon, to see if it's worth all of Randy's cockiness lately. It looks good, and I hear it plays well too. It definitely draws some inspiration f-Life. You can tell by the red damage indicators when the player is shot. I've seen that in trailers.

And by the way, Aliens: Colonial Marines had better be good.

And Duke Begins?...

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has a Problem Shutting his Mouth, it Seems

John Romero Comments on Passing of Don Punchatz

For those of you who need to catch up, Don Punchatz, AKA, the guy who made the Doom box art, passed away last month. ‘The Romero’ recently tweeted on twitter about Punchatz:

“Don Punchatz (R.I.P.) did DOOM's box art and it was awesome. He wasn't offered a royalty as was mis-reported recently.”

The original article over at spectrumfantasticart.com that some sites, including AAA, sourced and quoted from, claimed that Don was offered either a flat fee (which was lower than his normal going rate) or a percentage of the game's profits. Don took the flat fee, although according to Romero, there wasn’t a choice.

Well, you can’t ask Don about it now, but I guess we’ll be hearing something from his son, Gregor, sooner or later.

John Romero Comments on Passing of Don Punchatz

It’s Your Birthday: John Romero

On this day, back in 1967, Alfonso John Romero was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He turns 42 today.

John Romero is a designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry, and is one of the original co-founders of id Software. He’s worked on a number of their games like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Doom, Doom II and Quake. He also worked as Executive Producer and Game Designer on Heretic and HeXen.

Other than id Software, he worked at or co-founded companies like inCider, Capital Ideas Software, Origin Systems, Inside Out Software, Ideas From The Deep, Softdisk, Ion Storm, Monkeystone Games, Midway Games, Gazillion Entertainment and Slipgate Ironworks. Slipgate Ironworks recently experienced some layoffs. Slipgate Ironworks is owned by Gazillion Entertainment, of which John is the Executive Vice-President and Creative Director. He’s also the Chairman of the CPL Advisory Board.

Interesting facts about John Romero:

• He’s lived in Colorado, Arizona, California, and England.
• John started programming games when he was 11 or so.
• He is credited with coining the term "deathmatch", and is thought of as the “father of deathmatch competitions”.
• John likes to make sound effects and taunt people while he plays games. There’s a song in Doom II, called “Waiting for Romero to Play”, because he was so electrifying and entertaining.
• The pose of the space marine on the cover of the Doom box was taken from a photo of John Romero.
• Daikatana is labeled as one of the worst games of all time.
• John Romero was once killed but came back to life.
• John is a big fan of wikis.
• He refers to himself as “The Romero”.
• John almost worked at Blue Sky Productions, eventually renamed Looking Glass Technologies. Looking Glass Technologies made System Shock, which was technologically superior to Doom and Doom II, but was overlooked despite this.
• He once put his Ferrari up for auction on eBay. He seems to love them as much as John Carmack does.
• He’s been married about three times, including his current wife, and has three children. 
• His son works at Slipgate Ironworks.
• He’s named after his father, Alfonso. His mother is Virginia, and he has a brother named Ralph.
• John is often said to have the best hair in the industry.
• John was the final boss, The Icon of Sin, in Doom II. He was presented as a head on a stick.
• John likes listening to heavy metal music. This is why most of the music in Doom is inspired by metal bands, although the MIDI tracks were composed by Bobby Prince.
• John likes being in the spotlight. John Carmack said so.
• There’s a 95 % chance that John Romero will read this.

Quotes by John Romero

"I completely love playing and designing games and always will. I am so into games that I listen to game music all day. That may sound strange, but you can guarantee I'm a hardcore gamer and would never let you down by designing a crappy title." – Daikatana

"If you walk into CompUSA or Babbage's and see the vast array of game titles on the shelf, chances are that 95% of those titles are not worth playing." – Daikatana

"Daikatana will be the greatest game of all time"

It’s Your Birthday: John Romero

Apocalypse Then- Doom II: Hell on Earth

It’s the fifteenth anniversary of Doom II- the sequel to the game credited with kicking off the FPS genre, Doom. Doom II is the best-selling id game ever, and also received the Origins Award. It was also the first game to be rated by the ESRB.

The game was naturally developed by the masters, id Software, and has been released on many platforms, including PC, Linux, Amiga 1200, GBA, Macintosh, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Tapwave Zodiac, and Xbox Live Arcade. Unlike Doom, Doom II was commercially released and sold in stores.

It used the same id Tech 1 engine that its predecessor used, and introduced little new stuff besides the super (or double-barreled) shotgun, as well as some new enemies, like my favourite- the Hell Knight, basically a “smaller”, less powerful version of the Baron of Hell. The new power-up was the Megasphere, which doubled Doomguy’s maximum health and armour. That super shotgun was one of the reasons why I prefer Doom II to Doom sometimes.

And one gameplay change in Doom II was that instead of separate episodes, which basically got rid of all the player’s collected weapons and such, it introduced one continuous campaign which climaxed in a battle with the Icon of Sin at the end, and if you were a little sneaky, you would find that the mastermind was actually John Romero’s severed head on a stick.

Doom 4 is expected by some to be a remake of Doom II, just like Doom 3 was a remake of Doom essentially.

Apocalypse Then- Doom II: Hell on Earth

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Now Available

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is now available at Amazon.com.

"Starting today, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is available for shipping at Amazon.com. Current Mac OS 10.5 Leopard users are eligible to upgrade to Snow Leopard at the very low price of $29.

Snow Leopard is a truly exciting addition to the Mac OS X line, with half the footprint of previous versions, great new features in Expose & Stacks, quicker Time Machine backup, and faster wireless network interaction. It’s the world’s most advanced operating system, finely tuned." - Amazon.com

And if you need any motivation on buying the product, then you can speak to John Romero over at Twitter. He just bought a copy.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Now Available

John Romero says "Leave me Alone!"

Last month, John Romero tweeted some stuff about id Software selling out, and other such stuff. Of course gaming journos ate it up, and gamers the world over hated on John.

Now he's caught on after reading through a lot of these reports, and has said the following,

"I was wrong about Fallout 3 buying Doom. Zenimax bought both from their $300m coffers. Acquire!"

Followed by:

"Was reading comments about my id/zenimax tweets a month ago. Should not be a news story, lol."

But John, a little bird (it was John Carmack! ) told us that you like the spotlight. Well, hint taken, I won't say any more...until next time!

John Romero says "Leave me Alone!"

Apocalypse Then: Daikatana

On this day in gaming, in 2000, Daikatana was released. 

Daikatana was made by Ion Storm, now out of business, but once headed up by ex id Software co-founder, John Romero. The game is known as one of the major commercial failures of the computer game industry.

Apocalypse Then: Daikatana