I don’t know how this started
Yeah, I’m also in the group of people who didn’t know it was still around, but I still remember the time when this was the go-to site for score checks.
That’s a shame. I still used to check them every once in a while. Especially their all-time lists. For example, when I was trying to buy a Nintendo Switch game for my niece.
Damn, I used to use that to see how games and consoles held up very briefly, in addition to getting links to all the reviews for said games.
Oh well, Everything will be curated through the WIndows Store in our brave new future anyway.
I missed this story last week. Maybe one last one for 2019. I enjoyed reading about Silas. I’d never heard of him until today.
But unlike those who found fame and fortune from their work, he remains a somewhat obscure figure.
yep game programmers in the 80s were totally mainstream celebrities.
Thanks Polygon
Damn Boomer programmers.
They are called incels nowadays.
Well, fame within the gaming community at least. Everyone in the gaming community knows people like Sid Meier, Richard Garriott, and others, and that’s the type of people they talk to in the article: people we’ve heard of. I didn’t read that sentence and think “oh, they mean mainstream celebrity”. What a strange leap to make.
PC Gamer has an excellent making of article about the development of Lucas Arts’ seminal X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game that goes into exhaustive detail about the challenges the team faced.
My favourite bit is when they showed it to George Lucas and he was like “There’s no Imperial Navy! Oh well…”
Madness.
The article is about Tie Fighter, not the X-wing vs Tie Fighter game :P
But really, Tie Fighter is one of my favorite games. Looking back, it’s one of those games like Fallout New Vegas were the recipe for success was precisely being a sequel to a similar game, as starting with an engine, base art assets, etc, allows you to focus your development time in making a damn good game. It’s also the anti-thesis of ''open world" or “sandbox” games, and a triumph of hand-craft experiences, with very carefully designed missions, and of course briefings, cutscenes, etc.
I"m confused, he left and then what, changed his mind and came back? Here’s a link to him raging about Myst of all things:
Wow… He seems to REALLY hate macs!
Myst was, of course, a game championed by the worst people who existed in the 1990s: Mac owners. Mac owners had a problem. They’d spent a vast amount of money on a machine that had about seven games available for it total, no right mouse button, and no eject button on the floppy drive. They’d been sold such a lemon, and such an expensive lemon, that there was nothing for it but to double-down and pretend it was by far the superior choice. “Well actually it’s MUCH better for graphic design work,” they’d say, having never done any graphic design work, nor ever intending to. (“And why should I need an eject button when I can drag this icon laboriously across the desktop and drop it on this other icon instead? Or more usually unfold a paperclip and frantically wedge it into this tiny hole on the front of the machine conveniently located where your PC wastes space with a button.”) And they’d delude themselves and all those around them that the scant few games they could play were all absolute stone-cold classics. Thus Myst. The Macciest of all Mac games, a shiny veneer plastered across empty nothingness.
Has a lot of hate for Myst too, I mean love, hate or feel indifferent about it, I just find it comical he is getting so worked up over a game from 30 years ago.
I guess that’s what he’s going for!
But of course, but what’s actually funny is he’s still banging on about it 30 years later and he still means it, as you can tell from him then arguing with people in comments about it.
One bit was intended comedy, the other bit (that I actually found to be the funny part) wasn’t.
Back though to my original question: did he unquit then?
Weird! Yeah I have no idea (shrug).
As far as I can tell, he still freelances occasionally for RPS, but mainly works on his new Patreon-funded site, Buried Treasure.
And I’ll be frequently linking out [to RPS], since they still rather pleasingly revive me to review such games every now and then.
Microsoft is bringing the original Halo campaign to Windows PCs today. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has been remastered with 4K support for PC, and it arrives 18 years after the game debuted as a launch title for the original Xbox.
Well, Halo 1 got released on PC in 2003, but hey.