Might & Magic really had the best maps, too. I loved discovering just how accurate they were to the actual in-game grid-based world, too. Like, a patch of tiny trees on the map would actually be in the game, and I could guess which corner of a particular square map segment would have a big boss creature that was shown tromping around on the world map. Incredible. Up there with the Ultima cloth maps.
I had the Ultima maps hanging on my wall when I was a kid, Ultimas 4, 6, and 7. Cloth versus paper, but the M&M maps were always so much more vibrant and detailed. No comparison, really.
Actual physical video game maps are still the coolest things in the world to me. I’ll buy a boxed game if it includes a map even today, I did for RDR2 and Tides of Numenera. Not quite as cool as Ulitma’s cloth maps, but they don’t make them like that anymore.
They were actually really cheap cloth and poorly printed. They looked drab, completely unlike the colorful even cheerful might and magic paper maps. I loved Ultima so much that didn’t matter to me.
And yet my Ultima maps still hold up and are in one piece today, whereas the M&M maps, while very lovely, are coming apart at the creases.
I never owned cloth maps, but yeah, those paper maps definitely came apart at the creases. Two of my favorite maps came with Wing Commander Prophecy and Morrowind. Luckily, some nice thoughtful people scanned them in, so I can still view them online.
I agree, the vibrant M&M maps were particularly beautiful, but the more muted Ultima maps and their “feelie” qualities were wonderful too.
I loved them all, really. The games, the little tchotchkes that came in the box, the whole experience. I know a lot of my strong feelings now are simply nostalgia but what can I say, it’s a powerful thing.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with nostalgia, especially with video games IMO. The way gaming has evolved, there are simply things from prior eras that define the hobby and are amazing both for the time and compared to things you get today. In this instance, all those doodads were actually useful items included with the software. As you noted up above, those maps were accurate! You don’t get that kind of thing today.
As someone who delves into the past regularly and enjoys it very much, I often find myself marveling at just how good we had it. No one could keep up in the 80’s or 90’s any more than they can today. The creativity and quality of the past easily matches today’s output. It just had to do it with less computing power, which makes it all the more incredible when you go back and experience those games on their own terms.
These books help bring all that back to you in a unique way.
They certainly do!
Many of the little add-ins weren’t useful in-game, though, like the silver serpent necklace, black moonstone (which was just a shiny black rock, as I recall) or codex of ultimate wisdom coin. I loved that stuff regardless.
It has been nice that the indie wave has revived interest in “retro” games. I was saying that throughout the mid-90s too, to my brothers, since I didn’t have the internet to post on yet, about how I don’t understand why everyone is moving to 3D when 2D games have just started to finally look excellent. And then why everyone in the FPS arena was moving to story-based shooters when there was still so much to be explored in pure shooters like Doom, and so on. It always felt like genres and game types that were popular were moved past too quickly as technology marched onward. And now, we’ve got so much computing power, and finally we’ve got indies and small development teams going backwards and mining the unexplored potential in areas that were moved past too quickly.
Back to books though, I honestly can’t remember if I’ve read Masters of Doom, or if I’ve only read excerpts from Masters of Doom. I know I’ve read a lot of it, just from other sources. I do own it. I should go back and read it cover to cover.
It’s a great book. I know I probably mention this every time it comes up, but the book describes the DOOM 2 launch event here in NYC at the Limelight, and I was there in 1994, wearing a too-small T-shirt the GT interactive PR lady told me to put on, so it really tickles me to read about it 30 years later.
I didn’t realize until I read Masters of Doom that iD was based just up the road from where I was attending university at the time. I lost a lot of valuble study hours to Wolf 3D and Doom.
I dunno, man. I doubt I could have gone on that Quest of the Avatar without the Ankh around my neck.
I discovered in my freshman year in college that I was bad at staying away from gaming temptation. So after hearing about it all summer from my parents after my freshman year, I went cold turkey for the rest of college. No more gaming during Spring and Fall semesters. I would only play games during the summers while on vacation. That worked out well, I did well the rest of my time in college, plus gaming felt more precious during the summers too.
The one thing I really remember about Masters of Doom is Carmack going off to buy a Next workstation in Madison, WI.
I did something kind of similar, though it was mostly out of necessity, not having much money for gaming. I didn’t even have my own PC, mostly played on my roommate’s computer. I went through the shareware levels of a lot of games over and over.
In 91-92 I was attending the Russian course at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, and people would line up to play Civ on my pc. I would usually be off studying, and luckily avoided getting sucked into not keeping up with the workload by playing all the time. I don’t think anyone actually ended up getting dropped from the course because of it, but there were probably a couple of close calls.
The nice packaging and little extras are what I miss most about the industry. I still have 100+ old PC releases. Once we were firmly in the Steam Age, PC game packaging quickly went to shit. I won’t say Half-Life 2 started the trend, but uh, I think Half-Life 2 probably started the trend.
Ironically, the film industry has really come into its own in this regard over the last several years. There are many boutique Blu-ray studios that put out fantastic releases that not only have amazing transfers, but great packaging loaded with goodies as well. Not to drive us off topic, but here are a few from my ever-expanding collection.
I kind of wish there were similar companies in the game industry which licensed and re-released classic PC games with the kind of attention to detail and passion that the film industry does. The gaming industry in general has just become so disposable and ephemeral, and that’s really sad.
Limited Run Games does this and sometimes handles PC games. Check it out.