What went right and what went wrong
March 23, 2011 1:03 PM Subscribe
For the 25th Game Developers Conference, organizers hosted several postmortems for classic games such as Out Of This World, Doom, and Maniac Mansion. They are now free to view online.
Games Included are:
Out of This World / Another World
Doom
Bejeweled
Elite
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Populous
Prince of Persia
Raid on Bungeling Bay
Games Included are:
Out of This World / Another World
Doom
Bejeweled
Elite
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Populous
Prince of Persia
Raid on Bungeling Bay
I only got to see a few of these when I was at GDC. I recommend watching Peter Molyneaux talk Populous, where he described his introduction to the game industry via baked beans. I'm still not sure I believe him, but it's a great story.
posted by malphigian at 1:32 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by malphigian at 1:32 PM on March 23, 2011
I always thought that game was called "Maniac Mansion". I are dumb.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:38 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:38 PM on March 23, 2011
Awesome! I heard of these and badly wanted to see them. So glad they got uploaded.
posted by flatluigi at 1:39 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by flatluigi at 1:39 PM on March 23, 2011
Wow, even Rain on Bungeling Bay... this is pretty much a best of my video game youth, it's just missing Boulder Dash and Gauntlet.
posted by furtive at 1:50 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by furtive at 1:50 PM on March 23, 2011
Oh, Raid on Bungeling Bay. How you stole precious hours of school work from me.
Thanks for that.
On preview, same as furtive.
posted by fijiwriter at 1:51 PM on March 23, 2011
Thanks for that.
On preview, same as furtive.
posted by fijiwriter at 1:51 PM on March 23, 2011
Play:
Out of This World
Doom
Bejeweled
Elite
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Populous
Prince of Persia
Raid on Bungeling Bay
posted by Rhaomi at 1:56 PM on March 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Out of This World
Doom
Bejeweled
Elite
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Populous
Prince of Persia
Raid on Bungeling Bay
posted by Rhaomi at 1:56 PM on March 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Doh, in my haste I misspelled it...twice. Mods if you wanna make that "Maniac Mansion" that would be great!
And even though I was at the GDC I couldn't see any of them, because I got the Summits pass instead (since the main pass is Seriously Expensive) so I'm pretty happy these are online.
posted by hellojed at 2:00 PM on March 23, 2011
And even though I was at the GDC I couldn't see any of them, because I got the Summits pass instead (since the main pass is Seriously Expensive) so I'm pretty happy these are online.
posted by hellojed at 2:00 PM on March 23, 2011
I fixed it, but to do so I had to distract Weird Ed with a trout in the kitchen and then feed the tentacle some plutonium, and it took me like seventeen tries.
posted by cortex at 2:06 PM on March 23, 2011 [13 favorites]
posted by cortex at 2:06 PM on March 23, 2011 [13 favorites]
These are amazing. The clip on Marble Madness is worth the price of admission alone for its discussion of the economics of 80s arcade games and of the development environments that these games were cooked up in. Awesome!
posted by a small part of the world at 2:18 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by a small part of the world at 2:18 PM on March 23, 2011
I can't wait to watch these. This list has some of my favourites.
posted by Theta States at 2:25 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by Theta States at 2:25 PM on March 23, 2011
Wow, the Out of This World one is awesome! He's showing video from his rotoscoping work on the Amiga! aaaaaahhhhhhh so cool.
posted by circular at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by circular at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2011
God, this is amazing. If only I had a contiguous hour to spare.
posted by rouftop at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by rouftop at 2:29 PM on March 23, 2011
Awesome. I was a big fan of Out of this World and Flashback.
posted by electroboy at 2:33 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by electroboy at 2:33 PM on March 23, 2011
Action Button says Out of This World / Another World is the greatest game ever. DOOM is also on the list.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:50 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:50 PM on March 23, 2011
I too loved OOTW, bought it when it came out. It had the most fucked up paper-based copy protection ever, though. Unreadable red on unreadable purple paper or something. Hate!
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:00 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:00 PM on March 23, 2011
This is one of my favorite things ever, and I've always been amazed that there aren't more things like this. You have seriously made my week with this post. Thanks!
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:08 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:08 PM on March 23, 2011
Out of this World / Another World / Flashback is indubitably my favorite video game(s) ever.
posted by georg_cantor at 4:08 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by georg_cantor at 4:08 PM on March 23, 2011
You gotta play Elite in the original BBC B version. The fact that there was an engrossing strategy shooty game that could fit into about 24KB was amazing ...
(... and you're glancing at the clock at the after-school computer club; 3:45, so you slip out the pirate copy of Elite from the back of your workbook and turn to make sure that Mr Dinklage is still helping Spotty Smallsworth to understand WHILE loops for the fifth time — you've paid Smallsworth a small fortune in Curly Wurlies to act dumb, slide the disk in close the gate, invoke the magic * command and the DFS drive goes brr-brr, please please please don't fail on the sector you think is iffy after the pencil shavings incident, hoping you're really at the machine that the loudspeaker conveniently doesn't work so that the docking tune doesn't bust you, and THERE the game's up fly out shoot some things, mind the mining lasers don't overheat and ... DAMN, THE BELL!)
posted by scruss at 5:27 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
(... and you're glancing at the clock at the after-school computer club; 3:45, so you slip out the pirate copy of Elite from the back of your workbook and turn to make sure that Mr Dinklage is still helping Spotty Smallsworth to understand WHILE loops for the fifth time — you've paid Smallsworth a small fortune in Curly Wurlies to act dumb, slide the disk in close the gate, invoke the magic * command and the DFS drive goes brr-brr, please please please don't fail on the sector you think is iffy after the pencil shavings incident, hoping you're really at the machine that the loudspeaker conveniently doesn't work so that the docking tune doesn't bust you, and THERE the game's up fly out shoot some things, mind the mining lasers don't overheat and ... DAMN, THE BELL!)
posted by scruss at 5:27 PM on March 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
Oh man I'm so glad they put these online. A special Idle Thumbs podcast talked about how great they were, and made me all jealous. (And made me miss regular Idle Thumbs episodes.)
posted by graventy at 6:48 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by graventy at 6:48 PM on March 23, 2011
Both Doom and, surprisingly, Marble Madness apparently owe something to copious amounts of D&D playing...
posted by kaibutsu at 7:55 PM on March 23, 2011
posted by kaibutsu at 7:55 PM on March 23, 2011
Even if you don't care about the game, if you enjoyed last week's post on the Russian space program I highly recommend skipping to the 'Russian Space Minute' in Raid on Bungling Bay, because it's Will Wright's pet topic.
posted by graventy at 8:12 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by graventy at 8:12 PM on March 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
This is perfectly timed as I am currently reading Masters of Doom, a thoroughly interesting book about Carmack and Romero's path to creating Doom, id software and their ultimate falling out.
Thanks a lot for the post.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:52 AM on March 24, 2011
Thanks a lot for the post.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:52 AM on March 24, 2011
It's a little sad that during the Alpha snippets in Doom I can recognize the levels right away. Looking at the back of two imps coming up some stairs? Yep I know exactly where that is.
posted by starman at 5:23 AM on March 24, 2011
posted by starman at 5:23 AM on March 24, 2011
I recommend watching Peter Molyneaux talk Populous, where he described his introduction to the game industry via baked beans. I'm still not sure I believe him, but it's a great story.
I just listened to the whole video of Molyneaux on Populous. It was quite fortunate that he was in a position to turn his fancies into games (even though that didn't always work out).
posted by ersatz at 12:05 PM on March 24, 2011
I just listened to the whole video of Molyneaux on Populous. It was quite fortunate that he was in a position to turn his fancies into games (even though that didn't always work out).
posted by ersatz at 12:05 PM on March 24, 2011
slimepuppy, Masters of Doom is a great book. I've been thinking about rereading it. For whatever reason, I always remember when Romero was trying to make Daikatana, and how Quake 2 affected his development.
Also, the other guy on stage with Romero, Tom Hall, went on to make Rise of the Triad, Prey, and Anachronox, which, holy crap.
posted by gc at 1:36 PM on March 24, 2011
Also, the other guy on stage with Romero, Tom Hall, went on to make Rise of the Triad, Prey, and Anachronox, which, holy crap.
posted by gc at 1:36 PM on March 24, 2011
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posted by hippybear at 1:24 PM on March 23, 2011