NBA Jam, Age of Empires, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl had a massive impact on the video game industry, and the men and women who made them surely have some interesting stories to tell.
25 years ago… NBA Jam made its rim-rattling console debut.
21 years ago… Age of Empires conquered the PC world.
10 years ago… Super Smash Bros. Brawl fought its way into our hearts.
All three of these games had a massive impact on the video game industry, and the men and women who made them surely have some interesting stories to tell.
In his introduction to Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier wrote that a game developer once told him it’s a miracle when a team manages to complete a game. But not every team is so lucky, and the development cycle for even the most well-funded games can often turn into a comedy of errors.
In his introduction to Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, Jason Schreier wrote that a game developer once told him it’s a miracle when a team manages to complete a game. Over the next 300 pages, developers from Blizzard, Bungie, and Naughty Dog reinforce this point again and again. Using brutal honesty, they all discuss how close they came to disaster.
But not every team is so lucky (including the members of LucasArts that Schreier interviewed for his last chapter), and the development cycle for even the most well-funded games can often turn into a comedy of errors.
Nintendo was definitely the big winner at last night’s DICE Awards presentation. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences awarded 11 victories to the consolemaker, including “Game of the Year” for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Link’s newest adventure also received accolades for “Adventure Game of the Year,” “Game Design,” “Game Direction.”
Studio MDHR’s Cuphead received several awards for its outstanding sound and visuals at the 2017-2018 DICE Awards, including “Original Music Composition,” “Animation,” and “Art Direction.”
Developers for several other games strode to the stage to collect multiple awards during last night’s ceremony. That list includes Guerrilla’s Horizon: Zero Dawn (“Story” and “Technical Achievement”), PUBG Corporation’s PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (“Action Game of the Year” and “Online Gameplay”), Nintendo’s Snipperclips: Cut It Out Together (“Family Game of the Year” and the “D.I.C.E. Sprite Award”), and Oculus’s Lone Echo/Echo Arena (“Immersive Reality Technical Achievement” and “Immersive Reality Game of the Year”).
Congratulations to everyone who won big at the 2017-2018 DICE Awards. A complete list of all the winners and nominees can be found after the break.
Do you know everything there is to know about Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom? Would you like to?
If you answered “Yes” to the latter question (or even if you said “Yes” to the former), then today is your lucky day. Dark Horse has announced that they’ll be publishing a Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia this October.
Weighing in at 256 pages, this reference work will cover the first 30 years of “Super” Mario’s career, beginning with 1985’s Super Mario Bros.:
The Super Mario Encyclopedia is jam-packed with content from 17 Super Mario games and spans more than 30 years of the franchise’s history—from the original Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario 3D World. Track the evolution of the Goomba, witness the introduction of Yoshi, and relive your favorite levels.
This tome also contains an interview with producer Takashi Tezuka, tips to help you find every Coin, Star, Sun, and Mushroom… even explanations of glitches! With information on enemies, items, obstacles, and worlds from over 30 years of Mario, Super Mario Encyclopedia is the definitive resource for everything Super Mario!
Dark Horse’s Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia will be released on October 23.
Sony and Bluepoint Games repackaged Shadow of the Colossus and Ico in a “High Definition” bundle for the PS3 in 2011. In addition to promoting the latter with the proper boxart for the first time in North America, the re-release gave PS3 owners a new opportunity to return to the worlds of Fumito Ueda. But with the PS4’s launch looming, Sony had even bigger plans for Shadow of the Colossus, and they wanted to take the famously frustrating game in a brand new direction.
Sony and Bluepoint Games repackaged Shadow of the Colossus and Ico in an HD Collection bundle for the PS3 in 2011. In addition to promoting the latter with the proper boxart for the first time in North America, the re-release gave PS3 owners a new opportunity to return to the worlds of Fumito Ueda. But with the PS4’s launch looming, Sony had even bigger plans for Shadow of the Colossus, and they wanted to take the famously frustrating game in a brand new direction.
Sony recently teamed with developer Bluepoint Games to take Shadow of the Colossus and reimagine it “from the ground up” for the PS4. As one of the first games that could truly be described as “artistic,” it holds a special place in the hearts of many gamers. But how did it get there?
Sony recently teamed up with developer Bluepoint Games to take Shadow of the Colossus and reimagine it “from the ground up” for the PS4. As one of the first games that could truly be described as “artistic,” it holds a special place in the hearts of many gamers. But how did it get there?
Though it was critically-acclaimed from the very beginning, Ico was only a moderate hit for Sony and developer Fumito Ueda when it was released in 2001. But Ueda was thrilled with the game’s artistic ambition, and decided to create something even bigger as a followup.
This article refers to an older Version of the Video Game Canon. View the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the list.
The Video Game Canon has been upgraded to Version 2.0 thanks to the addition of four new lists that were published throughout the last year. Edge Magazine’s “100 Greatest Videogames” issue, Jeux Video’s “Top 100 Best Games of All Time,” Polygon’s massive “500 Best Games of All Time,” and Stuff UK’s “50 Greatest Games of All Time” have reshuffled the ranking in a big way.
Let’s take a look…
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Cuphead, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice dominated this year’s Game Awards, which were hosted by Geoff Keighley last night in Los Angeles.
Breath of the Wild kickstarted the launch of the Nintendo Switch in a big way this past March, so it’s not surprising that it also won “Game of the Year” at the Game Awards. Link’s latest adventure also claimed victory in two additional categories last night, “Best Game Direction” and “Best Action/Adventure Game.”
Studio MDHR’s Cuphead was released to quite a bit of fanfare earlier this Fall, and the side-scrolling shooter delivered at the Game Awards with wins for “Best Art Direction” (thanks to its beautiful 1930s-inspired animation), “Best Independent Game,” and the fan-voted “Best Debut Indie Game.”
Finally, Ninja Theory has been touting Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice as their “AAA Indie,” and the game lived up to that billing with victories for “Best Audio Design,” “Games For Impact” (for a storyline that dealt with mental illness), and “Best Performance” for Melina Juergens’s voicework as Senua.
Congratulations to the development teams responsible for all this year’s nominees, and you can find the full list (along with all the winners) after the break.
The latest VGC Essay looks at the creation of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the massive growth of the Call of Duty franchise. Here’s a teaser…
General William Tecumseh Sherman famously declared that “War is Hell” in a speech in 1880, though I think it’s safe to assume that more people are familiar with the anti-war protestations of a certain green Muppet from 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. While this sentiment has existed in the public consciousness for hundreds of years, the basic structure of a game as a confrontation that pits the player against the CPU (or another player) makes armed conflict an ideal setting.
War might be Hell, but it has also been very good for Activision’s bottom line thanks to the Call of Duty franchise.
The latest VGC Essay looks at the the blockbuster success born out of the simple ambitions of Mega Man 2. Here’s a teaser…
The first Mega Man game is a bit of an odd duck, which has become even more pronounced as the years go by. The graphics are simplistic, the sound is tinny, there’s only six Robot Masters instead of the traditional eight, and there’s even a score counter (a feature that was jettisoned from the dozens of sequels that followed). There’s just a smoothness to subsequent games in the franchise that Capcom had yet to master with the first entry.
But like most Mega Man fans, I only learned all this after the fact. At the time, whatever memories I have of the first game were formed by guide writers who described it as an unfairly difficult game, old episodes of Captain N, and the fact that none of the local rental outlets owned a copy (unsurprisingly, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf was always available).
I finally got the chance to see what all the fuss was about with Mega Man 2, which was also the first game in the Mega Man franchise to be spearheaded by Capcom’s Keiji Inafune. With an expanded role in the sequel’s development, Inafune became known as the “Father” of Mega Man to plenty of fans, and codified many of the traditions and patterns the series is known for.
