Category: Free Play

Random bits of news and one-off articles that don’t fit anywhere else can be found in Free Play.

343 Industries Will Work With Modding Community to Restore Cut Content to Halo and Halo 2

One of the most interesting chapters from the annals of video game history is the story behind the development of Halo: Combat Evolved. The groundbreaking first person shooter first sprang to life in the late 1990s as an extension of Bungie’s popular Marathon franchise. Over time those connections were severed, and the game was reborn as an RTS similar to the Myth series.

A year later, the development team dropped the strategy elements and the still-untitled game became a third-person shooter starring a mysterious “cyborg” character. It was this version of the title, now known as Halo, that would be introduced on stage by Steve Jobs at Macworld 1999.

However, Halo’s life as a marquee title for the Mac would be short-lived, and the game would jump to Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox console after Bungie was acquired by the tech giant in 2000.

While it had a colorful trip from the drawing board to store shelves, history has been kind to Halo: Combat Evolved. Xbox fans considered it the console’s killer app at launch, and a string of sequels eventually gave way to an ever-growing multimedia empire that now includes comic books, novels, toys, and multiple live-action adaptations. But what happened to all those earlier prototypes?

Enter the Digsite Project.

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GoldenEye 007 Documentary “GoldenEra” is Now Available to Stream in UK (and Worldwide Later in 2022)

It’s a great time to be a fan of GoldenEye 007. The famed first person shooter is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and even after being the subject of interactive retrospectives and the next release from Boss Fight Books, there’s still plenty to discuss about Rare’s brush with Bond.

GoldenEra, a new documentary about the game, is now available to stream throughout the United Kingdom via Google Play, iTunes, Prime Video, Rakuten TV, and Sky. Directed by Drew Roller, GoldenEra features new interviews with the development team (including David Doak, Grant Kirkhope, and Graeme Norgate), as well as Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert, IGN’s Peer Schneider, and a host of others:

GoldenEra tells the incredible inside story of the creation and legacy of GoldenEye 007, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

One of the greatest video games ever made, GoldenEye 007 was released for the Nintendo 64 in the summer of 1997 after two and a half years of grueling hours, missed deadlines, and an unwavering commitment to perfection. Developed in a farmhouse in Warwickshire by a small ragtag team of university graduates, most of whom had never worked on a game before, this iconic first-person shooter surpassed all expectations and went on to change gaming forever.

Told through interviews with the very people who created the revolutionary game, along with leading game journalists and industry professionals, GoldenEra captures an unmissable moment in the history of gaming.

GoldenEra will be available to stream throughout the rest of the world later in 2022. In the meantime, a teaser trailer for the documentary has been embedded above.

UPDATE (8/12/22): Collider is reporting that Cinedigm has acquired the North American distribution rights to GoldenEra. The documentary will be available through Digital and On Demand streaming services on August 23.

The History of Wordle: A Story in Nine Tweets

Every so often, a game comes along with a certain something that just completely captures the public’s fascination. It happened in 2006 with Wii Sports and its introduction of motion controls. It happened in 2007-2008 with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a pair of games that seeded plastic instruments in living rooms across the world like some kind of Johnny B. Rockstar. It happened in 2016 with Pokemon Go, a game that encouraged players to go outside and explore the real world.

And for the last few months, it’s been happening with Wordle.

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Wata Games Publishes First Population Report of Graded Games

During the last two years, Wata Games and Heritage Auctions have positioned themselves at the forefront of the retro gaming boom. But while demand has skyrocketed, the two companies have come under fire recently for possibly engaging in self-dealing and price manipulation. In the wake of these claims, the market for retro games (especially sealed titles graded by Wata Games and sold by Heritage Auctions) has cooled considerably.

In an attempt to be more transparent with the general public, Wata Games rolled out their first-ever Population Report for NES Games last week. This report includes a full count of every NES game Wata has graded (and any packaging variants available), as well as how many copies exist within each grade. From there, it should theoretically be easy to determine just how rare a given copy really is by matching data from the report to sales listings.

Deniz Kahn, the President of Wata Games, introduced the Population Report in the company’s Email Newsletter:

The team at WATA is excited to share with you our first-ever Population Report. This initial release is centered on Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games and we will be expanding the report to include games from other systems in the coming months. We are putting the finishing touches on a full, dynamic population report – including all games and grading categories – by early next year and we can’t wait to share that with you.

To zero in on a recent high profile example, we can see the copy of Super Mario Bros. that was recently sold by Rally for $2 million is currently the only copy of the game with a “hangtab” variant to receive a grade of 9.8 from Wata. Does that make it worth $2 million? I don’t know. But it is very useful information to have if you’re a collector.

Kahn also confirmed that Population Reports for all platforms would be coming soon:

Q: Why not wait to release a full Pop Report?
A: We felt compelled to share something of note with our collecting community now and while this is by no means a full picture, it does provide a solid look at grading stats for NES games. This particular report is a limited, temporary effort while we work on the more robust process of generating dynamic Pop Reports for all systems.

The release of their first Population Report doesn’t answer all the questions swirling around Wata Games, but it does give the public a slightly better overview of what the market for graded retro games actually looks like.

Microsoft Opens Virtual Xbox Museum for Console’s 20th Anniversary

The original Xbox made its worldwide debut on November 15, 2001, and Microsoft has been celebrating 20 Years of Xbox with special Anniversary Edition swag and the #Xbox20 hashtag all year long. The consolemaker will also roll out a six-part documentary series, Power On: The Story of Xbox, in December.

But first, they’ve opened the virtual doors to an Xbox Museum at Xbox.com.

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National Videogame Museum Opens “The Animal Crossing Diaries” Online Exhibition

The National Videogame Museum began collecting stories about the public’s lockdown-fueled fascination with Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in August 2020. The museum’s curators and archivists solicited hundreds of diary entries from players all around the world, all of whom were more than happy to share the details of their island adventures with Tom Nook, Isabelle, Blathers, and all the other villagers.

Now, after more than a year of hard work, the NVM is finally ready to open the virtual doors to their Animal Crossing Diaries online exhibition:

While the world was on pause, the island paradises of Animal Crossing: New Horizons thrived, welcoming those in isolation with open arms (and paws). The game became a routine part of everyday life. Cancelled plans were reimagined and reprogrammed to the virtual sandy shores of players’ islands. For many people unable to socialise in real life, the game became a vital creative space for personal connection.

Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons to maintain that personal connection with friends and family quickly became a huge part of the game’s appeal. Players also gravitated towards it’s strong emphasis on creativity and personal style, as well as the importance it placed on maintaining a daily routine. The NVM saw these common threads appear again and again throughout the diaries, ultimately sorting each entry into one of five categories:

Keeping A Routine – Faced with an uncertain day to day life in lockdown, players turned towards the game for an escape. If you couldn’t find a comforting routine in real life, the game could provide. For many players, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not a comforting distraction. It saved 2020.

Making Your Space – An island can be a place of comfort to create a world that expresses its player’s personality. It can be a social, artistic and cultural space shared with others across the world. For some it is a space in which processing feelings of stress, anxiety and grief can take place. Players making spaces to travel, connect and share experiences opened up new possibilities. For many players, events were accessible for the first time via virtual spaces.

Representing Yourself – Many games, like Animal Crossing, have a main hero you can customize to look like you.

Sharing Creativity – The closure of museums and other cultural events limited access to creativity. And while the island does have its own museum of art, insects, fish and fossils, it also has a range of design options. You can create your own outfits, patterns and even games! Players could recreate cultural and artistic events that couldn’t happen in 2020.

Staying In Touch – For many people, the pandemic means social distancing from friends and family. This creates a sense of isolation many struggle with. In the game, welcoming new neighbours to your island placed a big focus on social connections.

Visitors to the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition can also explore diary entries through a timeline feature that highlights important days on the New Horizons calendar (like Wedding Season and Toy Day), along with more impromptu in-game events (such as Biden Island and Pride Month) that were created by the players themselves.

The NVM plans to maintain and expand the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition project going forward, and you can add your story to the collection using their Online Submission Form.

Jeopardy! Guest Hosts Ranked: Who Did the Internet Pick as the Best of the Bunch?

OK, you caught me, ranking the guest hosts who’ve appeared on Jeopardy! this season is slightly outside the purview of Video Game Canon.

But there have been a lot of video game adaptations of the show over the years, and the firestorm surrounding the selection of Mike Richards as the permanent host (and his quick exit from that job just a week-and-change later) makes figuring out who the next host should be a very interesting question.

Plus, I’m a huge Jeopardy! fan, and I’ve been slightly obsessed with this whole process from the beginning.

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Rally, a “Stock Market for Collectibles,” Sells Their Copy of Super Mario Bros. for $2 Million

Rally, a “stock market of collectibles,” made a splashy entrance into the world of high-value game collecting during the Summer of 2020 when they purchased a sealed and graded copy of Super Mario Bros. for $140,000.

After acquiring the game (which received a 9.8 A+ grade from Wata Games), the company sold 3,000 “shares” in the collectible cartridge to investors for $50 apiece

Rally’s $140,000 purchase set a record for a single game sale at the time, but it’s been eclipsed multiple times in the past year, including twice just in the last month. That’s when this merry-go-round of motivated sellers and deep-pocketed buyers culminated in sales of $870,000 (for a copy of The Legend of Zelda) and $1.56 million (for a copy of Super Mario 64).

But now Rally gets to sit on the top of the mountain for a little while, and that’s because the game’s shareholders have decided to sell their copy of Super Mario Bros. for $2 million to a private collector:

According to The New York Times, each shareholder will receive roughly $475 per share after the sale is completed. That’s honestly a pretty great return on their initial investment.

A Copy of id Software’s PC Port of Super Mario Bros. 3 Has Been Donated to the Strong Museum

David Kushner meticulously detailed the story of id Software’s founding in 2003’s Masters of Doom, tracking the legendary development team’s history back through the creation of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. But before all that, John Carmack and John Romero approached Nintendo with the idea of releasing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the PC.

Nintendo’s signature brand of platforming wasn’t possible on the underpowered PCs of the time, but Carmack cracked the code in 1990 with the creation of his “smooth scrolling” engine. Sensing that this was a very big deal, the team (then known as IFD: Ideas from the Deep) got to work producing a prototype to show Nintendo:

Over those seventy-two hours, they fell into crunch mode. […] They got the game down to a T: Mario’s squat little walk, the way he bopped the animated tiles, sending out the coins, the way he leapt on the turtles and kicked their shells, the clouds, the Venus’s-flytraps, the pipes, the smooth scrolling. By the time they finished, the game was virtually identical to the bestselling hit in the world. The only noticeable difference was the title screem, which, under the Nintendo copyright, credited the makers, a company name the guys borrowed from Romero and Lane, Ideas from the Deep.

Unsurprisingly, Nintendo rejected the demo, but the new technology inspired IFD to create their own game, Commander Keen, and adopt the more familiar id Software moniker a year later.

According to Kushner, the developers eagerly shared their adaptation of Super Mario Bros. 3 with friends and collaborators as they worked on Commander Keen, and in 2015, Romero gave us a peek at what could have been when he uploaded a short playthrough of the prototype to his Vimeo channel:

Even though it was apparently distributed far and wide, this important piece of PC gaming history stayed hidden for more than 30 years. But a new report on Ars Technica has revealed that a floppy disk containing id’s Super Mario Bros. 3 prototype was recently donated to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

The Strong Museum, which also operates the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) and the World Video Game Hall of Fame, said they will make the prototype available to historians and researchers upon request. There’s also the possibility that it could find its way into a public exhibit in the future.

My only question is, what happens when you type in “IDDQD”?