Ratbag Dead

Midway Games just shut down Ratbag, their recent aquisition in August, a game company that had been around since 1993 employing 70+ hard-working game developers and had been a shining star for aspiring game developers in Australia.

Sickening, especially at Christmastime. So many bad decisions have been made at Midway that I either see the end of the road for the entire company or mainly for the executive staff. Something's got to go, and soon.

My executive producer and I were talking about the ludicrous policy of providing a vertical slice of a game at an early stage - it's pure stupidity. Building a game is like building a house; you lay the foundation, work on the framework, then start plumbing, wiring, etc. before hanging drywall and getting the roof on. Requiring a game to have a little of everything (and polished) at an early stage is a recipe for disaster and a sure way to throw development money out the window because you're not developing a game properly anymore - you're jumping through hoops like a circus dog. But this is Midway's method of operation. LOLZ.

Unfortunately, the "redundant" staff at Ratbag is going to be much better off now than working for Midway. Sadly, they'll be doing it without their company they worked hard for and the people they loved working with.

Happy Birthday, Keen 4-6!

It's been 14 long years since our second Keen trilogy but these ended up being the best Keens of all. Unfortunately, we had a publishing deal that forced us to release one of the three Keens at retail thus breaking up the sacred trilogy of games which resulted in lower sales of this second trilogy.

The retail game was called Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! (it was numbered Keen6) and stood on its own. Then the game duo we called Goodbye, Galaxy! had Keens 4 and 5 in it. Keen 4 took 3 months to develop, then we made Keen 6 in order to get it in the stores for Christmas and that took 2 months to make, and finally my favorite Keen, Keen 5, took us only ONE MONTH to develop. Apogee Software released the duo into shareware on December 15, 1991 while Keen 6 was in the stores.

KEEN TRIVIA:
You can see the second-oldest id Software logo on the Keen 6 box. The oldest id logo was in the help section of the original Keen 1-3 games. The "Lost Keen" came before the two Keen trilogies and was called Keen Dreams and was published by Softdisk in May 1991.

Anyone paying close attention to the Keen series will see some interesting parallels between the two trilogies. Both Keens 1 & 4 take place on friendly planets, Keens 2 & 5 take place docked onto an alien spaceship, and Keens 3 & 6 take place on hostile alien planets.

If you look closely at the Keen 5 title art you'll see Keen running away from a Robo Red but through the window of the space station you can see the secret level on the surface of the planet.

When we were developing Keens 4-6 we were living in Madison, Wisconsin in the freezing winter and worked constantly because it was so awful outside. Cops were frequently busting down the doors next door. It was such a bad neighborhood that we were basically developing our games out of a crackhouse!

Happy Birthday, Keen!

Today is the 15th birthday of the first trilogy of the classic Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons!

Our team was super small when we created these three games: John Carmack, Tom Hall and myself. Adrian Carmack came in near the end to do some art touch-up but the majority of the art was Tom Hall's. It took us three months of working at night after our day job (where we were making games all day) and December 14, 1990 it was uploaded to the Software Creations BBS and exploded all over the world overnight! After we received our first royalty check one month later we officially quit Softdisk and started id Software.

Blix Clouds That Kill Time

Here's a few really cool games to play this weekend.

CLOUD was made by students, paid for by an Electronic Arts grant. I'm still figuring out how to consume the clouds! Make sure you use the right & left mouse buttons and press F1 for scant help.

Kill Time is a crazy Japanese game where you have to keep your cursor from being captured by the little guy. Move it all over the place, just don't go off the screen or touch the blue walls on the side or your score restarts at zero!

BLIX comes courtesy of the talented Eric Zimmerman and his gameLab - it's very addictive!

You may have noticed some changes to the site, namely the coolass music player on the right side. The Game Music section also has the player so you can just listen to the music without downloading the songs. So now maybe it'll be easier for you to check out video game music and see what you've been missing. One of my fave remixers, Quinn Fox, just released some new original compositions on his site. Click on the green icon on the left side to get to them.

Happy Birthday, DOOM!

Yep, it's rolled around again - DOOM's birthday. Just turned 12 years old today and still going strong with Skulltag and ZDaemon and the wonderful DOOMWORLD.COM supporting everything DOOM.

I would be hugely surprised to see people still playing DOOM in 8 years...that would be unprecedented. Anyone playing any games from 1985 frequently? I didn't think so. Geez, is anyone playing other games from 1993 or earlier? I occasionally run Wolf3D but DOOM is really the only one from that time that I still play.

LONG LIVE DOOM!