Old Games Never Die

A long time ago, I was a designer and writer for a small design house called Westwood Associates. It was run by two great designers - Brett Sperry and Louis Castle. Louis was just and incredible programer and designer. He was doing stuff on the Apple IIe that would not be replicated until Doom came out. And Brett had this incredible sense of layout, interface design and organic motion.

On of the first games I worked on was Eye of the Beholder. I was a writer for the clue book on the EOB One and a writer and designer on EOB II.

The second game I worked on was DragonStrike for the NES. This was a top-down shooter and didn't any (other than the name) to do with the Apple IIe flight sim version.

I was a designer for a small NEC Turbographx role playing game called Order of the Griffon.

One of the last games I worked was Dune II for the Amiga and PC. This was the first real RTS to be developed. Brett Sperry came up with the idea after playing a German game called Herzog.


    

Living the Mario Life

Don't you wish sometimes - maybe many times - there was a reset button to life. You know you're headed down a certain path, things aren't going as you planned, so you reach down and reset the your life back to the last save .. oh, say 1990.

Video created by Brawl in the Family

Dedication to 8 Bit

I think one of the reason I'm not fabulously wealthy or famous is that I lack a certain level of dedication and commitment to a project. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

Still Workin' It

Still helping the wife get these second graders out of the classroom and into summer. In the mean time, have some 8-bit fun with Goldfish.


Goldfish - We Come Together (OFFICIAL) from Goldfish live on Vimeo.

Legend of Zelda Ocarina

If you just can't get enough Zelda and I know there are still a few of you out there that can't, STLOcarina has created the ultimate 12 hold Zelda Ocarina. That's right 12 holes baby! I really didn't know what an Ocarina was until I stumbled upon the STLOcarina site. According to Wikipedia, and Ocarina:

The ocarina ( /ɒkəˈriːnə/) is an ancient flute-like wind instrument. Variations do exist, but a typical ocarina is an enclosed space with four to twelve finger holes and a mouthpiece that projects from the body. It is often ceramic, but other materials may also be used, such as plastic, wood, glass, clay, and metal. - Wikipedia

 STLOcarina offers a variety of Zelda instruments ranging in price from a hundred bucks to a plastic version that costs $28.00. There's even a Zelda music book.



Shop STLOcarina --> Zelda Flute

8 Bit - Pink Floyd

It's 3:10 AM on a Sunday morning. A couple of days before a birthday I don't want to remember. So, I thought I thought you might want to join me in a little Pink Floyd - 8bit Chiptune style. I'm a fan of good Chiptune music. This is the kind of thing you'd hear on your NES or Amiga or Apple IIe.

Sit back and enjoy the sweet music of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Mobile Gaming Dominates Game Developers Conference

I've been in the video game industry a long, long time. I've designed games for the NES, SNES, Sega, Sony, PC and other platforms.

In the universe there's this stuff called Dark Matter ... no one really knows what it is but it makes up 80 percent of the universe. Computer gambling games - (slot machines, video poker, horse race games, online poker) are the dark matter of the video game industry.

It is where most of the money is made and where most of the player are. Take one casino in Vegas - MGM, they have around 3k slot machines pulling about 250 bucks a day in profit .. that's about $750,000 a day. .. one casino .. one city. Of course there's volatility - but you can see my point. Now with China opening up casinos and the explosion of Internet gambling ..

The "new" popularity of mobile games, which are really just casual games on a small devices are nothing more than slop spilled over from the gambling genre. Highly repetitive with quick, inconsiste­nt reward systems.

The video game console business is extremely volatile with huge cycles. Just look at the history of Atari, NES, SNES, Sega ... The computer game industry will always be there .. not huge .. except for World of Warcraft, but without the giant fluctuatio­ns.

So, when so-called experts say the trend is this way or that . take it with a grain of salt.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost