I think your obvious affection for the game added a really good feeling to the video. Great to see Ultimas I,II and III as cutaways. Perhaps you would like to take up my earlier suggestion and do one video per Ultima game! Well maybe not for Pagan ;) I know you can't really do a whole Ultima series but I would love to also see a Matt Chat about Ultima Underworld. It was also truly groundbreaking in the 3D world that it created.
Thanks, Gashead! I agree about UU being a great choice for a future episode. I probably won't do it right away, but it is in the queue for sure. I also want to do Baldur's Gate I or II, and perhaps Planescape Torment. Then there's Fallout, of course. So many brilliant RPGs to cover. I could easily do episodes on Temple of Apshai, Tunnels of Doom, Dungeons of Daggorath, or Wizardry, one of my personal favorites.
I think Garriott's problems began with Pagan. At that point, it was pretty clear that something just wasn't the same. I guess he was too busy with Ultima Online or something, but things just got worse. I think he had given up trying to be a leader and was just trying to copy what other folks were doing. Roberta Williams did the same thing about that same period--giving up on the audience, disrespecting them by assuming they wanted dumbed down games with more action. What they should have done was just stick to their guns, making Ultimas and King's Quests that were bigger and better, not watering down the formula with stuff best left to Nintendo. I think by that point all of them were just in awe by the ubiquity of console gaming and how much bigger the pie was becoming. I know a few of us really love that consoles won out, but it just leaves me saddened.
At any rate, I'd also like to cover more classic adventure games, such as King's Quest, Deja Vu, and Day of the Tentacle. It'd also be great to cover Syberia and a few more modern adventures. I still haven't heard anything about my Floyd Lives proposal. I hope that our agent is able to find a publisher. I know you guys would like what I had in mind for that book, but finding a good publisher is proving very, very difficult. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.
I've been thinking hard about one of Epyx's olympic games titles soon. I would probably end up doing the Summer and Winter games in a special episode, perhaps making mention of the later ones. I'll have to do some research, but I might even be able to get Bob Citelli to answer a few questions about the games that I could stick in there. That's another good game to show running on different platforms.
Then again, I haven't really done a straight arcade game yet. I was tempted to do an episode on Defender and/or Robotron. I'm starting to really feel the pain of that 10 minute time limit. I keep having to cut out good stuff just because it won't fit. I guess it's for the best, though, rendering is enough of a $@$@ as it is.
I still badly, badly want to do Deja Vu and some other Macventure games, but have yet to be able to find the Mac roms for them. It just isn't worth doing if I can't get hold of the originals.
I think your obvious affection for the game added a really good feeling to the video. Great to see Ultimas I,II and III as cutaways. Perhaps you would like to take up my earlier suggestion and do one video per Ultima game! Well maybe not for Pagan ;) I know you can't really do a whole Ultima series but I would love to also see a Matt Chat about Ultima Underworld. It was also truly groundbreaking in the 3D world that it created.
Thanks, Gashead! I agree about UU being a great choice for a future episode. I probably won't do it right away, but it is in the queue for sure. I also want to do Baldur's Gate I or II, and perhaps Planescape Torment. Then there's Fallout, of course. So many brilliant RPGs to cover. I could easily do episodes on Temple of Apshai, Tunnels of Doom, Dungeons of Daggorath, or Wizardry, one of my personal favorites.
I think Garriott's problems began with Pagan. At that point, it was pretty clear that something just wasn't the same. I guess he was too busy with Ultima Online or something, but things just got worse. I think he had given up trying to be a leader and was just trying to copy what other folks were doing. Roberta Williams did the same thing about that same period--giving up on the audience, disrespecting them by assuming they wanted dumbed down games with more action. What they should have done was just stick to their guns, making Ultimas and King's Quests that were bigger and better, not watering down the formula with stuff best left to Nintendo. I think by that point all of them were just in awe by the ubiquity of console gaming and how much bigger the pie was becoming. I know a few of us really love that consoles won out, but it just leaves me saddened.
At any rate, I'd also like to cover more classic adventure games, such as King's Quest, Deja Vu, and Day of the Tentacle. It'd also be great to cover Syberia and a few more modern adventures. I still haven't heard anything about my Floyd Lives proposal. I hope that our agent is able to find a publisher. I know you guys would like what I had in mind for that book, but finding a good publisher is proving very, very difficult. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.
I've been thinking hard about one of Epyx's olympic games titles soon. I would probably end up doing the Summer and Winter games in a special episode, perhaps making mention of the later ones. I'll have to do some research, but I might even be able to get Bob Citelli to answer a few questions about the games that I could stick in there. That's another good game to show running on different platforms.
Then again, I haven't really done a straight arcade game yet. I was tempted to do an episode on Defender and/or Robotron. I'm starting to really feel the pain of that 10 minute time limit. I keep having to cut out good stuff just because it won't fit. I guess it's for the best, though, rendering is enough of a $@$@ as it is.
I still badly, badly want to do Deja Vu and some other Macventure games, but have yet to be able to find the Mac roms for them. It just isn't worth doing if I can't get hold of the originals.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com