03 Sep 2019
On the rise and fall of the Premier Manager series of soccer management games — a former PC gaming juggernaut that lost its way amidst a shuffle of developers and publishers — and the part it played in the broader consolidation and homogenisation of sports games (of all kinds) over the past 20 years or so.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, gremlin, infogrames, premier manager, british games, business, championship manager, football manager, sports interactive, soccer, sports games, amiga, pc
16 Aug 2019
When the United States Senate held congressional hearings on video game violence in 1993 and '94, Sega CEO Tom Kalinske went to bat in defence of the industry — and the medium. But he faced major obstacles just getting the senators to understand that the audience for video games was
much broader than teenage and pre-teen boys. In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with Tom earlier this year, he describes the experience and lays out his frustrations with the senators.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: tom kalinske, sega, congressional hearings on video game violence, girl games
25 Jul 2019
Far from a mere "Worms in 3D", Hogs of War was its own breed of madness. Hear the story of how it evolved from a concept of "Command and Conquer with pigs", what made it such a well-designed satire, and how this underrated PlayStation game saw the funny side of serious global conflict.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, gremlin, worms, hogs of war, infogrames, ps1, artillery, british games, multiplayer games, command and conquer, comedy, satire
01 Jul 2019
How Nintendo and its mascot created a genre, and a combat-racing franchise heavyweight, and in the process gave us a masterclass in game balance, with the best-selling 1992 Super Nintendo game Super Mario Kart.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, super mario kart, nintendo, super nintendo, mario, racing, multiplayer games, japanese games
08 Jun 2019
Sega Rally Championship changed everything for the racing genre, and the 1995 off-road arcade hit was an incredible game too. This is the story of its development, critical reception, and long-term legacy.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, sega rally championship, sega, rally games, tetsuya mizuguchi, japanese games, multiplayer games, ridge racer, racing, daytona usa, arcade, kenji sasaki, colin mcrae, sega saturn
06 Jun 2019
For the 35th anniversary of Tetris' original Russian version, I pulled out this clip from my interview with Henk Rogers — co-founder of The Tetris Company and the dude who got Tetris handheld and console publishing rights back in the 1980s (and also creator of what was arguably the first JRPG, The Black Onyx).
Listen for Henk's memories about the strategy inherent in the game's scoring system and the story of how they fixed a bias in the Game Boy version's random number generator.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, alexey pajitnov, game boy, henk rogers, nintendo, tetris
16 May 2019
Before computers had proper multitasking support and quick shortcuts for changing apps, playing games when you're not supposed to be could be super risky. But if there's one thing that's been a constant in technology, it's that wherever there are computers, there are also games. And for a while, in the 1980s and 90s, many game developers actually put in a special key command that would bring up a fake productivity screen. This is the story of the rise and fall of the boss button.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: boss button, boss key, roger wagner, brøderbund, hackers, spacewar, boss coming, games at work, bezare, maze, apple ii, plato, dave lebling, brand fortner, plato, windows 95, dos, mac, pc
01 May 2019
The story of how a terrible description of the Donkey Kong arcade game led to the creation of Lode Runner, one of the greatest games of all time and one of the earliest games with a built-in level editor.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, apple ii, arcade, brøderbund, doug smith, level editors, lode runner, puzzle games, donkey kong, mainframe games
