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Development Retrospectives

Started by I accept the terms of the, December 13, 2011, 07:48:53 PM

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I accept the terms of the

I love reading developers talking about how they made a game, particular older games where there were lots of boundaries to be pushed. Some of you people are awful nerds too, so I'll share them with you:

A 5-part in-depth retrospective of Crash Bandicoot:
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/

The making the of C64 Lemmings port (including a naming-and-shaming of their rogue artist):
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap99/lemmingsdiary1.html

I've read more, but that's all I have to hand at the moment. Please share if you have any.

surreal

Gamasutra is a great resource for all things game-making related,  Quite often have post-mortems on projects etc, it's a huge site, always something interesting to read

Mister Six

Ron Gilbert played through Monkey Island 1 again a while back and blogged his thoughts - really interesting stuff. I was particularly pleased that he was as stumped by the grog mug puzzle as I was, and that he, too, found the big top a big waste: http://grumpygamer.com/8280380

Some interesting stuff about what was cut, too, including a top-down ship combat section.


vrailaine

Edge magazine used to regularly do 4-6 page features on old games like this, didn't it? Would love to buy a collection of them.

GamesTM probably have enough features to make up a book of them too, actually.

NoSleep

Edge did a special issue on retrogaming, too.

vrailaine

they did? Was it any good?

when I was looking for books about gaming, I was really expecting there to be at least one Edge book out.

NoSleep

It's up in the attic currently but it was very good indeed as I recall.

madhair60

Quote from: vrailaine on December 18, 2011, 02:36:42 PM
Edge magazine used to regularly do 4-6 page features on old games like this, didn't it? Would love to buy a collection of them.

GamesTM probably have enough features to make up a book of them too, actually.

There are at least 3 Edge "retro" specials, I have 2 of them.  One of them was exactly what you are describing.

GamesTM just recently put out their fourth collection of their retro articles. :p

NoSleep

I think the one I have was the first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_%28magazine%29

Quote"Retro: The Guide to Classic Videogame Playing and Collection" (2002)
This retrogaming-themed special issue applied the format of the standard edition of Edge to classic video games. This was the most fully formed of the Edge specials, being an edition that only featured new material.

If you look down the page there were further specials and articles covering the kind of thing mentioned in the OP.

Zero Gravitas

Not a narrative retrospectie but Ian Bell has posted the source to the original text based version of Elite he used to experiment with some of the game mechanics,it's bit-packing fun all the way, including some rather amusing preprocessor directives:



#if POLITICALLY_CORRECT
                    {0x28,-0x05,0xE2,0x1F,0,"Robot Slaves"},
                    {0x53,-0x05,0xFB,0x0F,0,"Beverages   "},

#else
                    {0x28,-0x05,0xE2,0x1F,0,"Slaves      "},
                    {0x53,-0x05,0xFB,0x0F,0,"Liquor/Wines"},

#endif




http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/text/index.htm

NoSleep

Ah yes; the NES version has that revision.