video games

“Dominate the world through diplomatic finesse, cultural domination, and military prowess.” -Giant Bomb

By Patrick S. Baker

Introduction

After, shall we say, the mixed critical and commercial reception of 1999’s Civilization II: Test of Time, which has an aggregate of only 66% on Metacritic, famed game developer Sid Meier and his company, Firaxis, immediately set to work on another Civilization game. Originally, the development of the game that would become Civilization III (Civ III) was given to Brian Renyolds, the man behind the highly successful base Civilization II game. However, Renyolds left Firaxis before development really got rolling to start his own company, so the assignment was handed to game designer Jeff Briggs and game programmer Soren Johnson.

Briggs was an experienced game designer, and one of the three founders of Firaxis, along with Reynolds and Meier. Briggs had previously helped design such games as Colonization and Civilization II. He also held a PhD of Music Theory and had written the original music for many of Microprose games.

Johnson had gone to work at Firaxis after an internship at Electronic Arts (EA). He was assigned as the primary game programmer for Civ III under Briggs direction. Johnson joined the development team with just 16 months left to finish the game. Still, he rewrote much of the game’s code, with his main focus was on the its Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“Playing Bubsy 3D feels like watching Forrest Gump, except every time Forrest Gump says ‘momma,’ Stone Cold Steve Austin punches you in the stomach.” –  Noah’s Game Reviews

By Patrick S. Baker

Bubsy 3D also known as Bubsy 3D: Furbitten Planet, or Bubsy is 3D in Furbitten Planet was released in 1996 and enjoys a singular place in video game history. The game was one of the earliest attempts to bring a favorite 2D platforming character into the world of 3D gaming. As such, Bubsy 3D sought to push boundaries and capture the imagination of players.

The first three Busby games were innovative and successful. Busby: The Adventure Begins introduced players to the charismatic hero, Busby the Bobcat, and offered challenging platforming gameplay in vibrant worlds. The second installment, Busby’s Quest: The Enchanted Kingdom, took players on a mystical journey filled with puzzles, mazes, and magical encounters.

Finally, there was Busby’s Galactic Adventure which expanded the series into space, providing players with thrilling spaceship piloting, cosmic exploration, and encounters with extraterrestrial beings. These games combined engaging game play mechanics, visually appealing environments, and a sense of adventure. Each installment brought new challenges and expanded the Busby universe.

“Before Guadalcanal, the enemy advanced at his pleasure—after Guadalcanal, he retreated at ours.” – Adm. William F. (Bull) Halsey, USN

By Patrick S. Baker

In 1982, Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) released Guadalcanal Campaign (GC). The game is the first game developed by famed game designer, Gary Grigsby. GC is also considered the first commercially released “monster wargame” for personal computers.

In 1982, Grigsby was a civil servant working for the Department of Defense (DoD). He had long had an interest in strategy and wargame, buying and playing board games from companies like Avalon Hill, Victory Games, and Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI).

In 1979, Grisby bought a TRS-80 to “take the combat systems off of these really complicated … wargames and put them on the computer.” Eventually, Grigsby was trying to develop and program full games using BASIC.  But he had no idea how to contact the two main PC game developers of the time, SSI and Avalon Hill, to get his games produced and marketed.

By Patrick S. Baker

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (Plumbers) was developed by Kirin Entertainment (no relation to the fine Japanese beer) and released in 1994. It has been variously called an adult-oriented “romantic comedy”, a visual novel, and dating sim, as well as a full motion video game. Whatever the developers’ ambitions for the game were, they were not met. The game actually turned out to be a branching slideshow with strictly limited player interaction.

Plumbers feature John and Jane, who are being pressured by their respective parents to go out and find a spouse. The player’s task is to get John and Jane together.  Set in the fictional city of “New Lost Wages,” a stand-in for Las Vegas, the game is centered on the lives of the two main characters.

John is an unemployed plumber, while Jane is a beautiful and ambitious woman caught in a bizarre love triangle between her rich father and an oddball photographer.  The gameplay consists mainly of making choices at various branching points in the story.

Players must navigate through a range of quirky and inexplicable situations, each filled with absurd and unexpected twists. As the game moves along, the player meets a range of flamboyant characters, including a domineering boss, a sexy secret agent, and a leather-clad dominatrix.

“Flawed on every fundamental level, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is possibly the most unplayable garbage available on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” — Game Informer

By Patrick S. Baker

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Jekyll & Hyde) was a video game developed by Advance Communication Company and released by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988. The game was based on the classic horror novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The novella tells the story of the brilliant scientist, Dr. Henry Jekyll, well known for his decency and generosity, but with a hidden and terrible dark side. He creates a potion to separate his dark side from his better self. Instead, the mixture changes him into a cruel and violent man named Mr. Hyde.

Jekyll & Hyde was a unique game for its time, in that it tried to tell a rather complex and subtle story through a video game.

“This game is so bad it makes Superman 64 look like Doom.” — anonymous game reviewer

By Patrick S. Baker

Okay, boys and girls, please have a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer ready for this one. Today gentle readers I recount the story of not only one of the worst video games of all time but also one of the foulest and most atrocious video games of all time. And NO, I’m not exaggerating in any way about what a disgusting piece of work this game is.

Custer’s Revenge, also known as Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica: Custer’s Revenge was one of three ‘adult’ video games released November 1982 in a package of video games called Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica. The other two games in the set were Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em and Bachelor Party.

Many sources erroneously report that the games were produced by a game company named Mystique, but in fact is no game company named Mystique. Mystique was the brand name for the line of adult games produced by American Multiple Industries (AMI).

“Come on, you apes, do you want to live forever?”

—Attributed to an unnamed US Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, 6 June 1918

By Patrick S. Baker

Starship Troopers: Terran Command is a fun and engrossing real-time tactics (RTT) game.  The developers, The Aristocrats, are clearly fans of the 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie and have integrated that film’s “look and feel” without distracting from the actual game play.

Just like in the 1959 Robert A. Heinlein book and the film, humankind is fighting a genocidal war against the Bugs (called the Pseudo-Arachnids in the book), an alien race of giant insect-like creatures.  As the player, you are put in charge of the campaign of 19 scenarios to secure the desert mining planet of Kwalasha from the Bugs.

By Patrick S. Baker

The designation “4X” (standing for “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate”) originated in the Computer Gaming World 1993 preview of Master of Orion by Alan Emrich. In a play-on-words, Emrich rated the game as “XXXX”, referencing the “XXX” rating for pornography. Over time the phrase mutated into “4X” and has been adopted and adapted into a game genre description.

A strategy game must have the following gameplay tenets to be a 4X game.

Explore: the player dispatches reconnaissance units to discover surrounding areas.

Expand: the player lays claim to newly reconnoitered areas by colonizing them, or by otherwise extending their influence into the newly discovered territory.

Exploit: the player collects and utilizes various resources in areas they control, and also upgrades the usage and collection methods of those resources.

Exterminate: the player attacks and conquers, or eliminates, their opponents.

By Patrick S. Baker

Part Three

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Released on 20 August 2013, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is technically a prequel and spin-off of Enemy Unknown, not a direct sequel, as it was under development in 2006, before Enemy Unknown was, but the development was both lengthy and fraught with difficulties.

The game started as a collaboration between two of 2K Games development studios, one in Marin County, California and the other in Canberra, Australia. The game was conceived by the 2K Australia team as a combined mystery game and first-person shooter. Tn the game the player was tasked by a secret government agency with photographing mysterious aliens and then researching what they are and what they were doing. However, the Marin team wanted a third-person shooter that focused on teamwork with more tactical elements. 2K Australia was removed from the project because of the disagreements between the two studios. The Marin team renamed the game, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and moved forward with their ideas.

By Patrick S. Baker

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles

Steel Panthers II: Modern Battles (SPII:MB) was released in November 1996, just one year and two months after the release of the original Steel Panthers (now referred to as Steel Panthers I or SPI).  Grigsby had two main goals while developing the new game; one was to improve the animation and the other was to let the players simulate most of the armed conflicts, both major and minor, historical or hypothetical, throughout the world, from 1950 to 1999.

SPII:MB was more than just a reskin of the first game. Grigsby retained the game engine of the original, but the database was completely overhauled with a thousand modern units from 40 different countries, and non-state actors, all modeled in great detail and having characteristics unique to each time period and nationality. For example, helicopters, both scout and attack were added to the weapons inventory and were placed under the players’ direct control.

Airplanes were still in a support mode, but were now equipped with ordinance like precision-guided weapons, napalm, and/or cluster-bombs. Ground forces were kitted out with an assortment of heat-seeking and radar-guided Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) to counter the air threat, and so on.