It is fascinating how the history of video games tends to be skewed towards the USA. Still today it is easy to come across articles – written by Italians of all people – that keep on mentioning the “console wars” in the 90s or the “great video game crash of 1983”. And yet, all of…
Nobody in the 90s cared about the history of videogames: they just played them really. Back then, though, the medium was still in its teenage years; it would be like expecting 15th century painters to organize an exhibition about Renaissance art. By now videogames are approaching their middle age, consequently we’re seeing more and more…
What do Zeus and Zombies have in common? Well, other than the letter Z obviously, not very much one would say, but Lucasarts would beg to differ, especially Mike Ebert and Dean Sharpe, The two designers were mainly responsible for Zombies Ate my Neighbors and Herc’s Adventures, two smaller arcade titles released by Lucasarts on…
How do you go around making a sequel to one of the most famous arcade maze games fourteen years later? Wait but… weren’t there already sequels to the original game? Actually, no. Ms. Pac-man was a spin-off, Pac-mania was a “reimagining”, Pac-land another spin-off, even though it did look and play like a sort of…
When I briefly looked at a couple of tie-in games, there was one question I had no answer to: how did a publisher decide which movie to license to a game developer? For the sake of this article, though, my guess would be: box office success with teen and pre-teen audience, the gamers of the…
A dead end can never be a one way street. You can always turn around and take another road. Unless you’re playing King’s Quest. Saving and reloading. Bet you wish you could do it in real life, huh? Forgot to pay the rent, died in a car accident while speeding or failed a job…
