Favourite Developers of Yesteryear

[Farthing]

I'm a fan of Looking Glass Studios. Fortunately, as a smaller studio, you can still track a lot of the people from it to modern game companies. Sadly, a lot of them got pushed into much less insightful companies. There was a magic at LGS that seldom surfaces in an environment. Just watch and read the credits to System Shock 2 sometime to see what I mean.

Threads like these are great not only to honor the fallen heroes of the gaming industry, but also to set the high watermarks for present devs to surpass. Here's to good days gone by, and more for us to make in the future. ;D

 

[anthony87]

Capcom.

I miss the days when they weren't the day one DLC, content withholding joke of the industry.

 

[Sacman]

[img height= 176]http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/372062.jpg[/img]

Well, Looking Glass Studios and Ion Storm... the good Ion Storm... the one that made Deus Ex... not that one that made that crap Daikatana...<.<

Fortunately... most of the people responsible for my favorite games can still be tracked down...

 

[Tanis]

Square-Soft

Such good memories, until they went to mediocre.

 

[AnotherAvatar]

It's been said, but I'll say it too: Troika. They made what might be one of the best RPGs ever.

I feel like with all the fan love that old team should really get together and make a kickstarter.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Capcom
Konami
Squaresoft

these where the big 3 i turned to growing up. now .... i need to go cry ....

 

[Sean951]

Rare. They might still exist, but they are hardly the same company that made DK 64, Goldeneye, or Perfect Dark.

 

[Realitycrash]

Black Isle Studios and Interplay, anyone? Original Fallout ftw.
But yeah, Bullfrog, Westwood, Square, Rare, Konami, etc. Good shit.

 

[CobraX]

Pandemic Studios.

They made:
Star Wars Battlefront (1 and 2), Destroy All Humans (1 and 2), The Saboteur, and Lord Of The Rings:Conquest - They were great and, as you can see, they made great games.

But they fell to the beast, EA. They got bought by EA at the same time as Bioware - Bioware lived, but EA shut Pandemic down. I was a Sad Panda...

They did good work and gave me loads of entertainment, I wish they were still around

Pandemic, you are missed.

 

[Isalan]

Going properly old school now, Im gonna say the Bitmap Brothers. Xenon Megablast will always be my favourite side scrolling shmup and the music was AWESOME

And as has been previously stated, Bullfrog. Ah, the good old days when Peter Molyneux was making games and not "interactive experiences". Gimme a HD remake of the original theme park with custom coasters you can ride and I will be forever happy. Also, HD Theme Hospital, and DK 3.

 

[distortedreality]

Going properly old school now, Im gonna say the Bitmap Brothers. Xenon Megablast will always be my favourite side scrolling shmup and the music was AWESOME

I only ever played Xenon II but it was great, and the music was fucking amazing for the time. Was on the scale of Reznor doing Quake it was that bloody good.

 

[drednoahl]

Going properly old school now, Im gonna say the Bitmap Brothers. Xenon Megablast will always be my favourite side scrolling shmup and the music was AWESOME

And as has been previously stated, Bullfrog. Ah, the good old days when Peter Molyneux was making games and not "interactive experiences". Gimme a HD remake of the original theme park with custom coasters you can ride and I will be forever happy. Also, HD Theme Hospital, and DK 3.

The Bitmap Brothers deserve a double mention imo - they founded Renegade, the publisher that gave the "Sensible" devs the artistic freedom for their games.

When EA took control of Bullfrog, Peter Molyneux was barred from coming to work even tough he was contractually obliged to finish the games he was working on. It still amazes me that anything got released at all in that situation.

Anyway, my pick is Sacnoth. There are other devs I miss for sure, but Sacnoth are who I miss the most. Shadowhearts and Shadowhearts Covenant are by far my favourite jRPGs of the PS2 era.

 

[TaintedSaint]

Black Isle,SquareSoft but mostly Ion Storm Warren stop working for Disney for christ sake.

 

[Isalan]

Just for you a link the original version of the track from Xenon 2 (which was called Xenon Megablast in the UK apparently)

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMZabvOcCc&feature=colike

P.S. Embedding is too difficult to work out at 4 in the morning

 

[Lucem712]

Just for you a link the original version of the track from Xenon 2 (which was called Xenon Megablast in the UK apparently)

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMZabvOcCc&feature=colike

P.S. Embedding is too difficult to work out at 4 in the morning

No problem, mate. I can help you out!

 

[Austin Howe]

Squaresoft. Excuse me while I cry lonely tears . . .

I'm back! Versus XIII still looks excellent, you just need to finish and put that shit out! Come on guys!

I really liked Naughty Dog. Crash and the Jak series are jus tmust-haves for anyone who can appreciate fun. Uncharted on the other hand

1) Brings no new ideas to the table
2) Emphasizes graphics over everything else.
3) Stole Amy Henning from Crystal Dynamics, meaning there will probably never be a true conclusion to Legacy of Kain unless this supposed reboot of Soul Reaver ends up working out.
4) Most importantly: I'm supposed to respect this writing? I've seen this movie too many times before. Legacy of Kain proves that Amy Henning is not only good, but astoundingly original. Uncharted is neither in either gameplay or story.

You could say I'm what the kids call "salty."

 

[Berenzen]

Nintendo-era Rare. I still boot up my N64 to play DK64, JFG, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and the two Banjo games every once and a while.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Black Isle, I suppose. Dead and gone and redistributed throughout the gaming world, presumably mostly into Bioware.

Not sure about Beamdog, however, which seems to be taking the pretense of "we are using Black Isle's reanimated corpse, with a different set of organs, for our purposes". Still waiting to really form an opinion of this.

 

[Indecipherable]

Troika
Black Isle
Bullfrog

and $@*!ing lol at the person getting warned for saying "Rare". Other people gave two names, he gives one as his favourite, and apparently that's low content?