Know Your Gaming Roots

[Giftmacher]

I second the Bullfrog related lamentations, Syndicate and Dungeon keeper in particular were solid games.

As for Looking glass, I was horrified when I heard they were closing down. All that talent broken up and moved on was, and still is, the worst gaming related news I've heard. I *still* want SS3, and no Ken, don't tell me Bioshock is a revolutionary new game blah blah. It's a skin change and a story line swap on the superior experience that is System Shock 2. There I said it, and there's going to be no take backs.

Gift.

 

[TripleDaddy]

I can't help but think that with all the nostalgia in this thread that the market for a lot of these IPs still exists...

 

[Rasputin-2]

Since everyone else is mentioning those companies they think should have been mentioned, allow me:

Origin.

Mainly (for me) for the Ultima series, but they produced a lot of other games too, including Bioforge, Crusader and Wing Commander.

Another great developer destroyed by EA.

It's a shame to see how bad EA has killed the UO experience.

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

People have already hashed out the old classics, but I still remember the old days of tag team gaming Questron(SSI) with my 2 brothers on a C64 because the old 5.25 floppies couldn't save anymore or going to a friends house to play Ultima 3 on their Atari ST.

who else remembers micro pose for the mech warrior games?

Oh yea i do. Sooo great games. Still play them once in a while

I always was a sucker for mech-type and wasteland/fall out type games. You can get mechwarrior 4 free now (well been out for a while) at http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/ . Not quite the same as the old mechwarrior game but there is rumour that there is a new MW game in the works after so many years of being shelved.

on a side note, do people still remember the goodies you used to get in a game box. Origin used to be one of the best with cloth maps and tokens in their Ultima games. Their Autoduel game came with a little toolkit that I used for a number of years to repair my eye glasses

 

[Fetzenfisch]

People have already hashed out the old classics, but I still remember the old days of tag team gaming Questron(SSI) with my 2 brothers on a C64 because the old 5.25 floppies couldn't save anymore or going to a friends house to play Ultima 3 on their Atari ST.

who else remembers micro pose for the mech warrior games?

Oh yea i do. Sooo great games. Still play them once in a while

I always was a sucker for mech-type and wasteland/fall out type games. You can get mechwarrior 4 free now (well been out for a while) at http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/ . Not quite the same as the old mechwarrior game but there is rumour that there is a new MW game in the works after so many years of being shelved.

on a side note, do people still remember the goodies you used to get in a game box. Origin used to be one of the best with cloth maps and tokens in their Ultima games. Their Autoduel game came with a little toolkit that I used for a number of years to repair my eye glasses

Yeah i was talking about that one or two days ago in a Special/Premium Edition - Thread , all that stuff you are now paying 10-30 bucks more for, once was more or less standart with good games. At least a good solid Manual, Several Maps and whatever material was useful or funny.Still got my huge Wingcommander Spacemaps lying around somewhere, about 3 times postersize each.

 

[sms_117b]

Westwoods C&C Retaliation on the PSX was the bomb

However, MicroProse Transport Tycoon has been omitted, why has this happened, I still play this game, infact it's the only pre-2009 game (it think) I still play.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Low on cash after the lawsuit, they were bought up by an investment group run by... guess who. They filed chapter 11, renamed themselves again, restructured the company, moved the company, and then began buying up other companies.

The description there brings to mind the image of a parasitic organism (Kotick in this case) finding a wounded animal, infecting it, and then using the poor creature to spread itself to others.
Tell me I'm not the only one thinking this.

AND THUS:

Bobby Kotick is JENOVA. O_O

 

[Yokai]

Good to see a shout-out to that ancient history, and it was fun to realize that I've actually heard of all of those companies, despite most of them disappearing before I was ten. See, my first computer was given to me by my grandfather in 2004--it was a laptop from 1994. The newest, shiniest game I could run on the thing was Thief. As such, I was still playing Warcraft II, X-COM and the original Command and Conquer while everyone else was geeking out over Halo and Morrowind. Good times.

 

[ldbmikey86]

Sierra 'n Broderbund are the mystery to me. time to look 'em up now. Got me all curious 'n shtuff.

Oh, and your 2D Boy - Activision analogy at the end there scares me. Not cool, man. Not cool.

 

[jbahm33]

id be interested to find out what happened to the people after the companies they were in went under. how many moved on to other profitable companies and how many comically moved from one sinking ship to another.

 

[MikoSquiz]

I thought Looking Glass were shut down by the mother company in order to secure more funding to make Daikatana in what is now known as "the stupidest thing anyone has ever done".

 

[Kermi]

MicroProse were by BFFs of gaming studios back in the day. They made EVERYTHING I played. X-Com, Stealth Fighter, Gunshop 2000. Back when all games came on floppies and I used to refer to it as "playing the computer" because it didn't occur to me that computers were good for anything else.
Which let's face it, if you weren't working in an office because you're only 8 years old, a Windows PC had two functions: games and MS Paint.

 

[Kermi]

Sierra 'n Broderbund are the mystery to me. time to look 'em up now. Got me all curious 'n shtuff.

Oh, and your 2D Boy - Activision analogy at the end there scares me. Not cool, man. Not cool.

Sierra were the kings of adventure games. I understand they're terribly dated today, but their 'Quest' series were just about the greatest thing around until Lucasarts brought out Monkey Island.

 

[Delusibeta]

Dune 2's also notable for being a tie-in game. Yes, a sequel to a tie-in game invented the RTS.

 

[Babitz]

You should have mentioned Black Isle. Hopefully, there will be more columns like this one to cover some other developers.