(re: re: So Ken, anymore news on this “meeting” with Sierra’s CEO in April?)
Little harsh, don’t you think? The country of origion doesn’t dictate the “goodness” of games. I’ve found several of ubisoft’s games quite fun.
Of course I have to buy all of Sierra’s games out of bargin bins. Not many good ones comming out now. 🙁 And how (and why) would Gates, Jobs, Ken, & Nintendo get together? First off, Bill has his X-Box. Nintendo has it’s GameCube & GBA. Jobs has his fans. Ken has his wife and a big boat to go from point A to point B in. 🙂
And how do PC games suck? I found all the Doom & Quake games quite fun. GTA is fun. Beyond Good & Evil is fun. Star Trek: Elite Force is fun. UT2004 is fun. Battlefield games are fun. May Payne is fun. Chess is fun. 🙂 I don’t see any of these as clones of anything.
Doom wasn’t the first FPS eigther. That would be Wolf3D. So Doom is a clone of Wolf3d, right? You mention Double Gradon, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, Super Mario, Contra, Commander Keen. Those were all basicly the same: you were a “hero.” You fought bad guys. You ran. Walked. Jumped. Ducked. At the end of the game you got a cool ending. One game you shoot, one game you use melee attacks, but it was all mostly the same with different graphics. They’re all also platformers. Most playformers play the same.
All the adventure games could be called Kings Quest clones. After all, they ALL let you use the keyboard to move and you type a command (or, later on, use the mouse to select something).
I also find it funny you say Zelda 64 was good, but it WAS a clone of Mario 64. They used the same engine, slighly modified. And what about metroid prime? That’s an excelent game. It’s 3d. In fact, nintendo did the OPPOSITE of what ken said he did (listen to fans) and didn’t listen to the fans and make it a sidescroller. Excelent game.
I don’t think ken planned on having his video game vets take over the game world. Did you ken? 🙂 Maybe a strong nitch, but if there was no competition, what other good stuff would they have to compare themselves to? No competition, can’t say “we’re the best!” Microsoft doesn’t say they’re the best, they say you have no choice.
Games are evolving. How many people complained when TV evolved from B&W to color? Or radio to Stereo? Or they had to upgrade to VGA cards to play the latest games?