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Less than Famous Firsts: Your Favorite Developers’ Early Efforts
Shadow Company heads to The Philippines
How Mario 3D Land Marries Old and New
DK Online (KR)

Less than Famous Firsts: Your Favorite Developers’ Early Efforts

Posted: 13 Oct 2011 07:02 AM PDT

Everyone starts somewhere in the game industry. Few would-be auteurs are handed their own big-budget projects without first doing time in smaller roles. Of course, some of those smaller roles are part of major games. Many of today’s best-known game developers began their careers on important ground: Doublefine founder Tim Schafer’s first gigs came with such acclaimed LucasArts adventures games as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, while Deus Ex and Thief producer Warren Spector jumped into game development by working on the Wing Commander and Ultima series.

Other major talents from today’s game industry started off with humbler attempts. Their first games didn’t change the market or spawn successful franchises, and some of them were clearly planned as disposable pieces of a popular license or an ongoing series. Yet in each of these seemingly minor titles, there’s a hint or two of what their designers would accomplish years down the road.

Hideo Kojima – Penguin Adventure

Above all else, Hideo Kojima is known for messing with players. He’s also known for the Metal Gear Solid series, the Zone of the Enders games, and the graphic-adventure pioneering of Policenauts and Snatcher, all of which throw curveballs in their stories or gameplay. Kojima’s knack for that dates all the way back to the first game he ever worked on: Penguin Adventure on the MSX.

Devoid of weary military operatives or finger-wagging about nuclear proliferation, Penguin Adventure sends Pentarou, its chubby flightless hero, racing through various courses. He’s out to find a golden apple, the only fruit that can heal the stricken Princess Penko. Along the way, Pentarou contends with pits, bats, an icy-breathed Freezasaurs or two, and something that assistant director Hideo Kojima would later adore: unvarnished references to popular films. The statues that greet Pentarou at a level’s end resemble penguin-headed versions of the sphinxes from The Neverending Story.

True to Kojima’s form, there’s a nasty surprise at the game’s conclusion, where the princess dies in spite of Pentarou’s efforts. There’s only one way to prevent this: pause the game once and only once during the entire quest. There’s no hint of this in the game itself, which led to plenty of disappointed players back in 1986. Twelve years later, Kojima was less subtle about killing off Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid; she survived as long as Solid Snake resisted a bout of electroconvulsive torture. Perhaps Penguin Adventure even planted some seeds for Metal Gear Solid 2, where no less than three major female characters die rather abruptly.

Later Appearances:

Penguin Adventure slipped into Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where the isolated young Sunny plays the game on her PSP. She doesn’t appear to pause the game, though. Uh oh.

Yuji Naka – Girl’s Garden

Yuji Naka is remembered most readily as the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog and the man who oversaw the blue speedball’s best outings. Yet he’s also the force behind NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Phantasy Star Online, and Billy Hatcher. Before he was ever Sonic’s steward, Naka worked on the first two Phantasy Stars and his lesser-known first game, Girl’s Garden.

Like many of its contemporaries, Girl’s Garden is all about hunting items in a maze. That maze is a web of bushes, the items are flowers, and the collector is a girl named Papri, who’s gathering a bouquet for the boy she likes. Naka intended Girl’s Garden for female players, and it makes no secret of defying the game industry’s gender roles: Papri’s quite willing to risk mauling by the bears who roam her garden, and her love interest, Minto, is unashamed of liking flowers, thank you very much. Girl’s Garden may be simple, but it merits revisiting to see just how far female characters have come in video games–and how far they haven’t.

Originally conceived as a test project by Naka and another Sega employee, Girl’s Garden caught the eye of upper management and was released for the SG-1000 (the ancestor of the Sega Master System). And while the cast of Girl’s Garden never showed up Sonic the Hedgehog or Burning Rangers, Naka still unfraid to go after segments of the gaming market previously ignored by other developers. Other parts of the industry have long since caught up with him, but his studio Prope’s been busy with Let’s Tap, Ivy the Kiwi?, and the Sonic-esque Rodea the Sky Soldier.

Later Appearances:

Papri and the rest of the Girl’s Garden cast appear in none of Naka’s later games, though he returned to vegetation-centric play mechanics with Ivy the Kiwi? and its vines.

David Jaffe – Mickey Mania

There’s no question that David Jaffe’s games earn their “M” ratings. God of War is relentless in its savagery, and the Jaffe-backed installments of the Twisted Metal series grew darker and darker with their concoctions of vehicular carnage and Mephistophelean soul-selling. All of this contrasts starkly with Jaffe’s first game, Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse.

Paying tribute to Mickey’s career, the game features several nicely animated recreations of classic cartoons: Steambot Willie, Lonesome Ghosts, and even the 1990 short The Prince and the Pauper. It is, course, as non-violent as a game can get without depleting itself of all conflict: Mickey dodges and outruns some bosses, he throws marbles as his only weapon, and he comically feigns death when he’s out of energy. It’s even less aggressive than, say, Mickey Mousecapade on the NES, where the stars Mickey fired were at least pointy.

Despite the lightweight, Disney-mandated tone of the whole production, co-designer Jaffe shows a good grasp of the same varied styles that would win God of War many fans. With each new cartoon tribute comes a new gameplay concept or two, and the final battle against Pete involves some creative use of the game’s environment. Mickey doesn’t slam Pete’s head in an iron door and stab him fifty-seven times before decapitating and dismembering him, but the mouse’s improvised weapons aren’t such a far cry from God of War’s more memorable clashes.

Later Appearances:

Mickey’s a long way from God of War and Twisted Metal, both legally and tonally. The closest you’ll come to seeing the hyperviolent Kratos interact with Disney characters is fan art, and that’s a path best unexplored.

Posted by: admin in Gaming News
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Shadow Company heads to The Philippines

Posted: 13 Oct 2011 07:02 AM PDT

Shadow Company, a new online shooter developed by Doobic Studios using the Unreal 3 Engine, is bound for the The Philippines after a service contract was signed earlier. The publisher will be GameClub PH (link), the Philippine MMO portal for Korean developer, Liveplex. Doobic Studios is currently more well known for creating Combat Arms, a hit MMOFPS in Asia.

As posted previously (link), Shadow Company features a Battle Squad mode 4-team system, unlike most online shooters where maps are limited to just 2 teams. Both companies’ representatives are delighted with the deal, with aims to make Shadow Company the top MMOFPS in the region.

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Find related article at: http://www.mmoculture.com/2011/10/shadow-company-heads-to-philippines.html

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How Mario 3D Land Marries Old and New

Posted: 12 Oct 2011 06:57 PM PDT

Once upon a time, getting about in a Zelda game was such a clear-cut process. You had your dungeons (anywhere from four to 12, depending) and you had the overworld that linked them all together. Aside from the occasional spin-off (Four Swords Adventures was broken into levels, and Majora’s Mask centered around the hub of Clock Town), that’s how it always worked. You’d wander around, maybe poke into a cave for a Heart Piece, clear away some scrub, fight some bad guys, and eventually work your way to the next subterranean puzzle labyrinth.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is mixing things up, and — for the first eight hours of the game, at least — the results are pretty great. Skyward Sword’s design makes the distinction between overworld and underworld much muddier than in past games. Perhaps that’s appropriate, since this adventure divides its world into three layers rather than the usual two. Above the dungeons, you have the overworld; meanwhile, above it all is the realm of Skyloft, best described as an aerial take on Wind Waker’s sea. At the heart of Skyloft is a large city held aloft by (one assumes) ancient magic or technology or something, but the skies are littered with floating islands, and Link travels between them on the back of a huge red bird.

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DK Online (KR)

Posted: 12 Oct 2011 12:56 PM PDT

Another day, yet another new Korean MMO developer and publisher. DK Online: The Legend of Dragon Knights is the maiden title for studio RPG Factory, once again boasting various veterans from the gaming industry working on the development team. DK Online is focused on open world Player Kill (PK), castle siege and a title and politics system.

The PK system is said to follow that of Lineage’s, which I never played before. There is a chance for an equipment to go bust if a PK is successful, while equipments in DK Online can be upgraded normally with no requirements to wear them. Skill books can only be dropped by killing various mobs.

There are currently 4 classes in the game, being the Warrior, Paladin, Sorceress and Warlock. Interestingly, among the classes, there is the title and politics system as well. For example, some Warriors might gain the title of Earl, some Paladins might gain the title of Bishop and so on. The titles are categorized into S, A, B and C, with the former the highest ranking (Supreme). There are also 4 races revealed, including Human, Lycan, Elf and Grayelf.

All these titles will be bestowed according to a number of requirements, for example the number of kills and contributions made in a siege war, elections etc. Each server will also have a fixed number of 100 Supreme players, meaning the highest title in each class. There will be features like the tax system added into the mix as well.

Just being curious, looking at the game content and artwork, can you guess which Korean MMORPG did one of DK Online’s main development staff worked on before and hence drew inspiration from?