The Minds Behind Adventure Games : Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers

237 Pages·15.004 MB·English

by  Patrick Hickey

The Minds Behind
Adventure Games
STUDIESINGAMING
The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies:
Critical Essays(Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, editor, 2016)
Player and Avatar: The Affective Potential of Videogames
(David Owen, 2017)
Speedrunning: Interviews with the Quickest Gamers
(David Snyder, 2017)
The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews with Cult
and Classic Video Game Developers(Patrick Hickey, Jr., 2018)
The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games:
Agency, Ritual and Meaning in the Medium
(René Reinhold Schallegger, 2018)
Responding to Call of Duty: Critical Essays on
the Game Franchise(Nate Garrelts, editor, 2018)
Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends
from the Late 1960s to Today(Marco Arnaudo, 2018)
Storytelling in Video Games: The Art of the Digital
Narrative (Amy M. Green, 2018)
Teach Like a Gamer: Adapting the Instructional Design
of Digital Role-Playing Games(Carly Finseth, 2018)
Video Gaming in Science Fiction:
A Critical Study(Jason Barr, 2018)
The Composition of Video Games: Narrative, Aesthetics,
Rhetoric and Play(Johansen Quijano, 2019)
Forum-Based Role Playing Games
as Digital Storytelling(Csenge Virág Zalka, 2019)
Narrative Design and Authorship in Bloodborne: An Analysis
of the Horror Videogame(Madelon Hoedt, 2019)
The Pokémon GoPhenomenon: Essays on Public Play
in Contested Spaces(Jamie Henthorn, Andrew Kulak,
Kristopher Purzycki and Stephanie Vie, editors, 2019)
The Minds Behind Adventure Games: Interviews with Cult
and Classic Video Game Developers(Patrick Hickey, Jr., 2020)
What Is a Game? Essays on the Nature of Videogames
(Gaines S. Hubbell, editor, 2020)
Women and Video Game Modding: Essays on Gender
and the Digital Community(Bridget Whelan, editor, 2020)
FORTHCOMINGINTHESERIES
The Minds Behind Sports Games: Interviews with Cult
and Classic Video Game Developers(Patrick Hickey, Jr., 2020)
Rerolling Boardgames: Essays on Themes,
Systems, Experiences and Ideologies(Douglas Brown
and Esther MacCallum-Stewart, editors, 2020)
The Minds Behind
Adventure Games
Interviews with Cult and Classic
Video Game Developers
Patrick Hickey, Jr.
Foreword by Pete Paquette
STUDIESINGAMING
Series Editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
All cover art has been taken from TheCoverProject.net. Gameplay screens have
been taken directly from live gameplay sessions or from press releases intended
for public sharing. All other photographs have been provided by the game
developers interviewed or directly from the publisher when indicated.
ALSOBYPATRICKHICKEY, JR.
The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews with Cult
and Classic Video Game Developers(McFarland, 2018)
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-7966-2
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-3847-8
Library of Congress and British Library
cataloguing data are available
© 2020 Patrick Hickey, Jr.All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover images from iStock and author’s collection
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my wife, Melissa,
and my daughter, Josie.
This page intentionally left blank
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword by Pete Paquette 1
Preface 3
Introduction 7
Mark Flitman, Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage: Paint It Black
and Red 11
Masaya Matsuura, Rodney Alan Greenblat and Perry Rodgers,
PaRappa the Rapper: Don’t Stop Believin’ 19
Garry Kitchen, Keystone Kapers: The “Little Man” That Could 25
Warren Spector, Epic Mickey: When Mickey Met Oswald 32
Fabien Demeulenaere and Philipp Döschl, Monster Boy and the Cursed
Kingdom: A Cult- Classic Competition 39
Todd Clineschmidt, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
The Fellowship That Almost Never Was 47
Kevin Sheller, Hunter: The Reckoning: Teddy Bears, Tequila
and a Triple- Buffered Adventure 53
Patrick Lipo, X-Men Legends: The Birth of the Marvel Action/RPG Monopoly 61
Tony Barnes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wooden Stakes and Bad Pizza 73
Dan Kitchen, Double Dragon: From the Arcade to the Atari 2600 Extreme 81
Garry Kitchen, Garry Kitchen’s GameMaker: The First “Unity”
in Game Design 86
Simon Pick, Die Hard Trilogy: The Tech Demo That Did It All One
Christmas in Nakatomi Plaza 93
Marshal Linder, Zyll: IBM’s “Quest” Before the King’s 101
Adam Jeffcoat, The VideoKid: Paperboy Meets Voxel Pam Anderson 106
Nate Weiss, Songbringer: A Whole New World, Every Time 111
Carlos L. Hernando, A Rite from the Stars: “Tou Kune Tu Kiki” 116
Chris Carpenter, Pheugo: Man Down Under at Work 123
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viii Table of Contents
Brett Taylor, Linelight: An “Adventure” Between the Lines 129
James Deighan, Andrew Marsh and Zack Manko, Coffee Crisis: Fade
to Coffee Black 135
Zack Johnson, West of Loathing: Getting by with a Little Help from My
Stick- Figured Friends 140
Kevin Sheller and John R. Sanderson, Family Guy Video Game!:
“Thank You, Mr. Belvedere” 146
Chris Seavor, Conker’s Bad Fur Day: Making Lemonade When Poo Hits
the Fan 156
Chris Seavor, Conker: Live and Reloaded: When Microsoft Met Their Match 166
Yoshitomo Moriwaki, Boom Blox: Spielberg and Jenga, with Explosives 171
Howard Scott Warshaw, Raiders of the Lost Ark: An “Adventure” in Research
and Discipline 177
David Crane, Pitfall!: Tarzan Screams and More Than 200 Screens 184
Andrew Glaister, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure: From Killing DOS
to Porting Jim 190
Nic Cusworth, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos: Lights, Lava, Action 196
Don Traeger, Spider: An Amazing Arachnid Adventure 202
Tony Barnes, Strider: Even Better Than the First Time 207
David Cowan and Don Traeger, Grand Theft Auto: From the Food Truck
to the PlayStation 215
Conclusion 224
Index 225
Acknowledgments
For my first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic
Video Game Developers, I spent a few pages thanking a plethora of people that helped
make it all possible. For this go- round, I’d like it to be a lot simpler. While many of the
same people from book one have been influential in supporting my creative vision for
book two, this book was far more insular an experience. This was something I did a lot
more on my own, with far less time out and about. I had a much clearer mission this time.
The reason for that is one very close to my heart. My mother passed away on February
28, 2018, less than two months before the first book in this series was released. And while
our relationship was far from perfect, she was one of the most selfless people in my life
and a huge reason why I became a journalist. The day she left this world was also my
daughter’s first birthday. It was an intense 24 hours. One that could have broken me.
Instead, it empowered me. I knew that I had to continue to make an impact on the world—
and the only way I really know how to do that is by writing and journalism.
Losing my mother and seeing
my daughter grow up simultane-
ously made me understand that this
book series is important and that it
affects people. I wrote a big section
of that first book by my mother’s
side during her chemotherapy ses-
sions and even more of it with my
daughter sleeping, the image of her
on the baby monitor in my periph-
eral vision while I typed away (I am
doing that very thing as I type this
passage). Simply put, that first book
is about so much more than video
games; it’s about the times we spend
with the people we love. Gaming,
for me—and millions of others—is
an adventure, both for yourself and
the people you share it with.
As a kid, a lot of time with my
Preserving the history of gaming is one of my own
mother was spent playing video personal quests in life, but it has also helped me create
games the likes of Sonic the Hedge- a bond with my daughter, Josie.
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