The Birth of the First Real-Time Strategy Game

I happened to look at the trivia section for Dune II on Moby Games. I found the following entry:

This game is commonly called "the first real-time strategy game", but that designation is incorrect. Dune 2 borrowed many elements from a previous Westwood release, Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge. And thatgame borrowed elements from what is probably the first true game in the typical "RTS" genre, The Ancient Art of War.

This is all false. I was an artist and designer on Battletech: The Cresent Hawk's Revenge and its predecessor Battletech: The Cresent Hawk's Inception. I must, somewhat embarrassingly, admit that I never played The Ancient Art of War though I heard it was a very good game. I could also point out that some of Westwood's earliest projects were converting SSI's games to the Amiga and Atari ST. But the point that this guy doesn't seem to understand, and made funny by this comment of "typical RTS" was that those were all "turn-based" strategy (TBS) games. Dune II was the first "real-time" strategy (RTS) game. Maybe he just never knew what R.T.S stood for.

I don't have the text of my update and it is pending approval on Moby Games. When they approve or reject it I'll get an email where I'll have access to the text of it again. I'll post it here when they do.

I figured since I was at it I would also share some other information on the game's history.

French developer Cryo Interactive was developing a Dune game for Virgin Interactive, but it wasn't going anywhere. Not wanting to waste the Dune license, Virgin gave the game to Westwood, who they had just acquired. This is circa 1992 and when Westwood change from Westwood Associates to Westwood Studios. Virgin was planning on canceling the Cryo game, but instead one of their producers flew out to France and got things going again and did. Virgin soon found they had two Dune games, though they were quite different. Cryo’s Dune is more of an adventure game that basically followed the story of the first book/movie. Westwood’s Dune was the first Real-Time Strategy game. Cryo finished their game first and it was released first, hence this game being Dune II.

Westwood wanted to just call the game, Dune: The Battle for Arrakis, but Virgin’s American marketing department insisted on calling it “Dune II” and they didn’t like the sub-title, “Battle for Arrakis” because they thought it made the game sound too much like one of those slow and boring, turn-based, strategy games that were dying out at the time. It should also be noted that some of Westwood’s first products were porting SSI’s turn-based strategy games onto the Atari ST and Amiga. Virgin wanted to emphasize the building and development aspect of the Dune II, so it would appeal to people who liked games such as the then popular: Populous and Civilization, two of the three games that inspired the gameplay in Dune II by the way. The third game that inspired Dune II was the Sega Genesis game, Herzog Zwei.

Later when Virgin’s European office was given the game to market in their territories, without knowing anything of the previous argument, renamed it, “Dune: The Battle for Arrakis.”

Blade Runner, the Cool Twitter Kids and I

One of the cool things about twitter is getting to listen in on people (I was gonna say famous people, but that sounds lame, especially when the people I am talking about aren't mega-famous, just authors or artist I like) talking to each other. There is the somewhat neat factor when you find out the people you like and follow also follow and talk to each other. You get the feeling that you are there with them while they are talking about stuff. That all still sounds pretty Access Hollywood lame, but there you go.

My point, which is covered up by my new hat everybody seems to like, though somebody did say I look like a shady character, is that I was reading a twitter conversation between Joe Hill, Ed Brubaker, and Michael Oeming where Oeming mentioned how much he liked playing the Blade Runner game we made at Westwood Studios back in 1997.

I should admit that, although I worked on the project in the beginning, nothing I did remained in the project when it shipped. For the longest time the Windows icon was the last thing remaining that I had created, but at the last minute they changed it. Mine was the silhouette of Decker used in the title on the movie poster, which I thought was the perfect icon. No idea why they changed it. I'd ask Rade, as he was the producer on the project, but after all these years I don't really care that much. My heart has since mended.

Anyway, nerd boner. Though I will admit I have no plans to frame these tweets like I want to do with the ones where Monkey Island creator, Ron Gilbert, praised my game, Highborn, on the iPad.  Note, that I haven't framed Gilbert's tweets, I just have had plans to frame them for about a year now.

Ain't it Gory

The following is a reposting of what I just wrote on Westwood's facebook page:



Here is an old Westwood game I am sure you have never heard of. I wasn't actually sure it was ever released until I was sent this video yesterday by Brian. My faulty memory remembers it haven been shelved, but then sometime afterwards I heard that some other company was interested in picking it up and publishing it. I'll try to remember to ask Louis or Brett next time I see them.

Most of the artwork was done by the late, great Rick Parks. It was all orginally done in EGA on the PC and just ported to the Apple IIgs. I still don't think the PC version ever came out. I know I did some work on it, but honestly can't remember what exactly. I remember we had a lot of goofy fun picking the name before settling on Ancient Glory. Everybody internally called it "Ain't it Gory."

Old Westwood NES Games

NESGuide.com posted this 15 minute video containing every U.S. game release for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. That is 1.1 seconds for each NES Game.



If you look watch real carefully, you can see each of the three Westwood NES games I worked on. They are DragonStrike (03:35.3 - 03:36.4), Pac-Mania (08:27.9 - 08:29.0), and Vindicators (12:56.3 - 12:57.4). Note they are all credited as Westwood Associates, not Westwood Studios. They were all published before the Virgin Games buyout when we changed our name.

If you want to see a bit more of each of those games, NESGuide.com's list actually links to these pages which has more video:

DragonStrike

The player character is a knight who flies on the back of a metallic dragon equipped with a lance and various magic items (among other things a magic orb that acts as a radar in the game). The player's dragon can use its recharging magical breath to attack and can also attack with its claws if the dragon passes closely above enemies. Opponents in the game include evil dragons with and without riders and other flying monsters such as manticores and beholders. Flying too close to the ground is another hazard for the player as enemy archers are present in some areas.

Pac-Mania

Just like most of the other games in the Pac-Man series, the goal is for Pac-Man to eat all of the dots before he is caught by the ghosts. This game has several significant changes from the traditional format. The first, and most noticeable, change is that the board is viewed in an isometric, 3D format. Because of this, it can sometimes be difficult to remember where the ghosts or the remaining pellets are. Secondly, and more importantly, Pac-Man can now jump. This in principle makes evading ghosts easier.

Vindicators

The Tangent Empire are preparing to attack the earth with their convoy of tanks, and it is you who has been sent forward to destroy the 14 space stations which make up the potential invasion threat. There are 3 sub-levels on each station, which can be played in any order. The action scrolls in every direction, with you guiding your tank-link droid around to shoot the opposition droids. The tank takes a while to steer, making it initially harder to avoid contact with those enemies. Each level contains energy stars, which can be traded in for upgrades such as improved weapons and extra speed after each level.

The scary thing is I think that I was the sole artist on those games, and there several bits I have no recollection of. Though, the technical restrictions of creating art on the NES was a enough of a nightmare that I'm not surprised I blocked some of it out.

There are a few other games in the first video that are ports of original Westwood Games, but that we didn't do that port of. The one that comes to mind is Hillsfar.

Joining the Jet Set crowd

So it looks like I have procured gainful employment and am joining the work force again. The jet set gang over at Jet Set Games have decided they wanted their office adorned with my Homestar Runner figures. That means they have to pay me to show up every day and dust them.

Jet Set was formed last year by Westwood Studios Alumni Bret Sperry, Adam Isgreen, Rade Stojsavljevic and Steve Wetherill. Besides working with such wonderful talent again, this also means I get to stay in Las Vegas.

So let's add this up: new car, new job, possibility of being able to move back into my house next year when the tenants' lease is up. So that just leaves one thing... anybody know any cute single women?

Retro Gamer - Lands of Lore

Issue 67 of Retro Gamer is finally out unless you live elsewhere in which case you already missed it. Not sure why the U.S. is a month behind. Why issue 67? Because that is the issue with the long over due "Lands of Lore" article. Damien McFerran actually interviewed Rick Gush and myself over two years ago, back when I was living in Brisbane. Damien's finishing of the article was interrupted by his wife having a baby, his triumphant return to the Tour de France and drafting Obama's Presidential acceptance speech. Did that come off as funny or mean? I was trying for funny. Writing it a little off at the moment, I'm watching the Emmy award show and I'm a bit upset Neil Patrick Harris wasn't in the red and black Dr. Horrible uniform. Why would he go back to the white uniform when the red and black one was so much more evil?

Okay, sorry. Seriously Damien's wife did have a baby. Again, congrats on that! Then the article was originally supposed to be in issue 64, but the editor felt that that issue had to many "making of" articles so he decided to push it back.

Unfortunately, the layout artist of the issue was too smart to publish the picture I gave him of members of the team. Actually, it is a picture of the "Eye of the Beholder" team, though it was pretty much the same people on "Lands of Lore." Note to the guy who wrote the Wiki article, Westwood did not split from SSI over artistic differences. Westwood became a part of Virgin Games, though we still provided a lot of help, support and love to our friends over at SSI while there were doing the EOB III. And if you don't beleive me, you'll have to deal with my bad-ass self from the early 90's in the picture. Oh yeah, don't mess with me!

It might be obvious by now that I am really just typing away trying to add some meat to this post to balance out the two pictures. I don't want to actually post a copy of the article itself until it has been off the shelf for a few months. It a glorious 3 page article with a nice shout out to the late great Rick Parks. I think you should rush right out and buy at least two issues. I did.

Into the Deep, Dark, Burning Depths I Ventured...

I went dumpster diving today... okay, not in a dumpster but rather my storage bin here in Las Vegas. Half of the stuff in there is what I kept after moving out of my house before moving to San Diego and onto Australia about six years ago. The rest is the stuff I put in there after moving back from Australia.

There was one point, while climbing around in 400 degree heat at the very back of the "air cooled" storage bin, when a number boxes started to shift behind me, that I suddenly felt like I was going to pass out. I had a thought about how long it would take them to notice I was missing, find my dead and crushed body, and figure out how to get it out. Luckily, I had my 100 FL OZ, insulated, Rebel Convenience store cup full of diet Dr. Pepper within reach to provide some much need refreshment. That's right one HUNDRED fluid ounces!!! And it only costs me .99 cents to refill. Thats one dollar and seven cents if you include tax. Compare that to the cost of a normal, 12 fluid ounce, can of soda. To be fair it isn't quite as big as it looks; because, it has a very thick, foam insulated core. I can fill it in the morning and it still has ice left in it in the evening.

I was looking for some specific stuff, but also found some other cool stuff.

First up is a self-portrait that Neil Gaiman drew on the back of his name page at a 1993 (I think, though I might be off by a year either way) San Diego Comic-Con panel on Horror Fiction. During the panel another author started to drone on about some artsie-fartsie stuff and pretty much everybody else in the room started to nod off. I noticed that Neil had begun to doodle on the back of his name page; which was really just a folded piece of paper with his name printed on it so you knew who was who on the panel. After the panel was over the entire audience swarmed around him at the exit as he was leaving. I, however, went to see what he had been doodling and claimed this prize.

I also found some of my old Unicorn Software educational games. Pictured are "Animal Kingdom" (later renamed "Wonders of the Animal Kingdom"), "Kinderama" on the Amiga, and "MacRobots."I really only found the slipcover for "MacRobots." When I left Unicorn Software back in 1988 I wasn't allowed to take my copies of the games I had worked on so that is all I got. If I mess with the sidebar art anymore, I'll add these in along with "Adventures of Sinbad" and "Magical Myths" which I also have cover scans of. Though now that I look at them I see that they are photographs taken of the boxes lying on a table which puts them at odd angle.

I also found two other Unicorn related items. Both of these my Mother had been keeping. She gave them back to me just in time for me to bury them in storage with the rest of the junk I was keeping. The first thing pictured above is the Amiga advertisement on the inside back cover of the August 1987 Commodore magazine. That is the Amiga version of "Animal Kingdom" on the right-hand computer. The funny thing is, as I just took the magazine out of the scanner, I noticed the advertisement on the outside back cover is for the Amiga versions of SSI's "Phantasie III, The Wrath of Nikademus" and "Realms of Darkness." I'm not sure about Realms, but I know Westwood did the port of Wrath to the Amiga. It was an omen!

Then there is the Unicorn Software Educational Catalogue. It looked much better on the Amiga monitor I assure you. A lot better than you see it here where it is a picture (with flash) taken of the monitor, that was then printed out on the manual which then sat in a box for the last 20+ years only then to be rescanned into the computer. It is actually a fold out catalog and has two screen shots for each game. I'm looking at a few of them thinking, "Did I draw that... I think I drew that... Okay yeah, I remember drawing that!" The fox for Aesop's Fables looks especially good. If you look real closely at the bottom left of the cover, you can see some yellow pixels. That is where I signed my name, but it got cut off when they trimmed the picture to account for the curve of the monitor photo.

I also found my pillow which I am very happy about. It is one of those nice memory foam ones that is thicker along the top and bottom making it less likely that my arm will fall asleep if I rest it under the pillow while sleeping. Arm falling asleep is actually loss of blood circulation which isn't the same as me falling asleep. I probably didn't have to explain that, but the sentence felt odd.

My Vectrex video game console was in there too, but I figured it was safer to leave it there. Especially since I had booby-trapped it to kill off any other tomb raiders who dared disturb my "Temple of Junk!"

The two cartridges I have for the Vectrex, a 'mega' cartridge with every game officially published and the unreleased prototype cartridge of "Dark Tower" are buried in one of the other boxes that I brought back from Australia. I had accidentally had them in with my desk supplies and moved them downunder with me. I was always afraid I was going to loose them, but I distinctly remember putting them in a box when I packed up in Perth.

Bob Jones, one of the very talented artist I worked with at Auran, also had a Vectrex in Australia. He had actually bought his new back when he was a kid. Unfortunately, it no longer worked and he just had it sitting on his desk as a show piece.

I never had any of the color overlays as I bought my system used from a guy who's name I believe is Sean Kelly. He used to have a newsletter that he would publish with antique video games for sale. I also think he was one of the guys who founded the classic video game convention that they used(?) to host here in Las Vegas. I was able to find links to Sean's website but it appears the site is no longer there.

One thing I didn't find was my Westwood jacket. We all had letterman's jackets made with the year we started on the sleeve. I know I didn't take it with me to Australia, so I hope it is in there somewhere.

Half a Day and A Cramped Hand Later...

Okay, the new left hand sidebar background graphic is done, uploaded and appears to be working. If you are viewing the blog in a resolution thinner than 1024 you are just out of luck, sorry. It sure took longer than I expected. But what else do I have to do while sitting here in this hotel room? Let me just say that using Photoshop on a laptop, without a mouse, is a royal pain in the ass... or more exactly, the hand.

One of the things that made it take so long was that I just couldn't take the cover of Dune II looking so bad. It wasn't the first Real Time Strategy game, but it was the one that created and defined the RTS genre as we know it. Such an esteemed title deserves a little respect, and all the box scans that I found online were horrible. The reason being that the title text and frame around the picture on the front of the box were done in raised gold foil which doesn't scan in very well.

After a little searching I found a copy online that was uploaded pretty large. Unfortunately, it was scanned and saved in 256 colors even though it was a jpeg. Somebody needs to do their file format compression homework. It was still pretty good for what I needed. I spent about an hour cleaning it up and bringing out the title text. Once shrunken down, you can't even tell. Here is the old box cover I had and the new cleaned up one. I also left the new one a little larger.
You can also see this problem with "Mines of Titan" box cover. Notice how the giant title text doesn't stand out very well against the background. It was also done with foil text, silver this time. Looks great on the store shelf, but doesn't scan in very well. I probably should have cleaned it up a bit too, even just a little brightness & contrast adjustment to bring out the red background. Though I know how I am, if I don't make a stand and stop now at 11:00, I'll be up all night touching up every single box cover. Even now I just had to go back into Photoshop and add the drop shadow. But those drop shadow settings where the ones I used for the boxes on the top layer of the side bar montage. It doesn't quite look right, by itself, on the white background... No no no! I'm not doing any more work on it! It's just my stupid blog that is only read by half a dozen people! I'll save my anal attention to detail for work that people will actually see.

As another famous Westwood saying goes, this one from Brett Sperry directly to me over something I was working on, "It's done, quit pixel fucking it!" It is a quote that has served me well over the years.

"That's a lot of boxes!"

If you are an old Westwood employee you may recognize that saying. If you are a current Petroglyph employee, you should go up to Mike Legg and ask him; because, although it was something said by Marco, it was Mike's imitation of Macro saying it that made it one of the famous "Westwood Quotes."

Other quotes in the Mike imitating Marco series include, "You should shave, you look like Pancho Villa." and "I'm nobody's flunky."

But the purpose of this post, is to point out that I know you can't read the blog if you resolution is 1024 pixels wide. I am sitting in a hotel room in Redlands California as we speak, slaving away in Photoshop, fixing the boxes on the left.

If you are reading this blog at some point after a few hours from now, in a browser window 1024 pixels wide or smaller, and don't see what the problem is; nevermind because I have obviously already fixed it.

If; however, you are reading this at some point after... yadda yadda yadda, and the text still overlaps the boxes on the left... Sorry but I guess one of the following things happened:

• I never got back to it after going to lunch.

• Hotel's internet went out and I wasn't able to upload the new graphic.

• I couldn't figure out what I did last time to link to the new graphic in a manner which the site wasn't scaling it down to fit on screen.

• An attractive woman expressed at least some passing interest in my romantically and I am off wooing her and could care less if you could read this or not.

• My plans for world domination have been moved forward and I am busy trying to take Australia, which as we know from Risk, is strategically important.

• I am still thinking of things to add to this list instead of working on the graphic... DOH!.

The Straw Shooting Game

Here is the story of another little game I invented to amuse myself. About the time we were finishing up the first Command & Conquer game, I was also involved in a play in Green Valley for Theater in the Valley. They were doing the last production of the season but suddenly had problems. Memories are vague, but I think one of the actors broke an arm or leg and the director's husband was getting reassigned somewhere else and they had to move. Anyway, they HAD to do the last play in the season or they wouldn't have enough money to open the next season. They picked a play one of the directors had already directed and knew well and then called people they had already worked with and knew could memorize parts quickly. I was one such person.

The problem was that I was in crunch for Command & Conquer at Westwood and there were rehearsals every night in Green Valley which is on the opposite side of town. I was slammed and didn't really have time to eat. I wound up getting fast food for lunch from the drive through to eat at my desk. For dinner I would go through the drive through while driving across town to rehearsals.

I noticed at the drive through window; they always took your money, gave you your drink, and then it took a minute or two before your food was ready. So in the down time while waiting for your food; the game is to take the straw wrapper and shoot it back through the drive through window without it being noticed by any of the people working there. There is point scoring for what you can hit. Landing in the fryer is major points.

Showing off to Petroglyph

A bunch of ex-Westwood people that now work at Petroglyph were at the Austin Game Developer's Conference which finished today.

Marty, the CEO of the company I work for, Interzone, had called a car but then didn't need it, so he had Allan, da man, cancel it. Except when he called to do so, they told him that they were still going to charge half price for canceling at the last minute. He asked if any of use were going to the airport, and I said that I was so he told them to come pick me up instead.

I'm waiting on the corner when a few of the Petroglyph people walk up. They asked if I was waiting for a cab and I said, "No, my company had called for a car."

Just as somebody asked how things were going at Interzone, a shiny, brand new, Cadillac pulls up and the uniformed driver jumps out to take care of my bags.

"Yeah, things are going quite well. Thanks for asking."

I did fess up when I saw them at the airport. We were all flying to Vegas on the same plane and it is hard to put on airs when flying Southwest.

Granted, I was only flying Southwest because I was paying for that flight. The other flights I've been on this trip that were actually work related have been a few steps up the ladder including some upgrades to first class. I had an awesome bay view hotel room at the Marriott in San Diego. So yeah, things are going quite well at Interzone. Thanks for asking.

Frank Muller

I popped over to Audible.com to check out the newly released audio books this morning and found out that Frank Muller had passed away last week.

We are sad to announce that Frank passed away on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC. Fortunately, our whole family arrived in time to say goodbye. We treasure the years we had him with us as he was an amazing husband, father, son, brother, and uncle to us all. Knowing that the long struggle is over for him gives us some measure of comfort. We will miss him dearly but we celebrate his life, his love, his career, his heart.

I stopped reading as much as I used to after graduating high school. Instead of devouring a book every few days, I would spend upwards of a month or more slowly dragging my way through one. It wasn't that I didn't want to read, its just that there were so many other things taking up time in my life. But then one day I discovered unabridged audio books at the library. They allowed me to listen to books while working.

Back then there wasn’t much of selection and I found myself listening to a lot of books I wouldn’t have otherwise been interested in. Up until that point I was really only a fan of fantasy and science fiction stories. But one of the first books I listened to from the library was Presumed Innocent written by John Grisham and read by Frank Muller. I was so drawn into that story by the way Frank read those words. On my next trip to the library I didn’t even look at titles, I just looked at the narrator’s name trying to find more stuff read by Frank. I wasn’t able to find much but it pushed me into looking for more information on “Recorded Books Inc.” and “Books on Tape,” two companies that rented audio books on cassette by mail. I have been devouring books again ever since.

The artwork for many early computer games that came out of Westwood Studios (then Westwood Associates) were created while listening to those books. Hillsfar, Eye of the Beholder, Kyrandia, and the original Command & Conquer all have a little of Frank Muller in them.

Just last year I re-listened to the first few books in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I remember listening to the first book in that series when it was first published which was read by Steven King. I had never finished the series, and still haven’t although I have gotten much further and do have the next book already. But the thing that got me to download them from Audible was that I noticed the first few were read by Frank Muller. Nice story Stephen and I agree there is some value to having the story read by the author, but Frank Muller pwn’ed you. He just took that story to the next level.

Stephen King himself said this of Frank, “When Frank reads, the blind will see, the lame will walk, and the deaf will hear."

The horrible news came in 2001. Just after learning that his wife was pregnant with their second child, Frank lost control of his motorcycle on the freeway. He sustained multiple fractures, lacerations and abrasions, and went into cardiac arrest three times. He also suffered severe head trauma, which was subsequently diagnosed as Diffuse Axonal Injury. Frank survived but due to this brain condition was no longer able to work and required very expensive ongoing medical care. On Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Frank passed away. I didn’t even know him and I miss him greatly.

You can read more about Frank Muller, his career, and his family at www.frankmullerhome.com. There is even a short video there of some of Frank’s acting work, one of which was a McDonald’s commercial I remember from when I was a kid.

Audible.com has posted this article and has even put together a free 15 minute montage of some of Frank’s recordings.

Thank you Frank.

The Magic Sign

There isn’t a Krispy Kreme in Brisbane. But they are popping up in some of Australia’s other major cities. When I flew back to Brisbane from both Melbourne and Sydney recently I saw multiple people on each flight with boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. I don’t get that. I also don’t get the mini Krispy Kreme donuts that were starting to pop up in all the Casino food courts and malls in Vegas right before I left.

Krispy Kreme donuts are just donuts except… except when they are bathed in the magic light of the sign! Oh yes, the sign with those two special words: "Hot" and "Now".

The sign is turned on when the donuts are being made. It is when those little lumps of dough take that magic ride along the conveyor belt of happiness and are magically transformed into the Food of the Gods. It when you can press your nose against the glass, pick out an unassuming lump of dough and say, “that one! I am going to eat that one!” And then you can watch it travel up and down, around and about, under the waterfall of frosting and then out to the front of the store. You can point out your donut to the ultra cool chick-magnet of a guy who gets all the girls (because he can get free donuts) who will happily pull it off the belt and server it up to you. Personally I like a ice-cold carafe of strawberry milk with mine.

I remember a few years ago David Yee, who worked at Westwood having recently left SOE where he had worked on Everquest. He was trying to get his friend, whose name escapes me, hired on as well. We flew his friend out for an interview and after work we all took him out to dinner. Then we went over to Mary K’s arcade which my friend Adam tells me has since been turned into a pool hall.  Afterwards one of us got the idea to go to Krispy Kreme. The cry went up, “KRISPY KREME!” and we tumbled out of the arcade, arms waving and yelling our cry! We piled into the car and shot off across town. When we got with in sight we saw that the sign was lit! We screamed our joy and screeched into the parking lot, leapt from the car and ran into the store arguing over which sad little lump of dough was going to turn into the magical, mouth-watering, ring of godly pleasure we would eat.

He thought we were nuts.

We all sat at the table eating donuts in single bites while swigging down the moo juice. He sits down with a plate of 3 regular donuts.

There was a sudden silence and much confusion.

“What are you doing? You got the wrong donuts!”

“I don’t like plain glazed donuts.”

“They aren’t PLAIN glazed donuts! They… they’ve just been down… look the sign… KRISPY KREME.”

“So?”

“Here eat this one, ill get another”

There was another silence as he took a bit. I don’t think any of expected anything other than what happened, but I can say there was an edge of nervousness on all our faces. We were in fact risking the fabric of our world if he didn’t just keel over and die of pleasure at that one bite. He did though. He literally swooned.

“Oh my God! This is the best donut that I’ve ever tasted! It’s like liquid sugar that is somehow still in solid form. It just melts in your mouth.”

I’m paraphrasing those second two sentences because he was busily stuffing his mouth at that point and it was a bit difficult to understand what he was saying.

I miss those late night Krispy Kreme runs. Drew sent me a link of some place here in Brisbane that not only claims fresh baked donuts but they also deliver. We haven’t tried them out yet, but I am not getting my hopes up.

This Just In...

Okay, so there are obviously quite a lot of you out there reading this as opposed to just Bughunter as the comment sections on each post would suggest. How do I know this you ask? Do I have a secret hit counter on the site? No, I’ve just had about a billion people ask or email what happened to the last post that I deleted even though it was only up for a few hours. The announcement email hasn’t gone out at work, so I took the post down till it officially goes out.

As an aside I’ve been wandering around the Petroglyph forums where there are quite a few threads about Command & Conquer and other old Westwood games. Of interest is the details about where the C&C story would have or was going with Westwood before EA’s C&C3. It even reveilles the shocking truth behind the C&C 1 UFO!!! I haven’t actually played C&C 3, still sticking with my EA boycott that I announced in regards to not buying Battlefield 2142. I do have the C&C 3 demo that is on a CD I got from some magazine but I haven’t installed it. I’m told it’s actually fun.

I just found out there is an article about Fury in Brisbane’s “City News” magazine. It’s the one that had the “Show Stopper” banner across the top, and the very cute Kelly Brightwell on the cover. So if you happen to be in Brisbane Australia and wander by a bus stop or convenience store, pick one up. It’s free.

Ode to Rick Parks

I was exchanging emails about Eye of the Beholder with the other day with Irene who goes by the handle Sentinel69. I was pointing out which avatar portrait from the game was based on me and which were other Westwood employees. The portraits were done by the late, great Rick Parks (aka the Center of the Universe). So I got to thinking about him and decided to Google him. I found the dedication video that was included with Lands of Lore 2 after he passed away.



Oh man, watching that gets me right in the chest. He was such a great guy. The way he is laughing and such on the video was the way he always was. He was always in a good mood and just uplifted any situation. If you were wondering why he appears kind of stiff in the video, its because he has some other medical problem that eventually led to his neck being fused so he couldn’t turn his head from side to side.

When Rick first came to Westwood he was so out of our league. He had been playing around on his Amiga drawing pictures, and getting some fame among Amiga users for doing so. I just tried searching for some of his Amiga pictures but struck out. The one that I remember the most was a simple picture of a Mickey Mouse drinking glass. Another had a man and woman holding a torch and walking away from the camera with purple marble pillars on either side.

He also did the mural of the Excalibur casino in the old ‘Strip Joint’ (as in Las Vegas Strip) employee cafeteria in the Mirage Hotel and Casino. The cafeteria used to be full of parody art about the other casinos such as a statue of David representing Caesar’s Palace where the statue is posed as if he was embarrassed and trying to cover his nakedness. Ricks mural was the scene where the young King Arthur is trying to pull Excalibur out of the rock but having trouble and even his horse is holing onto his cloak and trying to help pull.

The mural above the bar in old Mount Charleston lodge above Vegas was his as well done sometime in the 70’s. He did some a lot of work at Siegfried and Roy’s house, some mural on a boat owned by Donald Trump and much more.

Brett and Louis (Westwood’s founders) told him they really couldn’t afford to pay him what he was worth, but they worked out a deal where Rick would get time off to do other projects because he really wanted to do work on the computer because he thought it was so fun.

He brought the quality of Westwood art up so much. Not just with his own work, but just by his presence, everybody else’s work as well. I know I got a whole lot better after he started to work there. I remember thinking my pictures for DragonStrike were much better than anything I thought I was capable of at the time.

Now since all that is making me kind of sad, let me end this with a funny story. I mentioned this all started with the emails I was writing to Irene aka Sentinel69. So I just assumed the 69 was the typical number thrown onto the end of handle as the sexual reference. (In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure voice) “Sixty Nine Dude!”

Years ago one of the in things to do was to steal the yellow plastic table numbers from Carl’s Jr. and put them on the dashboard of your car. I had the number 68 on the dashboard of my very sporty Toyota MR2. (Just tried looking for a picture of the Carl's Jr. Number thing online and again struck out) Several times I would have a girl in my car say something to the effect of, “Shouldn't that be 69?”

I would reply, “No I wasn’t born in 1969, but now that I know where you mind is let’s say we skip dinner and just go back to my place.” I won’t comment on the success of this particular pickup line because a gentleman never tells. (That and I'm sure you are sick of the baseball analogies.)

Anyway, what makes this funny is when I went looking for Rick Parks stuff and found this video I noticed it was actually put onto Youtube by Irene. Except on Youtube she signed up as Sentinel1969. I’ve been busted by my own joke.

Kane is still cool even though EA sucks

Gamasutra has an extremely friendly (read: white washed) history of Electronic Arts. It even goes so far as to try and shine a good light on EA’s tendency to buy up smaller companies and close them down a few years later.

Acquiring these studios’ Intellectual Properties significantly enhanced EA’s portfolio of games, but as Gibeau explained, acquisitions also brought much needed talent into the company.

Yeah, I’m sure the dozen or two hand picked people they kept from each company were great for EA, but I am willing to bet it wasn’t so grand for the 200 or so people that lost their jobs.

I love Origin Game’s founder Richard Garriott’s takes on the buyout and eventual closing of his company. He started a new company called Destination Games and when Origin was shut down, he hired back all of his core people. He pointed out just how much money EA gave him for his company and then let him have all the people back again. So what did EA get for the money? They have the right to Ultima, Wing Commander and some other games I can’t even think of at the moment. Yeah, they’ve been making a mint off those games I’m sure.

The most frustrating part of all this is that I believe the reason this keeps happening to companies EA acquires is EA. Here is another bit from the article.

In 2002 Westwood released Earth & Beyond, a complex massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Unfortunately, Earth & Beyond struggled to find an audience and EA shut it down two years later.

The reason that it struggled to find an audience is directly the fault of EA. The original design was much larger and broader in scope. Players were to get planets they could colonize and develop as well as explore and fight in space. But EA was afraid that game would be to complex for the AOL audience they wanted to target. So they changed the game into the watered down, beautiful yet boring game in order to try and get that AOL audience. Unfortunately the AOL audience wasn’t even in the market for that type of game.

They did the same thing to Pirates which was an isometric pirate game on the PC before EA came in. It became a half-baked, over-development, 3rd-person, adventure game that they then decided wasn’t worth their marketing effort.

Anyway, I really didn’t want to rant this long. I was just typing up this little bit while flying on the griffon in WoW. I am not even going to waste time editing the above to read better. Just not worth it.

I will however give a link to an interview with Joe Kucan, can from C&C. You might be thinking this sense of humor in interviews is a lot like mine, but I have to say that he’s been like that all along. I’ve had to work at it.

I won't be buying C&C 3 myself. They lost me with all the crap they did to Battlefield 2042 though it looks like everybody else who was outraged has since forgotten about it.