Gaming Podcast’s Jonah Falcon and Shack News’ T.J. Denzer do a totally-not-ripping-off-Zero-Punctuation’s-Let’s-Drown-Out video of the former playing Bus Simulator 18 as they discuss some of the news of the day.
VIDEO: GamingPodcast Plays Bus Simulator 18
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Episode 480: PsychonautsEpisode 480: Psychonauts
As the episode title would imply, this week’s Gaming Flashback is Psychonauts, with Jonah revealing he’s a total fanboy and backed the sequel for over $800. He also has no idea what Oxenfree is, since he hadn’t played it yet. (He has, and realizes he was completely wrong about it being like Cabin in the Woods.)
The news:
- Captain Falcon was almost the mascot of the SNES
- Hackers have already infiltrated the Call of Duty: WWII open beta
- Assassin’s Creed: Origins‘ non-violent discovery tour update wants to teach you history
Let us know what you think.
Gaming Podcast 172: Heaps of MatesGaming Podcast 172: Heaps of Mates
We’re bringing a new gaming podcast to our heaps of mates, the listeners. We’re discussing some good community feedback while hitting a few key news article for this week. This weeks industry gaming news includes:
- Codemasters and Playground battling it out
- GamesWorkshop Sues WarhammerAliance.com
- StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Hits retail shelves July 27
- Nintendo to crack down on piracy with the Nintendo 3DS
- Sony confirms Little Big Planet 2
This weeks question, can a user-generated content create a game that extends far behind its own life cycle? Or, do we really rely on the developers to extend it?
Gaming Flashback: SimCityGaming Flashback: SimCity
SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.
Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.” Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis. Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.
When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game. Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal. Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64. On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!
The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city. Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required. In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.
Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more. Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.
In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.
In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!