TD Gaming Podcast Episode 75: Getting Stimulated

This week we’ve got some crazy statistics that says Red Teams beat Blue Teams. According to a study published last week in a Cyberpsychology & Behaviour journal, during a study of 1,347 matches between “elite teams” in Unreal Tournament 2k4 … and all things being equal, the red team won 55% of the time. Huh?

EA Gets Sued by…The People? The class-action complaint focuses on Electronic Arts’ actions since 2004, when Take-Two Interactive’s NFL 2K5 was released at a $19.99 price point and sold more than 2.9 million copies in the US, according to NPD figures.

Wii and USB! Someone browsing the web came across a Job posting for Nintendo of America. The job posting was for a “Software/Hardware Tester” who can execute a “test plan for Wii’s USB devices.”

Analysts baffled that GTA didn’t move Hardware. How does a game with such powers of popularity manage to NOT sell consoles? Truely a mystery, or expected?

This weeks podcast also discusses the best game cinematic sequences, what are your favorite? Leave us a comment!

This weeks flashback is Where in the World is Carman Sandiego and we start our gaming history on Role Playing Games.

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Outtakes Episode – September 2012Outtakes Episode – September 2012

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See you next week when we have a normal episode.

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!