The Incredible Machine (TiM) is a game designed and developed by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnel (now co-founder of GarageGames and their successful title Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 and co-founder in Dynamix makers of A-10 Tank Killer and The Red Baron). At the time, The Incredible Machine series came out of the shop known as Jeff Tunnel Productions.
Jeff Tunnel Productions published the first Incredible Machine games from 1993 to 1995 while Sierra Entertainment published all the rest of their titles all the way up to 2001. What is The Incredible Machines all about? It’s a game where you must build a series of Rube Goldberg devices in a “needlessly complex fashion” all to perform some simple tasks. That is the entire point to a Rube Goldberg device, which was originally defined as “accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply.”
I think everyone has seen a Rube Goldberg device, their are examples in science museums, and entire Myth Busters Episode about them, they appear in many movies (Goonies used one to open the fence to let in Chunk after he does his dance as did Doc Brown in Back to the Future to cook his breakfast and get his dog food).
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EA Leaves SecuRom out of Sims 3
Actually, Jack Thompson DID attack The Sims – at least, The Sims 2.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/After-GTA-Attorney-Jack-Thompson-Targets-The-Sims-2-5308.shtml
Actually, Jack Thompson DID attack The Sims – at least, The Sims 2.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/After-GTA-Attorney-Jack-Thompson-Targets-The-Sims-2-5308.shtml
Regarding Infocom, they were and are awesome. Planetfall will still make you cry when Floyd died and you sung a sweet song to him. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was worked on by Douglas Adams himself alongside Steve Meretzky, and Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It is one of the most devious, puzzling wordplay games ever made.
Interactive fiction still has a community, and there’s software for anyone to make a text adventure – and you can make a good one if you put some elbow grease into it.
With the power and size of hard drives, I wonder how complex someone could make a text adventure now – after all, a game’s immersiveness isn’t judged by graphics.
Regarding Infocom, they were and are awesome. Planetfall will still make you cry when Floyd died and you sung a sweet song to him. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was worked on by Douglas Adams himself alongside Steve Meretzky, and Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It is one of the most devious, puzzling wordplay games ever made.
Interactive fiction still has a community, and there’s software for anyone to make a text adventure – and you can make a good one if you put some elbow grease into it.
With the power and size of hard drives, I wonder how complex someone could make a text adventure now – after all, a game’s immersiveness isn’t judged by graphics.
“Lost Vikings” is the game you were thinking of Don:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Vikings
I think it was a popular game back in the day. I know I loved it and must have rented it for the SNES like 5 times. Don’t think I’ve played the second game though.
These guys made an appearance in World of Warcraft too, in the Uldamann instance (of course they were dwarves in the game I think). The above wikipedia articles mentions it too.
+++++
OnLive. I think it’s a really interesting idea, basically the game is run on their servers/cloud and is only sending you the video feed of your session, and all you send them is your controller movements.
“Lost Vikings” is the game you were thinking of Don:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Vikings
I think it was a popular game back in the day. I know I loved it and must have rented it for the SNES like 5 times. Don’t think I’ve played the second game though.
These guys made an appearance in World of Warcraft too, in the Uldamann instance (of course they were dwarves in the game I think). The above wikipedia articles mentions it too.
+++++
OnLive. I think it’s a really interesting idea, basically the game is run on their servers/cloud and is only sending you the video feed of your session, and all you send them is your controller movements.
Regarding jonahfalcon’s comment about text adventures: I’m still waiting for someone* to make a truly intuitive (perhaps even a learning) text parser. Maybe combine the best of Infocom’s complex command setup with some of the “lifelike” AI chatbot routines they’ve got now.
(* – I tried making one myself, but I’m just one guy, with minimal programming expertise.)
Regarding jonahfalcon’s comment about text adventures: I’m still waiting for someone* to make a truly intuitive (perhaps even a learning) text parser. Maybe combine the best of Infocom’s complex command setup with some of the “lifelike” AI chatbot routines they’ve got now.
(* – I tried making one myself, but I’m just one guy, with minimal programming expertise.)