So this week we’re busting out a new flashback of an old game: Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors II. We’re covering a bit about some gaming history and a few key news articles of the week including:
This weeks question of the week, what do you think is the top selling video game genre of all time, not just the last few years.
It’s the landmark 450th episode of Gaming Podcast — and the end of a very disappointing year in videogames (among other things) for 2016. These aren’t your usual awards though – Jonah gives the “Best PS2 Game” award to The Last Guardian, for instance. It’s an extra long podcast at almost 2 hours, so enjoy all of the banter.
There’s also news, of course, which includes:
Let us know your favorite games of 2016!
Now here is another interesting video game for the Atari 2600, the game Dragon Fire consisted of two game screens, one which you ran across a bridge while fireballs were shot at you, you had to duck or jump over the fireball. This screen was a side-scroller style screen (although it doesn’t actually scroll), at the other end of the bridge was a castle door which you’d enter to get to the next screen.
The second screen was more classic “overhead but not really” screen where you ran around this black screen picking up treasures while a dragon at the bottom shot fire at you from below.
As the game increased in level jumping fireballs became more challenging (on the first screen) as you ran because they would come quicker, more often. The second screen would get very difficult very quickly as the dragon would increase in speed and fireball spitting. You could tell how hard the dragon would be as it would change colors from lighter to darker black as you progress stages.
When you finished collecting all the treasure an exit would pop up in the corner and you had to run to it without being burned by the fireballs, that dragon would turn from left to right nearly instantly too! Then, you’d jump into the exit and be back on the bridge again, but this time it was harder. You could die up to 7 times before the game was over (just to show you how hard it is, they gave you a bunch of lives).
The game was tough, frustrating, hard to replay because you were just so nervous and jittery from the last attempt. Graphics were “okay,” nothing to rave at but it was, after all, the 2600.
You can hear all we had to say about DragonFire for the Atari 2600 on Episode 79 of the TD Gaming Podcast!
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This week we’re talking about pre-owned video games and ask the question, do you buy new or do you buy used? Do you sell your games? We answer some listener comments and hit on a few hot topics:
We’ve also got a bit of history on The Golden Age of Arcade Games and we take a gaming flashback to Mario Brothers, the original non-super version.
Greetings from Aus =)
@ Question of the week. I’m going to lay down my bets with paid MMORPG due to gaming has become so social accepted in more recent years. This Genre of games is the biggest Lure with money to be made on not only the game itself but in ongoing subscription fees, Micro transactions fees for exclusive / additional content (even I participated in spending $25 to get a shiny horse in WOW). The scale of Revenue these games like WOW, Runescape are bring in is unreal.
@Microsoft bans user because of town name:
Lol!
It’s funny though, they allowed the same word for sexual orientation. That’s a classical case of the left hand has absolutely no idea what the right hand does.
This reminds me of a stupid censoring mechanism: it turned the word “glass” into “gl*censored*” 😀
@John Romero doing casual games consulting:
This is a pretty interesting piece of news. Romero had the approach that “game design trumps everything”. This is the reason he left ID. So it makes sense for somebody to ask for consultancy from him.
Unfortunately, Daikatana didn’t turn out that great: designing is fun, team management is anything but fun.
I’ll keep an eye on what comes up on the subject.
@Sony fighting jailbreaking too:
While the majority owners of PS3 have enough money to buy legit games (heck, they bought a PS3), I do feel that a good deal of owners will not update.
Derrick, I like your point of view: “if we keep jailbreaking, we won’t be able to buy stuff from you”. I might add, and keep playing pirated copies 🙂
History tells me that piracy has a way of working around things.
@Apple taking a leap into social gaming with iOS 4.1:
I think Apple is running out of features to advertise their products. There’s also another way to read this: “Until now, iOS didn’t have support for social networking!” 😛
@QOTW: Lol, beats me!
If we’re talking in terms of number of copies sold, then I guess platformers, through Mario 🙂 I mean you can see it in both original and pirated consoles, on PCs, on next gen consoles etc.
If we’re talking revenues in USD, then I think it’s FPS, through MW2 : “After five days of sales, the game had earned revenue figures of $550 million worldwide”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2#Sales_and_revenue
As for quiz questions, I am trying to come up with some.
@Not getting any email re:quiz for 200, I know I sent some in, and its there in my sent mail box fr proof, so maybe I got the address wrong?
@QotW – I think this is a very good one. WOW might have 11million (probably more) players, which means that it clearly “sold” 11million copies, but how many people bought it and later on gave up to pursue what some people call a real life?
Your FPS games like Modern Warfare 2 sold massively in bulk, but that doesn’t mean that it still pulls in sales now.
The point I think most people will miss is the demand in games like Angry Birds. So many more people can justify spending $5 or less on a game than they can on spending $50.
So what was the question? Biggest revenue (Modern Warfare 2), or most units sold (WoW)?
Oh, and just for a sidenote, I bough my PS Move on launch. It is much more responsive than the Wii even with Motion Plus. The Sports game just feels so much better with the HD graphics (Yes, cartoons lose to well rendered images), and you can’t beat the archery and the fact that you actually pull the arrows out of the quiver instead of simply draw the bow string like the Wii.