Thanks to the influenza bug ravaging the United States right now, there’s no podcast this week. Check us next week for our pre-E3 podcast, however.
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Episode 394: Paul Bravely DefaultsEpisode 394: Paul Bravely Defaults
Paul is back from being deathly ill, and joins a half-asleep Jonah and Scott, where he and Scott try to have better timing. There’s no Gaming Flashback this week but plenty of weird news.
The list of news items include:
- Disturbing portrait of Konami corporate environment alleged
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: player choices more impactful, boss fights optional
- ZombiU drops the “U,” preps for August launch on PC, Xbox One, PS4
- Fallout 4 fan releases schematic for 3D printed Pip-Boy
- Vote to play coming soon for PS Plus members
- Hitchhiking robot is decapitated, left in a ditch
There’s a new Question of the Week that wasn’t going to be the Question – listen and find out what it is.
Gaming Podcast 164: Baby SealsGaming Podcast 164: Baby Seals
This week we’ve refrained from beating baby seals to do a gaming podcast. Whatever that means, we’re busting through some great community feedback, cranking through the history of Boulder Dash, mashing through the game history on G.O.D – Gathering of Developers while hitting up the game news of the week:
- Portal 2 has been announced
- Ubisoft’s new DRM fails (big surprise)
- Ubisoft’s DRM cracked
- Steam Coming to the Mac
- Microsoft looking for a 360 motherboard designer
This weeks question of the week, what world environment would you like to see your favorite game sequel take place in?
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!