This week has Microsoft backing Epic against Apple, Nintendo telling people they don’t have controller drift and apologizing for controller drift, and some new games.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
This week’s episode is light on news but heavy on features, as the Gaming Flashback checks out the coin-op arcade racer Omega Race while the Gaming History looks at the failed GameBoy Micro.
This week’s news includes:
We also have a single Reader Feedback and the Question of the Week is, “What is your game purchase in the Fall season with the highest priority?”
Gaming Podcast celebrates another major milestone, this time on February 2 — so expect some Groundhog Day jokes. This month has no Gaming Flashback, but there’s a lot of show in this sexcentennial podcast.
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Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.
It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.
The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.
The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).
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