A selection of the games that have inspired me.
Created by tamiolsen on Oct 10, 2009
Last updated: 03/06/10 at 01:52 PM
Guild Wars wasn't the first of it's kind that I've played. I tried WoW before that, and then Perfect World, but Guild Wars is the most memorable for me. What stands out about Guild Wars in my mind isn't the game itself, but the creation of the game. After first playing it, I browsed the game's web site, and then the manufacturer's site, and then the job listings, and then I began seriously considering the possibility of creating my OWN games. Through the web, keeping tabs on this game as I play it has really sucked me into the world of game design. If I had a dream job in mind for when I finished this course, it would be with the Guild Wars team. The game itself employs all teh aspects of video games that I have loved over the years. It has heart. It's a continual story that unfolds as you play, and is influenced by the decisions you make. The game reacts to the players, rather than just the players reacting to the game. It opens an entire world with real people behind the other players, making the experience much more memorable.
Lego Star Wars was originally purchased for my kids. My husband and I had both loved legos as children, and were fans of Star Wars, so getting the game for our children was an obvious thing. We got it for them for christmas, but they didn't get to play it for three days because he and I wouldn't stop playing it. We beat the game in that time, and have boughten every Lego series game they've put out since. Lego Star Wars ended a long period of time during which I didn't play video games more than as something to do when I was bored. It reignited my interest in them, and made me start looking for games I'd enjoy playing. What made this game so interesting for me was the simple fact that when things "died" they exploded into little lego shapes. It was something so simple, yet so fun, that it set this game apart and made it fun to play.
I started playing Tribal Wars at the request of a friend. I really wasn't interested in it at the time. It's a text based browser game, and at this time in my life I was too busy to do more than obsessively play a game for a few weeks then shelf it. I nearly quit after those two weeks. Then I started talking to some of the people I played with on the game. It was the first time I had actively played games online with people. The mechanics of the game were simplistic enough for a child, but the tribal (guild) aspect of it was phenomenal. An entire political system developed before our eyes as we populated the world provided to us. These politics were amazing to watch, as people from all aspects of life banded together with each other against other tribes. It was a lesson in human interaction... and made me many long-lasting friendships around the globe.
It was developed by Traveller's Tales for the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2 video game consoles and Microsoft Windows personal computers, with Griptonite Games developing the Nintendo Game Boy Advance version. These initial versions were published in April 2005. A Mac version, developed by Aspyr, was released in August 2005. A Nintendo GameCube version of the game was released on October 26, 2005. All versions were published by Eidos Interactive and LucasArts. "Welcome to Star Wars Episodes I, II and III, LEGO style! Now you can play through all three LEGO-ified movies in this running, jumping, lightsaber-swinging, puzzle-solving action game. It's an easy game to play, the totally goofy LEGO graphics look great and there are 30 different characters you can control. There are even podracer and starfighter levels! The best part though is that a friend can join you in the middle of a level, or whenever, and suddenly it's two-player time." http://www.kidzworld.com/article/5522-lego-star-wars-gamecube-pc-ps2-and-xbox-game-review
Guild Wars is developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. It provides two main modes of gameplay— cooperative role-playing (PvE) and competitive player vs. player (PvP)—both of which are hosted on ArenaNet's servers. Three stand-alone episodes and one expansion pack were released in the series from April 2005 to August 2007.
"Guild Wars is a global online roleplaying game. Players can engage in cooperative group combat, in single player adventures, or in large head-to-head guild battles. Guild Wars is a mission-based game set in a stunning 3D fantasy world that offers excellent support for guilds." http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php
www.guildwars.com
"The first steps reach back to early 2003. In the beginning of the year the development for the browser game Tribal Wars started. The big motivation was to create a game that the creators would themselves enjoy as players.
The hobby project quickly began to take off and grew much faster than ever expected. The game officially launched in June 2003 and by the beginning of 2004, the numbers had grown to a few thousand players. A second game world was quickly opened to keep up with the demand. While the game was constantly developing, it continued to grow and reached around 50,000 players by fall 2005." http://www.innogames.de/en/history
www.tribalwars.net
When I first played Populous, I loved the concept of building your own world and controlling the destinies of all the inhabitants. It was the first "SIMs" type game I had ever played. Before that I hadn't dreamed about creating worlds except on paper. Even now when I see terrain mappers and other world-building software, I can't help but remember Populous and it's simple pyramid shaped chunks of land. Not only did you get to build up and destroy land in the game, but you controlled natural disasters. You became "god" for the little humans the game gave you. One thing that stuck out to me at the time, and still does, is that the humans in the game were NOT under your control. They lived their own little lives, oblivious to your existence for the most part. They propagated when able, and expanded, and the only way you controled them was by controlling their environment.
This was the game I was addicted to when I was younger. I would fight with my brothers and sisters over time for gaming. We'd even wake up early in the mornings in order to be able to play before school started. What I enjoyed the most about it was the world map. It was new to me to be able to progress through a separate map of levels, and to me it brought just that much more reality to the game. The suits were also a bonus. It gave Mario almost a fantasy feel to it, which I loved as a kid. The graphics were just a little bit better, but the storyline was very similar to the original. There was always a princess needing rescued. The suits also provided new ways of moving the character. And even factored into the strategy of play. It added a dimension that had been missing in previous games.
Legendary Wings is special to me because it was given to me by my father. He didn't live with us, and so I was always trying to find something I could do with him. When he gave us that game, he'd sit and play it with us, or watch us play. I could never get very far on it when I was younger, but I'd play it over and over. It conjured images in my head of fantastic stories surrounding the winged soldiers. As I played I wasn't scrolling along with the storyline, but was creating one in my head.
A platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the NES, it's the fifth game in the Super Mario series. It was first released in Japan in 1988 and later in the United States and Europe in 1990 and 1991 respectively. "Directed by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario Bros. 3 (or just Super Mario 3) stands as the NES and Super Famicom's swan song, at least where Mario is concerned. While Super Mario 3 marked the last major Mario game for Nintendo's first home console, it packed enough gaming goodness to rule a gamer's life for months. First off, it just played damn well. The controls felt intuitive and precise, for example, and levels boasted seriously awesome design. What's more, there was an array of suits for Mario to wear, like the Frog, Raccoon and Tanooki suits, all of which bestowed groovy powers never seen before in a Mario game. In a word: awesome." http://top100.ign.com/2005/021-030.html
A computer game developed by Bullfrog in 1989 and is regarded by many as the seminal god game. It was the first game in the Populous series, preceding Populous II and Populous: The Beginning. It was also released on the PC Engine (as both a HuCard and a CD-ROM), SNES, Nintendo Game Boy, the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis, the Sega Master System, Sharp's X68000 computer and the Acorn Archimedes. "You play a god, gaming against other gods in a celestial game of conquest. To win, you must help your chosen people take over the world and wipe out the vermin who worship that other god." http://www.mobygames.com/game/populous
Super Mario was the first console game I ever played. It was at a neighbor's house, and I had never seen an NES before. We watched him play it for a short while before commandeering his system and proceeding to sit in front of it for hours, until being dragged home by my mother. From that point on video games have been an escape for me, and when I could I'd spend hours sat in front of a console, eyes glued to the screen. What pulled me in with Super Mario was the expansive world the designers had created. I wasn't interested in the shooter games of the era, and so hadn't been into playing games. Super Mario took my active imagination and gave me a place to explore.
Released in Japan as Ares no Tsubasa ("The Wings of Ares"), is a 1986 vertical shooting game released for the arcades by Capcom featuring side scrolling segments. A version of Legendary Wings was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System on July 1988 in North America. "The game is a vertical/horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up where you fly a winged soldier over a Greek mythos style landscape. Shoot and bomb the attacking enemies. The game play switches between horizontal platform and flying levels."-- http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8411
"Up until the game was released, gamers were really tied to the one-play-per-coin system at the arcades. Then along came Super Mario Bros., a game that wasn't frustrating or tedious. Rather, I think it was one of the first to nail down the idea of permanence in games. Even simple actions like running and jumping have deep gameplay implications. And the more you play, the more you discover. It's simply impossible to grow tired of Super Mario Bros." --Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=10&cId=3147448
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