Anytime I think of John Romero, I think of Daikatana and their ad campaign
Game development wasn’t nearly as corporatized back then. At that timeframe the discovery of what’s possible was still being invented, let alone formulated. The sheer discovery back then of what you could do in gameplay was a brand new frontier.
Anyone read our heard the audiobook of Masters of Doom by David Kushner? He goes over the history of both Johns and the history of them creating Doom.
I’ve been listening to it in my car over the last few weeks. I’m really enjoying it so far.
I bought on Audible years ago and have listened to it at least 7 to 8 times. Great book and I learned a lot about the two John’s lives.
Read his new book and it was a cool look into that era of game design and development. Id games played a huge part in my becoming a computer geek
He has a new book?
I love John Romero and read all the books about Doom/his life.
Can’t wait to check this one out!
https://romero.com/shop/p/doomguy
Time flies I guess it’s almost a year old already but this is what I was referring to
So what happened to Blackroom? I’d love to know what happened to that game and the fallout of them pulling the Kickstarter. He clearly moved on to sigil but man I really think he could make a cool new IP with gzdoom if he actually tried, instead of just living in the past with sigil.
I think Selaco beat him to the punch there. I am by no means a game designer but it’s seriously impressive what they did with the gzdoom engine. I have a hard time imaging anything that could top it within the same engine.
Tangentially, people should watch the series Children Of Doom on Youtube - which is only occasionally about id Software. It’s a history of first-person shooters, year by year, focusing on one landmark title before covering other major releases.
Admittedly it only starts with Catacomb 3D. The genre’s origins go back another decade, give or take. How far exactly depends on how you define it. Personally I would say: free rotation, on-foot gameplay, some kind of hitscan or projectile combat. Maze War from 1973 doesn’t quite count. Battlezone is a tank sim. (As is id’s Hovertank.) I think the earliest example I’d count is The Eidolon… by Lucasarts. They flipped the Rescue On Fractalus renderer upside-down so you can wander caves and hunt dragons. The game runs on Commodore 64.
This dude peaked in highschool and is still banging on that…
he was like 24-25 when Wolfenstein 3D came out (having designed like half the levels) and continued on, being an integral part of Doom, Doom 2, Hexen and Quake
As other people mentioned, this is a dumb take.
But also - the guy had some cringe moments. And he hasn’t had other insane smash successes like the many he was part of in the 90s. That’d be incredibly tough.
But he seems like a genuinely good dude and was absolutely a pioneer. People are still interviewing him for a reason. And not because he’s trying to relive his glory days.
We all can’t be l337 like…looks at username…wait a SECOND—
