Snowden Wyatt wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 21:23:
Between this and the recent remaster of Wizardry you've got to figure that Richard Garriott is out there somewhere dusting off a copy of Alakabeth.

Right now Peter Molyneux is rummaging through his trunk of old games looking for something ... to dust off.

honestly......you ever buy a gift for someone and have to think for a very long time about if you want to keep it for yourself?

I did this with Fisher's Spirograph in the 1980's, my lost opportunity to wed the girl next door.

Romero, the signature let down lazy dev attacks again, and again, and again ...

Between this and the recent remaster of Wizardry you've got to figure that Richard Garriott is out there somewhere dusting off a copy of Alakabeth.

I'm still trying to figure out why BRM said that he was "not trying to be negative or anything"... His posts seemed pleasantly nostalgic and if I'm honest a little bit heartwarming.

I remember playing this shareware game on my IBM PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz PC.

I've been on this website since, basically, the beginning. People like us, who read BN in like atleast every day since like 98 (internet connections were spotty at that point. I read it only in the library at school, (and there, at the one computer available, it took ages to load))

I witnessed, although I did not know it at the time, the birth of the online gaming community. People making new news websites, dedicated to news about games. Suddenly we knew about shit we'd normally wait months to get a hint of in physical magazines like PCGamer, We would see sites dedicated to new maps, models and mods or TC as we called it for Quake (like the long lost PlanetQuake) It was a commutity. No, strike that it was THE community. The community centered around, essentially Quake.

Later, this would naturally evolve into Quake-related games, ports and eventually new games. But at the time, this community was probably the size of the rest of the internet. Nobody else engaged online like this. This community was powerful. It created not just gaming, but the computers themselves. 3Dfx, OpenGL, the advent of the 3d-acceleration era. GPU's.

In my view, there would be no Nvidia without this movement
People connected, made friends.. They chatted. made their own homepages. IRC, Myspace.
Eventually some little dope site called facebook.

BicycleRepairMan wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 17:16:
... people would eat stuff he pooped to get that history collected.

RogueSix wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 17:09:

BicycleRepairMan wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 16:37:
Its obviously for those with special interest in old retro stuff. He could have priced it at ten times the price and someone would buy.
[...]
Its like Paul McCartney selling out another stadium, why do people pay 150 bucks to see him? Because he was 1/4 of the beatles. same reason they bought all his albums. Its the freakin Beatles. People want some of that. Same reason Mark Hamill can go to conventions and talk about that old movie he was in in 77.

I dunno, dude. Was Catacomb 3D really as "legendary" as The Beatles? I mean, Doom, sure. Wolfenstein, hmmm... mkay. But flarking Catacomb 3D? Wat?!?

Or maybe I'm just an old fart but simply not old enough to appreciate the legendary-ness of Catacomb 3D? Especially not the legendary-ness of spending feckin' €155 for an Ancient Vault edition (lel).

No, Catacomb 3D was not as legendary or influencial. But if George Lucas was to put up signed stuff he made before Star Wars... Thats what I mean
Edit: same with Paul McCartney, if he has stuff he did before the beatles, people would eat stuff he pooped to get that history collected.

I'm not trying to be overly negative in this thread, but lets face it: id Software was in a unique space back in 90-96, they re-invented everything we never expected from a game running on a home computer (meant for office work, not gaming). They inspired a generation of gamers, created almost single-handidly online gaming and the entire FPS genre, and as Blue have stated more than once, this entire website. Without wolf/doom/quake, there would have been no Blue's News. No PlanetQuake, No Shacknews, No Half-Life. No Call of Duty. No Steam, No Unreal. No Unreal Engine. No Fortnite. No Minecraft...

You know how Notch created the "Steve" face in minecraft? He used Quakeguy's face and simplified it.

We owe it all to Romero and those guys at id.

BicycleRepairMan wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 16:37:
Its obviously for those with special interest in old retro stuff. He could have priced it at ten times the price and someone would buy.
[...]
Its like Paul McCartney selling out another stadium, why do people pay 150 bucks to see him? Because he was 1/4 of the beatles. same reason they bought all his albums. Its the freakin Beatles. People want some of that. Same reason Mark Hamill can go to conventions and talk about that old movie he was in in 77.

I dunno, dude. Was Catacomb 3D really as "legendary" as The Beatles? I mean, Doom, sure. Wolfenstein, hmmm... mkay. But flarking Catacomb 3D? Wat?!?

Or maybe I'm just an old fart but simply not old enough to appreciate the legendary-ness of Catacomb 3D? Especially not the legendary-ness of spending feckin' €155 for an Ancient Vault edition (lel).

Jim wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 16:19:
Is this dude ever going to produce anything new? Or is it that the emperor is wearing no clothes?

By the way, Romero released a game a few years ago called Empire Of Sin , I havent tried it myself, but he does make new stuff. Does it sell? probably less than this will sell.

EDIT: Sorry, This was reply to RogueSix Jim, but I messed up the quote thingy

Your old heroes do not have magical powers. Nor does Notch, but he created minecraft as a fun project. Every day someone releases something like it or better. The chances of it getting viral and lasting 20 years and selling a bajillion copies is close to zero. Very, very talented people worked (probably more talented than the both of them combined) worked on titles like RedFall, Lawbreakers, or something like that "quadruple A" pirate game that came out recently. Millions in marketing and they all tanked. hard. Wanna make it in the industry, or buy $1m worth of powerball tickets? About the same chance.

RogueSix wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 16:12:
WTF?!? Does this dude need a new Ferrari or something?

everyone needs another Ferrari

Seriously tho, no-one needs to buy this. Its obviously for those with special interest in old retro stuff. He could have priced it at ten times the price and someone would buy. Romero has, rightly concluded that he will not be making a game anywhere near the influence of Wolf/Doom/Quake any time soon. Also he wont make the next Call of Duty game, or the next runaway popular indie like Palworld, Minecraft or Helldivers 2. To be real, nearly no-one will. The chances of making something, anything, and having it bought by millions, or even thousands, are close to zero. He lives on past glory. And thats totally fine. He was instrumental in making the first FPS shooters in the world, and he makes money if people pay him. No problem.

Its like Paul McCartney selling out another stadium, why do people pay 150 bucks to see him? Because he was 1/4 of the beatles. same reason they bought all his albums. Its the freakin Beatles. People want some of that. Same reason Mark Hamill can go to conventions and talk about that old movie he was in in 77.

Is this dude ever going to produce anything new? Or is it that the emperor is wearing no clothes?

WTF?!? Does this dude need a new Ferrari or something?

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 14:30:
No one is actually making them anymore, but there's a company that has stock piled quite a lot of them: https://www.floppydisk.com/

They should sell viagra while they're at it since they're about floppy things.

ForgedReality wrote on Jul 4, 2024, 13:37:
Blows me away that 3.5" and 5.25" floppies are still produced. Did they have to spin up an old factory just for this thing or what?

No one is actually making them anymore, but there's a company that has stock piled quite a lot of them: https://www.floppydisk.com/

While nobody now manufactures the media anymore, Floppydisk.com invested in a large quantity – "a couple of million disks," according to Persky – when production came to an end. The company has since been living off that inventory, but occasionally gets contacted by organizations that are clearing out warehouses and discover pallets full of floppies.

There are still a lot of old, dedicated PC systems out there that uses them (medical equipment, CNC machines, aircraft, etc). Heck, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's train system still runs on floppies, although they are upgrading: LINK

I still have a box of new floppies here somewhere, that I saved for a few clients running old dedicated hardware that uses floppies.

Worth mentioning: there's also a source port, which runs native on Windows or Linux using OpenGL and features some quality of life improvements:

https://github.com/ArnoAnsems/CatacombGL

Edit: It also supports Catacomb's various expansions and sequels.

Dude, you nailed it. Even if it isn't true, it should be.