Viridian Games

Viridian talks about his kids, game development, and anything else that comes to mind.

Name That Game 45!

May 15th, 2008 | Category: Name That Game!

This game was kind of a big deal when it came out because of its use of semi-famous actors in its full-motion video, but the gameplay looked awful so I never gave it a shot.

Killin' goblins, killin' goblins, killin' goblins all day!

Name and developer, please! Your reward will be to be cast as the lead in the next game I make that uses full-motion video!

8 Comments so far

  1. Wazoo May 15th, 2008 12:13 pm

    Definitely Wing Commander 2 by Origin Systems.

    Definitely.

  2. Viridian May 15th, 2008 12:20 pm

    Absolutely incorrect, Wazoo…but I think you knew that :)

  3. ravuya May 15th, 2008 1:04 pm

    The Horde, developed by Toys for Bob.

    Make sure you get my good side.

  4. sol_hsa May 15th, 2008 1:39 pm

    *sigh* - that’s what I get for not refreshing the site every five minutes, I guess. =)

    Horde was really underappreciated at its time. The musics.. they used the same process as they had with star control 2, which got rave reviews for the musics. However, time had passed, and the music in ‘horde’ was .. not appreciated by the critics.

  5. Viridian May 15th, 2008 1:50 pm

    Ravuya: Correct! Even the fact that it was developed by Toys for Bob, who made the luminous Star Control 2, was not able to convince me to buy this game.

    Sol: Yep. Once fully digital music was possible, tracked music went the way of the dodo. Which is a darn shame in my opinion. With high-quality samples and good arrangement, tracked music can sound just as good and have a much smaller footprint. For instance, the music on the Spyro games was awesome, and that was actually tracked music - Insomniac wrote their own XA file player instead of using the PSX’s standard PSF file system. And of course it was all composed by Stewart Copeland…

  6. Irwin1138 May 15th, 2008 8:54 pm

    I have this feeling, like Im a naive child who is playing near wise elders and acidentally hears stuff he dont fully understand… 8)
    Im not sure if I know at least one game of those you posted in “Name That Game”, Viridian 8(

  7. sol_hsa May 16th, 2008 5:48 am

    I don’t think it’s the module format itself that tanked, but the music style =)

    irwin, watch the warren spector master class, take note of all the games they mention (not only the ones showcased), and look them up. Plenty of interesting stuff out there.

  8. SteelGolem June 4th, 2008 5:20 am

    wow, you’re up to #45. you planning anything big and impressive if/when you hit the big five-oh?

Leave a reply