Viridian Games

In this video, I succinctly explain why voice acting in older games sucked so bad while making a complete fool of myself.  It’s what I do.

(Yes, if you’re a longtime reader of this blog you’ve heard this clip before. But I think I’ve “enhanced” it.)

And here’s a new video blog!

I always liked the look and feel of this game. Syndicate Wars was the first Syndicate game I played, so I didn’t suffer from “It’s not as good as the original!” syndrome.

Of course when I saw it, my first thought was, “Bullfrog needs to make an RPG with this engine!”

Iffen you can’t stand the YouTube, here’s a downloadable version.

All right! Did another video blog this weekend…I am going to try to get into the habit of doing one a month. This one is about Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper.

If that video isn’t up yet or if you just don’t like YouTube, you can download the video blog here.

These things are getting harder and harder to do, and it’s basically because my standards are going up – and my time has gone down (stupid YouTube). So instead of just doing a “stream of consciousness” thing as I play, I actually had to write a script and do multiple takes that I edited together. Plus, the whole project got put on hold while I tried to figure out a way to record the video in high-res…which I eventually gave up on. I finally recorded it in low-res in DOSBox.

Hopefully I’ll get better and they’ll stop taking a whole evening to do. And I’m willing to take suggestions on what game I should do the next one about!

In this video blog I discuss Bullfrog’s Powermonger. I talk about what it did well and what it didn’t do so well, and why Peter seems obsessed with creating little people.

And if those don’t work, here’s the direct download link.

Oh, and I did a video blog this weekend. I was a busy beaver.

This video blog was inspired by Gamespot’s Game in Sixty Seconds feature, where people try to explain why a game is cool in sixty seconds or less.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that there’s no way I can just talk about a game for sixty seconds.

Limiting myself to ten minutes was hard (stupid YouTube).

But here’s the first in what I hope are a long line of videos that specifically take an older game, explain why it was awesome, show you how it was played, and then talk about how it influenced the development of later games.

Enjoy!

YouTube:

Google Video:
Direct Download Link

I am feeling much more like myself today. Should this trend continue much stuff could conceivably get done this week…possibly including a video podcast! If you guys want to suggest topics for me to talk about, feel free.

Rather than just let them fade away, I’m going to officially put the video blogs on hiatus. There are a couple reasons for this.

First, since I got sick about two weeks ago my energy level has been kind of low and I’ve had this chronic cough…not good for talking.

Second, WonderMellon recently commented that when I started doing my video blogs it felt like my other projects were beginning to suffer. That’s true…it’s just amazing how much time it takes to do a video blog. It’ll take me three to four hours just to get fifteen minutes up on the web, and that’s time I could have spent much more effectively on a One-Page Game or Planitia.

Third…well, it’s getting kind of forced. The video blog I was planning to do this weekend was going to talk about high-level versus low-level story, which is something everybody is probably already familiar with…and I’m not really sure what my point was going to be.

The video blogs (or some other video feature) will return when I feel like I’ve got something to say and I’m well enough to say it (cough) without coughing (cough) all the way through (cough) it.

(cough)

In this episode, I talk about how games don’t have to be so darn difficult and present some gameplay footage from Hit & Myth. And I actually kept the thing to under fifteen minutes this time!

Gamespot:

Google Video (quality still not as good; not sure how to fix it):

If neither of those work, you can download the file directly from here.

Video Blog 3 successful!

In this blog I talk about how game development and game publishing work, tell two stories about game development, and even have a guest star at the end!

Edit: Google Video version is here. Gamespot’s player doesn’t seem to work well for non-Usanians. I’ll be uploading the Google Video version more promptly in the future.

Okay, let’s test something here…

Woohoo!

Well…

Except that the quality on the Google Video version is MUCH worse than the Gamespot one. Crud!

Edit: Direct download link for this video blog is here.

And here it is.

If the above video doesn’t work well for you, here’s a Google Video version.

And if neither of those work, here’s the direct download link.