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hermes

The Geneology of Games

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I am just playing Beyond Good and Evil, and found in it a lot of elements that seems like they are inspired from elsewhere... Nothing strange in that - happens all the time...

But I thought it could be interesting to think about the geneology of games - What traits come from where - Which games are 'parents' to which, in terms of feel, style, gameplay, story etc....

Anyways, in Beyond Good and Evil I see inspiration (or similarities) from two games:

1) Zelda - ocarina of time (I haven't played the windwaker).

-In the gameplay - the context sensitive buttons - the view of the gameworld. Certain elements of the fighting. The big bosses. etc

2) Little Big Adventure (or Relentless in the US)

-The story of a planet - with a dark force trying to overthrow it, the vast amount of different environments to be explored - the different kinds of character-full strange animals, the little-sidequests/games etc etc

... Well, there could be a lot of examples... In this family history of games there was a lot of different periods - and since the mid-nineties the age of cloning has been the rule - if you catch my drift... Anyways I think it's a interesting perspective on games....

So let's get some geneology on the table...

Who is the fathers and mothers of who - let me hear....

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Well, there is of course Dune II, which is the mother/father of every RTS game in existence, and Wolfenstein, which is the mother/father of every FPS game in existence.*

And is Gorillas.bas the mother of Scorched Earth which is the mother of the Worms games?

But yeah, I felt the LBA/LBA2 force was very strong with this game. Perhaps it's the frenchness or something.

*I bet someone will come up with even older RTS or FPS games.

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Well, there is of course Dune II, which is the mother/father of every RTS game in existence, and Wolfenstein, which is the mother/father of every FPS game in existence.*

*I bet someone will come up with even older RTS or FPS games.

And you were right...

The original Dune, carries some of the aspects of rts - further developed in Dune II, combined with great elements of narrativity - and this one has one of the best soundtracks ever made I think. There is a soundtrack-cd which has the game music elaborated with better technology - and it is some great electronic music indeed - makes you feel like terraforming planets - I listened to it while playing Alpha Centauri all the time - felt it was the perfect partner - also very good when reading science fiction.... Anyone know this ? - I guess it is next to impossible to come by today....

And you could argue for that the great great great mother/father of every fps game ever, is Space Invaders - the later games just being more elaborate in the shooting-stuff department..... well maybe a bit far out...

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And you were right...

The original Dune, carries some of the aspects of rts - further developed in Dune II, combined with great elements of narrativity - and this one has one of the best soundtracks ever made I think. There is a soundtrack-cd which has the game music elaborated with better technology - and it is some great electronic music indeed - makes you feel like terraforming planets - I listened to it while playing Alpha Centauri all the time - felt it was the perfect partner - also very good when reading science fiction.... Anyone know this ? - I guess it is next to impossible to come by today....

And you could argue for that the great great great mother/father of every fps game ever, is Space Invaders - the later games just being more elaborate in the shooting-stuff department..... well maybe a bit far out...

Dune didn't really contain any "real" RTS elements and Space Invaders is hardly the grandaddy of first-person shooters! :) But heck, if you want to be technical and just find the game that had the first "firing mechanism" in a game, then you need to go back to 1961 and play Space War!

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Dune didn't really contain any "real" RTS elements and Space Invaders is hardly the grandaddy of first-person shooters! :) But heck, if you want to be technical and just find the game that had the first "firing mechanism" in a game, then you need to go back to 1961 and play Space War!

Well dune had you moving around machines to harvest resources - and it had a big carry over to the refinement of Dune 2, but as such Dune wasn't a rts... but it was the father Dune II which in turn was the original pure rts game....

And the space invader stuff was just far out.. sorry

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I see what you're saying. I love Dune and Dune II but as I remember it I don't see how they were explicity related. There was some basic "place harvester here" stuff, but it wasn't really real-time strategy, was it? -- it was turn based as I recall? Plus there were no "enemy units" to attack or anything like that, was there? I should have to play it again! Both were great games!

If Dune was just resource management, then I think it may be related to an earlier strategy game.

Speaking of which, does anyone know if Dune 2000 was better than Dune II? Should I just go retro and stick with the old gfx, or was Dune 2000 "the same, but better!"?

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I once thought of doing a family tree of some games ... But it would be a hell of a task.

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Just as a side note, you can listen to a lot of Dune music here, as well as plenty of the C&C soundtrack.

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So its all really iterations ("with enhancements," of course :) ) of punching each other? That sort of defeats the purpose of this discussion...

In terms of "what came first" didn't Bungie's "Pathways into Darkness" predate wolfenstein, or do they just like to claim that at mid-90s trade shows?

Also I remember a first person shooter PC game themed around Terminator 1 where you could play as either Arnold or Reese or whatever his name was - it looked like it used a flight simulator engine but was based on the ground. No textures really to speak of, but it was all polygon based (or a total hack to look polygon based)... I think it predates wolfenstein as well, though it's pretty different in structure (mission based) and speed (really slow) and funness (it's not fun).

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I'm not reazlly fond of trying to know the ancestor of Command & Conquers 4 - Tiberium Dawn... what's more intriguing is to fond out what really interesting gameplay ideas didn't make it to nowadays game.

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Hear hear - that is a very interesting perspective....

What happened to the sidescrolling action-adventure games a.k.a. Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness and the Ape games...

I think this specific form of game - if rightly executed - has tremendous charm and possibilities of fun.....

It is surely something with the 2d - it makes for a very easily understood game-interface/controller scheme. I like the consequence of this - that you as player has total perspective and overview on what is going on - this doesn't neccesitate that it is easy - it just makes it comfortable in some way.

Why does almost every present commercial game have to be in some form of 3d - sure it has it's good sides, but it certainly has it's bad sides also - and the same with 2d...., So no reason to abandon 2d because it is outdated ... It is just a different method to make the game work......

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What happened to the sidescrolling action-adventure games a.k.a. Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness and the Ape games...

I think this specific form of game - if rightly executed - has tremendous charm and possibilities of fun.....

GISH!

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Just as a side note, you can listen to a lot of Dune music here, as well as plenty of the C&C soundtrack.

Well this Frank has made music for the Dune games from Dune 2 onwards... The soundtrack I talked about was that for the original Dune game - made by Cryogenic - I don't exactly know the artists but the music - is as earlier stated fantastic...... Doesn't anybody know this music - it is so dune-ish....

... Anyways I will give Gish a try....

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Speaking of which, does anyone know if Dune 2000 was better than Dune II? Should I just go retro and stick with the old gfx, or was Dune 2000 "the same, but better!"?

It's supposed to be terrible. But you might enjoy it...

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What happened to the sidescrolling action-adventure games a.k.a. Prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness and the Ape games...

I think this specific form of game - if rightly executed - has tremendous charm and possibilities of fun.....

I haven't played it, but isn't that Viewtiful Joe game a sidescroller? The worst was turning Castlevania and Mega Man into 3D games. That was like taking some classic book, like say the Iliad, and turning it into some big Hollywood blockbuster crap fest starring like Brad Pitt or somebody. Er...

what's more intriguing is to fond out what really interesting gameplay ideas didn't make it to nowadays game.

What about when adventure games turned to point-and-click instead of typing in the commands. Yeah, it sucked when you wrote things that the computer didn't understand, but now just clicking a couple of times on things makes things either way too easy. Or the designers have to come up with puzzles that are totally ridiculous like in the newest Monkey Island game where you have to combine like sixty items together in the most illogical arrangements just to open a door or something.

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