A Brief History of Wing Commander

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 16, 2011

Okay, you may not think two full articles to be all that brief, but considering the scope and significance of the series, this seems pretty well abridged to me. G4TV has a two-part history of the series: The History of Wing Commander, Part 1 The History of Wing Commander, Part 2 As a young gamer, […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Hit Game Designer Speaks Out on Ever-Improving Graphics, Reduced Innovation

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2011

Here is a great quote from a game designer with several games (including a couple of hits) under his belt: “I’m afraid that what I see in the future is a heckuva lot more mundane than what most people come up with. I think that imaging will become a lot more realistic; that’s been the […]

Filed Under: Interviews, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Twenty and the Seven

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2011

The fun thing about opinion lists – no matter whose list it is – is that they immediately generate counter-opinions about their order, about what was included, and about what was excluded. This weekend we had a couple of interesting lists circulate. The first is from Wired, entitled “7 Fantastical Indie RPGs Worth Playing.” This […]

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What Does “Old School RPG” Mean To You?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2011

I kinda tripped over this one working on the manual for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon this weekend. Frayed Knights was inspired by favorite old-school RPGs, particularly games like the Wizardry, Ultima, and Bard’s Tale series. Oddly, when I first started I think I would have listed Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant […]

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Revisited: “How Do I Get Past the Harpies?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 4, 2011

Word from testers have been coming back over the last couple of weeks. Seeing other people enjoy a world that you’ve created is a tremendous feeling. It’s also motivating – you see parts that aren’t working well (these guys are testing the game, so I get a lot of that), and want to fix them. […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Geek Life, Retro - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Preserving Video Games – and the Right Way to Handle Abandonware?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2011

An interesting article about the problem of preserving old video games: Grassroots Game Preservation Through Abandonware The focus is (duh!) on abandonware sites. That’s a gray area with me, though it’s not gray with respect to U.S. copyright laws.  Still, it’s largely tolerated by the industry, so long as the sites will take down games […]

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Ultima 9 – How It Might Have Been

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 26, 2011

Yet more historical Ultima development goodies are now avaialable at Ultima Aiera: The original documents for the “Bob White” plot for Ultima IX: Ascension.  This has been rumored and discussed for over a decade. Now you can find the … well, not the original plot for Ultima IX, but a plot that might have been. […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Contest Time – Swappin’ Stories About Old-School CRPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 15, 2011

To celebrate the whole going-beta thing, and the fact that the Rampant Games forums are back in business, I figured I’d run a little contest or three with indie games as the prize. It’s a simple one, though it does require forum membership. Yes, this is my devlish plan to get people talking on the […]

Filed Under: Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Ultima VI Technical Documents Online

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 10, 2011

Here is some of the internal documentation used for the development of Ultima VI… Ultima VI Technical Documents at Ultima Aiera These pages include details on the conversation scripting and the data format for the world editor. If you are the kind of person who likes to get “under the hood” of favorite games, these […]

Filed Under: Programming, Retro - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Story of Good Old Games…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 8, 2011

There’s an interesting write-up on the origins of Good Old Games, AKA GOG.COM, at The Escapist: Everything Good Old is New Again The most interesting bits for me were the difficulty of tracking down the rights in order to license them. Also, that some companies remain terrified by the lack of DRM on these games […]

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Reminiscing about Ultima Underworld

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 3, 2011

GOG.COM announced that they will be carrying a bunch of older games from EA. They are leading out with three games – well, actually four – from Origin and Bullfrog. Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 are leading out in a single package as the first – but hopefully not the last – of the Ultima […]

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EA Launching Ultima Website…?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 1, 2011

GameBanshee has some more information, including a screenshot of a page that was up only briefly. They’ve also confirmed that EA is the owner of the site. Dang, fans are just too diligent, and won’t let a company sneak something like this past them for long… Ultima Forever Website Leaked The web page screenshot suggests […]

Filed Under: Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Action RPGs: Still Not a New Thing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 31, 2011

I guess my post today is an echo of my earlier post, but Hardcore Gamer has a useful little post about the long history of western “Action RPGs” that’s worth looking over. It’s shy on details, but provides plenty of examples: Hardcore Gamer: A Brief History of Western Action RPGs A number of his examples […]

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Matt Chat: Baldur’s Gate

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 16, 2011

Baldur’s Gate and it’s sequel rank very highly in my list of favorite role-playing games. Matt Barton shares a retrospective and a play-through. I especially enjoyed the envy he expresses for those who haven’t played the games (yet): Boy are you in for a treat! Man, has it been that long since I played this […]

Filed Under: Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

EA Cracks Down on Ultima IV Remakes and Distribution – Hinting at Future Release?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 31, 2011

The news amongst Ultima fans this week has combined two events: #1 – Rumors (and Tweets) from a few weeks ago about Bioware Mythic’s Paul Barnett’s secret project, which point to a web-playable Ultima project. #2 – EA just issued a Cease & Desist against many sites offering free downloads of Ultima IV, as well […]

Filed Under: News, Retro - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Judges Guild: Older-School Adventures…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 28, 2011

This weekend – in between bouts of some kind of illness that made me it’s punching bag – I stumbled across some unpublished work I did for Necromancer Games several years ago. This was principally work converting and updating some old Judges Guild materials over to to 3rd edition D20 rules. Yep, dice-and-paper, baby. Sadly, […]

Filed Under: Dice & Paper, Retro - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



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