GSQ 2 Prologue: A Few of Our Favorite Games
We have a tradition in these here parts of preceding each issue (whether print or virtual) with a group production relating to the current theme. In this case, we took an opportunity to simply write about some of our personal favorite games, whether or not they made the list. Come wallow in nostalgia with us, won’t you?
7 thoughts on “GameSpite Quarterly 2: A belated prologue”
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If these are any indication of the quality of the full articles, I’m in for a treat.
Much as I also love Abuse, it’s hard to say it includes mouse aiming years before Quake, when Quake was itself released in 1996 (Abuse is actually 1995 btw).
FYI: Abuse is now open source and freely available. Google “Abuse SDL” for more info. Hurrah.
I concur with the slight Famicom version Gradius II preference. As much as I love the original and its more arcade faithful ports, it’s a little too bullet-hell for its own good.
Zerker, you’re absolutely right… but understand I’m employing a lot of subjectivity in my dates and comments. Let me explain:
Abuse’s box-commercial release was in 1996. The official iPhone version arrived August 15th (4 days ago!). And although Quake had mouselook, in my experience it wasn’t commonly used (or required for reasonably-skilled netplay) until Quake II. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Abuse forecasted the wider use of mouse controls in PC action games.
As for Abuse-SDL, if you’ve played any of the fRaBs levels, I apologize for making most of them far too hard!
Besides, we all know the Mac classic Dark Castle was the first game with mouse aiming.
I remember thinking that mouse aiming was silly and unintuitive, and alls I would ever need were the good ol’ arrow keys. Of course, that was only shortly after Duke introduced me to jumping in first person. Ahh, the days of my youth.. like the sweet scent of lemon.
I will happily second the notion that while Quake had mouselook, I think most playeres didn’t think to try using it until right away. Having just come off the DOOM games and Duke Nukem 3D, I was convinced that the keyboard alone was the perfect way to control these type of games. It was only after an online match on Ziggurat Vertigo that I asked someone how they managed the verticality of it all and they told me to try using mouse aiming. It was a strange, strange feeling when I first tried it out, but that anonymous internet guy was certainly right.
The funny/sad thing is that I so rarely play FPS’s on my PC nowadays that I’ll probably have to readapt to the “proper” control scheme the next time I do.