The Minds Behind Adventure Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers

by Patrick Hickey Jr.

Overview

Featuring interviews with the creators of 31 popular video games—including Grand Theft Auto, Strider, Maximum Carnage and Pitfall—this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins of some of the most enjoyable and iconic adventure games of all time. Interviewees recount the endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega-publishers, the growth of the adventure genre, and reveal the creative processes that produced some of the industry's biggest hits, cult classics and indie successes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476679662
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	12/31/2019
Series:	Studies in Gaming
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.47(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patrick Hickey, Jr., is the founder and editor-in-chief of ReviewFix.com and a lecturer of English and journalism at Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, New York. Over the past decade, his video game coverage has been featured in national ad campaigns by Nintendo, Disney and EA Sports. Series editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Pete Paquette
Preface
Introduction
Mark Flitman, Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage: Paint It Black and Red
Masaya Matsuura, Rodney Alan Greenblat and Perry Rodgers, PaRappa the Rapper: Don’t Stop Believin’
Garry Kitchen, Keystone Kapers: The “Little Man” That Could
Warren Spector, Epic Mickey: When Mickey Met Oswald
Fabien Demeulenaere and Philipp Döschl, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom: A ­Cult-Classic Competition
Todd Clineschmidt, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Fellowship That Almost Never Was
Kevin Sheller, Hunter: The Reckoning: Teddy Bears, Tequila and a ­Triple-Buffered Adventure
Patrick Lipo, X-Men Legends: The Birth of the Marvel Action/RPG Monopoly
Tony Barnes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wooden Stakes and Bad Pizza
Dan Kitchen, Double Dragon: From the Arcade to the Atari 2600 Extreme
Garry Kitchen, Garry Kitchen’s GameMaker: The First “Unity” in Game Design
Simon Pick, Die Hard Trilogy: The Tech Demo That Did It All One Christmas in Nakatomi Plaza
Marshal Linder, Zyll: IBM’s “Quest” Before the King’s
Adam Jeffcoat, The VideoKid: Paperboy Meets Voxel Pam Anderson
Nate Weiss, Songbringer: A Whole New World, Every Time
Carlos L. Hernando, A Rite from the Stars: “Tou Kune Tu Kiki”
Chris Carpenter, Pheugo: Man Down Under at Work
Brett Taylor, Linelight: An “Adventure” Between the Lines
James Deighan, Andrew Marsh and Zack Manko, Coffee Crisis: Fade to Coffee Black
Zack Johnson, West of Loathing: Getting by with a Little Help from My Stick-Figured Friends
Kevin Sheller and John R. Sanderson, Family Guy Video Game!: “Thank You, Mr. Belvedere”
Chris Seavor, Conker’s Bad Fur Day: Making Lemonade When Poo Hits the Fan
Chris Seavor, Conker: Live and Reloaded: When Microsoft Met Their Match
Yoshitomo Moriwaki, Boom Blox: Spielberg and Jenga, with Explosives
Howard Scott Warshaw, Raiders of the Lost Ark: An “Adventure” in Research and Discipline
David Crane, Pitfall!: Tarzan Screams and More Than 200 Screens
Andrew Glaister, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure: From Killing DOS to Porting Jim
Nic Cusworth, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos: Lights, Lava, Action
Don Traeger, Spider: An Amazing Arachnid Adventure
Tony Barnes, Strider: Even Better Than the First Time
David Cowan and Don Traeger, Grand Theft Auto: From the Food Truck to the PlayStation
Conclusion
Index

Editorial Reviews

Welcome to the journey. At each chapter you’ll have two paths to choose from. One is to continue on to the next chapter. The other is to put the book down and play the game. Follow the first option each time. I guarantee that when you finish reading the book and play the games they’ll be more fun because you’ll appreciate what went into the creation of them.”—Leonard Herman, author of Phoenix IV: The History of the Videogame Industry

“Patrick delivers a refreshingly sober look at video game development through the context of his interviews. The stories these legends of the game industry tell are full of disappointment and excitement - failure and success. The stuff video games are made of. The stuff of life.”—Jeffrey Paquette, designer, KROOM

“Patrick Hickey Jr. doesn’t just parrot off the facts like other books in the field, he does his homework, digs deep, and asks the right kind of questions. When you read this book chock full of interviews with those in-the-know you will undoubtedly be pleased!”—Michael Thomasson, author of Downright Bizarre Games: Video Games that Crossed the Line.

From the Publisher