The end of the year is nearly upon us, that means it’s time for a Dragon Quest game. This year’s big release is the Pokémon-esque Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, where players take on the role of Psaro, a young…adventurer, noble, prince, I have no idea. Anyway, Psaro is cursed and unable to fight anything with monster blood. In order to defeat them, Psaro must raise an army of monsters to do battle for him. In a nod to the Persona series, players can combine monsters to form new, more powerful creatures; fun!

We’ve also got a brand new entry in the SteamWorld franchise with SteamWorld Build, which looks kind of like SimCity crossed with a tower defense game, so that’s one to keep an eye on. If you like first person puzzle games then you should check out Forest Grove, and, finally, we have a new pinball game from Zen Studios called Pinball M which is just their Pinball FX game but exclusively for tables based on horror properties. I don’t know why they needed an entirely new game/launcher for these horror themed pinball tables, maybe to keep the rating down on Pinball FX, who knows. In any case, the game will be free to play, with players able to purchase tables based on John Carpenter’s The Thing, the game Dead by Daylight, the Chucky franchise, and an original property, Wrath of the Elder Gods.

Oh, there’s also the Batman Arkham Trilogy coming to Switch, collecting the first three Arkham games. Well, the first three mainline Arkham games; nobody wants Arkham Origins, LOL.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of videos the last couple of weeks, just haven’t had the time to get to them (or really feel inspired to make them). I’ll try to get one out next week to kind of put a bow on the end of the year. That will also be our last week of regular coverage as we move into the New Game Releases special editions; 2023 Buyer’s Guide, Notable Events, and 2024 Preview!

Top Releases:

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince (Switch) – Releases Dec. 1^st

Developed by: Tose
Published by: Square Enix

SteamWorld Build (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 1^st

Developed by: The Station
Published by: Thunderful Publishing

Forest Grove (PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 29^th

Developed by: Miga Games
Published by: Blowfish Studios

Pinball M (PC/PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 30^th

Developed by: Zen Studios
Published by: Zen Studios

Everything else:

• Batman Arkham Trilogy (Switch) – Releases Dec. 1^st
• Noctuary (PC) – Releases Nov. 28^th
• Gangs of Sherwood (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 30^th

Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 (and sometimes 40) years ago:

Welcome back to Notable Releases, our send to last of the year! Let’s quickly go over your 10, 20, and 40 year old games before doing a deep dive on our 30 year old title. 2013 saw the release of Gran Turismo 6 for the PS3, despite the PS4 releasing just about a week earlier…without backwards compatibility. Sony was hoping that players would keep their old consoles hooked up for just a bit longer so that they could enjoy a technically proficient title that wanted nothing more than to rob you blind with microtransactions.

2003’s notable release is the third person action game Armed and Dangerous from LucasArts. This Xbox console exclusive is known for its humor, parodying Star Wars, Monty Python, and the latest “nerd franchise”, Lord of the Rings. Critics didn’t really love or hate the game, feeling a bit “meh” about the whole thing. I tried playing it recently and it also thought it was “meh”. This had a lot of hype behind it when it came out, being an original LucasArts property, but just kind of came and went. The good news for modern players is that the game is available on Xbox Series X|S through backwards compatibility, either with a disc or as a digital download.

Skipping to 1983, we have the PC sports game One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird. Developed by Electronic Arts, One on One was, it seems, their “Final Fantasy”. If this game wasn’t a success it would have been the end of EA. The company’s founder, Trip Hawkins, came up with the idea based on the nostalgia he had for televised one on one basketball games he would watch on TV as a kid. Knowing that they needed some kind of hook to draw players in, EA signed two very well known NBA stars to act as the stars of the title, Julius “Dr. J” Erving (Hawkins favorite player) and Larry Bird.

Bringing the two men to their studio, EA picked their brain about the game of basketball and ask them for their advice on how the game should play. What came out of these talks was the most accurate basketball game to appear on the market to date. Critics were highly impressed with EA’s ability to capture the real feeling of shooting a basketball, including different styles of shots, like the jumpshot and the fadeaway. EA also implemented an “instant replay” system into One on One, marking the first ever instance of this feature in a video game.

Erving and Bird both scored a cool $25k for appearing in the game, as well as a percentage of the game’s sales. Erving even got some EA stock, I would be curious to know how much he made on that, as EA hadn’t even released Madden yet. One on One was one of the best selling PC games of 1983 and turned EA into a very well known, and respected developer (for a little while). A sequel, Jordan vs. Bird: One on One, would release in 1988, though it was not as well received. Moving on from there, EA would discontinue the One on One franchise, instead focusing on basketball games that featured full teams. This game is impossible to play today, and probably hasn’t held up all that well, but it’s exciting to think about how this one title, a game that is relatively unknown by today’s gaming public, was the lynchpin for the success at EA; it’s wild.

Didn’t think I was going to talk so much about One on One, but never mind that, we’re moving on to our notable release from 1993, one of the greatest and most influential video games of all time, Doom. After the strong reception to developer id Software’s first two games, Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, programmer John Carmack began tinkering around with a new 3D engine to replace the one used in Wolfenstein. When deciding what game to make with this powerful new engine, lead designer Tom Hall suggested the team make a new Commander Keen game. However, fellow id employees John Romero and Adrian Carmack though that the new engine was far too powerful to make a side scroller and suggested that they do another first person shooter, but not for Wolfenstein, as the team had grown tired of working on the franchise. Instead, a sci-fi theme was pitched, one that combined demons and technology, crossing the movie Aliens with a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that the id employees were currently playing in-house. This game would be known as…Green and Pissed.

Okay, okay, that was just the working title. Eventually, the title would be named Doom, taken from a line in the film The Color of Money (What you got in there? / In here? Doom). Initially, lead designer Tom Hall took the reins on story and level design, creating a complex tale about a space marine who would go through trials and tribulations in order to fend off an invading horde of demons, with levels starting out as simple, military style areas (warehouses, labs, etc.) with each stage gradually becoming more and more “hell like”. However, Carmack was not a fan of the story, while Romero thought the levels were boring, and retained the boxy look of Wolfenstein levels. In his spare time, Romero would go on to create more abstract, experimental levels that he felt pushed the limits of Carmack’s engine. Once these levels made their way around the id offices, Carmack fell in love and threw out Hall’s story, as he wanted to focus on over the top, arcade action, not a slow, methodical story of growth and redemption.

Hall, as you might imagine, became increasingly frustrated that all of his work was being thrown out. Not only were Hall’s story and levels rejected, but his pitches for game play improvements, such as flying enemies, were also being ignored. Feeling like id wasn’t a great place to be anymore, Hall would rarely come into the office, and when he did it only seemed to provoke arguments. The other id founders couldn’t take Hall’s absence and lack of team cohesion anymore and fired him; he’d later get a job at id’s former publisher, Apogee, and make the game Rise of the Triad (which was initially a Wolfenstein sequel).

With Hall out of the picture, id hired another designer, Sandy Petersen, who would work closely with Romero to finish creating the levels for Doom. In the id offices, Petersen’s levels were seen as more technically interesting, while Romero’s levels were more aesthetically interesting. This yin & yang approach to level design is, to me, one of the most interesting things about Doom, giving the game a kind of bi-polar personality, yo-yo’ing between mind bending puzzles that required technical finesse, and dark, visually disturbing levels that tested your sanity and tolerance for overwhelming odds.

With the single player campaign nearly finished, Carmack decided to incorporate a multiplayer mode that players could access through a LAN (local area network), but id would eventually partner with a company called DWANGO to allow for Doom to be played over dial-up internet. It was here that two gaming terms were born, “deathmatch” and “fragging”, becoming a regular, wide-spread part of the gaming lexicon.

Doom was initially planned for a Q3 1993 release, but technical setbacks (and the firing of Hall around February of 1993) caused the game to be delayed. With Doom, id Software decided to cut out their old publisher, Apogee, and release the game independently. With a December 10th date picked, the team at id decided to release the first episode of the game, “Knee Deep in the Dead”, over the internet, for free, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s FTP server. However, the anticipation for Doom was more than the university’s servers could handle, over 10,000 had logged onto the FTP site, and it crashed their network.

Like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was released under the shareware model, though it was slightly modified. While id would distribute the first episode to retailers for free, the retailer was then able to charge anything they wanted for it, making this a fairly attractive offer. On id’s end, they would then take phone, mail, and internet orders, from players and send out copies of the other two episodes, “The Shores of Hell” and “Inferno”. Due to the game’s violence and content, id was skeptical that the mainstream gaming press would be interested, as no one had made a game quiet like Doom before, so hardly any advertising was done for the game, with id hoping to push sales through their retail partners and word of mouth.

While id hadn’t done much advertising, they had a massive online presence in the early days of the internet. These online fans were rabid and in just one day, Doom had made $100,000 dollars, about as much as Wolfenstein had made in a month, and it wasn’t just the first day if release, it was every day, for months. Doom was a massive, MASSIVE, commercial success for id Software and solidified the company’s financial future for years to come. After six months, Doom had sold 65,000 copies and the free episode had been downloaded more than 1 million times. After a year, the game had sold nearly 200k copies, and by 1995 it was installed, in some form, on more PC’s than Windows 95.

It wasn’t just a commercial success, Doom resonated with critics in ways that few games had before. For computer gaming critics, they called Doom one of the most important titles in PC history, claiming it had done more for PC gaming than any other title in history. It instantly took over “Best PC Game” of all-time spots in just about every gaming outlet, and was seen as a must-have game. Over time, Doom would continue to grow in popularity and give birth to many of the staples we know today in the gaming subculture, such as online communities, modding, LAN parties, online multiplayer, just to name a few. The popularity of Doom was so great that the first person shooter genre became the new de facto image that mainstream media had about video games, replacing the side scrolling titles that had a stranglehold on consoles.

While Doom was not the first FPS game, it certainly was the one to make it popular. Not only did it make it one of the most popular genres in gaming, Doom’s level design philosophy and gameplay aesthetics became some of the most copied in history, probably until 2001’s Grand Theft Auto III. Modern gaming as we know it, from the culture to the interaction to the design, can almost all be traced back to Doom. A lot of us wouldn’t be playing games today if it wasn’t for Doom, it changed everything, for better or worse, and was another stepping stone to video games’ continued ascent into mainstream entertainment.

Lots of Doom talk but, if you’re interested, here’s what our notable films and albums were. 2013 saw the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the second movie in the franchise, release a year and a half after the first film. 2003 gave us a Halloween movie at Christmas with Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, starring Eddie Murphy as a wise cracking real estate agent who unwittingly brings his family to the titular mansion where his wife is almost wed to a ghost. There’s also a horrifying scene with zombies that made my daughter cry when we watched it a couple years ago on Disney+.

1993’s notable film is Addams Family Values, the sequel to the 1991 original (which was based on the classic TV series). While it came out a week earlier and trounced our previous notable, Mrs. Doubtfire, it dropped to second place in the box office after audiences apparently realized that Mrs. Doubtfire starred Robin Williams. I always like Values better than the first Addams Family movie because it partly took place at a Summer camp and I LOVED Summer camp (plus Wednesday was hot. I was 12, cool it). Lastly, we have 1983’s Scarface, written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma. Initially receiving mixed reviews from critics and a lukewarm reception at the box office, Scarface would go on to have a huge life in the brand new home video rental marketplace and became one of the most watched movies in college dorm rooms across America, with your boyfriend 100% having some kind of poster for this movie on his wall. Did I have Scarface poster? What the fuck do you think?

Moving on to albums, 2013 saw the release of Childish Gambino’s second studio album, Because the Internet, continuing his rise in popular culture. 2003 gave us the Alicia Keys second album The Diary of Alicia Keys which was a huge commercial and critical success, making her a huge star in the United States. The album would have TEN singles and go on to win three Grammy awards, including Best R&B Album. 1993 gave us the release of The Sign the, yes, SECOND album from Ace of Base, containing their hit single “The Sign”. It was such a massive commercial hit that The Sign sits on the list of all-time best selling albums in the U.S., sitting in the top 100.

Finally, 1983 saw the release of, my god, The second album from the punk band Misfits, called Earth A.D.. The album was initially kind of ignored, but a 1984 re-release would contain the song “Die, Die My Darling”, one of their most well known songs. Okay, that’s it for this week, folks. If you read this far down, I truly appreciate it. The films and albums are a little bonus, so you taking the time to check them out really means a lot, thank you.

Gran Turismo 6 – Released Dec. 6^th, 2013: Wiki Link

Armed and Dangerous (PC/Xbox) – Released Dec. 2^nd, 2003: Wiki Link

Doom (PC) – Released Dec. 10^th, 1993: Wiki Link

One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird (Apple II) – Released Dec. 1983: Wiki Link

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