Oddbean new post about login | logout @Chris Trottier Also, if you want to know of a great book about John Romero's life and how he got into making PC games, check out his memoir Doom Guy: A Life in First Person. It's just as interesting (if not more so) than the games he creates!
@74fa09d9 Yeah, id Software is so important to gaming that you can’t ignore them. Doom is probably the most important video game of all time. Not just for the game itself but for what it represented. Really, you could divide gaming history into two eras: before and after Doom. What makes it all the more incredible is that, at the time, id Software were the equivalent of today’s indie developers. The shareware scene were the renegades at the time.
@Chris Trottier And Apogee is back as an indie developer and publisher!
@74fa09d9 In a funny sense, I see Devolver as being the spiritual successor to Apogee. Not just because they publish Serious Sam but also because they also publish small quirky 2D titles like Hotline Miami and Enter the Gungeon. But also, their press conferences. Devolver has some of the most wild press conferences I’ve ever seen.
@Chris Trottier But Apogee still exists! It's weird to call an entirely different company a "spiritual successor" when the original company is still here with the same people running it! https://www.apogeeent.com
@74fa09d9 Actually, it’s not so cut and dry. The current Apogee isn’t the same Apogee that existed in the 80s and 90s. In fact, the current Apogee was founded in 2008. Funny enough, 3D Realms is no longer even a trade name for Apogee. 3D Realms, the one that currently exists, was bought by the Embracer Group in 2021. But I’m glad that a company called Apogee still exists in the video game industry for the same reason I’m glad Atari exists.
@Chris Trottier I'm 41; I lived through that era. And the current Apogee is headed by Scott Miller, who was the founder of the original Apogee which later became 3D Realms. It may not be as big as it once was, but it's still just as indie. EDIT: This should clear up the confusion: https://www.apogeeent.com/devblog/apogee-history
@74fa09d9 Haha! I talked something about this during my review of Rad Rodgers. Iron Slipgate bought 3D Realms so they could make a Duke Nukem title. But then they found out that Gearbox owned the rights to it—and there was a big lawsuit as a result. Rad Rodgers was their attempt to do a 2D Duke Nukem without calling it Duke Nukem (it even featured the voice talent of the man who voiced Duke Nukem). Actually, the history of Apogee and 3D Realms is much more complicated than that blog post indicates. But if I were Scott Miller, id be salty about the whole thing too.