Like any well-written history book, Dungeons & Dreamers captures your attention from the very beginning. For those of us who are older and remember a time before video games were a major source of entertainment, this book is like going home again. It firmly establishes its roots in tabletop gaming and taking the reader through a step-by-step transformation to the wondrous gaming networks we have today. And if it stopped there, this would still have been a labor of love that justified the long hours spent researching and interviewing. But it’s more than that, it’s an exceptionally detailed accounting of the work of several pioneers in the video gaming industry.
Modern gaming owes much of its entertainment and viability to early roleplaying gamers like Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who adapted other tabletop games into a more detail rich experience, allowing the player to move about in an unfettered landscape. Many people would come later on that would embrace this concept and take it to the next level. Richard Garriott was one of the first to act upon this, creating a multitude of text based games that eventually led to his massive multiplayer game, Ultima (and its sequels).
This week, tech giants take a stand against the FCC, Russia restricts free speech for bloggers, China’s about to launch an IPO that may dwarf Facebook, Who really won Samsung vs. Apple? …and < em>Star Wars the way it was really meant to be seen…
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Remember back when first-person shooter games were in their infancy, born from your floppy disk copy of Wolfenstein 3D?
It’s been a long time since those days—20 years now, in fact—and Bethesda Softworks is celebrating the anniversary of the game with a little treat for fans of the classic: the ability to play it for free whenever you want.
Continue reading to find out where you can play Wolfenstein 3D and to see a video of id Software technical director John Carmack playing the game while talking about its creation and development.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press