CLASSIC GAME POSTMORTEMS

Take a trip behind the scenes with the creators of some of the most innovative games of their time. Discover the lessons learned by the makers of these landmark game titles and find inspiration in understanding what it took to bring these games to life.

Classic Game Postmortem:
Crystal Castles

Franz Lanzinger

In this classic game postmortem Franz Lanzinger, the original programmer and designer, analyzes, reviews, and spills the secrets of Atari's classic arcade game Crystal Castles. Featuring Bentley Bear picking up gems and getting chased by trees and bees, Crystal Castles broke ground as a fast paced yet nonviolent 3D isometric game, Atari's first arcade character game with an ending and included an ingenious secret warp system. Franz, also a professional pianist, performs the music on his stage piano with the audience getting a close-up view, live. The talk features rare documents, sketches, photos, videos and even actual 6502 code from the heyday of Atari coin-op, defiantly known as "Coin-op, the real Atari".

Classic Game Postmortem:
Myst

Robyn Miller

The best-selling PC game of the 1990s, Myst is also often attributed as the game that sold CD-ROM drives. Its majestic 3D world was too large for floppy disks, filled with puzzles and mysteries that unraveled in front of players' eyes in an engrossing first-person adventure. Myst's immersive atmosphere and play even gave rise to the debate of games two decades ago. Since its release in 1993, it has been remade and ported to over 10 platforms, including most recently the Nintendo 3DS and iOS. Robyn Miller, the original co-creator and sound composer, will discuss how he and his brother Rand created a game that remains relevant and commercially desirable over 20 years later.

Classic Game Postmortem:
Pinball Construction Set

Bill Budge

Before LittleBigPlanet and Trials Evolution allowed users a way to create and share levels online, players could trade personalized content via floppy disk. In 1983, Electronic Arts published Pinball Construction Set with an abstract cover to match an equally experimental game that was one of the first to engender user generated content. The game's editor allowed players to construct their own virtual pinball tables, and players could save these tables to disk and trade them with friends. The editor's clean and simple interface even served as inspiration to designs behind SimCity six years later. Construction Set eventually grew into a series, with music, adventure, and racing themes for sequels. Bill Budge, the father of the seminal Pinball entry, will lay out the blueprints for how he constructed his own game and one of the earliest examples of an in-game editor.

Classic Game Postmortem:
X-COM: UFO Defense

Julian Gollop

Firaxis' and 2K Games' recent X-COM: Enemy Unknown is actually a remake of a series that began twenty years ago. It all started in 1994 with MicroProse's UFO: Enemy Unknown, entitled X-COM: UFO Defense in North America, a real-time base management simulation with turn-based tactical combat and an engaging story of alien invasion. The marriage of its distinct Geoscape and Battlescape views erepresented the game's strategy and battle modes, respectively; and they provided what felt like two different and compelling games in one. In this postmortem, Julian Gollop will lay out the tactics he deployed in directing, co-designing, co-programming, and even co-drawing the first, and often highest regarded, UFO/X-COM entry.

CLASSIC GAME POSTMORTEMS

2013 CLASSIC GAME POSTMORTEMS

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