Readers’ Questions
Brian H: Did you ever have a go at some of the events you replicated in videogame form?
On a dare, I tried pole-vaulting once as a kid, but knocked the wind out of myself by missing the landing pad. Around 1965, I built my own skateboard from a piece of plywood and a narrow, metal roller-skate. I found I could ride okay on very smooth pavement but the tiniest rock was a huge hazard!
Merman: In the Games series, how did you come up with interesting and different control schemes, instead of just joystick waggling?
I wasn’t the only one to come up with the control schemes, but I insisted on variety and that each scheme map well to the sport being simulated. For instance, the original biathlon controls did not require you to eject the spent shell and load the next one, as real rifles would, which I knew because I owned a bolt-action .22 when younger. I wanted that additional eject/load interaction for realism and added difficulty between shots on the targets.
Robert August de Meijer: Which games does Matt think have surpassed Diablo II in quality?
In my experience, none. But I could be wrong, since plenty of great games have shipped in the past 25 years.
Nick Moudios: Was it difficult getting the wave effect for surfing in California Games?
It required Jon Leupp, the surfing programmer, to develop a special animation tool and quite a bit of collaboration/iteration between him and the surfing artist, Suzie Greene. Its development was the most challenging of the events in California Games, technically and animation-wise. Oh, plenty! The Beast gameplay is quite underwhelming and should be completely redone. The running and speed of movement always bothered me, too. Actually, I’ve been thinking about redesigning all of the sub-games. I’d give the boulder game an Asteroids flavour: you’d throw the glaive to hit each large boulder and it would split into smaller pieces. In the Swamp, your army could be transformed by contact with Slayers into deadly frenemies, like in Robotron. Maybe Sony would even pay me to do this?!