Featuring interviews with the creators of 31 popular video games--including Grand Theft Auto, Strider, Maximum Carnage and Pitfall--this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins of some of the most enjoyable and iconic adventure games of all time. Interviewees recount the endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega-publishers, the growth of the adventure genre, and reveal the creative processes that produced some of the industry's biggest hits, cult classics and indie successes.

Patrick Hickey, Jr., is the founder and editor-in-chief of ReviewFix.com and a lecturer of English and journalism at Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, New York. Over the past decade, his video game coverage has been featured in national ad campaigns by Nintendo, Disney and EA Sports.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Foreword by Pete Paquette

Preface

Introduction

Mark Flitman, Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage: Paint It Black and Red

Masaya Matsuura, Rodney Alan Greenblat and Perry Rodgers, PaRappa the Rapper: Don't Stop Believin'

Garry Kitchen, Keystone Kapers: The "Little Man" That Could

Warren Spector, Epic Mickey: When Mickey Met Oswald

Fabien Demeulenaere and Philipp Döschl, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom: A ­Cult-Classic Competition

Todd Clineschmidt, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Fellowship That Almost Never Was

Kevin Sheller, Hunter: The Reckoning: Teddy Bears, Tequila and a ­Triple-Buffered Adventure

Patrick Lipo, X-Men Legends: The Birth of the Marvel Action/RPG Monopoly

Tony Barnes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wooden Stakes and Bad Pizza

Dan Kitchen, Double Dragon: From the Arcade to the Atari 2600 Extreme

Garry Kitchen, Garry Kitchen's GameMaker: The First "Unity" in Game Design

Simon Pick, Die Hard Trilogy: The Tech Demo That Did It All One Christmas in Nakatomi Plaza

Marshal Linder, Zyll: IBM's "Quest" Before the King's

Adam Jeffcoat, The VideoKid: Paperboy Meets Voxel Pam Anderson

Nate Weiss, Songbringer: A Whole New World, Every Time

Carlos L. Hernando, A Rite from the Stars: "Tou Kune Tu Kiki"

Chris Carpenter, Pheugo: Man Down Under at Work

Brett Taylor, Linelight: An "Adventure" Between the Lines

James Deighan, Andrew Marsh and Zack Manko, Coffee Crisis: Fade to Coffee Black

Zack Johnson, West of Loathing: Getting by with a Little Help from My Stick-Figured Friends

Kevin Sheller and John R. Sanderson, Family Guy Video Game!: "Thank You, Mr. Belvedere"

Chris Seavor, Conker's Bad Fur Day: Making Lemonade When Poo Hits the Fan

Chris Seavor, Conker: Live and Reloaded: When Microsoft Met Their Match

Yoshitomo Moriwaki, Boom Blox: Spielberg and Jenga, with Explosives

Howard Scott Warshaw, Raiders of the Lost Ark: An "Adventure" in Research and Discipline

David Crane, Pitfall!: Tarzan Screams and More Than 200 Screens

Andrew Glaister, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure: From Killing DOS to Porting Jim

Nic Cusworth, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos: Lights, Lava, Action

Don Traeger, Spider: An Amazing Arachnid Adventure

Tony Barnes, Strider: Even Better Than the First Time

David Cowan and Don Traeger, Grand Theft Auto: From the Food Truck to the PlayStation

Conclusion

Index