Tom’s Games

In Which We Find Out What Tom Has Done Before And Stuff

 A lot of people write me, wanting to know how to get into the games industry. Many of them have never made a game. That’s why I advise making a bunch of little games yourself, so you can screw up in private, until you really get the idea, then show other people your stuff. The director Robert Rodriguez says in his book, Rebel Without A Crew, that everyone has about ten bad films in them. He suggests making those, then with all that experience, you can show people stuff that shows more maturity and understanding. This goes for games, too. Look all this junk I did from June 9th, 1980, when I got my Apple II+, to September 1987, when I went to work for Softdisk. These aren’t all the games, but a lot of them. And it doesn’t include utilities and applications and stuff. (I reprogrammed a few of them for Softdisk later, you’ll notice.)

GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Tank Arcade/sim BASIC. Sad little type in the angle, it draw the dots of the arc for the cannonball, and you try to hit the other tank.
Murderer Adventure BASIC. Walk around a town grid looking for the murderer. If you find his square, you see a horrible stick figure with meanie eyebrows.
Gold Quest Adventure BASIC. Actual locations to find items and dig for gold!
Xenon I – IV Adventures Adventure BASIC. After writing real adventures, it was fun to write a huge adventure made up of leading descriptions that got you to type the next obvious thing to do or look at, which led to the next IF statement. They were all in a big loop, so if you typed GO STARSHIP, you’d jump forward to that part of the game. Silly but fun to make because they were so incredibly epic with no effort.
Deserted Island Adventure Fun little adventure that I don’t remember at all.
Monkey Adventure Adventure Not quite the spectacle of fun that Monkey Island was, but it was fun to get him to do stuff by taunting him with banana goodies.
Ed’s Superspy Course Adventure BASIC. He’s Ed. He’s got a superspy course! Collect all the treasures on the spy testing grounds… Published on Softdisk as my first assembly language adventure.
Aztec Temple Adventure My mom’s favorite, published later on Softdisk. It was pretty good. Some rather clever puzzles.
Box Canyon Adventure Fun little adventure. No great shakes.
Rescue on Alka Adventure Rescue the princess from the Castle Selzer. Get it?
Starcruiser Adventure On a bet, I wrote this in two hours. It was pretty cool for two hours. Escape the doomed starship!
Submarine Adventure Some cool puzzles in this baby. Sliding down a pipe on a belt and junk.
Cyclo Adventure First of a set of nine adventures: The Ultimate Adventure. Never made the other eight. Hee.
The Last Hope Adventure Sci-fantasy game with you trying to save the life-source of a planet from dying….
Shipwreck Adventure Pretty dang tough adventure.
Lighthouse Adventure Cool puzzles with timed tides and stuff.
Secret Evil Petrified Desert Adventure Huge and epic, about alien ships hidden inside petrified trees, which you find after, you know, crossing a desert. Really cool, and so big that when I tried to compile it with a BASIC compiler, it wouldn’t fit in memory!
Monolith Adventure Really tough adventure that was pretty spooky too.
Amusement Park Adventure Funny, cool adventure that I later redid for Softdisk. Some rather hilarious parts.
Primero Dinero Simulation FINALLY, I get off the adventure kick with… a sim that plays like an adventure. History class simulation of managing your supplies when stranded on an island.
Dungeon Role-playing Sort of a text adventure with fights in the middle of it. Eamonish, I guess. Why no graphics since Murderer?
Gunner Shoot-’em-up Shape tables Shooter. Basically, you’re a tail gunner. One of the creatures was “Space Mite”. Followed by a bunch of too-slow, flashy, awful arcade games that shouldn’t have ever been done in BASIC by a rational person. But this one was okay.
Zapper Shoot-’em-up Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Superzot Shoot-’em-up Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Dexicon Shoot-’em-up Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Space Peepers Shoot-’em-up Cool idea where little Kilroys pop out of moon craters. Saw the game game later on a console system. Ah well.  Good intro anim for flash.
Madvoober Shoot-’em-up Basically this is Mad Bomber, but with non-page flipped shapes that flashed (voobed) really annoyingly.
Mass Poopage Shoot-’em-up You shoot a bird that is pooping massively above you. Of course, the poop is utterly lethal.
Monkey Platform Imagine Donkey Kong Junior on two poles, with stuff coming down the screen that he’s got to avoid. Get to the top of the screen! Yes!
Musical Snowbound Maze A version of Pacman I wrote quickly for my sister, because she was bad at games–this one had no ghosts, which made it considerable easier.
Walk Into the Dot Action/Puzzle Kind of a cool simple game idea that actually got published on Softdisk later as a joke. First level: one bad dot, one good dot. Walk into the good dot. Second level: two bad dots. And on. After the thirty-sixth level, it is almost impossible. If you run into a bad dot, you go back one level. The dots are random, so you can get screwed. Strangely fun, though.  Well, to me, anyway.
Zap Shoot-’em-up Such a forgettable game, I forgot it.
Jumpy Platform I’m sure this had to do with jumping…
Horse Race Race Bet on one of four horses and they race! Kept track of historical scores.
Slot Machine Casino Pull the lever. Wow!
LGADV Adventure Adventure Sad lo-res graphics for rooms, but at least they were graphics!
LGADV2: Cheese Factory Adventure Adventure Not quite so sad, as there’s cheese in it. And duct-crawling-through!
The Silver Cow Adventure Hi-res tiles Ultima-style game with no Ultima style depth. An amusing voice-digitized “MOO!” at the start, on an Apple ][!
Alphabetics Educational Bring the two matching letters to the momma rabbit. The controls (four arrows and space bar) we way above the heads of the super-young kids it was designed for. A lesson I learned from my teacher friend Mr. K.
Death Ships From the Ninth Galaxy Shoot-’em-up Joke game: three HUGE ships at the top of the screen don’t fire, so you can just blow them up. But avoid the falling pilot’s corpse!
Korp Shoot-’em-up More dang disposable shooters.
Spire City Shoot-’em-up Disposable shooter with enemies on a spiral path. Wow.
Here Comes the Grunge Educational Character generator (later published at Word Castle) Cool hangman game without the gruesome corpse thingy.
Changemaker Educational Helped kids learn to make change with Eddie and his piggy bank!  Used by learning-disabled kids.

Then I went to work at Softdisk. I improved submitted programs for a long time, as well as making my own. Here are most of them (these are just the games, not the apps like What A Poster! and so on):

GAME YEAR COMMENTS
Aztec Temple 1988 They bought it from me… for a hundred dollars!
Ed’s Superspy Course 1988  
Changemaker 1988  
Walk Into the Dot 1988  
The Silver Cow 1988  
Amusement Park 1989  
Word Castle 1989 Formerly Here Comes the Grunge
In Search of the Golden Cheese 1989 The stunning sequel to The Silver Cow. Basically a maze.
Duck Boop 1989 First true event-driven shooter I made. A demo of the block-shape routines we provided on the disk.
Alfredo’s Stupendous Surprise 1989 Romero and I adding a choose-your-path version of the constantly mutilated, stick-figure mascot of Softdisk. We worked hard to fit this in 128K. We finished with EIGHT BYTES of memory left!
Recollect Trek 1989 Trivia game, as well as the next one.
Recollect The Beatles 1989  
Pun’s Peak 1989 Little adventure where the solutions are HIDEOUS puns.
Ark Shadows 1989 Cool levels for Arkanoid GS
Legend of the Star Axe 1990 Fun shooter with silly enemies like the Blehs and fleets of 57 Chevys. Joe Siegler got to level 174 of this game! 
Catacomb 1990 Cool arcade game done with Carmack. Did levels and graphics.
Double Dangerous Dave 1990 (Romero’s game–I just did the double hi-res graphics.)

Here also are some programs that I spiffed up so much from the original, they are countable as games I worked on:

GAME YEAR COMMENTS
The Seven Keys 1987 Basically, Monopoly.
Anagram Challenge 1988 Word fun.
Loose Change 1988 Changemaker without Eddie and the piggy bank.
Magic Boxes 1989 Puzzle that Romero later ported to the PC… in TEXT MODE!

Now on the PC side (these are in the id anthology)… 1990 was a busy year!

GAME YEAR COMMENTS
Catacomb 1990 2D Magician action.
Dangerous Dave 1990 Mario… sorta.
Catacomb II 1990 2D Magician action with more colors!
Slordax 1990 A fan of Slordax wrote me last week. LAST WEEK! I mean, get a console!
Shadow Knights 1990 I did like a few levels.
Rescue Rover! 1990 I really love the puzzle elements in the Rescue Rovers. (That’s why I borrowed some of the puzzle elements for Hyperspace Delivery Boy!)  Level 29 of Rescue Rover! is one of the hardest puzzles in any game ever. Heh heh heh.
Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion 1990 The reloading-your-shotgun mechanic was awesome and tension-producing… especially during boss battles!
Keen Dreams 1990 Shouldn’t have made this Keen — now some dude in Louisiana has rights to this episode.
Rescue Rover II 1990 More puzzle insanity.  Never did finish the trilogy… nor ever record the theme song I made up!
Hovertank One 1990 3D game!  But with color-mapped walls.
Catacomb 3-D 1990 This is the first 3D fast-action FPS EVER.  Too bad it was in EGA and like four people saw it.
Commander Keen in… “Invasion of the Vorticons” 1990 I love Keen. Keen is basically me at age eight. The Green Bay Packer helmet, the red Converse sneakers, the dreams of space… If I ever got the rights again, I’d make Keen 3D in a heartbeat.
Commander Keen in… “Goodbye, Galaxy!” 1991 Keen 4 introduced the Dopefish, who now has a bizarre, cult-like following, and has had a cameo in many games. Keen 5 is Romero’s favorite Keen.
Commander Keen in… “Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter!” 1991 Should never have split up the trilogy and made a commercial version. Ah well.
Wolfenstein 3D 1992 I remember Romero playing it while we were working on it in Madison, Wisconsin, and saying, “There’s NOTHING like this!”
Spear of Destiny 1992 I love the surprise end level. Hee.
DOOM 1993 Awesome game that I was totally unhappy working on, simply because the things I am best at aren’t in the game: characters, puzzle elements, story, content. It’s just a raw shooter, which is cool, but not really what I enjoy doing. I had a story, characters with different abilities, and brief cinematic pictures at the start and end. I felt we were getting way too minimalistic in player reward, and wanted a reason for the person to go through the levels, rather than a switch. We parted ways, which really was for the best. (What levels did Tom do? Level 1-4, first half of 1-8, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-7, 3-3, and 3-7. Some of them were subsequently retextured to be episode-appropriate and stuff, and the new monsters were added. It was really cool that a LucasArts guy said the crate stuff in Jedi Knight was an homage to the crate maze, 2-2, in DOOM. I’m honored. Now, if I can just beat Jerec before he goes up the tube again…. Also, a level of mine, level 10, wound up in DOOM 2, but I don’t count that as “a game I worked on”, so…)
Duke Nukem II 1993 Did the story, designed the bosses, drew the bonus items, and some sprites and tiles.
Rise of the Triad 1994 A bunch of innovations (rocket-jumping, sorted frags, environment changing, missile cam, parental password, and on and on, but lost in an old-style engine.
Extreme Rise of the Triad 1995 Level pack. Basically a waste of a few months. But some clever level bits.
Terminal Velocity 1995 Co-produced this one.

(I did the story for Duke Nukem 3D, but that was an after-the-fact thing. I also helped come up with TripBombs. Didn’t work on the game, though. And, of course, I was on the first year of Prey, but needed to make the game I wanted to make, and thus…ION Storm. Hope Prey rocks. Someday.  Well, at least I got a Prey mug.)

Also, I started a bunch of games that I never finished, but always wanted to. Never enough time. Sigh. Here’s a list!

BEFORE SOFTDISK

GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Poids Shoot-’em-up Turned into Legend of the Star Axe on the GS. An homage to Sneakers by Mark Turmell. The slogan: “They’re too cute to shoot!”
The Ultimate Adventure Adventure Gfx/text Finished Cyclo, the first one, but the other eight are in Limbo.
Fate of the Firedame Adventure You’re on a starship, stuffed in a missile tube, and it’s destroyed and in a decaying orbit. Have fun!
Castle Wolfenstine(sic) Action Text-based version of Castle Wolfenstein. Spelled differently to avoid prosecution!
Slayquest RPG My version of the ancient Dragon’s Eye crossed with Wizardry.
Starstrike Shoot-’em-up Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.
SOFTDISK
GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Rice Farmer Simulation Rice farming. Woo!
Lizardly RPG Wizardry parody.
Candy Quest Action adventure And never done.
Rescue Rover IIe Action I originally designed it on the Apple II. Inspired by Adventures of Lolo.
No Man’s LAN Arcade on network Would have been an AppleTalked multiplayer game
Dangerous Dave GS Platform Port of Romero’s game, did editor, gfx, but stopped
Disc World Platform Like Q-Bert
Scary Bizness Platform Halloween-themed platformed in Double Hi-res.
Secret of the Obelisk Adventure One of the few I didn’t finish
Run ‘n’ Jump Platform Run as stuff scrolls by you that you must jump over.
Starstrike Shoot-’em-up Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.

ID GAMES

GAME TYPE COMMENTS
  Penultima III RPG Carmack and I doing a real RPG, though it was a joke, too.
Wac-man Maze action We started this as an example for a developer seminar. Never finished it off.
Save Spot! Puzzle action Rescue Rover! but we would own the IP.
IGOTABAT.EXE Action Funny for brutality and that it fit in IBM’s old 8-character filename restriction.
Spheres of Influence Puzzle Action Combing spheres to make different things.
Commander Keen in… “The Universe is Toast!” Platform Sigh….

 

Okay, back to games I actually got AROUND to making or helping to make!
ION STORM GAMES
GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Anachronox Role-playing I loved making this game, even though the company struggles were insane. The guys that stuck it out were bonded in ways that no one else will understand. Likely by body funk.
Deus Ex Action RPG I voiced Walton Simons, and some other folks.
 
MONKEYSTONE GAMES
GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Hyperspace Delivery Boy! Action puzzle A fun puzzle adventure on the Pocket PC, then PC, then Gameboy Advance. Now being ported to Linux!
Jewel & Jim Action puzzle On BREW platform.
Gold Digger Action puzzle On BREW platform
Congo Cube Action puzzle On PC and elsewhere…
 

MIDWAY GAMES

At Midway, I was Creative Director over Third Party Products. It was a cool place with a great boss, Steve Crane. I commented on a lot of projects, did a Design Database to try to unite the five studios, and other stuff. Here’s two of the games I looked at a lot.

GAME TYPE COMMENTS
Narc Action My first task was to comment and suggest changes on this controversial title. A trip to Scotland! The checkered development history meant they never really got to do virtually any of my suggestions, but well, stuff happens. Frustrating for them, frustrating for me. Ah well.
Area 51 Action This is a great game. Apart from various milestone commentaries, I suggested a scanner to unite their Lore with the character, to make you feel you aren’t just another guy with a gun. Also, jumping bean grenades, but they never got quite erratic enough to make them scary, but there you go. They did a great job on this game. Props to Zach, Justin, Jim, Daryl, and the whole team. Fun! It was cool meeting David Duchovny and Marilyn Manson. If a bit surreal.
 

SECRET NEW COMPANY: KingsIsle Entertainment

Ooooh, mysterrrryyyyyyyy! But I am back MAKING games, baby!

GAME TYPE COMMENTS
????? MMOG A cool, interesting new type of massively-multiplayer online game.

 

And soon, I’ll add more to the list!
This list may be inaccurate, but like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where it is inaccurate, it is at least DEFINITIVELY inaccurate. :^)
Now you know a little bit more about me! La.

 

Brought to you by the letter ‘R’. 

15 Responses to “Tom’s Games”

  1. Bamyl Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    So, how do I get a hold of HDB for windows? Like now?

  2. tommune Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Workin’ on it. :)

  3. Bamyl Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    You’ve got a heart of gold ;)

  4. tommune Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    So does Zaphod Beeblebrox. :)

  5. Bamyl Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    Didn’t see that one coming. Damn my lack of imagination.

  6. Bamyl Says:
    April 30, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    (also, shouldn’t you be working? I’m kind of waiting for that new game ;) )

  7. Defiler Says:
    May 25, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Hey Tom ! Since I can’t find no massage board nor direct Email, I’ll just ask you here :)
    What legal issues prevent you from doing another Keen game, or at least develope a new Commander Keen game which will be totally different but still have the same familiar characters ?

    And for the other issues I tried to reach you about – I’m working on a Commander Keen comic book (something I started doing in crude guidelines back when I was 12, and found out it’s gonna be cool doing it right now when I’m 25 and, almost finishing my degree) – How can I get the right to use the many (or some of the) characters in the game series, If I’m not planning to do it for money, just for to publish it for free on the internet ?

    Sorry for the long comment
    You, sir, are a genius.

    Yotam “Defiler” Avni
    Israel

  8. tommune Says:
    May 28, 2008 at 5:04 am

    id owns Keen. They have been negative about fan projects.

    I hope to get him back someday.

    I’d just invent your own character! Just picture yourself, in your imagination, at 8 or 9 and go from there! :)

  9. FishInBlack Says:
    June 11, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Just dug out my copy of Anachronox again the other day and started playing through again. Love that game, one of top ten all time faves. Shame about the rights, though.

    Want something similiar NOW!!

    Wizard 101 sounds pretty cool though.

  10. Mr.Moore Says:
    June 17, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    Thanks for Anachronox – one of the best games I ever played (on my shelf right there with System Shock, Deus Ex, May Payne and Dungeon Master)
    Although the ending was quite unfair – in the view that there will be no part two – sniff
    …and that Dopefish is haunting me (saw it last in a game by russian or polish developers :)

  11. StoneyDumples Says:
    June 28, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    So, I’ve had a nagging question bouncing around my head for a while that I think would be great if you could answer for me.

    I’ve had what I thought was an original idea for a few years that I’ve wanted to implement in a game. It involved jumping through a portal type of teleporter. A seamless doorway integrated into the gameplay… exactly like what can be found in Prey and Portals now. Naturally when I fired up these games to check out the technology I was excited to see, what I thought was an original idea, had been executed so well in a commercial game.
    I was curious to know if the idea for the portal technology was in the Prey concept from the beginning. Since Prey (all the way back Prey) had been in production far longer than my idea had been, I was wondering if my idea was ever original at all.

    Can you shed some light for me?

  12. J.B Says:
    June 30, 2008 at 9:46 am

    Hope to see part 2 of Anachronox someday..

  13. bamyl Says:
    June 30, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    I spent hours and hours with Anachronix just running around Sender station. It felt like a second home. Which I guess is kind of a good thing since you’re working on an mmo now. I hope you’ll capture the same degree of wonder and detail I felt existed in Anachronox. But this time interactive and with lots of real people. Oooh this is going to be so great.
    Btw will you be doing any voice acting? I sure hope so, you have a knack for voice stuff. Walton Simons still haunts my dreams ;)

  14. tommune Says:
    June 30, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Yeah, that was early in Prey development.

    Even Portal was a fancied up version of a game done a little while ago.

    You’ll find that there’s almost always a precedent when you do stuff. The awesome part is in the execution.

    And yeah, I think some of my voice stuff is in Wizard 101.

  15. StoneyDumples Says:
    June 30, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    Well thanks. That’s pretty much what I wanted to know. I think it’s interesting that every new concept is based on old ones, yet somehow they can be refreshing every time they’re re-visited with a new angle.

    I’ve been reading Masters of Doom recently, it’s been cool putting faces and personality behind the games I love to play and dissect. I grew up on the Keen games, so I’ve been a fan of your style of goofiness for a long time… whether I knew who you were or not. :) I’m looking forward to Wizard 101.

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