Shacknews • 21st April 2023 How Tears of the Kingdom could tie together Zelda's timeline With Tears of the Kingdom less than a month away, Zelda fans are debating where it fits on the timeline--but what if that line isn't a line at all?
25th March 2022 Kool Stuff[7]: Floor to Ceiling: Arcade1Up on Mortal Kombat's 30th Anniversary Arcade1Up's Cyrus Rosenberg talks the company's revamped MK cabinet for the franchise's 30th anniversary, where the Supreme-branded MK cabinet came from, and what goes into licensing retro games for re-release.
18th March 2022 Kool Stuff[6]: How Video Game Ratings Have Changed Since Mortal Kombat II Long Live Mortal Kombat author David L. Craddock reached out to the ESRB to learn more about its history, and how the ESRB's ratings have changed to keep pace with the rapidly changing way we played video games.
10th March 2022 Kool Stuff [5]: Why Mortal Kombat Never Appeared on NES Long Live MK author David L. Craddock spoke with representatives from Acclaim and Sculptured Software to find out why MK1 never appeared on the NES.
Substack • 3rd March 2022 Kool Stuff[4]: Unfulfilled Nostalgia: Diamond Select Toys' Mortal Kombat Collectibles, Part 2 Diamond Select Toys's artists walk us through the making of its gallery diorama statues of Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Raiden, and Kitana.
Substack • 24th February 2022 Kool Stuff [3]: Unfulfilled Nostalgia: Diamond Select Toys' Mortal Kombat Collectibles, Part 1 Diamond Select Toys discusses the intersection between comics and collectibles, how the company chooses what types of collectibles to support in each line, and each product's multi-step process through design, sculpting, painting, and prototyping.
Shacknews • 31st December 2021 Unraveling the mystery behind Diablo's multiple release dates Diablo turns 25 today, and it turns 25 next month. Which is the true release date? The answer depends on where you lived.
Shacknews • 15th November 2021 X Factors: Game Developers Reflect on 20 Years of Xbox Four developers share their their favorite Xbox projects to work on, their favorite games to play, and other memories on the 20th anniversary of Xbox.
Shacknews • 13th November 2020 Bet on Black: How Microsoft and Xbox Changed Pop Culture, Part 1 From Adventure and Minesweeper to Age of Empires and Halo and beyond, explore Microsoft's history in the PC and video game industries. Based on over 100 hours of interviews.
Shacknews • 12th November 2020 A Bit of Foolishness: An Oral History of Age of Empires As WarCraft II, Command & Conquer, and Civilization II continued to sell, a small group of business programmers toiled away on Age of Empires, a strategy game that combined all three.
Shacknews • 17th September 2020 The console wars as we've known them are over With Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony all shooting for different goals, there is no war.
Shacknews • 11th September 2020 Never Forget: Traveling with the Xbox team on 9/11 In the home stretch to release the original Xbox, Microsoft developers find themselves in an America forever changed by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Shacknews • 15th May 2020 Work From Quarantine: How COVID-19 Has Upended Game Development Developers from Amazon Games, Techland, Behaviour Interactive, and more discuss the pros and cons of making games during a global pandemic.
Shacknews • 13th May 2020 From Chaos: The Aspirational Storytelling of Life is Strange Developers from Dontnod Entertainment and Deck Nine Games recount the making of the Life is Strange series, and what it contributes to storytelling in video games.
Shacknews • 3rd April 2020 Terraform: The Making of Doom 64 After invading computers and aging console hardware, Doom's creators partner with veteran coin-op developer Midway to bring their demons to Nintendo's 'ultra'-powerful new platform.
Shacknews • 20th March 2020 Hell Razer: The Making of Doom Eternal Fresh off their success with Doom 2016, id Software's developers set out to not only refine their push-forward formula, but to outdo themselves.
Shacknews • 18th March 2020 Super Doom: How id Software's Opus Made the Jump to Super NES With the Super NES on its last legs, Sculptured Software and id Software send it to hell in style.
9th March 2020 Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego? – Video Game History Foundation You all know Carmen Sandiego, but do you know about her most obscure caper? Back in 1989 – somewhere between her jetsetting adventures Where in Europe and her chrono-conquest in Where in Time, Carmen took an odd detour to the Peace Garden State – North Dakota.
Shacknews • 27th September 2019 Better Together: Stories of EverQuest Developers share memorable moments and behind-the-scenes stories in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Daybreak Game Company's groundbreaking MMORPG.
Shacknews • 30th May 2019 Survive or Kill: How Behaviour Interactive Rebooted Deathgarden Deathgarden launched with the highest of expectations. Within days, the asymmetric multiplayer shooter became a ghost town. The development team at Behaviour Interactive faced a difficult choice: Go back to the drawing board, or move on.