The well-made tutorial of Zelda: A Link to the past

In my playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, I realized how underappreciated the first 45 minutes of the game really are. You may call it tutorial, you may call it starting sequence that leads you into the game: it's the beginning of the story, at which Link wakes up in … Continue reading The well-made tutorial of Zelda: A Link to the past →

Sim City just stands out

SimCity is a fascinating game. Fascinating what it stands for, what it delivered and what doors opened for later games to go through. Released 1989 on Amiga and Macintosh, SimCity is a city building and management simulation built by Maxis. It was ported to numerous platforms, including DOS, Windows, SNES, PC-98, FM-Towns and OS/2. The … Continue reading Sim City just stands out →

In-Game Help in Zelda: A Link to the Past: Game hints in A Link to the Past

One of the things that I've recognized in my latest playthrough of Zelda: A Link to the Past is, that it also has a built-in help system. You might remember that particular design choice not as a hint system, but as the eldest from Kakariko, that you meet early in the game, and then later … Continue reading In-Game Help in Zelda: A Link to the Past: Game hints in A Link to the Past →

Revisiting Zelda: A Link to the Past

Zelda: A link to the past is one of my favorite games of all time. I feel in love with it in 1993, when we had an SNES and I was able to borrow the game from a friend. I spent a lot of time with it, because the feeling of being on an adventure … Continue reading Revisiting Zelda: A Link to the Past →

C&C – AI progression over time

When we look at the progression of AI, specifically in the Command and Conquer franchise, we can see that across very few years a lot has happened to make the computer-based opponents more intelligent and more challenging, to better equip them with faster, strategic unit production, tactical attack waves and base building. All such that … Continue reading C&C – AI progression over time →

Difficulty in games – and how Breath of the wild does it well

Designing your game for the right difficulty level is a challenge. We've all been at the point where we've played a game that was either too easy or too difficult. And especially in the beginning, when we don't know what to expect from a game and when we haven't grasped all the dynamics and mechanics … Continue reading Difficulty in games – and how Breath of the wild does it well →

Savegames III – Zelda

If we are looking at games and how they implement the savegame mechanic to support their immersion and their creation of the game world, we need to talk about the first part in the Zelda series that was released on the NES console. In 1986, the first Zelda game was released on the then Famicom … Continue reading Savegames III – Zelda →

The savegame mechanic in Resident Evil

In the earlier blog post about how the save game mechanic and influences the immersion and the gameplay, we had dissected various save game implementations. If we are looking at the Resident Evil implementation of saving and loading games, we will realize that the development team found a very interesting way of incorporating the save … Continue reading The savegame mechanic in Resident Evil →

Modernizing retro game scenes with AI

Over at one of my favorite Retro Game Forums stayforever.de, there's a thread about turning retro game art and scenes into realistic photos, leveraging generative AI like ChatGPT or Copilot and the like. What a fantastic experiment that is - I tried it out myself and enjoyed a good two hours, converting a number of … Continue reading Modernizing retro game scenes with AI →

Larry and the telemetry treasure

I am looking into how feedback and quality control happened in our beloved games in the 80s and 90s and came across something I learned that I want to share. As I research the subject space, it becomes apparent that especially in the 80s, structured testing and feedback gathering wasn't necessarily a very structured task … Continue reading Larry and the telemetry treasure →