There was also the Atari game Pitfall! and its sequel, which were very
similar in terms of gameplay to Montezuma's Revenge as I understand. I own
Pitfall but I don't own Monte.
Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of pizza?
Vender: No pizza. Only Khlav Kalash.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 8:22 AM
Subject: [Audyssey] Original Games was Why can't we get a challenging game
Hi,
When you think about it most games, books, movies, etc are inspired by
previous works created by someone else. It is very rare to encounter a
really unique or original idea for a book, movie, game, whatever.
Let's take an author like Stephen King who is widely regarded as one of
the greatest authors of horror and suspense of our time. Yet many of his
works are inspired by something he has read, watched, etc. According to
Stephen King himself Salem's Lot was inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula and
the horror comics he read as a kid. His short story Home Delivery was in
large part inspired by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The Dark
Half is not exactly an original idea either. The idea that someone can be
split into two individual people, one good one evil, is hardly new.
Regardless how or why he got the inspiration he still can spin a good
story out of it.
In 1984 George Lucas released Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. This
movie inspired a developer to create a game called Montezuma's Revenge
which was later released by Parker Brothers. The developer admitted the
inspiration for the game and his lead character Panama Joe were based on
Temple of Doom. Years later Edos Interactive would release a famous series
of games called Tomb Raider which were also inspired by Indiana Jones.
Only this time instead of a male leading character they came up with a
woman named Lara Croft. Regardless of the characters involved in these
games they were both inspired by Indiana Jones. As it happens George Lucas
got the idea for Indiana Jones from an old movie, actually a weekly
adventure serial, he had watched as a kid. I'm sure the original writer
who wrote that weekly adventure serial had no idea the extent of how many
spin offs and millions of dollars that would come of his original idea.
Yet the fact remains the Tomb Raider books, games, and movies are like a
great grand child of some weekly adventure serial I can't even tell you
the name of off the top of my head.
So to get back to the point when we talk about originality there is rarely
such a thing. Most of the time it is inspiration, ideas, and some
creativity based on someone else's work who has long been forgotten in the
sands of time. Even though we might not know the name of the person who
dreamed up the first vampire we do know that Bram Stoker is the man who
created Dracula which has been converted to books, movies, toys, games,
cartoons, you name it. In turn other people like Stephen King have been
inspired by Dracula to go off and tell his own dark tail of vampires and
doomed little towns in Southern Maine. Nintendo made Dracula the boss for
their Castlevania series. On and on we could go.
Smile.
Johnny Tai wrote:
That'd be a tall order I'd think, since in one way or another most games
are inspired by several earlier ones- for example, call it what you
would, tekken, soul edge, king of fighters, whatever...they all took the
original idea from Street Fighter.
So you can change the sounds, the themes, the name, but to come up with
something totally new as far as idea goes...very hard.
"No one ever kicked ass by saying I can't."
Johnny ST Tai
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