To politicians and parents, Mortal Kombat was a menace to society. To gamers, it was a way of life. From dedicated hustlers who put thousands of miles on their odometers driving coast to coast to challenge the top players in arcades, to fans who devote their free time to collecting action figures, setting world records, and plumbing the depths of its lore, the Mortal Kombat franchise has topped sales charts for thirty years, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.
But before Mortal Kombat offended politicians and sold over 12 million units (and counting), executives at Midway saw it as filler-a stopgap between more promising games like NBA Jam.
Cocreators Ed Boon and John Tobias felt differently. But not even they could have imagined the phenomenon Mortal Kombat would become when it hit arcades in October 1992, or the controversy that would follow in its wake.
Based on extensive interviews, Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 chronicles the arcade era of the video game industry's most infamous fighting series, the creative and technical hurdles its team had to clear, and the personal stories of the fans whose passion has made Mortal Kombat a pillar of popular culture.
"Two companies. Two opposing cultures. One multi-billion-dollar video-game empire.
Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book 1 invites readers to discover the origin of Blizzard North, a studio built by gamers, for gamers, and Blizzard Entertainment, a convergence of designers driven to rule their industry.
Composed from exhaustive research and hundreds of personal interviews, the Stay Awhile and Listen series divulges the fated meeting that brought the two Blizzards together, the clashes that tore them apart, and their transformation from grassroots democracy to corporate empire. At the center of it all-Diablo, a hack-and-slash adventure through the darkest recesses of Hell that changed online gaming forever."
In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys.
Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3D graphics.
Despite their visual simplicity, roguelike games captivate thousands of players around the world. From the author of the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Dungeon Hacks introduces you to the visionaries behind some of the most popular roguelikes of all time, and shows how their creations paved the way for the blockbuster video games of todayand beyond.
Prince Aidan Gairden’s life was planned out for him 800 years before he was born. On his sixteenth birthday, he will take up Heritage, the magical sword wielded by his mother and generations of Gairden ancestors before him, and lead the kingdom of Torel into a new golden age of peace and prosperity.
That’s how his mother envisions his impending reign. Aidan prefers to see it as decades of sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to old men bicker over property lines and taxes. If Aidan had his way, he would leave the sword and throne behind for a life free of responsibility.
To Aidan’s utter shock, Heritage grants his wish. In front of his parents and the entire kingdom, the sword rejects Aidan, leaving Torel without an heir.
While Aidan struggles to find his place, an ancient evil awakens and provokes a war between Torel and the warrior tribes of the west. Thrust upon a bloody trail of deception and corruption, Aidan is forced to make a desperate choice: lead Torel in a war he does not believe in, or be banished from his home and family forever.
