Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I mention a multi-million dollar develepment budget, a plush, brand new office, and a rockstar-like ego as lead designer?

I’m positive most of you were thinking of Gears of War, but no, I’m talking about ION Storm, John Romero, and the super-hyped uber-bust, Daikatana.

Most gamers are familiar with the sordid tale of woe known as Daikatana’s development cycle, but what makes this tale even MORE fascinating is the recent success of Gears of War. Although, Cliff Bleszinski and Epic Games stopped short of the infamous “ will make you his bitch,” there can be no denying that had Gears been a dismal failure, CliffyB would’ve joined the bottom of the barrel gang. No doubt destined to spend the rest of his career hanging out with Romero and Derek Smart.

It’s too bad, really. I don’t think John Romero deserves the scorn heaped upon him. The ill-conceived ad campaign wasn’t his fault. In fact, to hear certain biographers tell it, Romero was reluctant to agree to such an ad. Who could blame him, but the fact remains that Romero had, much like CliffyB has done, fully and completely bought into his own hype.

Despite similar environments and upbringing, the similarities between Daikatana and Gears of War end there. Daikatana missed several shipping dates due to Romero’s ambitious seven-month development plan coming squarely into contact with the need to convert Daikatana to the new-fangled Quake II engine, combined with a relatively amateur team of programmers and designers (compared to Epic’s combat-tested veterans).

It’s too bad, really. Daikatana sought to have a very tactical experience, centering around the main character’s interactions with his NPC squadmate-like sidekicks, not entirely different from Gears of War’s squad-based antics. The potential depth of Daikatana’s story and gameplay was unfortuantely lost in a malaise of bad writing, game-breaking bugs, and enemies on the “annoying to the point of suicide inducing” end of the frustration scale.

There have been times that I’ve sought to re-live the awful experience of Daikatana, if only for the sake of bragging about how many times I’ve played through Daikatana. (Kind of like bragging about how many times I’ve seen Star Trek V.) Unfortunately, my copy of Daikatana no longer works on modern operating systems. Installing and playing on XP results in a crash at the first loading screen, but that’s probably just my computer’s way of trying to save me from myself.

Wanting to play Daikatana comes from that same place in my mind that also desires seeing B-movies. There’s a certain amount of chutzpah required by someone like Uwe Boll. I can respect that. Doesn’t mean I’ll respect your work, though, Mr. Boll. Don’t get your hopes up.

But unlike Uwe Boll, or even CliffyB, Romero is probably one of the few people out there that I believe didn’t bring it on himself. At least not purposely. Seeing the smash success of Gears of War lends creedance to this view. If only a few things had been done differently, perhaps Daikatana would’ve gone down in history as one of the classics, an elusive fraternity, for sure.

Here’s to hoping all uber-egos can have successful games, just like Cliffy.