Tom’s Games

In Which We Find Out What Tom Has Done Before And Stuff

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 A lot of people write me, wanting to know how to get into the games industry. Many of them have never made a game. That’s why I advise making a bunch of little games yourself, so you can screw up in private, until you really get the idea, then show other people your stuff. The director Robert Rodriguez says in his book, Rebel Without A Crew, that everyone has about ten bad films in them. He suggests making those, then with all that experience, you can show people stuff that shows more maturity and understanding. This goes for games, too. Look all this junk I did from June 9th, 1980, when I got my Apple II+, to September 1987, when I went to work for Softdisk. These aren’t all the games, but a lot of them. And it doesn’t include utilities and applications and stuff. (I reprogrammed a few of them for Softdisk later, you’ll notice.)

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Tank	Arcade/sim	BASIC. Sad little type in the angle, it draw the dots of the arc for the cannonball, and you try to hit the other tank.
Murderer	Adventure	BASIC. Walk around a town grid looking for the murderer. If you find his square, you see a horrible stick figure with meanie eyebrows.
Gold Quest	Adventure	BASIC. Actual locations to find items and dig for gold!
Xenon I – IV Adventures	Adventure	BASIC. After writing real adventures, it was fun to write a huge adventure made up of leading descriptions that got you to type the next obvious thing to do or look at, which led to the next IF statement. They were all in a big loop, so if you typed GO STARSHIP, you’d jump forward to that part of the game. Silly but fun to make because they were so incredibly epic with no effort.
Deserted Island	Adventure	Fun little adventure that I don’t remember at all.
Monkey Adventure	Adventure	Not quite the spectacle of fun that Monkey Island was, but it was fun to get him to do stuff by taunting him with banana goodies.
Ed’s Superspy Course	Adventure	BASIC. He’s Ed. He’s got a superspy course! Collect all the treasures on the spy testing grounds… Published on Softdisk as my first assembly language adventure.
Aztec Temple	Adventure	My mom’s favorite, published later on Softdisk. It was pretty good. Some rather clever puzzles.
Box Canyon	Adventure	Fun little adventure. No great shakes.
Rescue on Alka	Adventure	Rescue the princess from the Castle Selzer. Get it?
Starcruiser	Adventure	On a bet, I wrote this in two hours. It was pretty cool for two hours. Escape the doomed starship!
Submarine	Adventure	Some cool puzzles in this baby. Sliding down a pipe on a belt and junk.
Cyclo	Adventure	First of a set of nine adventures: The Ultimate Adventure. Never made the other eight. Hee.
The Last Hope	Adventure	Sci-fantasy game with you trying to save the life-source of a planet from dying….
Shipwreck	Adventure	Pretty dang tough adventure.
Lighthouse	Adventure	Cool puzzles with timed tides and stuff.
Secret Evil Petrified Desert	Adventure	Huge and epic, about alien ships hidden inside petrified trees, which you find after, you know, crossing a desert. Really cool, and so big that when I tried to compile it with a BASIC compiler, it wouldn’t fit in memory!
Monolith	Adventure	Really tough adventure that was pretty spooky too.
Amusement Park	Adventure	Funny, cool adventure that I later redid for Softdisk. Some rather hilarious parts.
Primero Dinero	Simulation	FINALLY, I get off the adventure kick with… a sim that plays like an adventure. History class simulation of managing your supplies when stranded on an island.
Dungeon	Role-playing	Sort of a text adventure with fights in the middle of it. Eamonish, I guess. Why no graphics since Murderer?
Gunner	Shoot-’em-up	Shape tables Shooter. Basically, you’re a tail gunner. One of the creatures was “Space Mite”. Followed by a bunch of too-slow, flashy, awful arcade games that shouldn’t have ever been done in BASIC by a rational person. But this one was okay.
Zapper	Shoot-’em-up	Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Superzot	Shoot-’em-up	Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Dexicon	Shoot-’em-up	Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.
Space Peepers	Shoot-’em-up	Cool idea where little Kilroys pop out of moon craters. Saw the game game later on a console system. Ah well.  Good intro anim for flash.
Madvoober	Shoot-’em-up	Basically this is Mad Bomber, but with non-page flipped shapes that flashed (voobed) really annoyingly.
Mass Poopage	Shoot-’em-up	You shoot a bird that is pooping massively above you. Of course, the poop is utterly lethal.
Monkey	Platform	Imagine Donkey Kong Junior on two poles, with stuff coming down the screen that he’s got to avoid. Get to the top of the screen! Yes!
Musical Snowbound	Maze	A version of Pacman I wrote quickly for my sister, because she was bad at games–this one had no ghosts, which made it considerable easier.
Walk Into the Dot	Action/Puzzle	Kind of a cool simple game idea that actually got published on Softdisk later as a joke. First level: one bad dot, one good dot. Walk into the good dot. Second level: two bad dots. And on. After the thirty-sixth level, it is almost impossible. If you run into a bad dot, you go back one level. The dots are random, so you can get screwed. Strangely fun, though.  Well, to me, anyway.
Zap	Shoot-’em-up	Such a forgettable game, I forgot it.
Jumpy	Platform	I’m sure this had to do with jumping…
Horse Race	Race	Bet on one of four horses and they race! Kept track of historical scores.
Slot Machine	Casino	Pull the lever. Wow!
LGADV Adventure	Adventure	Sad lo-res graphics for rooms, but at least they were graphics!
LGADV2: Cheese Factory Adventure	Adventure	Not quite so sad, as there’s cheese in it. And duct-crawling-through!
The Silver Cow	Adventure	Hi-res tiles Ultima-style game with no Ultima style depth. An amusing voice-digitized “MOO!” at the start, on an Apple ][!
Alphabetics	Educational	Bring the two matching letters to the momma rabbit. The controls (four arrows and space bar) we way above the heads of the super-young kids it was designed for. A lesson I learned from my teacher friend Mr. K.
Death Ships From the Ninth Galaxy	Shoot-’em-up	Joke game: three HUGE ships at the top of the screen don’t fire, so you can just blow them up. But avoid the falling pilot’s corpse!
Korp	Shoot-’em-up	More dang disposable shooters.
Spire City	Shoot-’em-up	Disposable shooter with enemies on a spiral path. Wow.
Here Comes the Grunge	Educational	Character generator (later published at Word Castle) Cool hangman game without the gruesome corpse thingy.
Changemaker	Educational	Helped kids learn to make change with Eddie and his piggy bank!  Used by learning-disabled kids.

Then I went to work at Softdisk. I improved submitted programs for a long time, as well as making my own. Here are most of them (these are just the games, not the apps like What A Poster! and so on):

GAME	YEAR	COMMENTS
Aztec Temple	1988	They bought it from me… for a hundred dollars!
Ed’s Superspy Course	1988
Changemaker	1988
Walk Into the Dot	1988
The Silver Cow	1988
Amusement Park	1989
Word Castle	1989	Formerly Here Comes the Grunge
In Search of the Golden Cheese	1989	The stunning sequel to The Silver Cow. Basically a maze.
Duck Boop	1989	First true event-driven shooter I made. A demo of the block-shape routines we provided on the disk.
Alfredo’s Stupendous Surprise	1989	Romero and I adding a choose-your-path version of the constantly mutilated, stick-figure mascot of Softdisk. We worked hard to fit this in 128K. We finished with EIGHT BYTES of memory left!
Recollect Trek	1989	Trivia game, as well as the next one.
Recollect The Beatles	1989
Pun’s Peak	1989	Little adventure where the solutions are HIDEOUS puns.
Ark Shadows	1989	Cool levels for Arkanoid GS
Legend of the Star Axe	1990	Fun shooter with silly enemies like the Blehs and fleets of 57 Chevys. Joe Siegler got to level 174 of this game!
Catacomb	1990	Cool arcade game done with Carmack. Did levels and graphics.
Double Dangerous Dave	1990	(Romero’s game–I just did the double hi-res graphics.)

Here also are some programs that I spiffed up so much from the original, they are countable as games I worked on:

GAME	YEAR	COMMENTS
The Seven Keys	1987	Basically, Monopoly.
Anagram Challenge	1988	Word fun.
Loose Change	1988	Changemaker without Eddie and the piggy bank.
Magic Boxes	1989	Puzzle that Romero later ported to the PC… in TEXT MODE!

Now on the PC side (these are in the id anthology)… 1990 was a busy year!

GAME	YEAR	COMMENTS
Catacomb	1990	2D Magician action.
Dangerous Dave	1990	Mario… sorta.
Catacomb II	1990	2D Magician action with more colors!
Slordax	1990	A fan of Slordax wrote me last week. LAST WEEK! I mean, get a console!
Shadow Knights	1990	I did like a few levels.
Rescue Rover!	1990	I really love the puzzle elements in the Rescue Rovers. (That’s why I borrowed some of the puzzle elements for Hyperspace Delivery Boy!)  Level 29 of Rescue Rover! is one of the hardest puzzles in any game ever. Heh heh heh.
Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion	1990	The reloading-your-shotgun mechanic was awesome and tension-producing… especially during boss battles!
Keen Dreams	1990	Shouldn’t have made this Keen — now some dude in Louisiana has rights to this episode.
Rescue Rover II	1990	More puzzle insanity.  Never did finish the trilogy… nor ever record the theme song I made up!
Hovertank One	1990	3D game!  But with color-mapped walls.
Catacomb 3-D	1990	This is the first 3D fast-action FPS EVER.  Too bad it was in EGA and like four people saw it.
Commander Keen in… “Invasion of the Vorticons”	1990	I love Keen. Keen is basically me at age eight. The Green Bay Packer helmet, the red Converse sneakers, the dreams of space… If I ever got the rights again, I’d make Keen 3D in a heartbeat.
Commander Keen in… “Goodbye, Galaxy!”	1991	Keen 4 introduced the Dopefish, who now has a bizarre, cult-like following, and has had a cameo in many games. Keen 5 is Romero’s favorite Keen.
Commander Keen in… “Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter!”	1991	Should never have split up the trilogy and made a commercial version. Ah well.
Wolfenstein 3D	1992	I remember Romero playing it while we were working on it in Madison, Wisconsin, and saying, “There’s NOTHING like this!”
Spear of Destiny	1992	I love the surprise end level. Hee.
DOOM	1993	Awesome game that I was totally unhappy working on, simply because the things I am best at aren’t in the game: characters, puzzle elements, story, content. It’s just a raw shooter, which is cool, but not really what I enjoy doing. I had a story, characters with different abilities, and brief cinematic pictures at the start and end. I felt we were getting way too minimalistic in player reward, and wanted a reason for the person to go through the levels, rather than a switch. We parted ways, which really was for the best. (What levels did Tom do? Level 1-4, first half of 1-8, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-7, 3-3, and 3-7. Some of them were subsequently retextured to be episode-appropriate and stuff, and the new monsters were added. It was really cool that a LucasArts guy said the crate stuff in Jedi Knight was an homage to the crate maze, 2-2, in DOOM. I’m honored. Now, if I can just beat Jerec before he goes up the tube again…. Also, a level of mine, level 10, wound up in DOOM 2, but I don’t count that as “a game I worked on”, so…)
Duke Nukem II	1993	Did the story, designed the bosses, drew the bonus items, and some sprites and tiles.
Rise of the Triad	1994	A bunch of innovations (rocket-jumping, sorted frags, environment changing, missile cam, parental password, and on and on, but lost in an old-style engine.
Extreme Rise of the Triad	1995	Level pack. Basically a waste of a few months. But some clever level bits.
Terminal Velocity	1995	Co-produced this one.

(I did the story for Duke Nukem 3D, but that was an after-the-fact thing. I also helped come up with TripBombs. Didn’t work on the game, though. And, of course, I was on the first year of Prey, but needed to make the game I wanted to make, and thus…ION Storm. Hope Prey rocks. Someday.  Well, at least I got a Prey mug.)

Also, I started a bunch of games that I never finished, but always wanted to. Never enough time. Sigh. Here’s a list!

BEFORE SOFTDISK

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Poids	Shoot-’em-up	Turned into Legend of the Star Axe on the GS. An homage to Sneakers by Mark Turmell. The slogan: “They’re too cute to shoot!”
The Ultimate Adventure	Adventure	Gfx/text Finished Cyclo, the first one, but the other eight are in Limbo.
Fate of the Firedame	Adventure	You’re on a starship, stuffed in a missile tube, and it’s destroyed and in a decaying orbit. Have fun!
Castle Wolfenstine(sic)	Action	Text-based version of Castle Wolfenstein. Spelled differently to avoid prosecution!
Slayquest	RPG	My version of the ancient Dragon’s Eye crossed with Wizardry.
Starstrike	Shoot-’em-up	Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.

SOFTDISK

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Rice Farmer	Simulation	Rice farming. Woo!
Lizardly	RPG	Wizardry parody.
Candy Quest	Action adventure	And never done.
Rescue Rover IIe	Action	I originally designed it on the Apple II. Inspired by Adventures of Lolo.
No Man’s LAN	Arcade on network	Would have been an AppleTalked multiplayer game
Dangerous Dave GS	Platform	Port of Romero’s game, did editor, gfx, but stopped
Disc World	Platform	Like Q-Bert
Scary Bizness	Platform	Halloween-themed platformed in Double Hi-res.
Secret of the Obelisk	Adventure	One of the few I didn’t finish
Run ‘n’ Jump	Platform	Run as stuff scrolls by you that you must jump over.
Starstrike	Shoot-’em-up	Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.

ID GAMES

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Penultima III	RPG	Carmack and I doing a real RPG, though it was a joke, too.
Wac-man	Maze action	We started this as an example for a developer seminar. Never finished it off.
Save Spot!	Puzzle action	Rescue Rover! but we would own the IP.
IGOTABAT.EXE	Action	Funny for brutality and that it fit in IBM’s old 8-character filename restriction.
Spheres of Influence	Puzzle Action	Combing spheres to make different things.
Commander Keen in… “The Universe is Toast!”	Platform	Sigh….

Okay, back to games I actually got AROUND to making or helping to make!

ION STORM GAMES

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Anachronox	Role-playing	I loved making this game, even though the company struggles were insane. The guys that stuck it out were bonded in ways that no one else will understand. Likely by body funk.
Deus Ex	Action RPG	I voiced Walton Simons, and some other folks.

 

MONKEYSTONE GAMES

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Hyperspace Delivery Boy!	Action puzzle	A fun puzzle adventure on the Pocket PC, then PC, then Gameboy Advance. Now being ported to Linux!
Jewel & Jim	Action puzzle	On BREW platform.
Gold Digger	Action puzzle	On BREW platform
Congo Cube	Action puzzle	On PC and elsewhere…

 

MIDWAY GAMES

At Midway, I was Creative Director over Third Party Products. It was a cool place with a great boss, Steve Crane. I commented on a lot of projects, did a Design Database to try to unite the five studios, and other stuff. Here’s two of the games I looked at a lot.

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Narc	Action	My first task was to comment and suggest changes on this controversial title. A trip to Scotland! The checkered development history meant they never really got to do virtually any of my suggestions, but well, stuff happens. Frustrating for them, frustrating for me. Ah well.
Area 51	Action	This is a great game. Apart from various milestone commentaries, I suggested a scanner to unite their Lore with the character, to make you feel you aren’t just another guy with a gun. Also, jumping bean grenades, but they never got quite erratic enough to make them scary, but there you go. They did a great job on this game. Props to Zach, Justin, Jim, Daryl, and the whole team. Fun! It was cool meeting David Duchovny and Marilyn Manson. If a bit surreal.

 

KingsIsle Entertainment

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Wizard Blox	Match 3	Simple, free Match-3 on iOS to complement Wizard 101

LOOT DROP

Social games and more!

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Pettington Park	Social	It’s cats vs. dogs in weekly competitions — which side are you on? Fun social game with minigames, quirky humor

PlayFirst Studio at Glu Mobile

Mobile free-to-play games!

GAME	TYPE	COMMENTS
Deep Sea Deli	Drag match-3	Came in after this game started, helped it, but the core was flawed. Cute art though!
Diner Dash Rush	Action time-management	Also joined this late, made it as cool as possible, but flawed core, not tons of replayability.
Diner Dash (2014)	Time management	Inherited this, redesigned it a good bit, pretty fun game.
Cooking Dash 2016	Time management	Started this from scratch, broke apart and reassembled the core of what Cooking Dash is, got player in flow state, this is fun AND addictive. The team and I did this really well. Fun, evolving gameplay!

And we’ve just announced a new DASH game with Gordon Ramsay! More soon…

This list may be inaccurate, but like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where it is inaccurate, it is at least DEFINITIVELY inaccurate. :^)

Now you know a little bit more about me! La.

Brought to you today by the letter ‘R’ and the number ‘7’.