The industry was so different back then, Unreal Tournament 2004 still shipped with a software renderer.

The industry was so different back then, Michael Abrash documented that renderer’s development in Dr. Dobbs, an actual ink-on-paper journal.

Here’s one thing that hasn’t changed: Intel. This renderer, Pixomatic, was all hand-optimized assembly, from the guy John Carmack hired to outclass him. At one point he realized one instruction in a very tight loop was redundant. Removing it made the loop slower. Which is, in technical terms, some bullshit. Doing less should not take more time. It wasn’t from alignment or cache or pipelines or any sensible cause. Abrash called in favors so he could study the actual traces of the Pentium 4, because he just had to know what the fuck was happening under the hood - and Intel made him sign a stack of NDAs, so we the public will never find out.

That’s not disproof they did things differently - or well. Any multiplayer-only game without players is a dead game, even if the gameplay it would have is mindblowing.

Why would it matter who made it? It was a corporate trend-chasing exercise, for an abusive business model, arriving years late and costing the wealth of Croesus.

Multiplayer-only shooters are a death wish. Either you succeed instantly and massively, or your game is nonfunctional. With digital distribution it’s not even a coaster. If all these nice people were allowed to be smart people they’d deliver the PvE that Overwatch lied about.

I’m told the pace was a lot slower. Less twitchy, more tactical. Higher time-to-kill.

I’m also told it was ugly as sin. That’s one way to stand out from Overwatch’s waifu parade.

This video and the Portal trailer blew people’s dicks off when they came out, but at least the Portal trailer, younger audiences can see why. So much of HL2’s tech is now ‘Yep, that’s a thing. Was it new?’

If you want the proper contemporary experience, here it is in potato quality, with live commentary.

Round back.

“Oh come on, why the fuck, there’s no possible reason this code should-- wrong variable.”

I have too many comments reading “… how did this ever work?”

“What would you call this show?”

… Holocaust Survivor.

Temporarily acknowledging the game you actually bought. It’s allowed to exist, for a FOMO-appropriate period of time. Then it gets yanked away from you, again.

Never give Nintendo money.

Bastards all.

… is there any existing infrastructure or ownership they can erase, this time?

“We propose an alliance.”

“Kneel.”

Everything has to look better up-close.

VR lets you get reeeal close.

This entire business model is criminal.

For anyone going “Atari still exists?” - it’s complicated. And stupid. It is equal parts complicated and stupid.

Atari was purchased by Warner in 1976 when they were still “that Pong company.” The home-gizmo division was sold to Jack Tramiel shortly after the crash of '83.

The remaining arcade division took a journey. Tramiel had bought the name Atari, and also most of the staff and facilities and licensing rights, so Warner was left with a generic video-game husk which they spun off as AT Games, AKA Tengen. For some reason Namco owned most of it. Uuuntil Time Warner bought them back, and renamed them Time Warner Interactive, and then very shortly sold them to Midway, under Bally. Under Williams. That pinball conglomerate situation restored the proper Atari Games name, and then very shortly rebranded everything as Midway. This Atari did pretty well as Midway West until arcades stopped existing and they went bankrupt. And then Warner bought them again. They still own them, even though all Warner wanted was the Mortal Kombat IP.

Meanwhile.

The home division released a fascinating variety of consoles and microcomputers that do not matter in the slightest. Everything after the 2600 was a complete footnote. Their final lineup of the Lynx, the Falcon, and the Jaguar are only interesting to engineering ultranerds. Obviously they went bankrupt. Hasbro bought their remains, then spun them off into Mattel Interactive, which also went bankrupt. Hard drive manufacturer JTS bought their remains (for some reason?) and did the smartest thing anyone has ever done with Atari: nothing.

Infogrames screwed that up by buying JTS simply the acquire the Atari brand, which they proceeded to wear like a dead skin mask. They made a few admirable titles like Gauntlet Legends before entering a death spiral of hocking classic IP to stay solvent. It didn’t work. They went bankrupt. Some oil-adjacent venture-capital robot bought their remains, spent a decade hawking vaporware, released a weird PC nobody bought, and then also went bankrupt. A different clique of venture capitalists gave them more money, for some reason, and started reacquiring old franchises from all eras. They’re the Atari that re-released the 2600 last year, as if it’d be a big deal instead of a curiosity. I have obvious predictions for where this all goes, and yet, I cannot imagine that’s where it ends.

That logo is like a cursed artifact in a horror movie. Sensible companies see it laying there, and talk themselves into putting it on, and oh no everything went wrong somehow.

This game will be less preserved than the one on Ngage.

They’re semiquotes.

‘If you’re the kind of guy who’s always ‘giving people a hard time,’ please know you’re the most draining sort person to be around, and people are actively avoiding you.’