John Romero's Daikatana
John Romero's Daikatana is a video game that consists of 0 releases
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Introduction
Daikatana is a science-fiction first-person shooter that is far more well known for being a critical and commercial flop than it ever was for its plot or gameplay. It was released on April 14th, 2000, and developed by the Dallas Ion Storm branch and published by Eidos Interactive.
Story
The game begins in the year 2455 AD, where the world is run by corporations - the most powerful owned by the ruthless Kage Mishima. The opening sequence depicts a young martial arts teacher named Hiro Miyamoto practising late one night in his dojo. A sick, old man named Toshiro Ebihara appears on the dojo's doorsteps claiming to be a descendant of a group of skilled warriors known as the Ebihara Clan. He explains that centuries ago the Mishima's were a powerful clan that ruled with an iron fist and a bloody sword that only the Ebihara clan would dare oppose. In response to this the Mishima clan employed the services of a legendary swordsmith, an ancestor of Hiro. The swordsmith crafted a sword so powerful, it had the ability to manipulate time itself. The blade was named the "Daikatana" and through the blade, the swordsmith saw the evil that would befall the world if it was ever given to the Mishima clan. Instead, the swordsmith offers the Daikatana to the Ebihara clan and they promptly use it to utterly decimate the Mishima tyranny. Seeing how dangerous the sword could be in the wrong hands, the swordsmith threw the Daikatana into the centre of a volcano.
Toshiro then goes on to explain that in his youth, he was wealthy and funded an expedition to the volcano to recover the Daikatana, but after Kage Mishima learned of this he stole the Daikatana and used its power to travel back in time to make his clan powerful once again. The current, bleak timeline where Mishima rules most of the world is not the way the world is meant to be. Toshiro also claims that Kage Mishima is responsible for the "MMP" virus that plagues the world and keeps the population under his control, as only he owns the vaccine. Hiro, unsure exactly where he fits into all of this is then asked by Toshiro to rescue his daughter, Mikiko, who has been training all her life to use the Daikatana and has recently been captured by Mishima's forces. As Hiro is about to decline, assassins suddenly appear taking the two men by suprise. Hiro is knocked unconscious and Toshiro is mortally wounded.
When Hiro awakes, Toshiro is on the verge of death. He convinces Hiro to save Mikiko and Hiro, hiding inside a coffin carried by a Mishima truck, begins his quest.
Gameplay
Daikatana is primarily a first-person shooter in the style of John Romero's previous work on titles such as Doom and Quake . The focus of the setting is based around travelling through time with the power of the Daikatana, from dystopian, futuristic Japan, ancient Greece, the Dark Ages of Europe, and near-future San Francisco. An attempt was made at improving on the traditional formula by the player having two AI-controlled sidekicks - Superfly Johnson and Mikiko Ebihara. Unfortunately, this was to the detriment of the game, not its benefit. One of the main points of criticism aimed at Daikatana was the poor sidekick AI which, for example, frequently got themselves killed in a fight, which would immediately result in mission failure, as there was no way to resurrect dead characters. A minor issue that was frequently pointed out involved the fact that players could backtrack to earlier points in the level through a loading screen: on ocassion, as soon as the player loaded in a new area, one of their sidekicks would accidentally push them backward, past the loading threshhold, meaning that the player would have to sit through at least two loading screens before getting back to gameplay. Other, more specific criticism was directed at the character Superfly Johnson, an uninspired blaxploitation-style stereotype.
This schedule was quoted by John Carmack as being "Patently ludicrous". The truth of the matter was that Romero didn't have enough of an established, experienced team to handle the project. At the time that all of this was going on, Ion Storm was still being built as a company, hiring in new staff, many of which were not much more than "talented amateurs" hired on the basis of level designs they had created. Ion Storm first showed Daikatana at E3 1997, and the game was still running in software mode which made it look underwhelming at the time compared to Id software's recently unveiled Quake II . Romero's team made plans to licence the new Quake II engine to stay ahead but the switch forced them to scrap eleven months worth of development. In January, 1999 Daikatana's code base completed its switch to the Quake II engine. The switch had been scheduled to only take weeks, instead taking an entire year. Although plans had been made to have the game done by February, 1999, they missed their deadline and were forced to push the game back still further. A demo of the game was released but it underwhelmed many players due to the fact that it only included multiplayer death match, a standard judgement for multiplayer-only demos that continues to this day. Ion Storm tried to make up for the demo's disappointment by making a more impressive singleplayer demo for that year's E3. Unfortunately, last-minute changes to the game's code and other issues had the game running at a far less than impressive 12 frames per second. At this time Eidos became fed up with the project, given that it had funded the game for $25 million at that point in time. In June, 1999 Ion Storm and Eidos came to an agreement which resulted in Eidos receiving majority ownership of the company. As for Daikatana, the game was eventually released on April 14th, 2000 to overwhelmingly negative reviews.
John Romero's greatest embarrassment is a tale that begins in the dystopian future of 2455 AD, where a martial arts instructor must travel through time to recover the magical sword known as the Daikatana.
Introduction
Daikatana is a science-fiction first-person shooter that is far more well known for being a critical and commercial flop than it ever was for its plot or gameplay. It was released on April 14th, 2000, and developed by the Dallas Ion Storm branch and published by Eidos Interactive.Story
The game begins in the year 2455 AD, where the world is run by corporations - the most powerful owned by the ruthless Kage Mishima. The opening sequence depicts a young martial arts teacher named Hiro Miyamoto practising late one night in his dojo. A sick, old man named Toshiro Ebihara appears on the dojo's doorsteps claiming to be a descendant of a group of skilled warriors known as the Ebihara Clan. He explains that centuries ago the Mishima's were a powerful clan that ruled with an iron fist and a bloody sword that only the Ebihara clan would dare oppose. In response to this the Mishima clan employed the services of a legendary swordsmith, an ancestor of Hiro. The swordsmith crafted a sword so powerful, it had the ability to manipulate time itself. The blade was named the "Daikatana" and through the blade, the swordsmith saw the evil that would befall the world if it was ever given to the Mishima clan. Instead, the swordsmith offers the Daikatana to the Ebihara clan and they promptly use it to utterly decimate the Mishima tyranny. Seeing how dangerous the sword could be in the wrong hands, the swordsmith threw the Daikatana into the centre of a volcano.Toshiro then goes on to explain that in his youth, he was wealthy and funded an expedition to the volcano to recover the Daikatana, but after Kage Mishima learned of this he stole the Daikatana and used its power to travel back in time to make his clan powerful once again. The current, bleak timeline where Mishima rules most of the world is not the way the world is meant to be. Toshiro also claims that Kage Mishima is responsible for the "MMP" virus that plagues the world and keeps the population under his control, as only he owns the vaccine. Hiro, unsure exactly where he fits into all of this is then asked by Toshiro to rescue his daughter, Mikiko, who has been training all her life to use the Daikatana and has recently been captured by Mishima's forces. As Hiro is about to decline, assassins suddenly appear taking the two men by suprise. Hiro is knocked unconscious and Toshiro is mortally wounded.
When Hiro awakes, Toshiro is on the verge of death. He convinces Hiro to save Mikiko and Hiro, hiding inside a coffin carried by a Mishima truck, begins his quest.
Gameplay
Daikatana is primarily a first-person shooter in the style of John Romero's previous work on titles such as Doom and Quake . The focus of the setting is based around travelling through time with the power of the Daikatana, from dystopian, futuristic Japan, ancient Greece, the Dark Ages of Europe, and near-future San Francisco. An attempt was made at improving on the traditional formula by the player having two AI-controlled sidekicks - Superfly Johnson and Mikiko Ebihara. Unfortunately, this was to the detriment of the game, not its benefit. One of the main points of criticism aimed at Daikatana was the poor sidekick AI which, for example, frequently got themselves killed in a fight, which would immediately result in mission failure, as there was no way to resurrect dead characters. A minor issue that was frequently pointed out involved the fact that players could backtrack to earlier points in the level through a loading screen: on ocassion, as soon as the player loaded in a new area, one of their sidekicks would accidentally push them backward, past the loading threshhold, meaning that the player would have to sit through at least two loading screens before getting back to gameplay. Other, more specific criticism was directed at the character Superfly Johnson, an uninspired blaxploitation-style stereotype.History
Daikatana was meant to be what John Romero originally wanted Quake to be. Romero wanted Quake to be a first-person action-RPG and the rest of ID wanted it to be a sci-fi gothic first person shooter. In the end, it turned out to be a fairly standard shooter with much the same imagery as Doom, just with primitive polygonal graphics instead of sprites. Romero originally completed his design concept for Daikatana in March of 1997. The design document that he had come up with called for a large amount of content. Included in this document were details for 24 levels, 12 weapons and 64 different types of monsters. Despite this utterly huge undertaking Romero remained convinced that development for the game could be completed within the frame of 7 months, in time for Christmas '97. Romero's growing company Ion Storm had licenced the already-established Quake engine to power the game. Id software had completed content development for the much less ambitious Quake in the frame of 6 months with 9 artists. John Romero figured that given these numbers , he could complete the same amount of work on Daikatana in the period of 7 months with 8 artists.This schedule was quoted by John Carmack as being "Patently ludicrous". The truth of the matter was that Romero didn't have enough of an established, experienced team to handle the project. At the time that all of this was going on, Ion Storm was still being built as a company, hiring in new staff, many of which were not much more than "talented amateurs" hired on the basis of level designs they had created. Ion Storm first showed Daikatana at E3 1997, and the game was still running in software mode which made it look underwhelming at the time compared to Id software's recently unveiled Quake II . Romero's team made plans to licence the new Quake II engine to stay ahead but the switch forced them to scrap eleven months worth of development. In January, 1999 Daikatana's code base completed its switch to the Quake II engine. The switch had been scheduled to only take weeks, instead taking an entire year. Although plans had been made to have the game done by February, 1999, they missed their deadline and were forced to push the game back still further. A demo of the game was released but it underwhelmed many players due to the fact that it only included multiplayer death match, a standard judgement for multiplayer-only demos that continues to this day. Ion Storm tried to make up for the demo's disappointment by making a more impressive singleplayer demo for that year's E3. Unfortunately, last-minute changes to the game's code and other issues had the game running at a far less than impressive 12 frames per second. At this time Eidos became fed up with the project, given that it had funded the game for $25 million at that point in time. In June, 1999 Ion Storm and Eidos came to an agreement which resulted in Eidos receiving majority ownership of the company. As for Daikatana, the game was eventually released on April 14th, 2000 to overwhelmingly negative reviews.
| Game Name | John Romero's Daikatana |
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| Original US Release |
April 14, 2000
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Unfinished Business
a list of 41 items by TMThomsen
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