Daikatana
NPR has a story today titled "From 'Doom' to Gloom: The Story of a Video Game Flop." It's an interesting listen, and it really brings back some memories--I'd totally forgotten that part of the marketing campaign for Daikatana (pronounced "shit") included this phrase: "John Romero's about to make you his bitch." Not to mention the infamous phrase "suck it down!" at the bottom of the ad.Classy.
Here's a link to the NPR story (thanks Kotaku):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4803167.
Searing for the exact words of the "bitch" ad via Google, I was fortunate enough to stumble on an absolutely magnificent Gamespot article from 2000. "Knee Deep in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana" was written by Geoff Keighley, and it might be the best gaming feature piece I've ever read. It discusses, in tremendous detail, what happened with Daikatana and why. It was also published just before the game actually got released, so there's an ironic "we don't know how this will all turn out" perspective.
Of course, we know how it turned out. Twenty-plus million dollars for what turned out to be a mediocre Quake 2 mod.
Here was one excerpt from the Gamespot article that I thought was very funny, discussing the "bitch" ad:
Friends of Romero say the gaming public at large may have misinterpreted the ad. "People see John in the ads, yelling about how he wants to force you to assume a sort of female, canine relationship with him," explains Tim Schafer, designer of LucasArts' Grim Fandango. "I could see why people might see this as arrogance and machismo on John's part, but I honestly think it just flows from John's natural excitement for what he was doing."
Absolutely. That's exactly what I was thinking, because when I'm excited about a column I like to start it off with "Here it comes, bitches!" or some kind of exciting phrase like that.
Here's the link, and again, it's a fantastic article as well as a gaming time capsule:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/p9_01.html.
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