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Video Game History - John Romero's Daikatana Part one
After Romero was forced out of Id software he had decided to form his own games company.
The first name he came up with for his new company was 'Dream Design, but Romero felt
it wasn't good enough. One day over Lunch at Mc Donalds his friend
and co-partner Tom Hall suggested the name 'Ion'. Another friend quipped.
"The Competititor had better watch out, or they're going to get caught up in an Ion Storm.'
Romero had his new company name. On Christmas Eve 1996 Ion Storm closed a publishing
deal with Eidos Interactive. Eidos had been formed on a game called 'Tomb Raider' and
they where looking to develop more brands. Ion Storm had some conditions for Eidios,
most of which where agreed. Eidos would develop Ion Storm's first three games and wanted the
option to develop their next three games. Making it potentially a six game deal. In
total this valued Ion Storm at 100 million dollars
With the money in place, Romero, Tom, and Todd Porter sketched plans for their new games.
Tom came up with ideas for a comedic inter-galatic adventure called Anachronox.
Todd announced plans for a strategy title called Doppleganger. While Romero outlined
his new first person shooter that would take it's name from the mystical sword John Carmack
had tantalised him with in their Dungeons and Dragon game they once played. In that
particular game of Dungeons and Dragons John romero had risked everything for the sword:
Daikatana! Daikatana is japanese for 'big sword'.
Romero put word out on the internet that he would be making Daikatana. Fans of Doom and
Quake swamped Ion Storm's email server with resumes and mods. Romero picked a few applicants
to work for his company. Stevie case was offered a job after beating
Romero in a quake deathmatch game. Ion Storm was getting good press. John Romero
was named in Time magazine as being in the country's top 50 'cyber elite'. While Fortune
magazine named Ion Storm as one of the Country's top 25 'cool companies'.
Tension mounted between id software and ion storm after John Romero derided them publicly
by calling id software 'an out of date technology company'. The race was now on as to which
game would be released first, would it be John Carmack's Quake 2, or John Romero's Daikatana?
From the day production began on Daikatana in March 1997 John Romero had promised the
game for a Christmas 1997 release. Earlier that same year Mike Wilson had suggested an
advertisement for the game. The ad read 'John Romero's about to make you his ***' with
the tag line underneath saying 'Suck it down'. The ad was supposed to reflect the same kind
of trash talk players used when deathmatching each other in Doom and Quake.
After Romero saw Quake 2's 1997 e3 showing he was stunned, he thought it was best thing
he had ever seen running on a computer, and he wanted to upgrade to this new technology
for Daikatana. But Romero could get use of this new tech until after Christmas due to
his agreement with id that stated he could not use id's new tech until there game was
already on the shelves. The release date for Daikatana slipped to
March 1998. With Romero's highly ambitious plan to make Daikatana be four times the size
of Quake, have 64 monsters and 4 times zones the ion storm team was having enough difficulty
making the game on the Quake 1 engine, there was no way it could then be converted to the
Quake 2 engine in time for this new release date.
As production went on Ion Storm faced finacial problems from hiring such a large team and
having such a long production time. The release date for Daikatana slipped to December 17th
1999. However when this release date was missed the game finally released on April 21st 2000.
By this time Quake 3 had already been selling for months.
While John Romero's Daikatana was a failure, it was because of Romero that id software
ever came into existence. In the early 1990's John Carmack had been contacted 3 times by
the computer applications magazine Softdisk when they where forming a gaming division.
Each time Carmack had turned them down instead focusing on making his own games.
John Romero decided to give it one last try. Romero with the help of a colleague demonstrated
to Carmack just how much he would learn if he joined them at Softdisk.
It was also Romero's idea to form id software after seeing the potential of John Carmack's
revolutionary tech he had developed when working at softdisk. This tech was later used on their
first game 'Commander Keen' and the rest as they is history.