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Goldeneye director will Aim For Love with experimental matchmaking system at GameCity
Goldeneye 007 for N64 has quite a legacy regarding its multiplayer, but game director Martin Hollis has a different kind of multiplayer game he wants to try: in Aim For Love, players will take on the role of matchmaker (see what we did with the title now?) and try to set up real-life couples. The game will be part of the GameCity festival in Nottingham, England, which runs October 19-26. Two giant screens erected in a public plaza will provide the play area. Aim For Love will task players with picking out individuals from the plaza crowd and pairing them with a match that's good for them. Individuals being picked will see themselves being selected via the screens at the plaza. Matches can be platonic or romantic in nature, and the newly-formed pair work together to pick the next couple. "A massive challenge in the design of this thing is forecasting people's behavior," Hollis told Gamasutra. "You'll see, if you take the role of being a matchmaker seriously, how the two people react to each other, and how the crowd reacts ... the whole game is an experiment." Hopefully bad matches won't go all "slappers only" on each other.
James Bond meets Virtua Cop: The development of Rare's GoldenEye 007
During GDC Europe 2012, former Rare developer Martin Hollis recounted his experience directing GoldenEye 007, one of the most fondly remembered games of its time and a landmark title in the history of console first-person shooters. Hollis had only worked on one game for Rare at the time, the arcade version of Killer Instinct. When the opportunity arose to pursue a James Bond game in early 1995, Hollis jumped at the chance; as the video above demonstrates, he was a pretty big fan.The rest is gaming history. Hollis went over far too much for us to condense into a single piece (in fact, we've already written two others), but we've compiled some of the highlights after the break. Read on to discover how one of GoldenEye's primary influences was actually Sega's Virtua Cop. In the gallery below, you'll find images of some of GoldenEye's original design documents and some behind the scenes stories from the original team. %Gallery-164095%
Seen@GDC Europe: The adorable video that led to GoldenEye 007
When Martin Hollis first pitched GoldenEye 007 to Rare boss Tim Stamper in 1995, he had worked as a programmer on the arcade version of Killer Instinct. That wasn't, however, his greatest credential to direct the project, he told an audience at GDC Europe. No, his greatest credential was a video he created with his brothers when he was 18.We managed to record the video during the GoldenEye 007 postmortem and, as you'll see, Hollis has been a Bond fan for quite some time. We'll have more from the postmortem soon.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Zendoku
If you've heard that Zendoku is a fusion of sudoku and martial arts, you might have wondered why. We don't blame you; on the face, it certainly seems like an unusual combination, but Pocket Gamer's interview with Zendoku creator Martin Hollis reveals the inspiration behind this unusual puzzler, and much more as well. So what's the story? It's simple, really. "Sudoku needed some ninjas," Hollis said. Frankly, what doesn't need a ninja or six?Now that the question of inspiration is out of the way, the next logical question is: how does one mix puzzles and action? In Zendoku -- which uses symbols, not numbers -- the puzzle board, if you will, is the field of combat. Completing a row, section, or column initiates an attack -- and those attacks are played out in microgames. It all sounds good on paper, but we'll have to give it a try to see if it's any fun in action. It may be promising, but sometimes you just want to finish the puzzle, you know?
