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Watch the GDC 'Classic Game Postmortem' talks for free
If you want to hear about Mark Cerny's first, overambitious version of Marble Madness for yourself, try to decipher Toru Iwatani's clues about a "singing Pac-Man" game, see the history of Prince of Persia in the time it takes to play Prince of Persia (one hour), or suck John Romero's Doom postmortem down, you are welcome to do so right now. The GDC organizers have uploaded video and slides of many of this year's presentations to the GDC Vault, most of which are restricted to subscribers. However, the GDC Vault offers the Classic Game Postmortem series for free, including the aforementioned talks plus Eric Chahi on Another World, Will Wright on his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Ron Gilbert looking back on Maniac Mansion, and more.
Pac-Man creator reminisces about classic game design, calls for creativity
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani wants the next Pac-Man game to be about "a singing Pac-Man." Not a musical, "not Chicago," but more of a Blues Brothers type thing, he told a packed house at his GDC postmortem. Nobody there knew what that meant either. In the hourlong presentation, Iwatani shared concept art from the thirty-year-old arcade classic, including the hand-drawn concept for the famous Pac-Man death animation, and even a chart of ghost speeds. He identified the design of Pac-Man as female-focused, with an emphasis on "eating" as a verb ("Girls love to eat desserts," Iwatani explained. "My wife often eats desserts.") and cute characters, including cute enemies.
'Classic postmortems' unveiled for 25th Game Developers Conference
Beyond the plain ol' postmortems taking place annually at the Game Developers Conference, this year's event features a special 25th anniversary spin: "classic" postmortems. Famous developers will take the stage to speak about their classic games -- everyone from Pac-Man's Toru Iwatani to Doom's John Romero -- and an eager crowd will bask in the light of their classic game knowledge. 11 classics are being given the treatment, though we're putting Will Wright's Raid on Bungeling Bay talk at the very top of our priority list. Another highlight (among a list made up entirely of highlights) is Eric Chahi -- developer of currently in-progress From Dust -- speaking about the development of Out of This World. Check out the full, incredibly impressive list after the break and start planning accordingly. Or rather, clear your schedule. If you can't make it to GDC 2011, the postmortems will be filmed and made available via GDC Vault at some point after the event.
The past and future Pac-Man
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani brought a rather incredible historical artifact to the recent NLGD Festival of Games in the Netherlands: a notebook full of sketches from the original design of Pac-Man. The thirty-year-old sketches show that Iwatani had a pretty good idea of how the mazes and Pac-Man sprite would work even in the pen-and-paper stage of the game design (although, note that the drafted maze lacks the warps at either side). You can also see how casual Iwatani is about carrying around a priceless, irreplaceable document. (See more pictures at Control.) After the break, for comparison, you can see what's new with Pac-Man. At last week's E3 party, Namco Bandai debuted the pilot for a new 3D computer-animated cartoon starring a child Pac-Man and an army of evil ghosts. GameTrailers recorded the footage from one of the party's TVs, so you can see it now. It's a bit blurry-looking due to the 3D effect. It also totally lacks Marty Ingels.
Pac-Man Championship Edition following the dots to iPhone
Should Pac-Man Remix fail to provide enough remixed Pac-Man for you and your iPhone, Namco Bandai is preparing another version. We think you'll be delighted to hear about this new Pac-Man even if you just bought Pac-Man Remix: Namco Bandai is working on an iPhone version of Pac-Man Championship Edition, the excellent Xbox Live Arcade Pac-Man game created by Toru Iwatani himself. If you were about to buy Remix, then ... don't. According to The Feed, the iPhone version of the modernized maze game will be out later this year. We aren't thrilled with the idea of playing the high-speed Championship Edition with fake buttons or tilt controls, but we're excited enough about the game to give it a try. At least it makes more sense than Tekken.
TGS: XBLA Pac-Man World Championship in '07
Microsoft and Toru Iwatani (he's the creator of Pac-Man) announced plans for a World Championship where the top 10 Xbox Live Arcade ranked Pac-Man players in the world will be flown to New York City to do battle. There'll be cherries and pretzels flying everywhere folks, it won't be pretty. There's not much info yet except that the contest will begin in "early 2007" and will presumably be won by someone with a lot of free time and abnormal reflexes.Initial response: Will players be allowed to use their own controllers? What if the one of the top 10 players was rocking something like this, and the others weren't? It's no secret that the otherwise stellar Xbox 360 gamepad has a serious weakness in the D-pad department. Weak D-pad or not, just make sure Billy Mitchell (pictured) doesn't get his robotic mitts on an Xbox 360 between now and then, or you can kiss your chances of winning goodbye. Perfect. Score.Microsoft's TGS press briefing:XBLA hits Tokyo with Contra and friendsXbox 360 to add 1080p support, PS3 to lose bullet pointHD-DVD add-on hits Japan Nov. 17th for ¥19,800Blue Dragon hits Japan this holiday
