Hyrule Fantasy: The Power, Wisdom, and Courage of The Legend of Zelda – Chapter 1

Forays into the woodland around his childhood home inspire Shigeru Miyamoto to create one of gaming’s most legendary franchises.

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Announcement

Announcement: Making Fun: Stories of Game Development – Volume 1 collects first year of Episodic Content stories

On September 13, Press Start Press will publish Making Fun: Stories of Game Development – Volume 1, an anthology of my stories published on Episodic Content as well as various magazines and websites. The book will be available in paperback and digital editions, and will include bonus material appearing in print for the first time.…

Story

The BAM-like: Exploring Beneath Apple Manor – Chapter 1

Don Worth taps his love of D&D and aptitude for programming to create a dungeon crawl for the Apple II.

Story

Procedural Dungeons of Doom: The Making of Rogue – Chapter 1

Precariously close to flunking out of college, Michael Toy teams up with his college buddy Glenn Wichman to create a new type of role-playing game.

Interview

Frankenstein’s Monsters: Hacking NES Games with “Infidelity”

NES hacker infidelity discusses how he got started in the hacking space, the tools he uses in his work, and the particulars of his most popular game, Mega Man Ultra, a total makeover of Capcom’s Mega Man 2.

Hyrule Fantasy: The Power, Wisdom, and Courage of The Legend of Zelda – Chapter 4

Uninterested in recycling Ocarina of Time for a quickie sequel, Eiji Aonuma takes the Zelda series in a darker direction.

Hyrule Fantasy: The Power, Wisdom, and Courage of The Legend of Zelda – Chapter 3

Link’s first steps in 3D define the future of the Legend of Zelda franchise, and gaming in the third dimension.

Hyrule Fantasy: The Power, Wisdom, and Courage of The Legend of Zelda – Chapter 2

As Nintendo struggles to compete with Sega, Link and Princess Zelda make waves on 16-bit hardware and Nintendo’s portable machine.

LAN Trickery: An Interview with Scott Coleman and Jay Cotton, Creators of Kali – Part 2

With iDoom behind them, Jay Cotton and Scott Coleman gear up to write a more powerful networking program.

LAN Trickery: An Interview with Scott Coleman and Jay Cotton, Creators of Kali – Part 1

Kali‘s ability to connect friends and complete strangers ushered in a wave of online gaming services that included Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net. I caught up with Scott Coleman and Jay Cotton to learn the origin of Kali, how the program works its magic, as well as iDOOM, Kali‘s predecessor.

The BAM-like: Exploring Beneath Apple Manor – Chapter 2

Eyeing the burgeoning software market, Don Worth talks to publishers about adapting selling Beneath Apple Manor in stores.

Procedural Dungeons of Doom: The Making of Rogue – Chapter 4

Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and new friends come together to port Rogue to new generations of computing platforms.

Procedural Dungeons of Doom: The Making of Rogue – Chapter 3

Following his departure from UC Santa Cruz, Michael Toy befriends a hacker interested in helping him carry Rogue’s torch.

Procedural Dungeons of Doom: The Making of Rogue – Chapter 2

Working with text characters and teletype terminals, Toy and Wichman lay the foundation for Rogue.

New Stories Beginning in June

I’ve taken a two-month hiatus to build up a fresh backlog of stories, hit some book deadlines, and adjust to my new job as contributing editor at Shacknews. Episodic Content will kick off a fresh batch of stories in June. See you then!