I''ve read a lot of post on the three best games, but what about the people behind those games, who do you respect as the three best game designers... My Picks

• Howard Scott Warshaw For his Awesome Yar''s Revenge.
• Jordan Mechner For Karateka and Prince of Persia. I''ve never had so much fun with a joystick and one button.
• Eric Chahi Out of this world, and its many, many sequals. The graphics were cool looking, and the cinematics were interesting. The fact that an entire story was told with a minimum of english is interesting.

• Sid Meier: Civilization, Gettysburg, Alpha centauri.
  
• Shigeru Miyamoto: Mario Bros
  
• Ralph H. Baer: Pong
  

[edited by - xMcBainx on April 4, 2003 10:14:02 PM]

I''ll bite.

Sid Meier - Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Alpha Centauri, etc.
Shigeru Miyamoto - Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong...
Warren Spector - Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex

Also, Yuji Naka (Sonic) and Brian Reynolds (Civ 2, Rise of Nations) are near the top.


"It''s better to burn out than fade away"
--Neil Young

Sid Meier for Civilization and the original Railroad Tycoon.

Shigeru Miyamoto for Zelda: Link to the Past, Mario 3 and Mario World.

Will Wright for Sim City and Sim City 2000.

Peter Molyneux for a lot of Bullfrog games (and now Lionhead)
Shigeru Miyamoto for just about every good Nintendo game

Would have put John Romero, but since Daikatana...

quote: Original post by rmsgrey
Peter Molyneux for a lot of Bullfrog games (and now Lionhead)
Shigeru Miyamoto for just about every good Nintendo game

Would have put John Romero, but since Daikatana...

You know, I have Daikatana (it was < $10 when I got it) but haven''t installed it yet. I heard that it actually gets good after the first level or two. Very badly designed as you should at least have the first levels have some fun value to it...I will have to install the game just to see how good/bad it really is.

I agree with the above designers/designs as being greats.

If I would have to put in my own, although I prefer Miyamoto and Molyneux:

-Will Wright (Sim City, etc)
-Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege (the engine, not so much the game as I haven''t played it yet))
-The guys behind Original War

dede: I have to say that it is rare that I find someone who enjoyed "Out of this World" as I did. Most people never heard of it. Have you ever played Flashback or whatever the somewhat-sequel was? I haven''t. B-(

Response to GBGames

I will give Daikatana this, I''ve heard the third(ireland) level is not too bad. Lots of cool weapons, etc. If you assume Daikatana was made at the time of its design, it was innovative, but at the time of its release, five years later, the industry passed it by, and lapped it quite a few times.

If you decided to play it, remember, the ending where you leave your "helpers", after they tell you they are going to stay behind, you must TELL THEM to stay behind. Or else your helpers will disappear, and you need them for the ending.

The sequals to Out of this world, in pseudo order:
Out of This world
FlashBack
Out of this world 2(gensis only)

I''ve played Flashback, but I liked Out of this World the best, because Flashback requires a lot more lazer battles than Out of this World did, and it made you back track all over the place. It just wasn''t as appealing.(i.e. I never beat it, although I got about 1/2 way thru). Hehe, they advertised it as the first 12 meg videogame, but they never told anyone it was 12 megaBITS, not bytes.

I''ve also played for a short time his other game, Fade to Black, it was a simple pass key hunt in 3rd person fps, with pretty decent graphics(for the time), but the camera really sucks.

I haven''t played Heart of Darkness either, but I''ve heard it was a pretty good throwback to Out of the world.

1) Yuji Naka (Sure, the Sonic games were nice, but this one *really* shines: NiGHTS - Into Dreams)
2) Peter Molyneux (Black & White, Dungeon keeper, Populous and Theme Park)
3) Warren Spector (What can I say? Deus Ex)
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Other favs:
Sid Meier (Alpha Centauri... Never mind the Civ games... They''re nice enough, but AC is awesome)
And the guy behind the Monkey Island games, whose name I can''t recall at the moment (The Monkey Island games, duh! )

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

Sid Meier - Civilization
Will Wright - I am SUCH a SimCity addict
John Carmack - Think about it. Okay...more of a programmer...but this is MY list. Fnaa.

Looks like people are just dropping names that the gaming press loves to drop. Here are a few people that no one has mentioned yet that deserve some credit.

Doug Church - In an interview with Warren Spector, Spector called said he was a designer that should get more credit than he does. Look at his track record, the Ultima Underworld series (Lead programmer and Project Lead), System Shock series (Lead and project lead on SS, programmer on SS2) and he also has credits on Thief and Deus Ex.

Ron Gilbert - "The guy behind the the Monkey Island games", and Maniac Mansion. Tim Schafer also deserves some credit, these two guys are pretty much behind all of the old lucas arts adventure games.

Richard Garriot - The Ultima series.

Steve Barcia - Found him while browsing, he has some nice credits. MOO1 and MOO2, MOM and Metroid Prime, not too bad.

Hironobu Sakaguchi - The man behind everyone's favorite console RPG series, Final Fantasy.

You should check out mobygames, they list game credits for almost anything you can think of. You'd be surprised to see who worked on what and what they actually did.


[edited by - impossible on April 8, 2003 5:04:55 AM]