John Romero Is So Sorry About Trying To Make You His Bitch

[Maes]

How has he grown weak :-(

I always like to think that Romero's true personality is hidden in certain commented out exit messages in the Doom Source Code and in certain esoteric wads.

[Alfonzo]

"I'm sorry guys, but it's over. You can remove the gimp suits now."

[Technician]

Nothing new here. He's always been submissive with that add.

[Doom Marine]

John Romero's already made us his bitch with E1.

[Use]

It was a stupid ad..wait why the hell does anyone care?

[Marnetmar]

For fuck's sake, Romero! I'm disappointed.

[Per-Scan]

Heh. John Romero's our bitch now... :P

[Quasar]

We forgive ya John :P

Some people actually say Daikatana wasn't that bad, but I couldn't personally even bear to watch it being Let's Played. Seriously. I have never been so annoyed at a game by proxy before. I'm pretty sure if I tried to play it I'd be yelling at the screen after the first five minutes.

[Technician]

It's good once you get past that damn swamp. Using such a dark frustrating map as the first level was stupid. Oh, and let's not forgive the A.I.

[Creaphis]

Quasar said:

We forgive ya John :P

Some people actually say Daikatana wasn't that bad, but I couldn't personally even bear to watch it being Let's Played. Seriously. I have never been so annoyed at a game by proxy before. I'm pretty sure if I tried to play it I'd be yelling at the screen after the first five minutes.

Haha, this is actually one of my favourite LPs ever. That has more to do with the commentators than the game, though.

[kristus]

Technician said:

It's good once you get past that damn swamp.

No it's not.

[Aliotroph?]

I got into the sewers place and gave up. It sucked too much. I hate to say it, but I really didn't like that game. :( I suppose I might have had more patience for it ten years ago. Games like Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2 and the Elder Scrolls games made FPS games feel very tedious for me.

[printz]

It was much better if he DIDN'T feel sorry, knowing that he had already released important titles like Wolf, Doom and Quake, and that after Daikatana he could have kept a lower profile and release a better game. And do a joke on that "his bitch" marketing stunt saying it was silly. Not openly feel sorry and sad about it.

[Quasar]

printz said:

It was much better if he DIDN'T feel sorry, knowing that he had already released important titles like Wolf, Doom and Quake, and that after Daikatana he could have kept a lower profile and release a better game. And do a joke on that "his bitch" marketing stunt saying it was silly. Not openly feel sorry and sad about it.

Well I would guess it's just a new strategy from John, seeing how he can't seem to get people to forget about that incident no matter how many times he's explained it away, etc. :P Every time there's an "ask John Romero" sort of thing somebody of course has to bring up how he feels about Daikatana and/or (usually and) that stupid ad :P

Personally I never took the ad as anything but a silly marketing stunt dreamed up by some guys with no clue on how to sell a game. I certainly wasn't bothered enough to be offended or to have it influence my opinion of John or anything he's created - that stuff is judged on its own merits (or lack thereof in Daikatana's case :P )

[Maes]

Quasar said:

Well I would guess it's just a new strategy from John, seeing how he can't seem to get people to forget about that incident no matter how many times he's explained it away, etc.

...

Personally I never took the ad as anything but a silly marketing stunt dreamed up by some guys with no clue on how to sell a game.

IMHO there must be something more to it...

  // FinalDOOM?
  "fuck you, pussy!\nget the fuck out!",
  "you quit and i'll jizz\nin your cystholes!",
  "if you leave, i'll make\nthe lord drink my jizz.",
  "hey, ron! can we say\n'fuck' in the game?",
  "i'd leave: this is just\nmore monsters and levels.\nwhat a load.",
  "suck it down, asshole!\nyou're a fucking wimp!",
  "don't quit now! we're \nstill spending your money!",

[Quasar]

Maes said:

IMHO there must be something more to it...

  // FinalDOOM?
  "fuck you, pussy!\nget the fuck out!",
  "you quit and i'll jizz\nin your cystholes!",
  "if you leave, i'll make\nthe lord drink my jizz.",
  "hey, ron! can we say\n'fuck' in the game?",
  "i'd leave: this is just\nmore monsters and levels.\nwhat a load.",
  "suck it down, asshole!\nyou're a fucking wimp!",
  "don't quit now! we're \nstill spending your money!",

Those were jokes never meant to be seen by anybody outside of id and GT (in fact they were mainly added to a spot release for GT to amuse the mentioned "Ron", who was the guy at GT in charge of getting DOOM II published), so I'm not sure how that compares to a public ad campaign. If you're suggesting John actually feels that way toward his fans, which he has repeatedly both said and demonstrated with his actions to be false, then I dunno what to say.

[Maes]

He surely has an attitude of making others -even if just verbally or on a hypothetical level- his bitches ;-)

Didn't he also take "care" of the Doom and Quake DM messages in a similar fashion (though with less profanity)?

[Gez]

A thread about the Daikatana ad campaign? I seem to have fallen in some temporal vortex that sent me back in the dying years of the 20th century. That's a wonderful opportunity! I can use my knowledge of the future to prevent disasters and, circuitously, to get rich!

[Maes]

Well, there's always Derek Smart... I wonder what would happen if he got into a "snapping" contest with John Romero... OH WAI-

[Creaphis]

Gez said:

I seem to have fallen in some temporal vortex that sent me back in the dying years of the 20th century. That's a wonderful opportunity! I can use my knowledge of the future to prevent disasters and, circuitously, to get rich!

I nominate that these three sentences forever replace "timeline."

[DuckReconMajor]

John Romero said:

"you quit and i'll jizz\nin your cystholes!",

Buzz Lightyear said:

I don't believe that man's ever been to medical school!

[Doom_Dude]

Aliotroph? said:

I got into the sewers place and gave up. It sucked too much. I hate to say it, but I really didn't like that game. :( I suppose I might have had more patience for it ten years ago. Games like Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2 and the Elder Scrolls games made FPS games feel very tedious for me.

I like FPS games but Daikatana is pretty low on my list and I don't care if I ever play that again. I liked the Greek theme maps the most. The first episode with the swamp and the shitty mosquitoes and silly frog enemies, just makes any thought of a replay die a horrible death. Those frogs and skitos, I seem to think of joke wads when I think of those... haha. I actually tried about a year ago to replay it but got bored and decided to go mess with Oblivion mods or somethin.

[PaganRaven]

Doom Marine said:

John Romero's already made us his bitch with E1.

He made me his bitch with KEEN1.

[Kirby]

"John Romero is about to make you some TEA"

Just doesn't have quite the same kick to it

[printz]

Doom Dude said:

I like FPS games but Daikatana is pretty low on my list and I don't care if I ever play that again. I liked the Greek theme maps the most. The first episode with the swamp and the shitty mosquitoes and silly frog enemies, just makes any thought of a replay die a horrible death. Those frogs and skitos, I seem to think of joke wads when I think of those... haha. I actually tried about a year ago to replay it but got bored and decided to go mess with Oblivion mods or somethin.

In my opinion the robot dragonflies were relatively easy. Shoot them as you see them, until they disappear. The robotic frog were kind of shooting back at you or scratching you, but you'd often hear them before meeting them. The robotic crocodiles were more fun to fight, kinda like the Doom pinkies. I think it was much better if all these monsters were mutant future animals, not robots thrown into a natural habitat. Maybe there's an explanation (that the oppressive regime is desperately trying to remake the ecosystem that they made extinct), but I find it a bit tacky though...

The problem was of course the later levels, which gave you too little health all-in-all. I could enjoy the game for its RPG aspect, but I was let down by the artificially increased difficulty: some AI mistakes, fragile player, dangerous weapons, checkpoint-only save. It was too cruel. I'm glad I didn't get far enough to witness the pitfalls of the helper AI. Hell, if only it was implemented right, this would have been revolutionary -- the game didn't yet belong to the age of lame fake-interactive user-friendly games -- they could have made a helper-based FPS that didn't feel fake.

The Japanese workmen you'd encounter were screaming too loud for some workmen. They also said something along "why do we keep getting stuck guarding this sector?"

[Maes]

IMO, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka got it all right-on since the beginning:

JOHN ROMERO: "Alright team, I've got a fabulous idea for a game! I've been listening to what the gamers want and are looking for, and I've got some killer thoughts! This will be the best game ever created!"
ION STORM TEAM: "HOORAY!!!"
JOHN ROMERO: "First of all, we'll need to make our own engine. A superb engine, featuring advanced effects like T&L, dynamic LOD, curved surfaces and-"
POD PEOPLE: "John xyblah grawh rawwwwr!" (translated: "John, you are our bitch now!")
JOHN ROMERO: (shot by evil Pod Peoples' ray gun) "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
ION STORM TEAM: "John, are you okay?"
JOHN ROMERO: (slowly getting up from the ground) "I LIKE BUGS AND FROGS."
ION STORM TEAM: "What?"
JOHN ROMERO: "'SUPERFLY JOHNSON' IS A GOOD NAME FOR A BLACK MAN."
ION STORM TEAM: "We quit."

[Aliotroph?]

His experience sounds exactly like mine. The only differences are I got stuck in the technological outhouse with the cowering Japanese guys and gave up. Well, that and I discovered that once the game starts getting crashy I can reboot and play it again. Installing the full game isn't as hard as installing that demo I guess.

It still loads slowly on my current PC. It loads more slowly than Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Stalker. WTF! The AI was non-existent, but I saw so little of it that I didn't care much. The game has a weird graphics feature that lets you turn up the saturation on the colours and makes everything look fullbright. Why?

The theme seems cool, or at least different. All the story at the start made me unhappy, though. The cinematics were just too motionless and ugly.

[Technician]

Theres a patch on the net that is essential! It fixes a phone book of issues.

Something Awful Article said:

the team has literally had over two fucking years to make this game, and they don't even care enough to get a functional demo installer working?

Two years? Ah, those were the days.

[Maes]

Technician said:

Two years? Ah, those were the days.

Pretty sad days, they must have been.

[Ladna]

I personally think those quotes out of the Doom source are pretty hilarious, and my opinion of ID (I didn't know it was Romero) actually went up when I found them, haha. From all the stuff I've read on the internet (which I think we all agree is the best way to get to know someone), he actually seems like a really cool guy who loves his fans. It's kind of sad that the state of video game journalism is such that interviewers don't know what else to ask past, "what about that ad/game way back in the day?" Then again this happens on NPR too, so maybe such shallowness isn't restricted to gaming.