Y2K Will Be Quite Okay

Hi, folks…

I’ll have the last article in the series on Maxis Software for you next week. Today, I’m happy to say that the new ebook, covering the historical year 1999, is available, and on a far more timely basis than the last one at that. My thanks go to Richard Lindner, for developing the scripts that produce it, and to my hiking buddy Stefaan Rillaert, for modernizing them slightly and adapting them to run on Linux instead of Windows.

As always when we finish out another year of history, here’s a sneak preview for you of what I have planned for the coming year.

• Maxis in the 1990s and The Sims. We’re up to eyebrows in this already, so I assume that no further explanation is required.
• Driving sims, a hugely neglected topic around these parts. I can’t hope to remedy that neglect entirely, but I can tell you about how these lifestyle-adjacent games came to be, and tell you about the one driving game that I ever got seriously into. (Hint: it involves Porsches.)
• The somewhat anticlimactic later days of the Lemmings franchise, which did at least conclude with one last really good game.
• Deus Ex.
• Diablo II.
• Iceland Dale and Baldur’s Gate II.
• The Russians are coming! Most notably for our purposes, with Evil Islands, an idiosyncratic but engaging take on the CRPG.
• Impressions Games and their historical city-builders.
• Her Interactive. I’ve been promising something about the folks who found fame and fortune — on a modest scale, that is — through the unlikely vehicle of interactive Nancy Drew for years now. I’m finally going to do it this year. No, really, I am!
• The ongoing struggle for relevance of the adventure genre in general: Discworld Noir; In Cold Blood; Stupid Invaders; Escape from Monkey Island; RealMyst; Fairy Tale About Father Frost, Ivan, and Nastya. (Try saying that last one three times fast…) Not an overly heartening list, but needs must.
• The Longest Journey, because this adventure game does deserve its own bullet point.
• No One Lives Forever, a groovy, desperat…