John Romero John Romero
John Romero John Romero
Born
Born October 28, 1967 Colorado Springs, Colorado Occupation
OccupationVideo game designer Alfonso John Romero
Alfonso John Romero(born October 28, 1967,[1]in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is a game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and was a designer for many of their personal computer games (all subsequently ported to consoles) includingWolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Doom, andQuake. His game designs and development tools, along with new programming techniques created and implemented by id Software's lead programmer John Carmack, led to a mass-popularization of the first person shooter, or FPS, in the 1990s. He is also credited with coining the FPS multiplayer term "deathmatch".[2]
Biography Biography
Apple II Apple IIJohn Romero's first published game,Scout Search, appeared in the June 1984 issue of inCider magazine, a popular Apple II magazine during the 1980s. Romero's first company, Capitol Ideas Software, was listed as the developer for at least 12 of his earliest published games. Romero captured the December cover of the Apple II magazine Nibblefor three years in a row starting in 1987. He also won a programming contest in A+ magazine during its first year of publishing with his gameCavern Crusader .
Romero's first industry job was at Origin Systems in 1987 after programming games for 8 years. He worked on the Apple II to Commodore 64 port of 2400 A.D., which was eventually scrapped due to slow sales of the Apple II version. John then moved ontoSpace Rogue, a game by Paul Neurath. During this time, Romero was asked if he would be interested in joining Paul's soon-to-start company Blue Sky Productions, eventually renamed Looking Glass Technologies. Instead, Romero left Origin Systems to co-found a game company named Inside Out Software, where he ported Might & Magic II from the Apple II to the Commodore 64. He had almost finished the Commodore 64 to Apple II port of Tower Toppler , but Epyx unexpectedly cancelled all its ports industrywide due to their tremendous investment in the first round of games for the upcoming Atari Lynx.
During this short time, Romero did the artwork for the Apple IIGS version of Dark Castle, a port from the Macintosh. Also during this time, John and his friend Lane Roathe co-founded a company named Ideas from the Deep and wrote versions of a game named Zappa Roidsfor the Apple II, PC and Apple IIGS. Their last collaboration together was an Apple II disk operating system (InfoDOS) for Infocom's games Zork Zero, Arthur , Shogunand Journey. Ideas From The Deep still exists to this day at IFD[3].
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id Software id Software
Romero moved to Shreveport, Louisiana in March 1989 and joined Softdisk as a programmer in its Special Projects division. After several months of helping the PC monthly disk magazine Big Blue Disk , he officially moved into the department until he started a PC gaming division in July 1990 namedGamer's Edge(srcinally titled PCRcade).
Romero hired John Carmack into the department from his freelancing in Kansas City, moved Adrian Carmack into the division from Softdisk's art department, and persuaded Tom Hall to come in at night and help with game design.
Romero and the others then left Softdisk in February 1991 to form id Software.[4]
Romero worked at id Software from its incorporation in 1991 until 1996. He was involved in the creation of several milestone games, includingCommander Keen,Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II andQuake.[4]He also served as Executive Producer (and Game Designer) on Hereticand HeXen. He also designed most of the first episode of Doom, most of the levels inQuake, half the levels in the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. He also wrote many of the tools used at id Software to create their games, including DoomEd (level editor), QuakeEd (level editor), DM (for deathmatch launching), DWANGO client (to connect the game to DWANGO's servers), TED5 (level editor for the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny), IGRAB (for grabbing assets and putting them in WAD files), the installers for all the games up to and including Quake, the SETUPprogram used to configure the games, and several others.
On the cover of the srcinal Doombox, the pose of the space marine was taken from a photo of John Romero by the artist Don Ivan Punchatz.
Ion Storm Ion Storm
The now infamous Daikatana"suck it down"
advertisement Romero later co-founded Ion Storm Inc. in Dallas, Texas with id
co-worker Tom Hall, where he designed and produced Daikatana.[4]
This ambitious shooter was announced in 1997 with a release date for the Christmas shopping season of that year. However, this release date slipped repeatedly in the coming months, and the game began to accrue negative press.
In particular, a 1997 advertisement boasting "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch....Suck it down" caused controversy amongst gamers and the gaming press gamers.[5]The massive pre-hype for the game and the subsequent delays (it was not released until April 2000) led reviewers to "lash out" at the game.[6]Upon release, Daikatanawas critically panned and appeared on numerous "top 10 worst games"
listings.
During this time, Romero was also rumored to have been killed (aptly enough, with a headshot) and a photograph of his corpse with a bullet wound was also spread through the Internet; Romero himself later stated that the picture was taken for the magazineTexas Monthly, and that "maybe he shouldn't have taken it".[7]
Romero departed with Tom Hall immediately after the release of Hall's Anachronoxgame and the subsequent closing of the Dallas Ion office.
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Tom Hall, John Romero and Warren Spector at Ion Storm, Dallas, Texas
Monkeystone Games Monkeystone Games
In July 2001, Romero and Hall founded Monkeystone Games in order to develop and publish games for mobile devices, and Monkeystone released 15 games (approximately) during its short lifespan of three and a half years. Some highlights of their developments included Hyperspace Delivery Boy(Pocket PC, PC, Mac, Linux, GBA),Congo Cube(Pocket PC, PC, BREW, Java ME), and a version of Red Factionfor the Nokia N-Gage. He left the company due to personal problems with his girlfriend, who was also employed at the company.[8]
Midway Games Midway Games
In mid-October 2003, Romero joined Midway Games as Project Lead on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. While he continued to maintain his working relationship with Monkeystone, Lucas Davis took over running the office. The Monkeystone team moved to Austin, Texas to work on Midway's Area 51title until its release. Monkeystone Games closed down in January 2005. John moved from Project Lead to Creative Director of Internal Studio during this time.
At the end of June 2005, Romero left Midway Games mere months before the completion of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.
Slipgate Ironworks Slipgate Ironworks
On August 31, 2005, Romero confirmed[9]that he has been working on a yet-to-be-announced MMOG at his newly opened development studio, Slipgate Ironworks.[10] It has been reported that the name is temporary. "For the record," Romero wrote, "I'm co-founder of a new game company in the Bay Area and am much better off in many ways than I was at Midway." He also said that he would not reveal anything about the company or the game until 2007. On March 17, 2009 it was announced that Slipgate Ironworks is part of Gazillion Entertainment[11] . According to John Romero, he is a co-founder[12]of Gazillion.
On July 22, 2006, John Romero and former co-worker Tom Hall guest hosted episode 53 of the podcast The Widget .[13]
Cyberathlete Professional League Cyberathlete Professional League
John Romero was the CPL's Chairman of the Board for ten years.
On December 20, 2006, John Romero announced a new FPS project for the Cyberathlete Professional League titled Severity for both consoles and PC.[14] It was announced that Tom Mustaine (ex-Studio Director at Ritual Entertainment) would act as Director of Game Development at CPL's new studio.
It is stated thatSeveritywill be a multiplayer first person shooter. The game will be built on technology licensed from id Software.
In September 2008 John Romero told That Gaming Site that Severity was canceled, but Tom Mustaine contacted the site to inform them the project was not canceled but in "stealth mode" citing John Romero was "let out of the loop".
On October 2009, Angel Munoz, founder of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) stated that Severity was no longer being produced because they were not able "to convince Game Publishers of its value."[15]
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Retro Gamer Collaboration Retro Gamer Collaboration
In March 2010, John Romero collaborated with the gaming magazine Retro Gamer and taking on the role of "Guest Editor", taking charge of the magazine's editorial and contributing to a number of articles and subjects throughout the magazine. There is also an extensive interview with Romero in the issue with industry luminaries offering their thoughts on Romero.
Gamesauce Gamesauce
In Spring 2010,Gamesauce Magazine[16]featured John Romero on its cover, and an in-depth interview with Romero inside the magazine written by Brenda Brathwaite.[16]Romero publicly apologized for the infamous Daikatana advertisement.
Personal life Personal life
Between 1999 and 2003,[17]Romero was involved with Stevie Case, a prominent female gaming industry figure who achieved early notoriety for beating him in aQuak edeathmatch. Until their breakup in early 2003, Case was the COO of Monkeystone Games.[17]In January 2004, Romero married Raluca Alexandra Pleşca, srcinally from Bucharest, Romania. He has two children (Michael and Steven Patrick Romero) with his first ex-wife, Kelly Mitchell, and one daughter (Lillia Antoinette Romero) with his second ex-wife, Elizabeth McCall. He met his first wife while he worked at the register of a Burger King restaurant in Rocklin, California and he met his second wife while she co-worked with him at Softdisk.[2]