John Carmack (yes, the John Carmack behind DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein and, by extension, every FPS you have ever played), is a genius.
The man can program everything from game engines to orbital rockets, and his latest venture is into the burgeoning world of cellular phone gaming. As much as we have shunned gaming on the tiniest of platforms in the past, Carmack’s games are some of the bright spots (read: the only games I have on my phone). After the surprisingly good DOOM RPG was a smash hit, Carmack created a game called Orcs And Elves which was a hybrid of Wizardry, DOOM and massive hand cramps, and now John wants to bring it to your DS.
Mr. Carmack and a few of the other luminaries at id had a conversation with Wired’s Chris “MY NAME ALWAYS COMES FIRST” Kohler, where he went over his desire to port Orcs And Elves to Nintendo’s tactile handheld. More importantly, he discussed the interesting history id has with the Big N, and how Nintendo’s puritanical standards towards the SNES led to id’s shaky-at-best relationship with them.
For those gamers old enough to remember, Nintendo made sure to strip as many references to nazis, blood, sex and drug use out of the games released for it’s earlier systems as possible, and since Carmack based most of his games on 3 of the 4 of those themes, Nintendo wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of having id’s games emblazoned on televisions across America. Of course, since Wolfenstein was the Halo of it’s time, Nintendo also couldn’t pass up the bags of cash they would stand to earn by allowing id to port the game to the SNES. Hence, the version that made it to store shelves was more stripped down than that girl Ron buried in the desert last night.
Thankfully, in the years since then, Nintendo’s fall from monopolizing the gaming market in the US has forced them to give developers a bit more leeway with what they can add to their games, so Carmack’s Orcs And Elves should be translated to the DS with all of the blood intact (and any references to sexy nazi breasts that John wants to add would be just fine by us).
