John Carmack (yes, the John Carmack behindDOOM,Quake,Wolfensteinand, by extension, every FPS you have ever played), is a genius.
The man can program everything fromgame enginestoorbital rockets, and his latest venture is into the burgeoning world of cellular phone gaming. As much as we haveshunned 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 goodDOOM RPGwas a smash hit, Carmack created a game calledOrcs And Elveswhich was a hybrid ofWizardry,DOOMand massive hand cramps, and now John wants to bring it to your DS.
Mr. Carmack and a few of the other luminaries at id hada conversationwith Wired’s Chris “MY NAME ALWAYS COMES FIRST” Kohler, where he went over his desire to portOrcs And Elvesto 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, sinceWolfensteinwas theHaloof 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 thanthat 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’sOrcs And Elvesshould be translated to the DS with all of the blood intact (and any references tosexy nazi breaststhat John wants to add would be just fine by us).
