Reading List (May 2020, Part 2)

Hello! Hope everyone is doing okay. Here's your second lot of articles and videos for May.

Top Pick

[Read | Long Read] Development of The Legend of Zelda - An absolutely humongous breakdown of the Zelda series, looking at how "how market conditions and the minds at Nintendo influenced the development of each Zelda game, both from a creative and business standpoint".

Designer Notes

[Read] How level designers craft iconic stealthy encounters - Gamasutra chats to level makers on games like Dishonored and Hitman to find out how sneaky rooms are built. 

[Read] The road to Dungeons - Mojang explores the random level design of its new action RPG.

[Watch | CC | 1 hour, 20 mins] The Untold History of Arkane - Danny talks to Arkane, with a focus on the huge middle period where the studio got tangled up in a series of unreleased games.

Critical Hit

[Watch | CC | 17 mins] The Post-Apocalyptic Aesthetic - Eurothug looks at the different ways video games depict the ruins of civilisation. 

[Read] The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Female-Fronted First-Person Shooter - From Perfect Dark and No One Lives Forever to Gears 5 and Wolfenstein Youngblood. 

[Watch | 31 mins] Global Warming, as Depicted by 30 Years of Strategy Games - Sid Meier has been talking about climate change since the very start. 

[Watch | 35 mins] Resident Evil Remake Design - Charlie continues his Boss Keys-like "Road to the Rocket Launcher" series, this time with the excellent remake of Resi 1.

[Watch | 21 mins] Talking Anthropology, Creation Myths, & Religion with Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey - I'm not surprised that Bunnyhop was the one to go deep on this fascinating game, which comes from Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets. 

Culture Club

[Read] What One Really Cool Jacket in CoD: Warzone Says About Video Games in 2020 - IGN's Joe Skrebels got obsessed with a pink puffy jacket in Call of Duty, so called up Infinity Ward to find out how it was made.  

[Watch | 12 mins] Using Calculus to Go Fast in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - How do you calculate the absolute most efficient route through a room, for a robot speedruner to follow? This video explains all.

[Watch | 25 mins] How We Solved the Worst Minigame in Zelda's History - Similar to the above, but this time reverse engineering a Wind Waker mini-game to build a tool that can untangle its random logic. 

[Read] Abt dropped by Audi over imposter controversy - As the lockdown pushes athletes into the realm of eSports, we've got some new problems: like getting someone else on another computer to pretend to be you. Hilarious. 

[Watch | 20 mins] Inside Second Life's Most Expensive Brothel - Quinns explores a virtual brothel, and what's to know "what they're doing in there? And to who? And with what?"

[Watch | 7 mins] DeepMind Made A Superhuman AI For 57 Atari Games! - Two Minute Papers looks at a research project that uses deep learning artificial intelligence to beat Atari games. Jeez, what a cheat. 

Code Monkeys

[Watch | 31 mins] Game Engine Developer Reacts to Unreal Engine 5 Demo - I struggled to understand that bonkers UE5 presentation. This guy (who worked on EA's Frostbite engine) helped me get it.

[Watch | 9 mins] How to Game Jam! - This should prove useful! Brackeys shares tips and tricks for making games in super short time periods.

[Watch | CC | 2 mins] Bug hunting with Obsidian - The makers of The Outer Worlds break down the story of one hard-to-find bug.

History Corner

[Watch | 17 mins] How the Game & Watch Impacted Nintendo's Handheld Gaming Product Vision - An interesting look at what Nintendo's first console (sort of) tells us about the rest.

[Watch | CC | 13 mins] Deep-Dive Analysis of FMV Cutscenes - I found this fascinating. How do you remaster cutscenes when all you've got is pixelated PC video and blobby PlayStation compression?

[Read | Long Read] When SimCity got serious - "From 1992 to 1994, a division called Maxis Business Simulations was responsible for making serious professional simulations that looked and played like Maxis games". Phil Salvador has the full, exhaustive history.

Business Lunch

[Watch | CC | 6 mins] Here's Why My Indie Game Went Viral on Steam - This chap shifted 200,000 copies of his cute fox game in the first week. Here, he shares some tips on what he did right. 

Art and Audio

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] Why Mario's Triple Jump Animation Is So Good - Daniel Floyd looks at the iconic trampoline leap from Mario 64, and how it lived on into Galaxy and Odyssey.  

Beyond Bytes

[Read] How One ‘Yesterday’ Screenwriter’s Dream Became Something Of A Nightmare - The story of the guy who came up with the idea of Yesterday (only one man remembers The Beatles), and how it got mangled by Hollywood.

[Watch | No Voice | 10 mins] Making a GOOGOL:1 Reduction with Lego Gears - Here's a LEGO clock that will take 5.2434e91 years to spin. Hopefully we'll be out of lockdown by then.