John Romero: Difference between revisions

Alfonso John Romero (born October 28 1967) is a famous figure in the computer gaming industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and lead designer of their groundbreaking first-person shooter games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.

John Romero's first game Scout Search was published in 1984 by inCider magazine, a popular Apple II magazine during the 1980s. John's first company, Capitol Ideas Software, was listed as the developer for at least 12 of his earliest published games. John captured the December cover of the Apple II magazine Nibble for three years in a row starting in 1987. John also won a programming contest in A+ magazine during its first year of publishing with his game Cavern 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 onto Space Rogue, a game by Paul Neurath. During this time, John was asked if he would be interested in joining Paul's soon-to-start company Blue Sky Productions, eventually renamed Looking Glass Technologies. Instead, John left Origin Systems to co-found a game company named Inside Out Software which is where he ported Might & Magic II from the Apple II to the Commodore 64 and then almost finished the Commodore 64 to Apple II port of Tower Toppler until Epyx cancelled all its ports industry-wide due to their tremendous investment in the first round of games for the upcoming Atari Lynx.

During this short time, John did the artwork for the Apple //gs 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 Roids for the Apple II, PC and Apple //gs. Their last collaboration together was an Apple II disk operating system for Infocom's games Zork Zero, Arthur, Shogun and Journey. Ideas From The Deep still exists to this day at IFD.

Romero then 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 named Gamer's Edge (originally titled PCRcade). This is where John hired John Carmack into the department from his freelancing in Kansas City, moved Adrian Carmack into the division from Softdisk's art department and convinced Tom Hall to come in at night and help with game design. The team gelled quickly and John recognized the team's talent level and convinced the others to co-found a new game company, id Software.

John co-founded and worked at id Software from its incorporation in 1991 until 1996 and was involved in the creation of several milestone games including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II (in which Romero also appeared as the end game boss) and Quake, as well as serving as an Executive Producer (and Game Designer) on Heretic and HeXen.

Romero later co-founded Ion Storm Inc. in Dallas, Texas with id co-worker Tom Hall, where he designed and produced Daikatana. 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, an infamous 1997 advertisement (by Ion's then-CEO and Marketing Executive Mike Wilson) with the slogan "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch" upset many. It was not until April 2000 that the game was finally released — a development period of three years, which was deemed as an exceedingly long period at the time but by 2004 had become commonplace. Upon release, Daikatana was disdained by the gaming press but still sold over 200,000 copies worldwide in its first year of sales.

Romero departed with Tom Hall immediately after the release of Hall's Anachronox game and the subsequent closing of the Dallas Ion office. The two then founded Monkeystone Games in July 2001 to help pioneer the newly emerging mobile game industry. Monkeystone developed and published approximately 15 games 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, J2ME) and Red Faction for the Nokia N-Gage.

Between 1999 and 2003, Romero was involved with Stevie Case, a prominent female gaming industry figure who achieved early notoriety for beating him in a Quake deathmatch. Until their breakup in early 2003, Case was the COO of Monkeystone 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 51 title until its release. Monkeystone Games closed down in January 2005. John moved from Project Lead to Creative Director of Internal Studio during this time.

In January 2004 he married a teenager he met on the internet. Her name is Raluca Alexandra Plesşa in her hometown is Bucharest, Romania. She arrived in the USA on May 6, 2005 — 15 months after their marriage. Raluca has her own blog at Rhaluka.com.

At the end of June 2005, Romero left Midway Games mere months before the completion of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.

On August 31, 2005, Romero confirmed that since leaving Midway he has been hard at work on a yet-to-be-announced MMO at his newly opened development studio. "For the record," Romero writes, "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." A shroud of secrecy lies over this mysterious company and its secret project.

He also still spends a lot of time playing Doom.

• In 2002 Romero put his Ferrari[1] up for auction on eBay. The heavily modified Ferrari included a parallel port from the engine compartment into the cockpit next to the passenger's seat which one could plug a laptop into, and tune the engine while the car was running.

• Romero's domain name, rome.ro (Planet Romero), is one of the most popular domain hacks in use today.

• Since 1998, Romero has served as Chairman of the CPL Advisory Board[2].

• Kushner, David (2003). Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. Random House. ISBN 0375505245.

Wikiquote has quotations related to John Romero.

• Planet Romero
• John Romero's profile at MobyGames
• "A Hardcore Elegy For Ion Storm", Salon article on Ion Storm
• Creating DOOM: Romero Remembers, an interview with Romero about the creation of Doom
• TIME's CyberElite, Romero is #36 on the list
• Hangin' Out With John Romero, an in-depth and unique interview with John
• Verbosity Interview with Romero, taken during Daikatana development
• Interesting and humorous information on everything2.com
• "Romero Threatens to Make You His Bitch", GameSpy piece in the "25 Dumbest Gaming Moments" article

Articles on the rise and fall of Daikatana:

• "Stormy Weather" article at the Dallas Observer
• "From 'Doom' to Gloom: The Story of a Video Game Flop", NPR Morning Edition story on Romero, part of a series of other famous debacles
• Knee Deep in a Dream — the Story of Daikatana, a GameSpot series of behind-the-scenes articles on Romero and his work on Daikatana