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What were the golden years of Australian game development?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 15/07/09 - 1:49 PM Permalink

We are nowhere near anything like, nor have ever been close to anything that can be called "golden years of Australian game development". I'm sure we will have one eventually, we just need less games like Hellboy and more games like.....(Any takers?)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 23/09/09 - 10:18 PM Permalink

Harn Bloodline, Citizen Zero, those were the days when Aussie studios thought they could do a big-arsed game and take on the world but ended up with a turd!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 15/07/09 - 5:48 PM Permalink

Isn't it about time we changed this poll anyway? :P

Submitted by souri on Thu, 23/07/09 - 4:31 AM Permalink

We need some more votes!! I'm guessing many are unsure which years are/were the golden years (too young for the early 80's etc)

Me, I voted for 1980-85 when Melbourne House reigned supreme with 10% market share of the games industry and some extraordinary games!

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 23/09/09 - 9:42 PM Permalink

Much love + respect to Melbourne House, OG game developers extraordinaire. Penetrator from 1982 was th' first game that my brother an' I ever owned as kids, bought from Dick Smith in th' city packaged a plastic bag with a photocopied pamphlet an' cassette inside to go with our new wood panel-ed System 80 [ Trash-80 clone ]. What memories! Riding th' levels as th' cassette loaded ha ha.

We must have spent hundreds of hours playing this front to back, an' then back to front. Really was ahead of it's time in terms of replayability an' even beat out Loderunner as th' first game to ship with a level editor -- an' remember planning out levels on dad's logarithmic graph paper & filling up numerous C90s with our crazy level designs. Thanks for th' good times Phillip Mitchell, whoever you are, wherever you are. This an' Haunted House by Scott Adams were th' two games that we loved th' most back in th' day an' oddly we didn't even care or know where they came from ..

-- Chuan

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 23/09/09 - 10:22 PM Permalink

^

Best cassette art .. ever. An orgiastic symphony of spacey gloves, colourful machines that go ping, an' pee pee laser trails. If you look carefully, th' bottom left screenshot shows th' abstract square shaped tunnel level. Th' genius bit was that game had you constantly moving forwards, so you had to make braking vectors by holding down 2 keys at once then quickly thrust ahead to keep up from getting crushed by th' scrolling edges. 10/10 for game feel ..!

-- Chuan