Stumbling Tours! - Epic Megagames, Part 1

[davidn]

I'm opening up a new video project (and the thing that I really came up with the Stumbling Tours rebranding for) - it's the history of Epic MegaGames! This will be an occasional video series, because I don't get nearly the amount of time that I used to to work on these things - but I'll take it from their very beginning to the release of Unreal Tournament in 1999.

This first video covers ZZT and its successors. Originally I'd meant to do more, but I talked about them for twenty minutes and felt that that was long enough for a first part already.

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2UAVI8IOVE

I'm trying to make a conscious effort to speak more slowly, as I've had a few people say my rapid Scottish accent makes it difficult to keep up with me - it's a struggle and I still find myself slipping!

Comments

[kjorteo]

God, this takes me back. And thank you for featuring one of my games, too! :)

ZZT is... God, there's Anna Anthropy's book, the Museum, and even still there's so much room there to just go on about it. That's why I did my Closer Look at Adventure of Sam, which no one in the actual community even played. It's just... it meant so much to everyone.

I almost wasn't sure how you could even capture the scope of it all in one video, but what you have here is astonishing :D I learned a few things I hadn't already known, and even the ones I did were just... oddly comforting to go over again. Thank you for this :)

[davidn]

Thank you! I feel a strange comfort from reliving it as well, it's very... nostalgic :) It's such a fascinating collection of interacting bugs - the Super Metroid of DOS game creation. Though I talked with one person in the Youtube comments who only glanced at the Z2 community from the outside, and who quite rightly reminded me a lot of its people were pretty terrible. Despite that, it became a... breeding ground for a lot of confused young people who were exploring who they were.

I was surprised that Sam wasn't on the archive already, because I knew I had played it and its sequel - how did people know of it, was it confined to your personal site or something?

[lizzyloo]

Yessssssss, I loved Epic Megagames. Well, espesh Jill of the Jungle.