{"id":33359,"date":"2012-03-02T12:50:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T10:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=33359"},"modified":"2012-03-02T12:53:18","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T10:53:18","slug":"once-upon-a-time-john-romero-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-jordan-mechner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/33359-once-upon-a-time-john-romero-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-jordan-mechner","title":{"rendered":"Once upon a time, John Romero wrote a fan letter to Jordan Mechner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You probably know John Romero the Game Development Legend, but did you know that before then, he was just John Romero the Regular Kid?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe not so regular, actually, because at 17, he&#8217;d already created &#8220;tons&#8221; of games and worked out how Jordan Mechner made Karateka. Most of it, anyway, although the scrolling background technique remained inscrutable to Romero, so he wrote a letter to Mechner telling him how awesome the game was, and asking him all about it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am writing because you need to be congratulated on this game. I was absolutely stunned by the graphics, shadows and all,&#8221; he gushed. &#8220;You did a tremendous job, and have, I think, defined the state-of-the-art for future Apple games. The technology has been in the Apple all along to do those graphics, it just needed a programmer like you to use it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_32511\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">[<a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32511\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32511 \" title=\"Jordan Mechner at his Apple ][\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg\" alt=\"Jordan Mechner at his Apple ][\" width=\"600\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple-.jpg 600w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple--300x230.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Jordan-Mechner-at-his-Apple--250x191.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-32511\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jordan Mechner at his Apple<\/p><\/div>He goes on to &#8220;betray&#8221; himself as a game developer too, &#8220;albeit an unknown one&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All in all, your game is absolutely amazing. I have studied Broderbund games and they all have non-flickering animation and excellent demos. I have made tons of games but until recently I haven&#8217;t used any advanced animation techniques like page-flipping and OR animation. Now that I know how good these techniques look, I am starting to use them (the page-flipping requires a tremendous amount of work!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can read the rest of the adorably adolescent letter at the link below.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, Romero and Mechner will be joining Adam Saltsman (Canabalt creator), Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), Markuss &#8220;Notch&#8221; Persson (Minecraft creator), and Jane Pickard (University of Southern California academic) on stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, to talk about indie game development.<\/p>\n<h5>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/kotaku.com\/5889709\/a-wonderful-old-letter-from-one-gaming-legend-to-another\" target=\"_blank\">Kotaku<\/a><\/h5>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Related Article<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Karateka reboot: Q&amp;A with Jordan Mechner\" href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/32509-karateka-reboot-qa-with-jordan-mechner.html\"><strong>Karateka reboot: Q&amp;A with Jordan Mechner<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awwwwwww!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":33383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,883,2556,2367,2369],"class_list":["post-33359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-active","tag-doom","tag-john-ropmero","tag-jordan-mechner","tag-karateka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33362,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359\/revisions\/33362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}