Games like jack of all tribes6/14/2023 Populous II accommodates fans and newcomers alike happily, with a much cleaner interface than the first game and much faster processing speeds (“It runs at 17 frames per second, which is as fast as your average shoot ’em up”, Molyneux told The One excitedly). Gameplay “There are good games, there are bad games, and then there’s Populous II.” – Matt Bielby, Amiga Power “Kiss your weekends goodbye,” wrote Trenton Webb of Amiga Format in July 1991. It gave the Populous universe a coherent theme to work around, and proved to the industry yet again that Bullfrog wasn’t playing around. Still, Populous II easily smashed it out of the park on its reputation alone, and received 90% or higher scores in every major games magazine of the time. Others felt that it was too similar to its predecessor to feel like a brand new experience worth the money. Genesis port) had actually done the job better. But in the intervening years between the two games, other companies began to emulate its “3D isometric for-want-of-a-better-word ‘God-sim’ stuff” , in the words of Amiga Power, and some critics felt that derivative games like Mega lo Mania ( Tyrants: Fight through Time for the U.S. Upping the ante in every conceivable way, it is still today often thought of as the definitive Populous experience. And after topping Christmas charts with Powermonger in 1990, there was every reason to believe that upward trend would continue.Īnd so Populous II did indeed land with a bang – but it took awhile for the dust to settle. Bullfrog found itself in a golden age of its own making, becoming a trend-setter and a rule-breaker in turn, cultivating an unorthodox ‘bad boy’ image in what was, after all, a business environment. Working for Bullfrog looked like it would be any young upstart’s ticket to ride, and Molyneux made good on his promise to hire newbies through another contest in Amiga Power, which one Mike Diskett won with his entry Mr Wobbly Leg Versus the Invaders from Space (Diskett would end up leading on Syndicate Wars in 1996). ACE Magazine even ran a reader contest (with a tinge of casual racism) which granted five lucky fans the chance to playtest the game at Bullfrog’s offices in Surrey themselves, drumming up hype even further.Īll throughout, Molyneux maintained interest in Bullfrog’s antics with enigmatic statements about future games with codenames like ‘Project X’, ‘Creation’, and ‘Bob’. Previews salivated over the possibilities, including the illusory Sim City connection, and speculated in terms no doubt subtly suggested by Molyneux himself about sprawling cities, uncountable game modes, orchestral music, and more. Molyneux bragged to The One that it would be a total rewrite, not just another “data disk”, and could even include riffs on different mythologies, with expansions modding the game to include Celtic, Norse, and Japanese deities (only the latter ever materialized). As such, plans for Populous II began almost as soon as the first game hit the presses. To his credit, Molyneux grasped this much earlier than most of his contemporaries, and once the sales figures started rolling in, it quickly became apparent that this was only the first round of something that would take time to perfect. Perhaps because the world itself, which games often mimic in a sort of inverted mirror, is itself a massive simulation, which requires nudging, fine-tuning, and occasional upheavals to set on course. Ironically, a game that offered less player input than usual seemed to tickle this fancy better than any game with delusions of minute, infinitesimal control ever could. That something as simplistic as Populous could excite these feelings, in retrospect, is difficult to imagine.īut the heart of ‘storytelling’ differs in each medium, and for video games, the dynamism of being a protagonist in a living, unfolding world – of influencing and leaving one’s mark on it – is what makes the narrative feel personal, first-person. And like any watershed moment, a feeling simmered in the atmosphere after Populous’s release that games, in their uphill climb towards artistic respectability, had tread new ground once more. With Populous, Bullfrog had unintentionally spawned a massive hit that would draw a new line in the ever-shifting sands of taste.
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