December 2024

Heretic was developed by Raven Software, published by id Software, and released on December 29, 1994. the partnership between the 2 companies began when id Software provided their Wolfenstein 3D engine for Raven’s next game ShadowCaster. after releasing Doom, id opted to give Raven a shot with their new game engine. strip away all the futuristic/sci-fi/marine aesthetics and replace them with a medieval fantasy world and you get Heretic. so it’s probably worth noting before I delve deeper into this story to explain how I discovered Heretic. I didn’t get access to a legitimate PC until mid-1995, and I had no real context of PC gaming to speak of outside of a shareware collection that exposed me to the likes of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, and Dangerous Dave. by that October I went with my grandma to Best Buy and she bought me The Ultimate Doom. even in my youth I had the tinker/explorer gene fully active. effectively hidden on the CD-ROM was a /HERETIC directory, and contained inside it was the shareware version of the game. I had no Sound Blaster 16 yet and there was no PC speaker option, so I had to play my new free game…

(I have to post this here because Facebook is apparently broken) NFL Blitz 2000 was released by Midway Games on December 11, 1999. as my grandparents were retired from the business by the dawn of the NFL Blitz series, it wasn’t until about 12 years later I played them for the first time. some 15 years ago (that’s 2009) my grandpa wanted to go to an auction in Alsip, IL and as a result of my car accident settlement I apparently ironically bankrolled this operation. it was there I found a couple of broken Blitz games, a Blitz 99 and Blitz 2000 Gold. I want to say I got them for $275 and $250 respectively. they were fun fixer upper projects and the differences between them amidst all my other responsibilities were difficult to triangulate at the time but I was able to learn a lot eventually. since the development team was mostly the same as NBA Jam, they added an On Fire mode in Blitz 99 which you could achieve by completing passes to the same player 3 times on offense or sacking the other team’s quarterback while playing on defense. this didn’t exist in Blitz 97. what also…