DAIKATANA
The sheer hype and anticipation behind Daikatana is really hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t there at the time. John Romero, along with John Carmack, literally wrote the book on so many video game paradigms. First person shooters exist today because of the man, and so much of their language and iconography, including how movement and combat are handled, or multiplayer and online, comes from his work. So obviously a brand new game that he promised would be his greatest yet was going to draw all eyes on it, right? I mean, how could it not? The game that ultimately released, however, was flaccid and underwhelming. While the backlash to it has made it seem worse than it was, it was most definitely not even close to achieving the heights Romero’s older games achieved. Daikatana’s failure would go on to put a premature end to Romero’s career, and it would take decades before he would venture back into making full-fledged games again.
