The Warren Spector Papers: Historical videos from Origin, Looking Glass and Ion Storm
The Warren Spector Papers: Historical videos from Origin, Looking Glass and Ion Storm
Information - posted by Infinitron on Sat 26 January 2013, 18:39:23
Tags: Ion Storm; Looking Glass Studios; Origin Systems; Warren SpectorA post over at the Ultima Codex informed me of the existence of this video archive, hosted by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. It's part of a larger collection of documents and other media donated to the university by Warren Spector, who has been involved with historic preservation in the gaming industry for many years.
The videos themselves are mostly promotional stuff, mainly related to various Origin and Looking Glass games from the early to mid-90s, but also to Deus Ex and other Ion Storm titles. In addition to Origin's more well-known games (Ultima, Wing Commander, etc), there's material here from many of their more obscure titles. Of particular interest is a video labelled Autoduel, which is actually a promotional video for an apparently never-released Autoduel Online game based on the classic from 1985. There's also a video with a few minutes of rough footage from a mysterious unidentified first-person game, which were found on a VHS tape spliced in between a bunch of random TV show recordings(!)
The site is rather slow, and the quality of the videos poor, but still, this is quite the treasure trove. Warren Spector's career has taken a turn for the pathetic in recent years, but he should be commended for assembling this.
The videos themselves are mostly promotional stuff, mainly related to various Origin and Looking Glass games from the early to mid-90s, but also to Deus Ex and other Ion Storm titles. In addition to Origin's more well-known games (Ultima, Wing Commander, etc), there's material here from many of their more obscure titles. Of particular interest is a video labelled Autoduel, which is actually a promotional video for an apparently never-released Autoduel Online game based on the classic from 1985. There's also a video with a few minutes of rough footage from a mysterious unidentified first-person game, which were found on a VHS tape spliced in between a bunch of random TV show recordings(!)
The site is rather slow, and the quality of the videos poor, but still, this is quite the treasure trove. Warren Spector's career has taken a turn for the pathetic in recent years, but he should be commended for assembling this.
