Let’s Plays can be great or terrible, depending on the personality, the game, and the familiarity between the two (obviously ours here at GG are awesome and you should watch each and every one). But what about the people who designed the games, and the players who are truly great at them?
Double Fine has a new series of Let’s Plays called Devs Play, where developers are players play through and chat about the games. The first one features The Lion King for Genesis, a game which I could handily beat in my sleep without losing a single life, thankyouverymuch. But the interesting droplets of information that are revealed make the series really interesting. 6 videos will be released total. They are –
- The Lion King with Greg Rice and Louis Castle – Louis tells about how such a difficult game was made on such a tight schedule, and how it was meant to be the successor to Aladdin (which is vastly different between SNES and Genesis, btw)
- Earthbound with Ben Burbank – Costume Quest 2 dev Ben Burbank goes through the history of this trilogy, which the US only saw a single release of (Earthbound/Mother 2, which you should totally play on Wii Virtual Console).
- Gauntlet DS with Anthony Vaughn, Geoff Soulis, and Mike Mika – The developers take a look at the unreleased Gauntlet DS to blast through the campaign on their little touchscreens.
- The Legend of Zelda with Brandon Dillon and Matt Mansen – The duo literally take apart the cartridge to engage in some physical hacks, which results in some interesting cheats and insights.
- Doom with John Romero and JP LeBreton – The living legend of FPSs and one of its biggest enthusiasts play through Knee Deep In The Dead (oh god remember that one?!) and give a fresh look at the shooter that launched a thousand copycats.
- Psychonauts with Tim Schafer et al and Stephen Kiazyk – Pro speedrunner Kaizyk blasts through Psychonauts faster than any of the devs think possible and ignores all the story.
These videos will be released weekly, starting with The Lion King one (which is right here). They’re fascinating, and definitely worth a look.
