Carmack loves the DS

Nov. 24 6:31 PM by Lynxara

Well, Thanksgiving is done and over with. If you're like me, that means you've got a lot of leftovers on hand, and are nursing a pretty bad cold caught during Black Friday shopping. So while you're all driving back home from grandma's house or whatever, take a few minutes to reflect on iD Software's Orcs & Elves coming to the Nintendo DS.

If you don't know Carmack, he was one of the two geniuses behind the landmark FPS titles Doom and Quake (the other was John Romero, but we don't talk about him anymore). After getting the mildly controversial Doom 3 out the door, the story goes that Carmack was playing his wife's cell phone and realized that most mobile games are amazingly lousy.

(Note that this statement is absolutely true. If you doubt me, go read reviews of mobile games. for awhile and be amazed at the horrific mediocrity on display. It's not that mobile games are bad because they're casual; there are plenty of amazing casual games out there. Mobile games are bad because, generally, developers are willing to use the limited control options as excuses for terrible gameply. As you read these reviews, bear in mind that a phone that plays mobile games can cost as much or more as a Wii, 360, or PS3.)

So Carmack approached his wife about having her company, Fountainhead Studios, create some mobile titles in conjunction with iD Software, based on the fair supposition that they wouldn't have much competition. He didn't, and in time was responsible for a pair of mobile games that were surprisingly non-lousy: Doom RPG, and Orcs & Elves. Check the links for footage of both games in action. If you want a comparison against some other mobile games to judge lousiness, here's Lil' Jon Crunk Golf. People have spent money to purchase this game.

Of course, even a mobile game that's not lousy is going to be pretty limited. For Orcs & Elves's recently-released Nintendo DS port, it got a complete facelift with improved graphics and some new gameplay mechanics that took advantage of the second screen. Despite inarguably looking better, it still met with noticeably poorer review scores as a DS title than as a mobile game. Granted, the DS has an overall better pool of games than mobile, so standards are bound to be higher.

Anyway, now that we've set things up, on to the interviews! First, Gamasutra sits down and talks to both id found John Carmack and the head of Id's new Mobile division, Carmack's wife Katherine Anna Kang. id Mobile was formerly Fountainhead Entertainment, a development studio outside of id founded to create Doom RPG and Orcs & Elves. Here's an older interview with Katherine Anna Kang that talks a bit about Fountainhead's creation. Finally, 1up's Scott Sharkey interviews not just Anna Kang and John Carmack about id's new focus on portable games and the DS, but also id CEO Todd Hollenshead.

As for Orcs & Elves itself? Well, I was going to take a pass on it, since Etrian Odyssey was enough first-person dungeon crawler to destroy my life for about a week or so. After writing this post up, though, I'm awful curious. Watch for some hands-on impressions in the next few weeks or so. As for you guys already playing Orcs & Elves on the DS, or mobile, or whatever... what's it like? Got any tips for me?