Daikatana

Daikatana is a first-person shooter video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive on April 22, 2000. It is known as one of the major flops of the computer game industry. The game has appeared on such platforms as Windows, Game Boy Color and Nintendo 64. The PlayStation version was cancelled.

Development history

Romero's initial game design, completed in March 1997, called for a huge amount of content -- 24 levels split into 4 distinct time periods, 25 weapons, and 64 monsters. Despite this, Romero believed the game could be completed in seven months, just in time for Christmas 1997. The game was to license the existing Quake game engine. While at id Software, the content portion of Quake had taken a nine-person team only six months. Romero had 8 artists, and calculated that he could finish in seven. This schedule was called "patently ludicrous" by John Carmack. What Romero had failed to realize was that he did not have an established, experienced team to rely on. Ion Storm was still forming as a company, constantly adding new employees. Many were talented amateurs, hired on the basis of level designs they had created.

Related Topics:
March - 1997 - Christmas - ''Quake'' game engine - Id Software - John Carmack

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Ion Storm showed Daikatana at E3 in June 1997. Unfortunately, the engine was still running in a software mode, and looked dated and unimpressive. At the same time, id software was debuting their Quake II game engine, featuring hardware acceleration and innovative visuals. Romero realized that they were falling behind technologically. The Christmas 1997 deadline was quietly dropped, and the new plan was to keep creating the content for the game, and switch to the Quake II engine as soon as it was ready. The game was rescheduled for a March 1998 release.

Related Topics:
June - Id software - ''Quake II'' game engine - March - 1998

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The Daikatana team received the source to the Quake II engine around Thanksgiving 1997, and immediately realized that the switch would not be simple. The code was completely different from the original Quake engine, and would require throwing away eleven months of work for a complete rewrite.

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Even this would not have prevented the release of Daikatana in 1998, but internal company politics began to erode morale. Ion Storm had grown extremely quickly, and was spending money freely. The Dominion project, put on a fast path by Ion Storm in a desperate attempt to generate some revenue, was resented by the Daikatana team for stealing resources from their project. In November 1998, morale got so bad that twelve members of the Daikatana team quit, leaving Romero with no team, and no way to make the Christmas 1998 deadline.

Related Topics:
Dominion - November

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In January 1999, the switch to the Quake II engine was complete. What had been scheduled for a few weeks had taken an entire year to complete. Ion Storm proudly announced that "Come hell or high water, the game will be done on February 15, 1999." This deadline was missed, but a demo was released in March 1999. However, this demo failed to impress players as it featured no monsters and no single player game, only multiplayer deathmatch.

Related Topics:
January - 1999 - February 15

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The Daikatana team was then frantically trying to create a new, far more impressive demo for E3 that year. Last minute changes to the level design led to a demo that could only run at about 12 frames per second, far less than the 30 frames per second that was considered a minimum for first person shooters. The E3 disaster led to a crisis for Ion Storm. Eidos, the parent company who had financed Ion Storm to the tune of $25 million so far, had had enough. In June 1999, Eidos and Ion Storm reached an agreement. Eidos got majority ownership of Ion Storm, and founders Todd Porter and Jerry O'Flaherty left the company.

Related Topics:
June - Todd Porter

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Despite this turmoil, and the departure of the fourth lead programmer on the project since its inception, Daikatana was nearing release. Ion Storm was confident enough in its progress to schedule a huge release party for December 17, 1999. This date came and went like all the previous ones, as the bug testing, ambitiously scheduled for a few weeks, dragged out into several months. On April 21, 2000, Daikatana finally reached gold status.

Related Topics:
December 17 - April 21 - 2000

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