Serious Sams 15th anniversary today blast from the past!
Some dev comments and several more pictures at the link.
Back in the day, at the very beginning of the new millennium, Croteam was a bunch of young 20-something guys who all shared the same dream to develop most intense, hectic and fun shooter ever. Nowadays most of us are in our late thirties or early forties, have families, and admittedly, dont play games as much as wed want to. But one thing we still share our desire and passion for making best and most fun games ever. And of course, that same dream is still here, as vivid and real as it gets.
But how did it begin?
Our first game was released on Commodore Amiga in 1994. Only two years later, and we could see the age of Amiga was over, and its time to move one cause the new king came to town Windows PC. So we decided to switch to PC gaming. The game we all loved and adored at the time was DOOM. We wanted to make something even crazier, but a bit light-hearted. But 3D engines at the time were so expensive, that a group of students couldnt afford one. So we came up with the plan to create our own 3D engine, which would power our own game and which we could license to other developers as well.
Fast-forward several years of hard work, and in summer of early 2000 we finally burned alpha copies of TFE on CDs and mailed them (yes, mailed by POST, not emailed) with an extensive game design document, printed in full color on deluxe paper, towards addresses of 30 biggest publishers worldwide. We thought the game was great, we loved it, we were so confident its gonna be a huge hit, so all that was left was to wait for a reply from those guys, and then pick the best proposal.
Out of 30 submissions, two letters returned. One said No, thank you, the other Thank you, but no. So, with no certain future and weakened morale, we decided well go our separate ways, but before we split, we agreed to put a demo on the internet, to showcase our engine and what weve worked so hard on for the past few years.
In May 2000, public test 1 was released. And it blew up the internet (sorry Kim, we were first). It quickly became the most downloaded demo of that summer and landed us the contract with Gathering of Developers, a Texas-based company led by Mike Wilson and Harry Miller, among others.
After receiving hundreds of emails per week from gamers all over the world who loved the demo, with our batteries fully replenished and secured funding from GoD, we went on to finish our first Serious Sam game. To be honest, The First Encounter was (and still is) one of our dearest games, in which we poured our hearts, soul, sweat, and tears. It took us years to develop it, but on 21st of March 2001, the wait was finally over, our baby was released in stores worldwide. It had a great reception, everyone loved the crazy over-the-top gameplay combined with beautiful visual and audio presentation, and we were really relieved once first (positive) comments started pouring in. And best of all, it won Gamespots prestigious Game of the Year award, as well as numerous other awards and praises from the gaming press and community.
15 years later, its great to see our first baby still has a very strong following, mostly thanks to 2009 Steam HD reissue, published by Mike and Harry again, this time at the helm of Devolver Digital, probably the best publisher in the world.
In light of this anniversary, we asked our veterans to say a word or two:
Some dev comments and several more pictures at the link.
