Civilization creator Sid Meier was our guest for Kotaku Talk Radio this week. You can listen to the full episode now or download it for posterity. So many topics. Did you know Meier wishes he made Tetris and Guitar Hero?
The legendary game designer, who is still hard at work at Civ studio Firaxis, fielded the obligatory listener requests for sequels. He also talked in-depth about the Civilization development debate of squares vs. hexagons, took us back to the glory days of military flight sims and explained why he is not annoyed by the long wait for Gran Turismo 5.
Among my favorite bits were his early-show discussion of great video game instruction manuals from years past as well as his mid-show revelation: "Guitar Hero and Tetris are probably the two games that I kick myself for not having designed."
Really!
The man who made one of gaming's most-loved franchises wishes he made two of gaming's biggest other ones as well. Jump to the 37 1/2-minute mark for that bit:
On the wish to have made Sid Meier's Guitar Hero: "I think music games are really cool, and if I had a great idea I'd probably be working on it. But just the idea of opening up the fun and creativity and joy of music to a huge audience is great. We like to think we opened up some of the richness of history to people [with the Civilization games]. There's so many rich topics out there and I think music is one of them. I think Guitar Hero has done a great job of giving people access to the fun of music and I really applaud them for that.
On the wish to have made Sid Meier's Tetris: "Tetris is one of those games that in hindsight, you say, 'Oh, man, that is so clever. That is so simple, but deep and rich. Why didn't we think of that?'"
Get this show! It's free, of course.
Full download instructions for this and all KTR episodes.
Download the MP3 [Chat About It]
Listen to it [Chat About It]
Subscribe via RSS [Chat About It]
Download to your iPod or iPhone [iTunes]
Subscribe to podcast on iTunes [iTunes]
Download to your Zune [Zune]