Video retrospective re: US Gold's Godfather game

[dreamkatcha]

Here's something no-one has really delved into before so I thought I'd take on the challenge, re-watch the 9 hour trilogy and compare the two.

It's part celebration of Pete Lyon's fantastic art skills, part movie worship. I also cover the Godfather game that wasn't and look at how it evolved as a separate entity. It's an old story that you're probably already familiar with, but I think it's fascinating regardless.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Higgy]

Thanks for the video. I never played the game but I remember being very impressed with the graphics. Watching it today, as you say there are so many little details like melting snow. Impressive.

[vulture]

Artwork is indeed fantastic!
Gameplay, sadly, not so much.

[dreamkatcha]

Thanks for checking it out both of you.

It's an odd one this because it got tonnes of coverage in the Amiga mags at the time of release, even stretching to 4 page reviews in some cases, yet it's not a particularly well known game. I suppose not being much fun to play and the poor review scores accounts for that.

Pete Lyon also worked his magic on Fright Night the action game, and would have contributed to the adventure game too had that emerged.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Massive missed opportunity - a slow (very slow) and unresponsive controls made it frustrating to play. I think the loading times were a drag too.

It looked ok and I remember the sound FX of the street being pretty cool, the problem was when you came to actually play it.

This was crying out for a point and click game - maybe wrong but I remember the preview / reviews saying that was also in the works - obviously never happened. Just a shame that you have a licence like the Godfather and come up with a very generic walk and shoot game (and some FPS shooting too)

[Hewitson]

Very detailed graphics... Sadly the game runs at a few FPS and the scrolling is of Atari ST quality.

[dreamkatcha]

Yes, someone of the sound effects were unexpectedly good too. For instance in the New York streets you'll see a train in the distance and actually hear it rumble by as well. Later there's faint birdsong and so on.

Fiery Phoenix, that was the premise of the video. That there were originally to be two Godfather games, yet only one made it. The adventure game being coded by Delphine became Flashback believe it or not.

It's definitely not very A500 friendly so I'd recommend running on one of the later models with extra RAM. Only then do some of the wrinkles get ironed out. Not that this will do anything for the bland gameplay unfortunately.

[Gordon]

Great vid as usual.

I can't decide what type of game would of been of best for Godfather. While the idea of Point and Click sounds good, what would it based on? If the original story, then do we really want to play through a story we already know. Maybe a spin off with of the other characters? Or a prequal?
Maybe a Batman style multi-genre game?

[dreamkatcha]

Cheers.

Good point. If you strictly followed the plot from the movies there would be no surprises and presumably you could solve the puzzles based on your existing knowledge. That wouldn't be much of a challenge or a lot of fun beyond the wow factor of knowing you're channelling one of the Corleones.

Maybe EA got it right with their 2006 open world game. This combines elements from the movies with spin-off missions that adopt themes and characters yet expand on the environment. Going down this route would keep it fresh and also appeal to the people buying it solely based on the IP.

Whatever you do with the franchise Francis Ford Coppola wouldn't approve.