John Romero is a programmer by training and a game designer by vocation. He bears the title of a truly cult personality in the gaming industry and shares the popularity of giants such as Meyer and Molyneux. Romero has always taken not quantity, but quality. Despite the fact that there are not so many projects behind him, they all have a good reputation.
Early biography and first creative steps
John Romero was born on October 28, 1967. His first game was written in 1984 - at that time the project was just a paper program. The publication of the work was taken up by the then-popular inCider magazine. Soon, John took part in a competition among talented programmers, where he won his first victory.
Industrial development came in 1987, when Romero began working at OriginSystems. The task of the project, on which John worked, was to port an RPG called 2400 AD from an Apple II computer to a Commodore64 computer. A little later this project was canceled, and Romero was transferred to work for Paul Newrat, who at that time was working on Space Rogue.
In the end, John Romero decided to create his own studio, which was called InsideOutSoftware. In addition to Romero, it included other talented programmers, including John’s friend, Lane Route. After some time, Romero and Rout decided to leave the walls of the studio and start creating their own company. Under their wing, several interesting projects were developed, among which the release of ZappaRoids on 3 computers at once, as well as the development of a graphical shell for gaming applications on the Apple II, were noted.
Follow-up career
The computer game designer left his first company in 1989. In March of the same year, he joined Softdisk, where he met for the first time with John Carmack. A few years later, Carmack, Romero and another game designer Tom Hall said goodbye to Softdisk and founded a new company called idSoftware.
The work of idSoftware was associated with the creation and development of first-person shooters. Such a project as Wolfenstein 3D is still considered the first “real” shooter, the cult Doom managed to draw attention not only to the genre, but also to the gaming capabilities of the IBM PC platform, and Quake became the first truly three-dimensional first-person shooter (not pseudo-three-dimensional, as was popular before).
Successful cooperation between the founders of the company ended in serious disagreement, after which Carmack and Romero went their separate ways. From that moment, John Romero managed to establish several new studios and change more than one job. Unfortunately, his subsequent projects could not get much popularity in the industry. Work at idSoftware is still the “golden period” of Romero’s activity.
About the personal life of John Romero
John met his first wife, Kelly Mitchell, in 1987. At that time, Romero worked in the service sector of the Burger King restaurant chain. In the marriage, the couple had two children, but the couple did not stay together for long and soon separated.
In 1990, Romero met his second wife, Elizabeth Ann McCall, who bore him a daughter. After a divorce from Elizabeth, John also managed to have a relationship with a cyber athlete named Stevie Case. The latter received the greatest fame after defeating John in the match Quake. Their romance lasted about 5 years, and in 2004 Romero decided to marry again, but already on his new lover, Raluka Alexander Ples.
After 6 years, the couple's family life came to an end. Today, it is known that John Romero is happily married to his industry colleague Brenda Romero.
Facts from life and professional activities
- In 1984, John released his first book, Scout Search.
- 1987 was the year Romero released his first commercial project (2000 AD).
- The protagonist on the poster for the Doom game owes his image to Romero. In the process of working on the cover, idSoftware contacted illustrator Don Punchac and hired a model whose task was precisely to portray the protagonist. John Romero shared his vision of the protagonist: the hero had to stand on a rock and shoot back from the crowd of demons. It was difficult to realize the plan, and the character, despite all the efforts, could not get closer to the necessary image. Then John took off his T-shirt, armed himself with a toy gun and told the model to depict a demon who grabbed the protagonist by the hand. In the end, it was Romero's posing that was decided to be canonical, capturing him on the final cover.