THE MAKING OF CLAW

DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS PC

BLOOD SYSTEM: PC

YEAR: 1997

SHOGO: MOBILE ARMOR DIVISION

SYSTEM: PC, AMIGA

YEAR: 1998

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR (PICTURED)

SYSTEM: PC, PS3, PS4, XBOX 360, XBOX ONE

YEAR: 2014

In 1994, as Doom took the world by storm, Windows 95 emerged with the promise of a glorious new era of PC gaming. While most developers hurled all their resources into churning out ’Doom clones’, a small startup operating out of Kirkland, Washington, did something else entirely. It took two steps into the future, and one into the past – harnessing the full power of cutting-edge Microsoft DirectX technology, and using it to breathe new life into the world of 2D platforming.

Monolith Productions’ first big break came in the form of the inauspiciously titled Games Sampler 2 for Windows 95. Cofounder Brian Goble recalls, “There was an underground team at Microsoft that was making gaming technology for Windows, and they wanted to get everyone excited about it, so they came up with the Sampler CD – which was basically a bunch of demos from other publishers.” Though the company was young, it had already developed a stellar 3D engine for Windows, which the team used to build a virtual world for the Sampler CD. “The user could go into the world,