Ion Storm
More info
- Creator
- John Romero, Tom Hall
- Released
- 1996–2005
- Type
- Game developer
The Texas studio that shipped one of gaming's most notorious flops and one of its finest games in the same year.
John Romero and Tom Hall left id Software and founded Ion Storm in Dallas in 1996, bankrolled by Eidos. The office was a skyscraper penthouse and the budget matched. Daikatana was advertised with a poster promising that Romero would make the player his "bitch", slipped by years, shipped in 2000 and was savaged. The ad is better remembered than the game.
The Austin branch, led by Warren Spector of Origin and Looking Glass fame, released Deus Ex the same year: a first-person role-playing game in which almost every problem had more than one solution. The Dallas office closed in 2001, Austin in 2005. Deus Ex passed with Eidos to Square Enix.