Best-selling author Tom Clancy died late Tuesday in a Baltimore hospital. The former insurance salesman rose to fame in the mid-1980s with his first published novel, The Hunt for Red October, and later went on to co-found video game developer Red Storm Entertainment. He was 66.
Several of Clancy's publications were adapted into video games but it's his Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell games that are most well known. The original Rainbow Six, published for the PC in 1998, was one of the first (and some would argue, the best) tactical first-person shooters ever.
The game was later ported to several other platforms including Mac OS, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast and Game Boy Color. The series spawned 18 different games with the most recent being 2013's Patriots.
The Ghost Recon series launched in 2001 as a squad-based first- and third-person shooter. These games typically took place in larger outdoor environments compared to Rainbow Six games. At present, 13 titles have been released under the Ghost Recon banner.
The most recent of the three series is Splinter Cell: a third-person stealth-based franchise with seven games on the market thus far. The first game in the series debuted in 2002 with the most recent offering being Splinter Cell: Blacklist earlier this year.
Have you played any of the Tom Clancy games and if so, which are your favorite? My favorite would have to be the original Rainbow Six for the PC. Myself and a friend would play this online with others for hours at a time. This was before the days of easy voice chat so we would talk on the phone as we played to help each other out in versus play. Domination!