The Impact of the Apple Mac, Life After the Boom Years, and Japanese Gaming in the 1980s
Trip Hawkins, while going to Harvard in 1975, wrote a 7 year plan to make his own game company Because the computers of the day were too slow for his vision, Hawkins decided to wait to start his company in 1982, the year he believe that technology would meet his needs During these 7 years, Hawkins prepared by taking classes that fit his needs, such as game theory and MBA courses for business skills Hawkins started working for Apple in 1978, giving him the money he needed to start his company Hawkins quit Apple on New Year’s Day 1982, but by then had missed the video game boom Hawkins plan for his company was that it would control game development, publishing, and distribution His company would package its games in boxes, not plastic bags, distribute the games straight to retailers, and promote the game designers In May of 1982, Electronic Arts opened, with the goal of making video games art EA didn’t release it’s first game until March 1983, in the middle of the video game bubble burst Because of this, EA and other start-ups had to focus on the Apple II and Commodore 64, which were smaller markets due to the higher prices of computers Between 1982 and 1987, there was little hope for the American video game market, as the destruction of Atari seemed to be the destruction of the industry
As video game companies had to focus on computers, the games of the time started changing By comparison to consoles, computers had long load times, a lot more memory, higher resolution visuals, and the ability to save games The slower speed of computers forced a decline in action games, while the extra memory of floppy disks allowed developers to get ambitious Computer users were also older than console users, meaning the focus of audience changed as well EA showed this change with some of its first games, such as M.U.L.E. M.U.L.E. was a computerized multiplayer board game based on supply and demand economics Inspired by Monopoly and the sci-fi novel Time Enough for Love, M.U.L.E. took place on a far away planet were players had to commandeer plots of land to produce energy, grow food, and mine ore in a bid to become the richest Unlike Monopoly, which has cut-throat competition, M.U.L.E. required players to work together to ensure there was enough food and energy for survival At the time, M.U.L.E. was a commercial failure, but it has gained popularity over time Another early EA game to demonstrate the changing industry was Pinball Construction Set Bill Budge came up with the idea after working for Apple where many of the programmers were major pinball fans Budge made Raster Blaster, a pinball game for the Apple II in 1982 through his company BudgeCo He later decided that allowing players to design their own tables would a good idea Along with Lode Runner, Pinball Construction Set was one of the first games to allow players to make their own levels or designs
The graphical user interface, or GUI, was the brainchild of Douglas Engelbart, who wanted to make computers more like TVs back in 1950 The idea was originally dismissed, but with the Cold War heating up, Engelbart got funding from the recently created ARPA of $1 million a year With this funding, Engelbart invented the mouse, the idea of windows, the word processor, the concept of cut and paste, and icons The Xerox Alto, made in 1973, was one of the first computer to use GUI, but Xerox never sold commercially Steve Jobs, after seeing the Alto at Xerox’s PARC research institute, was inspired to use GUI on Apple computers The Apple Lisa was released in 1983, becoming one of the first computers that used GUI to be sold commercially The Lisa had a $9,995 price tag, which was far too high for most people, making the Lisa a commercial failure Apple released the Apple Macintosh a year later, with a much lower price tag of $1,995, and became a huge success The Lisa was more advanced than the Macintosh, but the Macintosh’s lower price tag made it far more successful Many programmers took advantage of the new tool of GUI, such as Chris Crawford Crawford made Balance of Power, a simulation game based on the Cold War Playing as either the US or the Soviet Union, the goal of the game was to defeat the rival superpower by increasing you standing among the world’s nations The players could use diplomacy, military muscle, espionage, money, or insurgency to meet their goals, but nuclear war had to be avoided The game sold quite well for its time, selling 250,000 copies Infocom also took advantage of the Mac’s power and abilities, mostly focusing on text adventures Infocom released the film noir adventure Deadline, which took advantage of the Mac’s black and white graphics, and added “feelies”, or physical pieces that came packaged with the game such as police interview notes and a murder scene photo Infocom focused a lot on storytelling, best seen in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, based on the novel Working extensivly with the author Douglas Adams, the game was headed by Steve Meretzky After completing The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in 1984, Meretzky started to make A Mind Forever Voyaging Based on Meretzky’s dislike of the Reagan administration, the player played as Perry Simm, a software program that lived in a computer simulation of a future that was based on Reagan’s free-market and socially conservative ideals Dave Lebling, who worked at Infocom at the time and was rather conservative, stuck up for the game, and joked that he might make a game that attacked liberal principles While Infocom focused on writing, Sierra Online was trying to escape the restrictions of text adventures This change started with Time Zone, a $99 sci-fi epic adventure that came on 6 double-sized floppy disks Co-founder and lead designer Roberta Williams became fed up with text commands, and made King’s Quest in 1984, ditching the Apple II and going for the IBM PCjr King’s Quest introduced animation to text adventures, and also reduced the reliance of text commands, using the arrow keys to move the player around While King’s Quest started to use less text commands, ICOM Simulations’ Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True got rid of them all together Instead of have to type in the commands, players could click on a selection of action words and then click on the object or person to apply them to While Déjà Vu didn’t have the story quality of games from Infocom or Sierra Online, the revolutionary play style was highly influential By the end of the 1980s, the text adventure would be on its last leg, taking out Infocom with it due to Infocom’s aversion to animation and GUI After the release of Ultima III, series creator Richard Garriott got to see fan mail for the Ultima games, where people described having fun killing all the villagers Garriott also received hat mail from supporters of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, or BADD, a group that viewed D&D as spreading Satanism and perversion Because both those for and against his games misunderstood them, Garriott decided to make a game about virtue To prepare for the game, Garriott studied philosophy and morality heavily to find some simple truths to include in the game He boiled down these ideas into 8 virtues based on 3 broad principles: truth, love, and courage He applied these ideas into his game, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, where the game tracked the players’ behavior to assess how virtuous they are One test in the game has a blind shopkeeper where the player can shortchange the person without them noticing, but doing so will prevent them from getting a major clue later on
The coin-op industry was in danger of extinction in the US after the video game bust Arcade companies that survived relied on the superior technology of arcade games over computer games, where developers had to work within the frame of the system Arcade games had graphics and sound that no home computer could match Arcade games were also able to take advantage of specially designed controllers that home computers couldn’t have An example of this is Exidy’s 1983 game Crossbow, where players used a pretend crossbow to shoot targets, which revived an interest in light gun games Despite Atari’s major crash, Atari Games was still making arcade games Made by Ed Logg, Gauntlet was inspired by Logg’s son’s love of Dungeons & Dragons and a computer game called Dandy that was a four-player co-op game Gauntlet had D&D’s fantasy style of warriors and wizards, but was actually a shoot ‘em up set in a large maze Up to four players could play Gauntlet on the same machine, and players could join in during the middle of a game Gauntlet was a huge success, making around $900 a week per machine Yu Suzuki, a game designer at Sega, made the motorbike racing game Hang-On in 1985, with the cabinet designed as a replica motorcycle with a screen mounted in the windshield Suzuki pushed this idea further with the 1986 game Out Run, inspired by the film The Cannonball Run Suzuki took a two week trip to Europe to study sports cars, and the Ferrari Testarossa became the focus of Out Run Suzuki’s experiments in cabinet design reached their pinnacle in 1990 with G-LOC: Air Battle, a gigantic arcade game where players sit in a replica jet fighter cockpit and could rotate 360 degrees The revival of the arcade industry prompted Defender creator Eugene Jarvis to return to video games Returning to Williams, Jarvis made NARC, an ultra-violent ode to Reagan’s war on drugs The players could play as Max Force or Hitman, and were on a mission to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, usually by killing the brutally NARC was notable for being one of the first games to use digitalization, a technique that allowed game designers to record film or sound and import it into their work, which greatly improved visuals and audio
Hiroshi Yamauchi inherited the Japanese toy firm, Nintendo, from his grandfather in 1949, when he was about 21 years old Yamauchi was very ambitious, and started out by firing his cousin and every manager loyal to his grandfather Shigeru Miyamoto was very different, who dreamed of becoming a puppeteer or a cartoonist, and didn’t want to work a “salaryman” job Miyamoto got an interview with Nintendo in 1977 because his father was had connections, and to get the job, Miyamoto made a coat hanger for children, made of soft wood and decorated with pictures of animals Nintendo was going through a transition period at this time, having unsuccessfully tired to enter the video game business in 1975 with the horse race betting game EVR Race Nintendo tried again in 1977, releasing the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15, two home Pong consoles Other companies, such as Bandai, Hitachi, and Epoch also made home Pong consoles around the same time Nintendo did well with the Color TV Game consoles, selling more than a million units Back in 1977, Japanese game companies were focused solely on Japan, with no thought of an international market This was true for much of Japan’s pop culture, with the idea of Japanese cinema being Godzilla, and anime and manga being virtually unknown in the West With the release of Taito’s Space Invaders, which was huge in both Japan and the US, many Japanese video game firms were inspired to compete on a global scale With this new market, Yamauchi decided to focus solely on video games Gunpei Yokoi was the first to come up with an idea, an LCD portable video game
Yokoi was inspired when he saw a businessman playing with a pocket calculator to pass the time, and thought a video game would be more fun The result was the Game & Watch, a series of low-cost handheld games that doubled as digital watches, hence the name The first Game & Watch game was a juggling game called Ball, and later, dozens of games, including Donkey Kong, would be made, selling more than 30 million units Yamauchi was far from satisfied with just the success of the Game & Watch, and wanted to make a home console There was no majorly popular home console at the time of 1982, with failed attempts including the Bandai SuperVision 8000, the first Japanese cartage based console, and the Epoch Cassette Vision While the console market was crawling, the computer market was accelerating, with products made by NEC and Fujitsu One of the first Japanese software companies to make computer games was Koei, founded by husband and wife Yoichi and Keiko Erikawa Their first game was The Battles of Kawanakajima, a historical strategy game set in feudal Japan Koei made several games in this style, most notably the series Nobunaga’s Ambition Koei’s most influential release, Night Life, wasn’t even a game, but a computerized sex guide that offered advice on sexual positions with black and white line drawings Night Life’s success spawned a new video game genre in Japan called bishoju Bishojo, literally “pretty young girl”, is a style of manga that involved school age girls, and while not always, are often pornographic in nature The pornographic bishojo games are called eroge, and at times dealt with subjects such as rape and pedophilia Enix’s Lolita Syndrome had a section where the player throws knives to tear off the clothes of a young girl Not all bishojo games were pornographic, mostly involving dating sims, such as Tokimeki Memorial, where romance and wooing the girl were the main goal For the most part the Japanese authority paid little attention to bishojo games
The first game to get condemnation was 177, a 1986 game where the goal was to rape teenage girls The game was condemned by the National Diet of Japan, and the publisher remove it from sale Bishojo faced further controversy in 1989 following the arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a serial killer who kidnapped, tortured, and murdered four girls aged four to seven
After Miyazaki was arrested, police found thousands of videos, including many pornographic anime films After this, bishojo game publishers formed the Computer Software Rinri Kiko, a content regulator for the industry Due to their sexual content, bishojo games are rarely released outside of Japan, despite having a fan base in Japan Some games series that were released internationally have bishojo influences, most notably the Dead or Alive series, and even more so, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball Harvest Moon, created by Yasuhiro Wada in 1996 for the SNES, took elements from dating sims, but with a stronger focus on farming When Sierra Online’s Mystery House was released in Japan in 1982, many Japanese developers were inspired to make adventure games Portopia Serial Murder Case and Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom, both featuring manga-style artwork, were inspired by Mystery House
As consoles started to become more popular in the early 1990s, adventure games started to become more minimalist The 1992 horror game Otogirisou, made by Chunsoft, reduced the player’s actions to a small number of choices that would influence how the story would progress Like bishojo games, visual novels were rarely released internationally