Videogames at the Library: Ahistoricalperspective
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VideoGames at the Library: AHistoricalPerspective Gustavo Marfia∗,AlessandroAmoroso∗,MarcoRoccetti∗,GiulioBasile∗,ClaudioE.Palazzi† ∗ Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione - Universit`adiBologna,Italia Email: {amoroso, marfia, roccetti}@cs.unibo.it † Dipartimento di Matematica Pura e Applicata - Universit`adegli Studi di Padova, Italia Email: [email protected] Abstract —We present an overview or the video games available at the Film Library of Bologna. This institution, in collaboration with the University of Bologna, has a whole collateral branch dedicated to the video games, as they can be considered a recreational activity somehow related to movies. This collection of video games conceptually starts from the ones that are strictly connected to movies, and then expands to a wider class of video games. A video game could be related with a movie either as its direct inspiration, its prequel or collateral plot, or also be created as a direct consequence of that movie. The expansion of the collection available in the Library includes a historical set of video games. In this paper we discuss the historical perspective of the relationship between technology and video games, providinga complete historical view of the video games by means of the titles and the consoles available in the Library. Several dedicated consoles are still in working conditions and could be used by the visitors of the Library. I. INTRODUCTION The collection of the Play Room of the Film Library of Bologna contains about 2000 video games, whose releases Fig. 1. Temporal distribution of games available at the Library with respect to the hardware platforms range from 1979, till the present date. The library collects both video games and consoles, a visitor can therefore play agameinteractingwiththeoriginalhardware.Notallofthe Unfortunately,in both the Figure 3 and 2 the label “PC”, that collected console are accessible at any time: some of them, comes form the Library directory, is far too generic. It ranges usually the oldest ones, are available only upon reservation. from Mac to Windows computers, and does not differentiate In any case the access to any of these resources is free. the hardware neither with respect to its release date nor its Figure 1 shows the timeline of available software with configuration. respect to each platform in the Library collection. Each solid rectangle after the name of a platform shows the whole interval II. GENERATIONS of available software for that platform. The dotted horizontal We can distinguish several generations of video games, that lines separate the platforms by their generations, labelledat are characterized by both hardware and software. We follow the left of the figure. the classification reported in [1] as a guideline for our analysis. All the platforms are available to the visitors of the Library, It is worthwhile to notice that the targeted video device for but as anticipated before, some of them are available under the home consoles was the contemporary TV, therefore their restrictions. The consoles released before 1994 are available video capabilities were usually calibrated with respect to the upon advanced reservation solely, whereas the newer ones can common TV capabilities. The sound output gained importance be freely accessed. Same restrictions also apply to the PCs. during the years, as the computational power increased enough Figure 2 shows the number of titles available at the Library to produce more accurate sounds. for each platform. The initial input devices for the home consoles where Figure 3 shows the number of titles available with respect to paddles with knobs and buttons. After this initial phase the their release date. Not surprisingly, a higher number of titles joystick become available and was used for several years, both are available for more recent dates. with home computers and consoles. More recent generations The network connectivity of consoles was introduced only few years ago, but it is quickly gaining popularity, providing support for massive multiplayer online games. The description of the consoles starts with quite precise specs on CPU clock, such as in the first generations. While this measure become not representative of the power expressed by the consoles, the description shows the performance of them. III. VIDEOGAMES:EARLY SEVENTIES,EARLY EIGHTIES A. First Generation It represents the dawn of video games for dedicated con- soles. This generations spans from 1972 to 1977. It begins with the release of the Magnavox Odissey [2]. In 1977 several manufacturers abandoned the market, and solely Atari and Magnavox continued to produce consoles. We do not further discuss this generation because it is very old and because no devices nor video games of this generation are collected in the Library. B. Second Generation Three consoles characterized the second generation, also called the 8–bit generation,thatspansfrom1977through 1983. In 1979, the release of the Atari 2600 [3], initially called Video Computer System (VCS), marked the beginning of this generation. In 1980 Mattel released the Intellivision [4], followed by the Coleco Vision in 1982. Both the Atari 2600 and the Mattel Intellivision are available at the Library. During this generation, video games were stored in ROMs, embedded into plastic cartridges. These cartridges could be Fig. 2. The number of different titles per platform inserted in a slot of the console, which, equipped by a general purpose microprocessor, ran the software stored in the mounted cartridge. Such architecture represented a con- siderable advantage: users were no more limited to play with pre–installed video games, being now able to buy and collect the cartridges (i.e., the games) they wanted. Both the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision were equipped with a CPU cycling at about 1MHz.TheAtari’sRAM was 128bytes,whilethecartridgescouldincludememory 1500 expansion. The Intellivision had about bytes of RAM. Their video output was on a regular TV at about 160 × 200 pixels. The Atari was able to display slightly more than 100 colors, while the Intellivision was limited at a 16 color palette. Sprites were the common technique to display moving figures on the screen. The Atari 2600 was originally released with 9 titles, two Fig. 3. The number of different titles per release date of them (Combat and Street Racer)areavailableatthe Library. Later, new titles were released and, among these, the best selling titles for this console were Pac–Man,that of consoles became equipped with sophisticated remotes, sold more than 7million copies, and Pitfall!,thatsoldabout that evolved to be wireless, and in some cases completely 4million copies. Both of them are available at the Library. The disappeared. The latest consoles are now capable of sensing best selling titles for Intellivision include: Las Vegas Poker the movement of the user’s body in the three dimensional &Blackjack(2million sold), Major League Baseball, NFL space. Football,andSpace Battle;thelastthreesoldmorethana The handheld platforms evolved very quickly in this late million copies [5]. All of them are available at the Library. years, and it seems that they are merging with the smart– Pac–man for the Atari 2600 was a port of the very famous phones. namesake arcade game. Several titles of that age were ported successful rivals of the NES console was the Sega Master System,releasedin1985.Nintendoreleasedin1989thefirst model of a long series of Game Boy,thatwasthefirstwidely popular handheld gaming console. The most famous and best selling game of that period was undoubtably Super Mario Bros for the NES, that sold 43million copies, while its sequels, Super Mario Bros 2 and Super Mario Bros 3 sold 18 and 10million copies, respectively [9]. The basic idea of scrolling graphics, introduced by the NES, is that the screen shows only a portion of a bigger virtual screen; in other words, the screen is like a window that could be “moved” on the virtual screen to show a new portion of it. The software was still released on cartridges, while floppy disks begun to be popular as distribution medium. The main memory of the NES was 2KB, while it was also Fig. 4. The cover of Flight Simulator equipped with 2KB of video memory. The video output was 256 × 240 pixels with 25 simultaneous colors and 64 sprites. The Master System had a 8–bit processor, a Zylog Z80 clone, from existing arcade games. Interestingly, some titles, such running at about 3.5MHz,themainmemorywas8KB,while as Baseball, were also ported between the two consoles. The the video memory was 16KB.Thevideoresolutionwasat Library has the versions of Baseball for both the consoles, most 256 × 240 pixels with 128 colors (16 different colors, hence enabling a valuable comparison. each one with 8 degrees of intensity) and 64 sprites at most. During the same years, Commodore released two of the first The Game Boy had a custom 8–bit CPU, running at about best selling personal computers: the VIC–20 (1980) [7] and the 4.2MHz, 8KB of main memory and the same amount of Commodore 64 (1982) [8]. The VIC–20 was the first home video memory. The display was 2.6 inches, showing 166×144 1 computer that sold more than million units. The successor pixels with four levels of gray. of the VIC–20 was the Commodore 64, that sold something in The Library collects all the three Super Mario Bros, and 12 17 between and million units [6]. They were both equipped some remarkable titles for the Master System, such as the 1 with an 8–bit CPU running at about MHz,andtheRAM Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s 5 64 was KB for the VIC-20 and MB for the Commodore 64. Trap.Notethat,whiletheFigure2and3reportsthenames 176 184 8 The video output of the VIC–20 was × with colors, used in the classification adopted by the Library, the NES and 320 200 16 while the Commodore 64 had × with colors and the Sega Master System are labelled as “Nintendo 8-bit” and 112 sprites.