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Share your experience: www.focalpress.com/boundtocreate Vintage Game Consoles AN INSIDE LOOK AT APPLE, ATARI, COMMODORE, NINTENDO, AND THE GREATEST GAMING PLATFORMS OF ALL TIME Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton First published 2014 by Focal Press 70 Blanchard Road, Suite 402, Burlington, MA 01803 and by Focal Press 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Focal Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Loguidice, Bill. Vintage game consoles : an inside look at Apple, Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, and the greatest gaming platforms of all time / Bill Loguidice, Matt Barton. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-415-85600-3 (pbk.) 1. Video games—Equipment and supplies—History. 2. Video games— Equipment and supplies—Collectors and collecting. 3. Video games— United States—History. I. Barton, Matt. II. Title. TK6681.L644 2014 794.8028'4—dc23 2013038380 ISBN: 978-0-415-85600-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-72831-4 (ebk) Typeset by Alex Lazarou Contents Acknowledgments vii Foreword ix Preface: The Birth of Videogames xiii Generation One (1971–1984) 1–135 1.1 Arcade (1971) 5 1.2 Apple II (1977) 21 1.3 Atari 2600 VCS (1977) 39 1.4 Atari 8-bit (1979) 55 1.5 Mattel Intellivision (1979) 69 1.6 PC DOS Computers (1981) 85 1.7 Commodore 64 (1982) 105 1.8 Coleco ColecoVision (1982) 119 Generation Two (1985–1994) 137–219 2.1 Nintendo Entertainment System (1985) 139 2.2 Commodore Amiga (1985) 155 2.3 Sega Genesis (1989) 169 2.4 Nintendo Game Boy (1989) 187 2.5 Nintendo Super NES (1991) 205 Generation Three (1995–2001) 221–328 3.1 PC Windows Computers (1995) 225 3.2 Sony PlayStation (1995) 243 3.3 Nintendo 64 (1996) 257 3.4 Sega Dreamcast (1999) 271 3.5 Sony PlayStation 2 (2000) 285 3.6 Microsoft Xbox (2001) 299 3.7 Nintendo GameCube (2001) 315 Index 329 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments We would like to thank our families and the wonderful folks at Focal Press for their help and support with this ambitious project. In particular, we’d like to thank Sean Connelly and Caitlin Murphy. Working with you two has been a rare pleasure. We’d also like to thank our amazing cover artist, Nathan Strum. vii This page intentionally left blank Foreword In the vaults of the videogame industry lie many relics. Some are mere curiosities, obscure and grotesque contraptions that few have seen, and even fewer loved. Is there treasure amongst this labyrinth of cardboard boxes and ceiling-high metal shelves, this jungle of snarled AV cables and piles of AC adapter bricks? The dull fluorescent lights high above you flicker, and for a moment you fear getting lost in this dire place. What was it the old man said about grues? But suddenly, out of the corner of your eye you see what you have not seen for many years. Those brown keys, that beige box, that bold red LED shining in the darkness! At last, you are reunited with a love you once forsook, but never forgot. Many gamers would argue that the Com- modore 64 has not aged gracefully, but to someone who grew up playing and adoring classics like Forbidden Forest, Archon, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, or The Bard’s Tale, the Commodore 64 is still a great platform for gaming. But why did the Commodore 64 succeed and remain successful in the face of so much competition, which included heavy-hitters like the Atari 800 and the Apple II? Was it really just a question of value for money, or was there some- thing intangible and unique about the machine, its games, or its fans? In his foundational book Diffusion of Innovations, sociologist Everett M. Rogers wrote about how and why certain inventions—or “innovations,” as he called them—catch on while others are either forgotten or ignored altogether. Rogers argued that successful innovations are not neces- sarily superior to alternatives in any objective sense. Instead, what seems to matter most when deciding whether to adopt an innovation is the opinion of your peers, or at least the peers who are the most like yourself. Despite the huge expenditures lavished on marketing and advertising, it’s the ordinary people who enjoy and tell others about their products that determine their fate in the marketplace. This book is essentially about the diffusion of a certain type of innovation that has become an integral part of our culture: the videogame platform.1 Over the course of the videogame indus- try’s history, we’ve seen countless consoles, computers, and programming languages come and go. Some, like the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System, diffused deeply and rap- idly into our society, making indelible impressions on millions of gamers. Far more common in the history books than in the wild, however, are contraptions such as Nokia’s N-Gage, Smith Engineering’s Vectrex, or Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, all of which failed to move beyond a niche audience despite their promising innovations. It’s not easy to explain these failures, nor pinpoint precisely why other systems like the Sega Genesis or iPad are runaway successes. But it sure is fun to try! 1 In this book, we use the term “console” to refer to a device intended purely for gaming, such as the Atari 2600 or Sega Genesis. “System” may refer to consoles as well as personal computers like the Commodore 64. “Platform” is a broader term that includes any combination of hardware and software that can run the same software. For example, the original Apple II, Apple IIGS, or a Win- dows PC running an Apple II emulator can all support the Apple II platform. Interestingly enough, “console” was the term used in the title of this book because that’s considered more recognizable than “platform” to the average consumer! ix x Foreword Foreword xi Your humble authors, Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton, have always been fascinated by games and gaming machines, and now avidly collect hardware and software for every system we can get our hands on. We are lifelong gamers who began gaming shortly after leaving the womb (nice place, but the Wi-Fi is spotty at best). However, not content to simply play and enjoy games, we also write about them. In 2009, we wrote Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. We had a great time doing it, but all along we kept running into the “platform issue.” While our purpose in that book was to focus entirely on the games—that is, the software—it was difficult to avoid crossing over into hard- ware. That’s because the devices we use to play a game are a huge part of how we experience it. For instance, if you’re playing Space Invaders at home on your Atari 2600 instead of an arcade machine—are you truly playing the same game? How about if you’re playing Breakout with a joystick or mouse instead of a spinner? A large part of the videogame experience is inseparable from the hardware—the peculiarities of the hardware for which it was originally designed and optimized, such as the amount of RAM, processor speed, graphics technology, default control- lers, or storage media. In short, hardware is just as important as software when talking about videogames. It’s quite fascinating to see how a single quirk in a system’s design can affect its destiny in ways the manufacturer could never imagine—an important process Rogers calls “re-inven- tion.” For instance, in deference to controlling costs, the Atari 2600 shipped with only 128 bytes of memory—not enough memory, in fact, for a frame buffer, which would have stored all the information needed to display the screen.