FMV Origins: Tom Zito and Digital Pictures hough full-motion games tend to be Zito’s team had to invent the In hindsight, Digital Pictures’s CLUBCLUB O’O’ FUNFUN NEWSNEWS Tsidelined by the medium’s historians, genre; adventure Night Trap and shooter work through the ’90s is clearly a creatively they’ve actually been an instrumental, influ- Sewer Shark led the way. Unfortunately, and socially important part of the medium’s July/August Issue 2020 ential force. According to Tom Zito, the for- NEMO never actually made it to market. As history. Zito acknowledges the great cura- mat’s key innovator and mastermind behind its launch loomed, Hasbro shied away from tion work that partners like Tyler Hogle and $0.00 classics like Night Trap, FMV games are the the long odds involved. Zito acknowledges William Mesa have done in bringing games industry’s Forrest Gump: Present for some of the stakes: “It was truly a bet-the-company like Corpse Killer and Night Trap to modern the most important events in its history. proposition,” he says. Still, it wasn’t the end platforms—a process that has proven to be FMV gaming traces its origins to of the road for those pioneering creations. surprisingly difficult. “It’s been frustrating for For Physical Media Enthusiasts! the early 1980s when Zito (then a journalist “Everything got locked up,” he says, “and I Tyler to fundamentally have to reinvent the for The New Yorker) profiled Atari founder bought the rights to those two games, just wheel in order to make the games work,” Nolan Bushnell, who invited him to join a because we’d done so much work on them.” says Zito. new venture called Axlon. Zito moved to Several years later, Zito’s sentimen- He also says the inconsistent California to join Bushnell, but his holiday tal impulse paid off when Nintendo and digital archiving standards of gaming’s early travels soon placed him directly at a cross- Sony began work on what would have been years can be an issue: “There were pieces of roads in game history: Nintendo’s tentative one of the biggest collaborations in video footage for Sewer Shark that somehow had attempt to restart the U.S. console industry. game history. “Around 1990, Sony wanted gotten lost. I spent a lot of time with Tyler “I went back to New York over the Thanks- to acquire Sewer Shark, because they were and with Bill trying to figure out some way giving break of 1985,” says Zito, “and went working with Nintendo on this new product we could recreate those parts from other to a camera store. I saw giant mob of kids— called the ‘Play Station’. They wanted games pieces of the game that were still intact.” the store was one of the retailers picked for that were like movies and wanted to put For the most part, Zito has taken the trial launch of the NES. Sewer Shark in the box with this product; a hands-off approach to the restoration of “I bought an NES and set it up could I put together a group of people to the Digital Pictures catalog, as it’s largely in the meeting room at Axlon to show to convert that title into a pack-in?” technical work best left to programmers. But FMV Interactive Movie Blowout! people, and I said, ‘Look. If video games are Zito was more than happy to he admits that it can be difficult returning back, who better to get back into the video oblige and began working closely with the to a body of work that caused so much un- game business than Nolan?’” Though retail- Sony product development team to convert warranted controversy; Night Trap famously How Wales Interactive Puts ers had been wary of Nintendo’s console, Sewer Shark from VHS to CD-ROM. Not became a proxy in ’90s political battles. Zito and Bushnell immediately recognized everyone was thrilled with the feedback Zito Both sides treated Zito like a punching bag. the “Emotion” Into “Full Motion Video” that console games were about to return in offered, however. “My colleagues and I re- “To be candid with you, this is a big way. They realized Axlon should be at ally rubbed [PlayStation lead engineer] Ken also a very painful part of my life,” he the forefront, but not as an NES licensee. Kutaragi the wrong way,” he says. “He didn’t admits. “From the outside, it looks like, ‘You Screaming Villains Speaks Calmly “Nolan had this idea that if we like that we were fundamentally telling innovated all this stuff. Isn’t that exciting?’ could figure out a way to put data for video Sony how they ought to design a product.” Pioneers are guys who get a lot of arrows About Their Heroic Preservation Work games on VHS cassettes, it would solve the Any friction between Zito and Ku- in their asses. I remember the arrows a lot huge manufacturing costs associated with taragi turned out to be less of a deal-breaker more than all the stuff we accomplished.” making cartridges,” says Zito. “He wanted a than the friction that developed between Still, Zito is able to take some Journey Back to the Beginning game system that was very similar to every Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo backed out solace in the fact that his work does with Dragon’s Lair other system, except it would store its data of the partnership, leaving Sony to lick remain genuinely beloved by fans, and on tape.” While this idea wasn’t outland- its wounds and settle for being merely a that software that faced such turbulence ish—a more powerful take on the audio software company (at least for a little while). before it ever became a reality has proved cassette drives commonly found in the era’s Zito and his newly minted company Digital so enduring. “I’m surprised that so many home computers—Zito envisioned a differ- Pictures suddenly went from working with people still feel really strongly one way or ent approach. “If we were going to use a Nintendo to working with their rival, Sega. the other about these titles,” he says. “That’s VCR, it should be filmed images, not bitmap “Sony had sunk quite a bit of always one of the amazing things about graphics,” he says. “That would set us apart money into helping us get Sewer Shark on being an entrepreneur or creator, when you from everything else that was out there.” disc, and they’d become aware of the Sega see how people react to what you’ve done: Bushnell hated the idea, but toy CD,” Zito recalls. “I said, ‘Not only can we That these games have such a big impact on giant Hasbro loved it. They greenlit a VHS- make product for you, but we have a title some people. based game system code-named NEMO we could make pretty quickly: Night Trap.’” “What doesn’t surprise me is that and asked Zito to head it up. “I left Nolan’s Digital Pictures became one of people who grew up on these things would company to start Hasbro Electronics and Sega’s key partners for the remainder of want to have something that was emotion- develop this game system,” says Zito. “That the 16-bit generation, publishing nearly 20 ally meaningful to them now be a focus of Plus: Tom Zito on the was how the NEMO system came to be, FMV-based games for Sega CD and 32X. collecting. The notion that people could be Dawn of FMV Games and how I wound up being in this world of As a new generation emerged, however, spending six or seven figures to buy really full-motion video games… even though we real-time polygons quickly replaced FMV rare NES games, instead of investing their didn’t really know what full-motion video for telling in-game stories. FMV faded and money into baseball cards or art—that games were.” has largely been forgotten. doesn’t surprise me in the least.”LR What’s your role at Limited Run? eryone to bake their own treats!! (FYI, my I’m Director of Communications... or Lord favorite introductory recipe is Milk Bar’s ‘Wales’ of a Tale: Modernizing the FMV Genre of the Tweets, whichever you prefer. compost cookie. It’s super easy and avail- How did you get your start here? able on their website. Give it a shot!) I’m he term “FMV game” may suggest old, to reach this point, and Banner acknowl- our locality!” Banner says. I actually came over sight-unseen from currently trying to crack the savory side of grainy, “B-movie” material, but Wales edges the studio has learned hard lessons Another advantage: The studio T California, where I had been working at baking with more bread loaves, and yes... Interactive has found success by pushing along the way and scrambled to adapt. “We has become adept at balancing its roster of Telltale when it closed. Josh had tweeted that means a sourdough starter is in my fu- back against that image. The studio’s inno- needed to teach some of the writers we games, with small-scale creations like The about an open position that sounded up ture. But I want to make a good bagel first, vative video adventures have won awards work with not how to tell stories, but how Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker—es- my alley and I was familiar with LRG so that’s the current short term goal! on modern consoles by striving to match to tell non-linear stories,” he says.