1001 VG Book #06 - "Space Invaders" - (1978)

commentary about the book article for:

#6 = Space Invaders (1978)
- by CD (Chris Dahlen)
- Arcade

- Good article, however there aren't a "handful of methods for predicting the appearance of the UFO." The writer got confused... the UFO appears at regular time intervals, and the "methods" he's thinking of are simply in knowing how to get 300 pts every time you hit the UFO. It has to do with counting your shots.. and hitting the UFO with a very specific # shot.

- Also, this naturally mentions the oft-repeated fallacy of Space Invaders causing a coin shortage in Japan.  We now know that there wasn't extra coin production due to Space Invaders... but it's one of those stories that is legend, even if truth has been stretched.

- The other glaring error is they called Galaga a "clone" of Space Invaders. That's like saying Eminem is a clone of Sir-Mix-A-Lot because they are in the same genre. Sure, there are some genre similarities -- but a clone in the videogame world is a bad thing... a duplicate. Same game, different name.  Galaga is clearly not a clone!  It's a true original - an all-time classic with many of its own innovations!

MY QUICK REVIEW:
Space Invaders is one of the big daddy games of video game history. Whereas Pong might've been the first big hit for video arcade games... Space Invaders was the revolution that moved the entire industry from a small entertainment avenue towards a major global juggernaut. It effectively launched a massive increase in awareness and growth for video arcade games.

Furthermore, when it was licensed and brought over to the Atari 2600 platform in 1980, it also created demand for that console equating to millions of units and a march towards market dominance.

But why? The modern player might find it rather repetitive and boring. It's just 5 rows of 11 invaders that move monotonously, dropping steadily closer... for wave after wave until you fail. Well, maybe a few reasons:

1. High-score games were nothing new, but this was not a timed game... you really could rack up a decent score the better you got at it, lasting longer on a quarter and sensing accomplishment. The high score was saved for all to see at the very top of the screen.

2. This wasn't trying to simulate real life... it was something entirely new. It wasn't a driving game, dogfighting, sports or a shooting gallery... those are things people either saw or possibly could do in real life. But shooting down waves of aliens set on destroying the Earth was novel (at the time). Might be old hat now, but captured the imagination.

3. Well-balanced play, built-in tension, and the bug that became a feature - the gradual speeding up of the marching aliens. Never underestimate how important gameplay is.  Is it fun?  With it's tension-inducing, four-descending note soundscape (doo, doo, doo, doo...), the mother-ship popping out with its own wild sounds, and the difficulty moving from fairly easy right on up to beyond-reflex hard...heck yeah it was fun!

Did I mention it looked really cool? A painted backdrop depicting the defending moon landscape, with an angled-mirror reflecting the actual B&W screen hiding below. It had depth, sounds, gameplay, tension, presentation... and novelty! Deserves to be remembered. Still playable today.

VIDEO:

1001 VG Book #05 - "Combat" - (1977)

commentary about the book article for:

#5 = Combat (1977)
- by GM (Gary Penn)
- Atari 2600 (or Atari VCS at the time)

  - This was a great review - and it IS so true that with great play mechanics and a well-matched opponent the graphics fade into the background. 

  - I don't particularly like cartridges being described as "slammed" into the Atari. I was always careful. Were you a slammer?  Nor do I like "thumbed away at rubberized joysticks" -- because I for one just grabbed the joystick with the full hand, and base in the other, thumb on the fire button.  Using your thumb to work the joystick seems weird.

-- There were both tanks and planes… a lot of variations on planes and jets and other sky combat games. So to be fair, the cartridge had quite a bit more variety than hinted at…

 
- I hate the word seminal - I won’t use it. It's perfectly legitimate, I just think there are far better words that mean the same thing.  Look it up.

  - It is mentioned Combat was a pack-in game... and that's true, Pac-Man finally replaced it as the pack-in game in 1982. So, kudos to the article mentioning "for five years" which was indeed the time it was the bundled game for the 2600 from 1977-1982.

  - However… originally there was both an "Atari VCS" as well as a "Sears Tele-Games" console -- same internals, different brand & marketing paths.  Of note, though, is that the pack-in title was different on the Sears Tele-Games!  So, not everyone who bought a consle in those first five years automatically “slammed in” the Combat cartridge. But... it was a popular cartridge... so I'm sure the vast majority of people probably had it or bought it.

  - Roughly 4 million combined console sales by end of 1981… both Atari & Sears branded console sales in total.

MY QUICK REVIEW:
The Combat cartridge for the Atari 2600 boasts 27 video games.  This was a time when gameplay variations were counted as unique "games" but in this case can really be broken down into a few major categories:
Tank (14 variations)
Biplane (6 variations)
Jet-Fighter (7 variations)

This was only a few years after the initial release of a Tank video game in the arcades, and so from a technical perspective it's quite an achievement. I feel like Atari was really focused on giving the player as much as they could on a single cartridge along this style of game play... head-to-head battle with vehicles.  

With only 2Kb storage capacity, there might not have been any room leftover for a computer-programmed opponent. Therefore, Combat is best experienced with a real-life person, sitting just feet away with you, on that 2nd controller. Somebody who teases, yells, and threatens retaliation for the beat-down delivered with grinning satisfaction.  Ah yes!  The smooth gameplay allows you to forget about the pixelated graphics and to be absorbed in the age-old fight for bragging rights.  

VIDEO:

(Atari 2600 game - Combat gameplay footage)

1001 VG Book #03 - "Breakout" - (1976)

commentary about the book article for:

#3 = Breakout (1976)
- by SP (Steve Poole)
- Arcade

  - First note - the picture in the book is actually from "Super Breakout" - which is a 1978 sequel to Breakout that introduced three game modes. The picture above is the original Breakout from 1976.

  - The article mentions how many games still show the influence of Breakout - including Peggle. Really? Peggle? How did they make that stretch? It's fine by me to point out some of the closely related games, such as Arkanoid, a game clearly in the genre and tradition of Breakout. But to stretch influence beyond a clear connection is to ignore the many genres and other games that have all had their own influence in this great industry. There are many games that draw inspiration from many sources.

MY QUICK REVIEW:
Breakout is a great game... makes Pong style gameplay fun without an opponent. Adds a little bit more to do than just getting the ball past your opponent's paddle, too.  At first you just want to keep the ball in play, but as the blocks get eliminated you really have to get good at hitting the edges of your paddle for finely-tuned aiming.

We have a risk-to-reward here as the edges of the paddle put you closer to just barely missing the ball, but if you don't you might never get all the blocks.  Furthermore, once the ball goes above the top red block line, your paddle shrinks in half!  So there is clearly a skillset needed to actually eliminate the entire 112 brick wall.  And if you DO...  you have a 2nd full set of blocks to eliminate.  But here's the cool thing - if you clear the 2nd set, you've actually beaten the game.

I also love that Breakout was part of what inspired the "minimal" level of graphics necessary for the Apple II.  Steve Wozniak, famed Apple I & Apple II designer, had stated that when designing the Apple II it should be at least capable of playing a decent game of breakout.  There's also the crazy story during the creation of Breakout... how Steve Jobs got Wozniak to implement a tight design... pocketing a big bonus for reducing the total number of chips. But then Steve lies to Woz about how much the bonus was and pays him his half of the "lied-about amount" (which varies a bit based on who's telling the story).  Still... crazy stuff.  Crazy history. 

VIDEO:

(Breakout original cabinet gameplay)

(Peggle gameplay example)

While Peggle is a really fun game, I don't think it has much in common with Breakout other than "bouncing balls".  But you're really not controlling much of anything except the initial shot from the top of the screen.

1001 VG Book #02 - "Pong" - (1972)

commentary about the book article for:

#2 = Pong (1972)

- review by MK (Michael Kittymycack)

- Arcade

  - This entry was awful. First, I really hate it when they describe Pong as having "english". If you've ever played any actual racquet sport, or even Billiards, you'll understand that "english" is spin you purposely place on a ball to affect trajectory and bounce. Ping Pong, especially at high levels of play, has huge amounts of spin... and there is no equivalent in Pong. The only thing happening here is the angle the ball rebounds is affected by the location it hits the paddle. - Then there's the story about the game breaking shortly after it was installed due to a completely stuffed coin tray. It wasn't "shortly after" Pong was placed that Andy Capp's Tavern called… it actually took a couple weeks to fill the coin slot by all accounts. Still, it was doing high coin drop in short order.

  - Sayng that as soon as Pong was a hit “an industry was born” is also inaccurate. The coin-op industry had other hits going strong, and new games coming every month at least.  Pong was an attempt at a new and novel variation of coin-op game. Once it hit big, it was somewhat classified in a category the coin-op industry called "tv games" and later more broadly "videos". Pong clones were very popular for two to three years after Pong, with many clones and competitors jumping on this new type of coin-op game. Although Pong started the popularization of the "video game" coin-op, the big transition to them being the primary type game really took off once Space Invaders became a massive hit starting late 1978.

  - Finally, the most egregious mistake in the article is talking about Pong as having a computer AI opponent. What!?! Obviously they were not playing the original 1972 game, but some kind of port if they were playing against a computer opponent. Honestly, there was no ability for computer AI - there was no microchip or computing going on.  Analog circuits only.  Also, a major factor in future games like Breakout (1976) was the introduction of gameplay that didn't require an opponent at all. This is the kind of error that prompts a project like the one you're reading right now.

MY QUICK REVIEW:
There is probably some confusion to the modern gamer why the fuss about Pong. And, in truth, I've often felt that way myself. I look at this simplistic game and wonder how it could possibly have been a hit. I can surmise two reasons: first, a video game was still prety new technology; second, it just boils down to the competitive head-to-head fight it engendered.

Even though we had computer space months before Pong, and we certainly already had a tradition of coin-op arcade games, shooters, gun games, etc. this video thing was still new. These little analog controllers let you control a paddle on a TV screen in a smooth, responsive way. You weren't moving something around in a strictly physical sense, but the feeling was real. So that aspect was captivating.

Yet I believe the real reason for Pong's success was it's head-to-head competitive gameplay. One quarter, two paddles, two players.. and a race to get to 11 or 15 points (DIP switch setting) first and win! It was a skillset you could develop and felt like a new category - the "TV Game". Also, you could play the game with one hand... so the other was free to hold a drink or something. It just seemed to do well because people enjoyed testing out their skill against other people.

After this was introduced we went through a few years of Pong clones everywhere, and then the Pong consoles hit the home market. Eventually there was a bit of a video game crash as the pong craze died off and before the next big thing took off. But there's no doubt Pong's great success was the beginning of making "video" (TV) games a valid and vibrant part of the coin-op scene. Furthermore the "home Pong" system was a breakthrough in home electronics becoming a market segment!

VIDEO:

CHVG: 1974 - Tank you very much

Kee Games wants to tank you... (1974)
___________________

Here we are, 1974... the year I was born!  Certainly it had to be a magnificent year in gaming, yes?  Nope.  No it wasn't.  While there were some new innovations that did push different genre's forward into the arcade scene, nothing "big" occurred in 1974.  Was more of a development year... a time for ideas to matriculate and formulate.

Atari couldn't make 'em fast enough

I read that only about 8,000 Pong Arcade cabinets had been fulfilled by Atari by end of year.  Although this was still quite a bit more than your average pinball table, for comparison the Odyssey console sold almost 100,000 in its first two years.  (Possibly more, but exact sales figures don't seem to exist... and all the "sold" consoles didn't necessary move to consumers right off.  But this clearly shows why the console market was desired, and groundwork was being laid for a home version of pong and possibly other games.

It was near the end of 1974 that Atari President Nolan Bushnell gave the go-ahead for creating a "Home Pong" unit, thinking it could be a great success for Christmas sales in
1975.

During this year, Atari was trying to out-innovate "The Jackals" (as Nolan Bushnell dubbed the competition)… by coming out with a new game every month.  At first they reiterated with a number of different Pong clones, but eventually they also came up with some new creative ideas that were also hits in their own right:

• Gotcha (first maze game)
• Trak 10 (first racing game)
• Tank (yeah! the first tank game).

Kee Games’s Tank is the first game to store graphics data on a ROM chip. It's also a company that was secretly owned by Atari.  The idea of Kee Games was to get around markets where only 1 distributor could operate.  So Nolan setup another company with his neighbor, Joe Keenan, as the CEO. All the Atari games basically had an identical game with a different name -- distributed by Kee Games.  But after Tank became a huge hit, Atari actually went on to merge Kee Games back into the mothership.

Midway’s TV Basketball is the first arcade game to use human figures as avatars, instead of blocks or vehicles.  But the vast majority of games were variants of Pong.  Still, fairly boring times if you ask me.

Play Meter magazine publishes its first issue - the first magazine dedicated to covering the video arcade market.  There's a smattering of issues on the archive.org website, but this would be a treasure trove of interesting information if we could get the entire library available someday!

Play Meter Magazine - One of the earliest issues I found

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COMPUTERS:

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The PLATO system is still one of the few systems that have any games on it that are still preserved - and even playable today on various emulators, or the Cyber-1 platform.

SPASIM (PLATO)
  - Here we have the first documented, first-person mainframe game.  Wireframe graphics... a space shooter... very mathematical and definitely more like a sim than anything else.  It's best to watch a video tutorial, you'll get a feel for it without having to learn the tricky controls.

MAZE WAR  (Xerox - Alto)
  - I've now seen this game listed in both 1973 and 1974... so I'm not sure which one specifically to place it in.  But it was an important early game that introduced some of the concepts which become the first-person shooter.  A level editor was even created, and there was network play for player-vs-player action. 

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CONSOLES:

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  - The Odyssey dropped its price again to $50... but no new games were released.  But that's because this system did not really have programmable cartridges. The "carts" they sold simply had jumpers which would select an internal built-in game.  So by 1974, all the games ever designed were released and purchasable.  Odyssey continued to sell in 1974.. but it wasn't long before the system was dead. 

The game card, which isn't quite a cartridge.

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ARCADES:

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ASTROHOCKEY  - (pong variant)
 - It did have 4 variations of gameplay, including player vs. machine.  That's a nice addition.

ATTACK UFO
  - Uh... its a black & white game with UFO's.  That says a lot. Why are we so violent to tourists from other planets? 

BALL PARK
  - Midway releases in America, this Taito (of Japan) baseball game.  Looks pretty decent.  The sports-focus in video games is  a bit pervasive these days isn't it?

BASKETBALL
  - It's a basketball game from Taito, but no way to see it run unfortunately... but is deemed a "Landmark" title, being the first video game to use sprites, and the first to represent human characters.

Arcade flyers can be way better than the games!

CHALLENGE
 - Another Pong clone... by Micro Games.  Also looks like a "micro cabinet"... the thing is tiny.

"Honey, have you seen the Micro Game?"

COUNTDOWN
 - Pong clone, but you start with 5 points and can't let any goals or you lose a point at a time.  

ELIMINATION / QUADRA-PONG
 - 4-player pong clone... which also debuts in the first ever "cocktail" style arcade cabinet.  That's pretty cool. I did like how Atari was innovating from the beginning with game types as well as cabinet variations. Looking at the playing field, you can see the early groundwork for 4-player paddle games like Warlords later on.

FORMULA K
 - This is the Kee Games release of Gran Trak 10.  Same exact innards as...

GRAN TRAK 10 (GRAN TRAK 20 for 2-player)
 - Atari makes the first racing game... (and of course guys wearing helmets show up to play, with hot girls on their shoulder - see exhibit A)  

Safety First!

Gran Trak 10 was not only another hit game, and a growing genre.. but Atari also incorporated some anti-piracy methods.  Inside was a custom-designed ROM for the game, but Atari gave it the same part# as a Texas Instruments Arithmetic Logic Unit.  This mean that when pirates tried to build their own version, they'd order the wrong part and their clones wouldn't work.  Smart Atari!  Especially after all those frickin' pong clones!

But then, an accounting error in the game's production meant that every Gran Trak 10 machine sold at a loss for Atari.  Dumb Atari! It nearly helped bankrupt the company.  They thought, "Sure. we're losing money on each unit - but we'll make up for it in volume."  (okay, I obviously made up that last part.  Classic joke.)

PIN PONG
 - A black & white pinball simulation game by Atari.  Uhm...  cool... that is if want to take everything that's fun about pinball, remove it, and then sell the sizzle.

PUPPY PONG
 - Cool story behind this... basically a free-play version of Pong, but packaged in a cute yellow dog house. This particular setup had its début at Chuck E. Cheese.  It was a neat attempt at giving kids something fun to play without having to feed it tokens. Only a few survive today, as it never saw a wide release, due to Charles Shultz's complaints about its similarities to Snoopy.  (See Snoopy Pong, 1973).

QWAK!
  - An early light gun game where you shoot ducks out of the sky. And, it sounds like you have your ever-trusty hunting dog to go retrieve the blasted birds.  Aw, those poor ducks - they were so abused by early gamers.  It wasn't until much later when Deer became the big targets for virtual hunters that ducks could breathe a sigh of relief.  

REBOUND
  - Pong you say?  NAY I say! So much different... you see, the ball bounces up & down across the screen instead of side-to-side   Oh my? Gravity is involved!?  Your little paddles (er, psuedo-people) hit the ball over the net and to the other side.  Yeah, I'm a bit sick of all these pong-like games myself, but at least it's a welcome variation.  Was also a very realistic sales flyer:

What even is going on here?

SMATCH
 - WTF? Another great name for some sport game, hah! (I think this was another pong-like game, but was distributed overseas?)

SPEED RACE
  - A Taito release, also known as Racer or Wheels.  This was a ground breaking game, innovating with such concepts as vertical scrolling, sprites with collision detection and a driving wheel for a controller.  One of the first driving games.

Go Speed Racer!

SUPER PONG
 - Even Atari is enamoured with Pong, and puts out this 4th title in the series.  Three paddles per player and better ball physics... increased speed, serve from anywhere - Viola!  Another easy buck from a proven concept, yes?  

TANK
 - Ah yes... the Combat cartridge that first shipped with the Atari 2600 game was based on this original arcade game (albeit with a ton of crazy added variations).  The idea was cool, though.. control a tank and shoot the other guy before they shoot you.  It combined maze games with tank control games... both fun genres IMO.

The original "Tank" was an instant hit. So Kee Games (Atari), quickly devised a plan to launch a whole series of Tank games. They designed a boardset that could be easily modified to change the game. This would allow them to come out with a new Tank game whenever they wanted, with no real extra work needed.  And to think how many variations were included even on the simple Atari 2600 - "Combat" or "Video Olympics" is just staggering progress.

Tank was Kee Games biggest hit

TOUCH ME
 - Okay...  have to mention this game, simply for it's awesome title!  Technically it's not a video game - it's just Atari's version of the vastly more popular Simon.  Atari also released a hand-held Touch Me as well (a year or so later) so you could play with yourself anywhere - "No mom, I'm just playing Touch me!"  Oh, Atari...  trail blazers, yes... but man could they make some bonehead decisions. Oh sorry, poor choice of words.

But the real ironic twist is Ralph Baer (remember the original Odyssey?) sees Touch Me, copies it, and creates Simon. Remember, Nolan Bushnell copied the Odyssey (Ralph's machine) and got in trouble.  But Ralph Baer copies Atari and gets away with it?  That's why I'm NOT a fan of all the Magnavox lawsuits... money-grubbers!  Simon goes on to become so popular that it actually has the impression of being the original, and Touch Me feeling like the clone.  Nice one... you sly devil Ralph!

You wanna play Touch Me?
(is not a good pickup line)

TV BASKETBALL
 - kinda cool... at least they got a BBall hoop on the screen... or at least the flyer says so.

WHAM BAM
 - No seriously, I'm not making this stuff up.  And here I thought, "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am!" was a recent saying, but one look at this flyer, and I think you can guess where this game got its name from!  Holy moly...

WILD GUNMAN:
 - WOW!  Now that I see this, I vaguely remember watching somebody at a pizza parlor playing around with this game.  It was so intriguing.  It could've been a clone, but I had totally forgotten about that memory.  This was really a technological stretch. Long long before Dragon's Lair, they were trying to interact with live-motion here.  

I swear I saw this once (or at least something like it)

Wild Gunman was Nintendo's first 16mm film projector games and becomes Nintendo's first big export product, in Europe and USA, because the effects of Japan's oil shortage that occurred in 1973 began showing : Japan's economy went into a tailspin and people couldn't afford using their money on Nintendo's Shooting Ranges anymore.

An updated version of the game was released in the arcades and in the Nintendo NES, ten years later in 1984, replacing photographic images with cartoon-style video game sprites. In this version the player also waited for the opponent's eyes to flash (accompanied by a speech bubble reading 'FIRE!!').  On October 4, 1997, Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of this game was tragically killed in an automobile accident, at the age of 56.

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CULTURE:

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Angering an entire generation of kids...

The Rubik's cube invented

The MRI invented.

CP/M was created by Gary Kildall, founding Digital Research
  - which gave lots of ideas and future fodder for people like Bill Gates, yeah?

Dungeons & Dragons was released!  (and all the future nerds rejoice...)

Pepsi was first American company to sell a consumer product in USSR… 

PLATO games really are leaders… Spacesim, M199H, pedit5, Empire, etc. 

Taito started making games… like "Basketball" and Speed Race (like Monaco GP)

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GAME OF THE YEAR:
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TANK (Kee Games + Atari  = Kataree?)