The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

by Steven Kent

  I remember stopping Joe Miller in the parking lot and saying, “You need to get back in there, these people don’t understand the vision.” I tried to get our guys to go back in there and be advocates and extol the vision. And I remember looking at Joe and Michaelene and some of the other folks who were there in the parking lot with me and seeing something that was almost like fear in their eyes. They kind of looked at me, they considered going back for a fraction of a second, then they said “no,” and we all got in our Chevy Suburban and drove off.

  —Richard Brudvik-Lindner

  New and Old Contenders

  America’s 3DO already has an advanced games machine on the market, though at a whopping $699. Atari will launch its Jaguar later this year; Sony has set up a new joint venture to market a 32-bit machine. Sega has teamed up with Hitachi to develop new machines.1

  A number of historically insignificant consoles came out during the 16-bit era: a Japanese game manufacturer named SNK released a CD version of NeoGeo, Philips released an overpriced education/entertainment deck called CD-i, and Sega released new reiterations of its CD product. Then, in October 1993, Matsushita (a.k.a. Panasonic) released a CD-based game console called the REAL 3DO Multiplayer. The introduction of 3DO marked the birth of the next generation of video game hardware.

  The 3DO Multiplayer was the result of an interesting experiment in marketing economics, a partnership in which one company provided all of the technology while another provided the manufacturing—both without paying each other. The hardware itself was the creation of RJ Mical and Dave Needle, the same team of Amiga-veterans that developed the Lynx. Disappointed with the failure of Lynx, and furious at Atari for its poor handling of the product, Mical and Needle left Epyx and began working on their next invention the very next day. Meeting in a restaurant, they discussed possibilities for future plans. When they landed upon the idea of a truly breakthrough game console, they sketched out the needed components on a napkin right at their table.

  Mapping out the hardware was easy enough—building it would be a different story. To do so, they would need capital and preferably an investor who would purchase the hardware rather than just help design it. They turned to Sega.

  Dave Morris, who replaced me briefly as president of Epyx, came to me with RJ and Dave Needle when I was president of Sega. They presented to me the concept of paying them $2 million and giving them two years to develop the next “ultimate revolutionary” video game system; and I was all for it, based on their credentials, because they had developed the Amiga computer and they had developed Lynx. I had just paid $1.7 million dollars to Joe Montana to get his picture on a game. I thought it was nothing to pay $2 million to get the next hardware system developed.

  So I recommended that they go to Japan, which they did two or three times, and present their concept to Nakayama. They were turned down.

  —Michael Katz, former CEO, Sega of America

  One of the next people they met with was Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts. Intelligent and ever fascinated by technology, Hawkins made a good audience for their presentation. As the CEO of a major computer and video game company, he understood the industry and had an army of contacts throughout Silicon Valley. And he would need them. Buying into Mical and Needle’s project meant more than breaking into the console market; it meant taking on Nintendo and Sega. Anybody who signed on with Mical and Needle would need to be as much an evangelist as a venture capitalist. Trendy, witty, charismatic, and known throughout the high-tech world as the ultimate salesman, Hawkins was a perfect fit.

  Taking 3DO from concept to reality was a lengthy and difficult process that required a large team. Looking back at everything that went into making the console, RJ Mical would later remark that “It took 17 people to design the Amiga. It took just Dave and me to design the Lynx, and we came in under budget. Turning the genesis of an idea into the reality of the 3DO took a small army. On the other hand … it was a small army.”

  Dave Needle, the hardware side of the Mical and Needle development team, had created a brilliant machine. Their console played games, music, and photographs on CD-ROM, hence the name “Multiplayer.” It was built around a 32-bit ARM 60 RISC processing chip and featured 3 megabytes of memory. Unfortunately, time and the rapid evolution of technology had conspired against them. Shortly after Needle and Mical completed their work, a breakthrough in chip design made floating-point technology, an efficient way of making calculations for 3D graphics, more affordable for later consoles.

  Floating-point capability is something that we would have had to add at extra cost and might jeopardize the size of the chip…. Low-cost processors typically did not have floating-point capability until very recently. Then it finally became cheap enough and common enough to become available for use in video game machines.

  It would have speeded up the polygon calculations, but I don’t really think that that makes a hell of a lot of difference, to be honest.

  —Trip Hawkins

  From the start, Hawkins wanted to do things differently from other game companies. Nintendo and Sega manufactured their own hardware, while Hawkins wanted to create a hardware standard and license it out to electronics manufacturers. Nor did he want to publish games for his new console. In Hawkins’s business model, he would simply develop the finest technology on the market, and his profits would come from licensing that technology to others. As the console went into development, Hawkins’s strategy seemed to be working. Panasonic, Sanyo, AT&T, Creative Labs, and Gold Star all expressed interest in manufacturing hardware based on the new console’s architecture. More than eighty companies, including Activision, LucasArts, and Microprose, signed on to make games for it. Since Hawkins was the head of Electronic Arts and some of the early development had been handled internally, there was never any question about whether Electronic Arts would support it.

  The creation of 3DO was shrouded in mystery to me. It felt pretty bitter. Trip Hawkins started the 3DO stuff internally and I think there were some real issues; but I’m not sure exactly what all went down.

  —Don Traeger, former employee, Electronic Arts

  In the fall of 1993, Hawkins unveiled his 3DO game console to the press. Backed by Electronic Arts and headed by the electronics-entertainment world’s best salesman, 3DO became the darling of Wall Street. Not everyone was impressed, however. Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo, later said in an interview that he never worried about 3DO because of the way Hawkins set up the business model.

  They violated, in my opinion, the cardinal rule. And that is that you cannot rely on other people to make good games for your system. It’s nice to think that they can, but these hardware systems need first-class software, and you have to do it yourself. The model just didn’t work.

  —Howard Lincoln, former chairman, Nintendo of America

  I’d like to think that we would have had the smarts at Sega to market the 3DO in the conventional, successful way and not create this, if you’ll forgive the expression, ridiculous new model that Trip came up with of how to market and sell 3DO. I mean, not manufacturing the hardware himself and licensing the technology to other people—it’s ridiculous. Why would more than one company want to compete against someone else with exactly the same product? Why would a retailer want to buy the same product from more than one company? Everyone in the industry thought that was ludicrous.

  —Michael Katz

  Behind the scenes, 3DO suffered from a bit of an identity crisis. Hawkins, whose background was in software, forgot some of the cardinal rules of video games. He decided to price the Multiplayer at $699, more than four times the price of Super NES or Genesis. A Commodore computer inspired this steep price. Remembering that Commodore had charged $700 for the complete Commodore 64 set up and feeling that his 3DO Multiplayer had many more capabilities than the Commodore 64, Hawkins thought consumers would pay the same price.

  Sadly, the work and technology that went into 3DO technology were partially overshadowed by the co
nsole’s poorly designed controllers. It came with flat, slender controllers that were reminiscent of the controllers on the Super NES. They had, however, one major flaw—the direction pad on the left side of the controller did not handle diagonal movement well. When consumers called in to complain about this problem, 3DO technicians suggested that they loosen the screws on the back of the controller. Although this fix helped diminish the problem, it did not completely solve it.

  There was also some confusion about which game to pack in with the 3DO Multiplayer. Amazingly, the decision was made to bundle Shelly Duvall’s A Bird’s Life with the game player that Hawkins was trying to market as a toy for sophisticated adults. While Shelly Duvall’s A Bird’s Life was a respected piece of educational/entertainment software, it was a program meant to teach young children about birds. Fortunately, a company called Crystal Dynamics stepped in with an impressive new driving game called Crash ’N Burn, which was ultimately selected to be the bundled software. Even with Crash ’N Burn in the package, 3DO owners had little to play at launch. Few games were ready for the October launch of the 3DO Multiplayer, and only a space-flight game called Total Eclipse stood out as having much promise.

  The public did not bite. According to one published prediction, only 125,000 units were sold in the United States in the entire first year. Panasonic lowered the price of the 3DO REAL Multiplayer to $399.95 in 1994, but the initial excitement was already gone and sales remained low. In foreign markets, however, 3DO fared slightly better. Despite its “made in the U.S.A.” image, the 3DO Company actively pursued worldwide sales and ultimately sold more consoles in Asia than in the United States.*

  The first 3DO titles failed to demonstrate the superiority of its 32-bit technology. Over the next two years, Electronic Arts published games that highlighted 3DO’s abilities and differentiated it from the competition. First a motorcycle combat racing game called Road Rash was ported to 3DO from Genesis. Then Electronic Arts followed up with a solid 3DO version of its titanic Madden NFL series. Tapping into the CD-ROM–based console’s strengths, the new version of Madden featured digitized footage of the former Oakland Raiders coach and larger, more detailed, players. Next, Electronic Arts published a 3DO version of FIFA International Soccer, with multiple camera angles, a truly 3D field, streaming play-by-play audio commentary, and a repertoire of special kicks and realistic moves. This was the game that would demonstrate just how impressive “next generation” sports simulations could be. These games came out too late to save 3DO, however. By the time Electronic Arts finally teamed up with Car and Driver magazine to create a realistic auto-racing game called Need for Speed, consumers had moved on. None of these games were available in 1993 and by the time they began appearing more regularly, 3DO had lost its momentum.

  Atari’s Last Cat

  In November 1993, Atari released one of the most controversial and ill-fated game consoles ever made. The system, called Jaguar, was a cartridge-based console with a Motorola CPU. Although Jaguar had only 16 megabits of RAM, it had two 64-bit RISC graphics processing chips. Atari marketed it as the first 64-bit game console ever to hit the market, but competitors argued that it was really a 16-bit game console.

  Their CPU is 16 bit. Ours is 32 bit, and our coprocessors are a lot more powerful doing the graphics and sound. Atari has trouble getting good sound during game play because of how they set up their bus structure. It’s only because of an ambiguity in the law that they can even say 64 bit without having to explain what they mean.

  —Trip Hawkins

  Atari president Sam Tramiel faced a tough battle from the moment he announced his new game console. His family’s hardball style of business had alienated much of the industry. Many retailers refused to carry the new console, and while more than 200 developers signed up to make games for Jaguar, very few software publishers ever came through with any games. Only five games were available when Atari released Jaguar. Despite promises that more games would be out by Christmas, it took months before Atari released new games. Even worse, those first few games, which included Cybermorph, Crescent Galaxy, and Evolution: Dino Dudes, left consumers completely unimpressed.

  Even taking into account the lack of games and the controversy surrounding the processing chip, Jaguar had some marketing advantages over 3DO. Retailing at $249.95, it was far less expensive. Atari created a catchy advertising campaign in which it instructed consumers to “do the math” when comparing Jaguar’s 64 bits to 3DO’s 32. Then there were the unique controllers that appealed to some players, yet infuriated others. Jaguar controllers were fat and wide, with curved edges and rounded rolls along their bottom to create an ergonomic feel. The controller featured a number pad in its center, giving a “retro” nod to the days of ColecoVision and Intellivision.

  Although Atari never solved the dearth of games issue, two British game designers appeared on the scene to give the system a couple of outstanding titles. The first was by Jeff Minter, a former Vic 20 designer, who was known throughout the industry as “The Yak.” Tempest 2000, Minter’s first game, was a brilliant recreation of Dave Theurer’s coin-op classic, updated with shaded polygonal characters and a techno-rock soundtrack. With its great sound and fast action, Tempest 2000 proved that Jaguar could be a great game machine, given the right software.*

  Alien vs. Predator, Jaguar’s second big game, came from a British developer named Andrew Whitaker. Alien vs. Predator was a first-person shooting game of the Doom variety that could be played from the perspective of the space parasites from the movie Alien, the intergalactic hunter from the movie Predator, or a space marine. Each character had its own goals, strengths, and weaknesses. It took Whitaker seventeen months to create Alien vs. Predator. The hardware was not completed when he began work on the project, and Atari engineers changed their design four times during the time that he worked on the game.

  For every Alien vs. Predator or Tempest 2000 that appeared on Jaguar, there were many more games such as Kasumi Ninja: a weak attempt at emulating Mortal Kombat, with characters such as a Scottish brawler who shot fireballs at opponents from beneath his kilt. Despite outselling the $699 3DO in 1993, Jaguar fell behind 3DO in 1994. In an effort to salvage his sales, Tramiel even tried running television infomercials.

  The Consumer Electronics Battleground

  CHICAGO: Sega kept a low-profile at the June 23–25 Summer Consumer Electronics Show here—in the basement, to be exact—while archrival Nintendo was roaring like a 200-pound “Donkey Kong” gorilla in a massive exhibit-hall booth that literally could not be missed.3

  The 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Chicago, was the scene of grand battles, with Atari and 3DO claiming technical superiority while Nintendo and Sega clashed on other fronts.

  Nintendo entered the show on an unusual up-note. Having spent the last few years looking helplessly beaten by Sega in image marketing, Nintendo scored a hit with a game called Super Metroid. Designed by Gumpei Yokoi’s Research and Development Team Number 1, it was built off an earlier game that they had created for the NES. Super Metroid was not enough to turn the tables on Sega, but it at least served notice that Nintendo was not to be ignored.

  In 1994, Nintendo used CES to trickle out announcements about Ultra 64, the new 64-bit game console it was developing with Silicon Graphics. Company executives hired a bus and shuttled small groups of reporters to a hotel suite, where they were to be shown private screenings of Ultra 64 hardware. The groups were led into a small showroom with four televisions peering out of ceiling-high curtains. The reporters never actually saw the console, which they were told was nothing more than a prototype. Instead, they were shown a fighting game called Killer Instinct that they were told ran on Ultra 64 hardware. Nintendo did not announce a precise release date for Ultra 64 in those private screenings but indicated that the system would come out in the fall of 1995 for $250. That was the most Nintendo would release.

  More salient to Nintendo’s plans for 1994 was a curious little game adapter calle
d Super Game Boy, which enabled consumers to run Game Boy cartridges on Super NES with some muted colors. At the time, Super Game Boy seemed like a ridiculous idea. Game Boy sales had slowed, and the Super Game Boy sold for $60, more than Game Boy itself.

  Nintendo’s other hope was a game that was designed using a new technology—Donkey Kong Country.

  The Return of Rare

  Though Rare, Ltd., had dropped out of active game development, the company did not remain silent for long. Chris Stamper began work on technology that would allow him to create games with 24-bit graphics on a Silicon Graphics workstation, then convert them into the kinds of two-dimensional images that would run smoothly on the 16-bit Super NES. Once operational, Stamper’s device would give Rare an edge over every other game company. While competitors would still be creating cartoon sprites, Rare would be able to pre-render art on high-end workstations. As Chris Stamper completed the device, his brother Tim began designing a boxing game that would serve as a demonstration of the new technology. Then they invited Nintendo of Japan out to their headquarters in the tiny English town of Twycross to see what they had created.

  We had a visit from Mr. Takeda [Genyo Takeda—one of Nintendo’s top engineers]. We decided to show him a demonstration of a boxing game we had created, using rendered graphics on a Silicon Graphics workstation. He was very impressed and asked, “What would this look like on a Super NES?” So into the evening and the next day, we had two of our engineers work on taking the 24-bit true color imagery and converting it to Super NES.