Replay: The History of Video Games
Page 57
Nobunaga’s Ambition (1987, Koei, MSX, Japan): The start of Koei’s long running historical strategy game series.
UFO: Enemy Unknown / X-COM: UFO Defense (1994, Microprose, Mythos Games, PC: MS-DOS, UK): Manage the global effort to repel alien invaders from Earth in this sublime mix of battlefield tactics, research management and defensive base building. Its creator Julian Gollop has served up a succession of first-class squad-based strategy games over the years including: Laser Squad (1988, Target Games, Mythos Games, ZX Spectrum, UK): The 2D blueprint for UFO: Enemy Unknown; X-COM: Apocalypse (1997, Microprose, Mythos Games, PC: MS-DOS, UK): Turn-based and real-time hybrid follow-up to UFO: Enemy Unknown; Rebelstar: Tactical Command (2005, Namco, Codo Technologies, Game Boy Advance, UK): Portable tactical strategy; Also see his earlier RPG strategy gem Chaos (1985, Games Workshop, Julian Gollop, ZX Spectrum, UK) and its multiplayer wizard battles.
Advance Wars (2001, Nintendo, Intelligent Systems, Game Boy Advance, Japan): Expertly crafted and user-friendly game that even the strategy adverse should love.
Dynasty Tactics (2002, Koei, PlayStation 2, Japan): An invigorating strategy spin-off from Koei’s action-packed Dynasty Warriors series.
Hearts of Iron (2002, Strategy First, Paradox Interactive, PC: Windows, Sweden): Complex and historically accurate strategy that is not for the faint hearted, but is rewarding for those willing to delve deep. Also see: Europa Universalis III (2007, Paradox Interactive, PC: Windows, Sweden).
The king of turn-based strategy games has, however, been the long-running and utterly compulsive Civilization series. Sid Meier’s Civilization (1991, Microprose, Sid Meier, PC: MS-DOS, USA) marked the start but Sid Meier’s Civilization IV (2005, 2K Games, Firaxis Games, PC: Windows, USA), which introduced religion into mix, is the one to go for. The cut-down Civilization Revolution (2008, 2K Games, Firaxis, Xbox 360, USA) provides a gentler introduction, but at the expense of much the series’ subtle beauty.
God games
Will Wright’s Sim City (1989, Maxis, Will Wright, Macintosh, USA) opened the floodgates, rejecting stories and goals for open-ended play. While the original’s raw appeal still lingers, a more accessible introduction to the series that made town planning fun is Sim City 4 (2003, EA Games, Maxis, PC: Windows, USA).
The society-building rivalry of Utopia (1982, Mattel, Don Daglow, Intellivision, USA) ventured into similar territory before Sim City although it pales against Wright’s creation. The emergent dynamics of Life (1970, John Conway, PDP-7, UK) was an important influence on Wright’s game, try it at: www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife
Wright’s non-Sim City work during the 1990s was more miss than hit, but his virtual ant farm Sim Ant (1991, Maxis, Will Wright, PC: Windows, USA) laid the foundation for his next major creation: the voyeuristic doll’s house that is The Sims (2000, EA Games, Maxis, PC: Windows, USA). The increased emphasis on the lives of your virtual people in The Sims 2 (2004, EA Games, Maxis, PC: Windows, USA) only enhanced the appeal. Again others had dabbled in similar territory before:
Little Computer People (1985, Activision, David Crane, Commodore 64, USA): The Sims 15 years too early.
Alter Ego: Male Version / Alter Ego: Female Version (1986, Activision, Peter Favaro, Apple II [iPhone], USA): It may be text only but the colourful and witty writing brings it to life. The iPhone version includes both the male and female versions of this live-another-life game.
Released a few months after Sim City was Peter Molyneux’s deity sim Populous (1989, Electronic Arts, Bullfrog, Amiga, UK). Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods (1991, Electronic Arts, Bullfrog, Amiga, UK) was better though. Molyneux returned to playing god with Black & White (2001, EA Games, Lionhead Studios, PC: Windows, UK) and Black & White 2 (2005, Electronic Arts, Lionhead Studios, PC: Windows, UK), but with stronger ties between you and your followers.
Life & dating simulations
Tokmeki Memorial: Forever With You (1995, Konami, Koji Igarashi, PlayStation, Japan): High-school romance game that was incredibly popular in Japan.
Harvest Moon (1996, Natsume, Pack-in-Video, Super NES, Japan): Live an idyllic rural existence in this farm sim. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (2003, Natsume, Victor Interactive, Gamecube, Japan) captures the series’ country living delights best.
Animal Crossing (2001, Nintendo, Gamecube, Japan): Vastly entertaining life simulation where you begin a new life in a village filled with colourful characters and a seemingly never-ending supply of constant surprises. The game uses the Gamecube’s internal clock to introduce seasonal surprises on days such as Halloween.
Virtual pets
Dogz (1995, PF Magic, Rob Fulop, PC: Windows, USA): Loveable computer puppies. And for those who prefer cats: Catz (1995, PF Magic, Rob Fulop, PC: Windows, USA). Nintendogs (2005, Nintendo, Kiyoshi Mizuki, Nintendo DS, Japan) took the dog rearing to the next level.
Tamagotchi (1996, Bandai, Aki Maita, Electronic toy, Japan): The egg-shaped toy captivated millions and stretched the patience of everyone else with its constant demands for attention.
Seaman (1999, Sega, Vivarium, Dreamcast, Japan): Look after and chat with a frankly freaky fish-man-parasite thing.
Alien Fish Exchange (2001, nGame, mobile phones, UK): Fish breeding and sharing (and if you are feeling particularly mean, cooking) that foreshadowed many of the ideas that would later become the basis of social networking games.
Social networking
The explosive growth of social networks after 2005 has been accompanied by a rush of games tied to websites such as Facebook and MySpace that revolve around co-operation between friends.
Habbo (2000, Sulake Corporation, Sampo Karjalainen & Aapo Kyrölä, Finland): A social network for teenagers presented as a hotel, which has a video game look as well as games integrated into it.
Lexulous (2007, Lexulous, Rajat Agarwalla & Jayant Agarwalla, Facebook, India): Essentially a remake of the board game Scrabble. Originally called Scrabulous until Hasbro’s lawyers objected.
Parking Wars (2007, A&E Television Network, area/code, Facebook, USA): Park on other people’s streets and fine those who park on yours. Like the moment in Monopoly where you hope your opponent won’t notice you landed on their property but on a global scale.
Restaurant City (2007, Playfish, Facebook, UK): Build and manage restaurants for people to visit and enlist your friends as employees.
Farmville (2009, Zynga, Facebook, USA): Insanely popular crop growing.
Mob Wars (2009, PsychoMonkey, David Maestri, Facebook, USA): Team up with your friends to build a mafia empire by beating up rival players.
Indie & Doujin-soft
Both the western indie game scene and Japan’s equivalent doujin-soft movement are treasure troves of surprising, confusing, delightful and appalling games that are growing in number at a bewildering rate. This list can only scratch the surface:
Pencil Whipped (2000, ChiselBrain, Lorne Flickinger, PC: Windows, USA): First-person shooter set in a pencil sketch world that looks like a disturbed child’s nightmare.
Uplink (2001, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): Knife-edge hacking game. Introversion went on to make: Darwinia (2005, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): Real-time strategy reinvention; Defcon (2006, Introversion Software, Chris Delay, PC: Windows, UK): An unsettling game of global thermonuclear war.
Cave Story (2004, Studio Pixel, Daisuke Amaya, PC: Windows, Japan): A glorious Japanese indie platformer with a RPG heart.
Torus Trooper (2004, ABA Games, Kenta Cho, PC: Windows, Japan): Gut-wrenchingly fast fusion of Wipeout and Tempest.
Tumiki Fighters (2004, ABA Games, Kenta Cho, PC: Windows, Japan): Fly a toy plane through chunky polygon world and use the debris of those you destroy as a shield. Formed the basis for Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy (2008, Majesco, Budcat Creations, Wii, USA)
Dan! Da! Dan! (2005, Omega, PC: Windows, Japan): Vertically scrolling shooter where you blast your way through pastel-coloured blocks to avoid crashing.
I’m O.K. – A Murder Simulator (2005, Thompsonsoft, PC: Windows, USA): Side-scrolling shooter retort to the bombastic anti-video game campaigner Jack Thompson, who said he’ll donate $10,000 to charity if Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two released a game about a father of a child killed by a computer gamer who takes revenge by murdering people in the industry.
Passage (2007, Jason Rohrer, PC: Windows, USA): A five-minute slice of video game social commentary exploring life, death and marriage.
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (2009, Dejobaan Games, PC: Windows, USA): A game about hurtling to earth after leaping off a skyscraper. An exhilarating rush of out-of-control panic.
Blueberry Garden (2009, Erik Svedäng, PC: Windows, Sweden): Eccentric platform game.
Bonsai Barber (2009, Zoonami, Wii, UK): A quirky game where you trim the foliage of vegetable customers at your barber’s shop.
Canabalt (2009, Adam Atomic, Daniel Baranowsky, Online: Flash, USA): Many indie games champion the ideal of games controlled by one button alone. This is one of the best – a panicked and frantic race over rooftops to escape the monsters that are destroying the city.
Everyday the Same Dream (2009, Molleindustria, Paolo Pedercini, Online: Flash, Italy): Stylish agit-prop with an addictive soundtrack.
Machinarium (2009, Amanita Design, Jakub Dvorsky, PC: Windows, Czech Republic): Beautifully illustrated indie adventure game.
Zombie Pub Crawl (2009, Orange Crane Games, iPhone, USA): Marauding zombies are getting in the way of you and a pint of lager. Time to get out the gun.
Enviro-Bear 2010: Operation: Hibernation (2010, Justin Smith, iPhone, Canada): Bear tries to drive car. Cue clumsy driving chaos.
Miscellaneous
The square pegs that won’t fit the round holes:
Scram (1980, Atari Program Exchange, Chris Crawford, Atari 800, USA): Nuclear power plant management.
Frogger (1981, Sega, Konami, Coin-op, Japan): Traffic-dodging gem that defies categorisation.
Midwinter (1989, Rainbird, Maelstrom Games, Atari ST, UK): Organise a guerrilla war to overthrow an evil dictator. Its giant polygon 3D island was a technical marvel at the time although the game’s an unforgiving experience. A few years later the excellent Hunter (1991, Activision, Paul Holmes, Amiga, UK) offered a similar experience – minus the character recruitment elements – across a large 3D archipelago.
North & South (1989, Infogrames, Stéphane Baudet, Atari ST, France): Zany strategy board game with excursions into real-time strategy and platforming.
Storm Master (1991, Silmarils, André Rocques & Louis-Marie Rocques, Atari ST, France): Design strange flying machines to wage war on the enemy in action sequences.
Transarctica (1993, Silmarils, André Rocques, Amiga, France): Giant war trains battle across the frozen wastes in this unusual fusion of action, strategy and adventure.
Chop Suey (1995, 20th Century Fox, Magnet Interactive Studio, Theresa Duncan & Monica Gesue, PC: Windows, USA): Two girls go on a giddy trip through a Midwest town. One of the opening shots of the games for girls movement of the late 1990s.
Barbie Fashion Designer (1996, Mattel Media, PC: Windows, USA): Design clothes for Barbie dolls and print them out on special fabric printer paper. The first game aimed at girls to become a big success and ahead of the curve of user-generated content to boot. Create-and-print play was also explored by another girl game: Anime Land (1995, Casio, Casio Loopy, Japan): Create and decorate manga images and then turn them into stickers by printing them out on the Loopy’s thermal printer.
Snake (1997, Nokia, Nokia 6610, Finland): The first mobile phone game to grab people’s attention. Eat dots to grow your tail while avoiding the walls or your tail. Its roots can be found in Blockade (1976, Gremlin, Coin-op, USA).
Power Shovel / Power Diggerz (1999, Taito, Coin-op, Japan): Very silly fun with diggers.
Magic Pengel: The Quest for Colour (2003, Taito, Garakuda-Studio, PlayStation 2, Japan): Pokémon-style creature battling where you draw beasts that the game then brings to life.
Segagaga (2001, Sega, Tetsu Okano, Dreamcast, Japan): A tongue-in-cheek state of the industry address.
Jet Set Radio Future (2002, Sega, Smilebit, Xbox, Japan): Icily cool inline skating graffiti ’em up where you race around a city-turned-playground while decorating buildings with your spray can.
Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Microgame$! / Wario Ware Inc.: Minigame Mania (2003, Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Japan): Rapid fire bursts of bright, simple and bizarre mini-games that veer from the nostalgic to the wildly inventive.
Katamari Damacy (2004, Namco, Keita Takahashi, PlayStation 2, Japan): Roll a sticky ball around a crude-but-charismatic 3D world until you become a messy mass of people, animals, pianos and other everyday objects. Silly but fun. Keita Takahashi followed it up with the how-far-can-you-stretch madness of Noby Noby Boy (2009, Namco Bandai, Keita Takahashi, PlayStation 3, Japan).
Cooking Mama (2006, Taito, Cooking Mama, Nintendo DS, Japan): Cookery themed mini-games. Prompted a protest game from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who objected to the meat-based recipes: Cooking Mama – Mama Kills Animals (2008, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Online: Flash, USA)
The Simpsons Game (2007, Electronic Arts, EA Redwood Shores, PlayStation 3, USA): The game’s simple beat ’em up action is nothing special but its wicked lampooning of the video game industry and game design conventions demands attention, not least Will Wright’s power-crazed cameo.
Fl0w (2007, Sony Computer Entertainment, Thatgamecompany, PlayStation 3, USA): Relaxing zooplankton adventures. Drift through the ocean nibbling on other wee beasties to evolve.
Flower (2009, Sony Computer Entertainment, Thatgamecompany, PlayStation 3, USA): A dreamy, beautiful, enchanting and, above all, joyous game where you control the wind to create streams of swirling petals that cavort around the country fields bringing them back to life.
Hardware Glossary
A brief overview of the computers and consoles mentioned in this book. If you want to learn more the Old Computers website is an excellent starting point: www.old-computers.com
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3DO Interactive Multiplayer
Manufacturers: Creative Labs, Goldstar, Panasonic, Sanyo
Year released: 1993
Origin: USA
Type: Home console
Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins’ bid to create a common standard for video games. Several companies produced versions of the 3DO, starting with the Panasonic FZ-1. Creative Labs’ Creative 3DO Blaster was an expansion card that turned PCs into 3DO systems.
A
Acorn Archimedes
Manufacturer: Acorn Computers
Year released: 1987
Origin: UK
Type: Personal computer
The first computer to use Acorn’s ARM microprocessor technology.
Altair 8800
Manufacturer: MITS
Year released: 1975
Origin: USA
Type: Kit computer
One of the first computers available for home use. Inspired the formation of Microsoft.
Amiga
Manufacturers: Commodore International, Amiga Technologies
Year released: 1985
Origin: USA
Type: Personal computer
After Commodore went bust in 1994, a German company called Amiga Technologies bought the rights and continued making the Amiga line of computers until it too shut down in 1997. The Amiga now lives on as the AmigaOS operating system.
Amstrad CPC
Manufacturer: Amstrad
Year released: 1984
Origin: UK
Type: Personal computer
A popular competitor to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in Europe. Especially big in France.
Amstrad GX4000
Manufacturer: Amstrad
Year released: 1990
Origin: UK
Type: Home console
Amstr
ad’s bid to create a European rival to the NES. Based on the technology of the Amstrad CPC line of computers.
Apple I
Manufacturer: Apple Computer
Year released: 1976
Origin: USA
Type: Personal computer
One of the first fully assembled home computers. Only around 200 were made.
Apple II
Manufacturer: Apple Computer
Year released: 1977
Origin: USA
Type: Personal computer
Part of the first wave of mass-produced home computers.
Astrocade
See Bally Professional Arcade
Atari 400 / 800
Manufacturer: Atari Inc.
Year released: 1979
Origin: USA
Type: Personal computer
Originally the 400 had 4Kb of RAM and the 800 had 8Kb. Later this was upped to 48Kb.
Atari 5200 SuperSystem
Manufacturer: Atari Inc.
Year released: 1982
Origin: USA
Type: Home console
Based on the hardware of the Atari 400 and 800 computers.
Atari 7800 ProSystem
Manufacturer: Atari Inc., Atari Corporation
Year released: 1984 and 1986
Origin: USA
Type: Home console
Originally released in 1984 but when Jack Tramiel bought Atari’s consumer division soon after it was pulled from sale. Re-released in 1986 to compete with the NES.
Atari Jaguar
Manufacturer: Atari Corporation
Year released: 1993
Origin: UK
Type: Home console
Designed by Flare II, a company founded by a team that had previously worked for Sinclair Research and on the unreleased Konix Multisystem.
Atari Lynx
Manufacturer: Atari Corporation
Year released: 1989
Origin: USA
Type: Handheld console
Full colour handheld rival to the Game Boy. Designed to cater for left-handed players too. Created by some of the same team that developed the Amiga computer.