Game audio, more properly known as sound design, had once upon a time been considered just another programming task. In the same way that I could paint a portrait of the Ayatollah using a handful of pixels, I could instruct certain notes to play in a relatively melodic fashion, but both were impressive only because a machine was involved. It was like watching a child prodigy do algebra: all signs pointed to an extremely promising future, but the current output, objectively speaking, wasn’t actually that special. In my original Atari computer, audio didn’t even get a dedicated chip—it had to share space with potentiometer (aka joystick) and keyboard functions, thus christening the hardware in popular terminology as the POKEY chip.
Despite being nicknamed for other processes, you could still do a lot with a POKEY chip. It offered a range of 256 frequencies, which was far more than a standard eighty-eight-key piano provided—though most were just extra steps jammed in between the standard musical notes, and therefore only useful for sound effects. In addition, six types of distortion were available for each frequency, which the programming book De Re Atari loosely (and somewhat aspirationally) cross-referenced for its readers into categories like “Geiger counter,” “waterfall,” and “electric razor.” And if, for example, an on-screen character needed to clean up his five-o’clock shadow while simultaneously testing radiation levels at Niagara Falls, the POKEY chip offered four independent eight-bit channels, which could be—or if you prefer, “had to be”—recombined into two sixteen-bit channels in order to prevent pitch problems with more complex background music.
But like everything that was cool precisely because it was so limited, advancing technology meant that sound design couldn’t stay in the hands of programmers forever. I had already said a reluctant goodbye to audio during Pirates! a year earlier—though my replacement, Ken Lagace, had once again proven that I would be wrong to be offended. Ken was a clarinet player who had taught music for decades, and he had created his own job by simply getting in touch with Bill one day and convincing him that our games needed professional sound design. Third-party sound cards had become common, he argued, with software that could make and reproduce genuine recordings instead of single-tone beeps. I had some musical talent, but not enough to pursue it full-time, and if we didn’t keep up, our competitors would. Like its visual counterpart, game audio had officially transformed from a skill into an art, and I sadly but freely relinquished it.
Submarine sonar, however, was in some ways a step back in time from piratical sea shanties. A propeller’s asynchronous grinding was more math than emotion, and since we had no real submarines available for recording, those effects would require direct instructions to the Commodore 64’s Sound Interface Device, or SID chip. (Clearly it was meant for me.) As Larry explained the ongoing role of sonar operators in modern times, I suddenly realized how we could bring something new to our otherwise bland interface of radar dots. Each submarine in the game could have a unique signature of layered bass tones and filters, and the player could learn to identify them by ear,* just like the professionals. Red Storm Rising ended up being one of the first games to use audio as an interactive element—and having smuggled just a bit of it back into my domain, I didn’t have to feel quite so jealous of Ken’s darkly moving, top-notch soundtrack.
True to his word, that first meeting at Tom’s house was pretty much the last time we saw him until after Red Storm Rising’s release, when he joined us at the annual Consumer Electronics Show to do some publicity. While he’d had no particular interest in gaming at the outset—if I had to guess, I’d say Larry probably talked him into considering game licenses in the first place—he seemed to be impressed at both the size and the narrative vision on display throughout the show floor.
To be honest, I was too. I’d grown more confident over the last four years, of course, but I never really lost that rush of excitement I felt at our first CES with a single copy of Solo Flight in my suitcase. At least these days I could rest easy knowing that our booth design was in the capable hands of our marketing department. The software wing of the conference had continued to shift steadily toward gaming, and by 1988 it was almost starting to feel like we owned the place. Nintendo’s booth was rumored to be 20,000 square feet that year, and for the first time ever, Atari had no new computer hardware to show off, only games. The industry as a whole was approaching a billion dollars in annual sales, and some of the resulting investments were a little off the beaten path: one game advertised itself as “a futuristic cross between ice hockey, soccer and utter chaos,” while another offered a collection of Italian-themed minigames, including pillow fights on a gondola and greased pole climbing in Verona. But I certainly couldn’t argue with their enthusiasm. Based on the crowds, it must have seemed like there was a market for everything.
Before long, Tom began dropping into a more comfortable tone during quieter moments of the convention, speaking for the first time as equals rather than business associates. That night, we sat up late together, expounding on the nature of art, sources of inspiration, and the inevitable connection we develop with our creations. He revealed that the intervening months had been kind to him financially, but not so kind emotionally, as he was forced to adapt to fame and the complications that come along with it. Tom was especially troubled by ongoing contractual issues with his first book, and the fear that he might never again own the rights to his own character. The conversation was eye-opening for me, first in discovering a kindred creative spirit underneath the alpha male persona, and also in the revelation that even someone of his stature could be taken advantage of through poor business arrangements. I’d always had a distaste for business deals in general, simply because it’s not the kind of thing I want to spend my day doing, but I was starting to realize that there was potential danger in them as well.
One morning in late 1988, Bill and I sat down to review the state of the company, and look ahead to where we were going next. With the increasingly apparent success of Pirates! and our other recent games, we had a little financial breathing room, and it was time to decide what to do with it.
I thought it would be nice to invest in some employee perks, both in gratitude to those who had worked so hard for us, and to lure new talent in the future.
“What about a company condo out in Nags Head?” I suggested. The Outer Banks of North Carolina was a popular vacation destination for many in our area, and Nags Head beach was one of my personal favorites. “We could send teams down there for a change of pace, or a designer who needed to get away and percolate on an idea. Maybe even let folks take their families, if no one else was using it.”
Bill nodded thoughtfully, his mouth curling upward in that negotiating smile. “Well . . .” he began.
I knew what he was getting at, because he’d been talking about it for months. I chuckled. “You want an airplane.”
“For promotional purposes,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I said. “You get an airplane, I’ll get a condo.”
We probably discussed the logistics a little more thoroughly, but that was the gist of the conversation. I hesitate to call it a trade—it just seemed like a good balance of our personal interests, which also happened to coincide with company interests.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I soured on my idea of a company condo. It probably wouldn’t get used as much as I was hoping, and the work that did get done there would be in air quotes, at best. We’d have to hire someone to maintain it, and getting into the rental market to recoup our costs was definitely not something we wanted to do. Plus, we already did plenty of team bonding over board games in the break room, and computer programmers were not exactly known for their sunbathing habits anyway.
I shared my doubts with Bill.
“You’re right, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. Then he shrugged to indicate that my half of the deal had no bearing on his. “I still want an airplane.”
So, Bill got an airplane.
The model he chose w
as a retired North American T-28B Trojan. It was a design that had been used in counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War, as Bill liked to mention, though it was more frequently employed as a training vehicle, which didn’t get mentioned as often. Whether or not our particular plane had flown overseas, though, it was a true military aircraft, and Bill made sure our custom paint job left the large Air Force symbol intact. A wide, sky-blue stripe down the middle separated a royal-blue top and a cream-colored underbelly, with our company insignia and slogan carefully stenciled on the side just beneath the cockpit. He named it the Miss MicroProse, and kept it hangared at Martin State Airport, the same place he and I had taken our first flight together.
Bill made sure it lived up to its promotional—and tax write-off-able—value right away. He offered to take up any games journalist brave enough to fly with him, and many agreed, writing glowing articles about the experience as he’d hoped. Of course, there was a product tie-in, too: just a few months after Red Storm Rising hit shelves, I took the opportunity to return to the flight simulator genre with a game called F-19 Stealth Fighter. It was a half upgrade, half sequel to an existing game called Project Stealth Fighter, with the major distinction being that this version would be developed on the IBM personal computer. A few older games had been directly ported up to the new system, but they didn’t take advantage of the new technology; they just looked like C64 games running on a bigger machine. F-19 Stealth Fighter would be MicroProse’s first chance to demonstrate what we could accomplish with the latest and greatest tech. I was intrigued by the chance to explore this topic with an entirely new code base; plus, the F-19 relied on stealth rather than maneuverability, so there were interesting new gameplay aspects to fiddle around with as well.
Ironically, there was no such thing as an F-19 fighter jet in real life. The Air Force had numbered its jet models sequentially since the 1960s, although they skipped the F-13 due to superstition. But after the release of the F/A-18 in 1978, the next plane announced had been the F-20 Tigershark in 1982. There was no explanation for the missing number, and the popular assumption was that the F-19 was a top-secret stealth fighter that already existed, but couldn’t be admitted to. Authors wrote military thrillers about it, toy companies sold hypothetical plastic models, and soon the fiction became so well-known that when we announced our upcoming game, some fans assumed that we had access to classified information through Bill.
Then, by complete coincidence, the Pentagon did announce the existence of a secret stealth fighter jet, on the exact day our game was released—but instead of the name that everyone in the aeronautics community had taken for granted, they called it the F-117A. Some believed the F-19 was still out there, while others speculated that this seemingly random number had been swapped in only to disconnect it from the widespread assumptions. In the years since, new Air Force jets have stayed faithful to the original numbering scheme, and no other plane has ever been acknowledged in the 100-plus range. Then again, it was probably fair to put the stealth bomber in a numbering category all by itself, since it looked nothing like anyone had imagined the F-19 ought to, ourselves included.
Bill was overjoyed. For one thing, it was a marketing coup that we couldn’t have planned better if we’d tried. But for another, it seemed to everyone involved that our plane was actually better than the real one. Maybe not when it came to staying off enemy radar, but definitely in the traditional “it’s cool to blow stuff up” kind of way. I felt I had something new to contribute to the flight sim genre because stealth had finally become a factor, but the real plane was so stealthy that there was almost nothing to do. The F-117A only ran missions at night, and the lack of curved surfaces meant that adjusting rudders and flaps was mechanically difficult, to the point that real pilots had to rely almost entirely on the plane’s computer to fly for them. Target locations were calculated in advance, and the payload was fired blindly according to the math. Then the pilot simply turned around and came home. It was like sneaking around with an invisibility cheat turned on; there was no thrill.
The Air Force had been so sure of the plane’s ability to avoid enemy encounters, they hadn’t even put any guns on it. As the company that had gone out of its way to add a gun to a submarine, it was no surprise that our version of the stealth fighter did, in fact, come with lots of guns. Even better, our missiles had cameras on them, so that you could ride one all the way in and watch your target explode at close range. None of us were under the impression this would be a real military feature any time soon, but in this case, Bill was happy to throw realism out the window. It gave him great pride to know that for once, the military had gotten it wrong, and we had gotten it right.
Apparently, others felt the same way. In addition to its commercial success, the Smithsonian Institution decided to put a playable version of F-19 Stealth Fighter in the National Air and Space Museum, as part of a new gallery called “Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age.” Most museum visitors had never seen anything like it. “Personal computer” had only recently become a pair of words you could string together without sounding like a lunatic, and those who worked with them were often limited to corporate tasks. F-19 brought the concept of computer gaming into the mainstream for a large portion of the population.
Having taken every willing journalist up in the air with him, Bill then devised a contest called “I Cheated Death with Major Bill,” asking fans to submit a 200-word essay on their favorite Micro-Prose game. Three grand prize winners would take a stunt-filled flight lesson in the Miss MicroProse, while another hundred or so would receive an assortment of model airplane kits and company T-shirts. Along with all the popular computer publications, the contest was advertised in Boy’s Life magazine, though for liability reasons I’m sure—okay, I’m pretty sure—I hope that Bill never would have let a child win the grand prize.
F-19 Stealth Fighter screenshot.
© 1988 MICROPROSE, WWW.MICROPROSE.COM.
Fortunately, we had plenty of adult submissions to choose from. One was a defense contractor in his forties, who came all the way from California for the opportunity. Another was a captain for the Philadelphia Police Department. But the essayist closest to Bill’s heart was a twenty-eight-year-old engineering student from Staten Island named Joe. He wrote that his dream of becoming a real fighter pilot had been cut short by nearsightedness, but F-19 Stealth Fighter had given him a chance at the next closest thing. As someone who had barely fought past the Air Force vision regulations himself, I’m sure Bill had that kid in the winner pile from the moment he opened the envelope.
Ironically, I never flew in the Miss MicroProse myself. Over the years Bill took many other employees through high yo-yos, double barrel rolls, Immelmann turns, and all the other maneuvers we’d so carefully articulated in our early games, but I’d been uneasy enough just flying with Bill upright at normal speeds, and I knew the death-defying aerobatics weren’t for me. Eventually, the novelty wore off and we sold it again, but it was a tough little plane, and the federal aircraft registry shows that it’s still in service today at a flight school in Cincinnati. So if I really wanted to, I could still go cheat death in the Miss MicroProse. But I think I’m good.
Sometime after that, I was called into a company meeting in the break room. With our steadily growing staff, it was the only place everybody could fit all at once, and we often gathered there for birthday celebrations and other announcements. So, nothing about it struck me as unusual, until I saw the five-foot-tall rectangle draped in fabric.
Somebody gave a little speech, and then the cover was whipped off to reveal the Red Baron arcade cabinet that Bill and I had bonded over in 1982. Apparently one of our office managers had gotten in touch with the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, and the staff there had managed to locate the original machine in the casino’s basement storage. Or at least that was their story; it’s not like we carved our names into it or anything. But the model was close enough to identical, anyway.
Bill beamed with pride a
s the two of us posed inside for several photos. It was an undoubtedly cool piece of memorabilia, with a lot of great memories attached. At the same time, though, it was a poignant reminder for me that he and I were gazing into increasingly disparate futures. Bill saw this old airplane game as a bulwark of who we were as a company, a touchstone that we would always come back to. F-19 was not a fun little throwback for him, or even a final capstone on a successful run in an outdated genre. To Bill, it was the beginning of something even greater. He would never lose his passion for flight simulators.
But as I sat in that plastic pilot’s seat, smiling this way and that for the various camera angles, it was clear to me that these memories, wonderful as they were, belonged in the past. I’d never be making another flight simulator again.
* Achievement Unlocked: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—Gather four moustaches.
† Achievement Unlocked: Prosthetic Devices—Collect Blackbeard, a peg leg, Van Gogh, and an ear.
8
OVERT PROTRACTION
Sid Meier’s Covert Action (1990)
NINETEEN EIGHTY-NINE WAS a complicated year. For the first time in a decade, I wouldn’t release a single game, and for the first time ever, I would prepare to be a father. Not that the two had anything to do with each other, except maybe that both were indications of my growing job security.
As a company, we were now releasing three or four games a year and generating around $15 million in revenue. We’d recently opened a London office with an additional thirty staff members, and the executive team was busy looking for more ways to expand without bogging down our existing development teams. Officially, Bill’s title was President and mine was Senior Vice President, but in practice we were equals over separate domains. Sometimes I compromised and worked on a military title I felt lukewarm about, and sometimes he compromised and sold a pirate game he couldn’t see the point of, but in general I left all corporate policy-making up to him, including issues of expansion. Bill and the other directors decided to create an internal label called Microplay, and use it to publish titles from third-party studios. It was a reasonable idea from a growth standpoint, and took some of the pressure off the in-house teams to churn out one hit after another. It also removed whatever pressure was left on me personally to create more military content, and allowed me to set up camp permanently in the action-adventure-simulation genre, wherever that was. Maybe it was just the Sid genre.
Sid Meier's Memoir! Page 9
