Hello and welcome to Retro Rewind! This series is my attempt to experience and better appreciate the games of yesteryear. I have a lot to play through and these articles will serve as a way to formalize and share my thoughts on what I am playing. Some entries may be dedicated to just one game in-depth, some may cover a handful of games in brief. I have a hand-selected library of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance titles to tackle consisting of games from all walks of life. While not all of it may have aged well or be entertaining by today’s standards, I hope that along the way I inspire you to pick up a controller and try something new – or, well, old rather.
In this first entry in the Retro Rewind series, I will be examining some of the landmark titles of the earliest days of the video game industry. Namely: PONG, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Centipede, Defender, Route-16, Frogger, and Donkey Kong.
PONG
- Developer: Atari
- Publisher: Atari
- Release Date: November 1972
- Original Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: “Pong / Asteroids / Yars’ Revenge” (GBA, 2005)
In The Beginning There Was… PONG
Originally released in 1972, PONG was one of the earliest arcade games and among some of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity. PONG is an electronic simulation of table tennis or “ping pong”. The concept is simple: defeat your opponent by earning a greater score. As I was playing the Game Boy Advance port included in 2005’s “Pong / Asteroids / Yars’ Revenge” compilation release, the game was first to nine points (as opposed to eleven).
Like table tennis, a net divides your table, you hit a ball, someone serves, and someone returns. You control your paddle vertically along the side of the screen to hit the ball back and forth across the net until someone scores, keeping in mind that every time the ball is bounced back the ball gets faster. The ball will bounce back into play off an invisible barrier surrounding the top and bottom of the table, preventing the ball from falling off-screen. A particularly interesting trait, especially at the time, is that the player can spin the ball and alter its trajectory by returning the ball from different spots on the paddle.
While I have seen the game before and played it before briefly in passing, I hadn’t really sat down and played it properly before. A few minutes of a Flash game or old monochrome mobile phone version in my past shouldn’t really count. Experiencing it today in 2014, for the first time, I did not find that it aged particularly well. I played a fair bit of it and never won a match. At times, the hit detection for the ball against my paddle was frustrating and trying to move the paddle using the Game Boy Advance’s D-pad instead of a traditional Atari paddle wheel is a cumbersome, inaccurate, and clunky exercise at best.
I suppose it’s a classic, by definition, but I wouldn’t recommended revisiting it today. You likely already know all there is to know about it without even having to play it.
So, then, why is PONG important? History.
Coming off the success of Nutting Associates’ “Computer Space”, the world’s first commercially sold coin-operated video game, it’s creators, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, would go on to found Atari, Inc. with the intention of designing and releasing their own video games. They hired engineer and computer scientist Allan Alcorn – a former co-worker of Dabney at the electronics company, Ampex. As a training exercise, Alcorn was to design and build a game based on a demonstration Bushnell had seen of Ralph Baer’s “Tennis” for the then upcoming Magnavox Odyssey – the first home video game console with interchangeable cartridges and accessories.
The enormous success of Alcorn’s prototype inside of a local bar in California in 1972, led to Atari manufacturing their first arcade game. By the end of 1974, Atari had made $3.2 million. Following Atari’s success in arcades, they began to turn their attention to the home market dominated by Magnavox and had signed a deal with Sears to release an official home version of Pong. The device was a dedicated, self-contained game and console unit and sales quickly eclipsed that of the Magnavox Odyssey. By the end of 1975, Atari had sold $40 million worth of PONG. It was the first video game to be mass-produced and, more importantly, successful on a wide scale.
It was the crowing achievement in amusement technology. PONG was simple and accessible. It established the sports genre, it introduced the multiplayer format and competitive play, it was the first use of a HUD or “heads-up display” in a video game, it featured stark black and white imagery, and produced evocative sound effects. The hollow, ringing, ‘pong’ beep sound effect was very well recognized. The game was exciting, for its time.
With the game’s success came countless clones and imitators, even Nintendo’s first video game – a ball and paddle derivative “Light Tennis” game machine called Color TV-Game 6. Besides Nintendo, PONG’s success also inspired many of the big names we see in gaming today. Konami ventured out of the jukebox rental and repair business and into manufacturing “amusement machines” for arcades. The Nakamura Amusement machine Manufacturing Company or “NAMCO” acquired Atari’s Tokyo-based subsidiary in 1974 and helped to expand the Japanese gaming industry into the West. PONG’s success also gave rise to Atari’s Video Computer System or more commonly known as the Atari 2600.
It was a small game with a big impact. It was a phenomenon. It was the Wii Sports of its day. It wasn’t the most innovative game or even the first video game, but it took what was then a niche and hobby market and proceeded to permeate popular culture, launching an industry. That is why PONG is important. It’s success paved the way for later games such as…
Space Invaders
- Developer: Taito
- Publisher: Taito and Midway
- Release Date: June 1978
- Original Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: “Space Invaders: The Original Game” (SNES, 1997)
The invasion was not from space, but from Japan. While PONG might have introduced the world to video games, six years later it would be Taito’s Space Invaders that would prove to be gaming’s first true worldwide success story. In 1978, the global takeover of Japanese game design had begun.
The layout of this game may look familiar. PONG’s success led Atari to create Breakout, which I’m positive you’re familiar with to some capacity. Developer Tomohiro Hishikado took Breakout’s layout and altered the game’s mechanics. Instead of bouncing a ball back into static objects, you fire projectiles at moving enemies at will. All while those same enemies are firing at you independently – a new concept at the time.
From the games I am playing in this historical retrospective, Space Invaders is the first one with an objective that could be construed as a loose narrative premise. So, that’s an marked improvement. Otherworlders are invading and you, the player, are the planet’s lone layer of defence as you take command of a laser cannon on the moon and fire at the descending extraterrestrials. The aliens are arranged in a tight row and column formation, marching left and right across the screen, advancing towards the bottom of the screen and surface of the moon. You move the laser cannon horizontally across the screen and hide behind four convenient destructible shields to play a game of intergalactic fire and retreat.
As the alien invaders are defeated one by one, their march grows faster – as does the ever-thudding heart beat-like bass beat of impending doom. When the screen is cleared, a new wave of invaders appears. The game does not end; you lose if the aliens reach the bottom of the screen. The goal is to keep wiping out waves and beat the high score – an especially lofty goal, as this was the first time a video game would save a player’s score. But don’t worry, as you had a few chances to break the score – this was the first game to offer multiple lives!
I was playing the 1997 Super NES release entitled “Space Invaders: The Original Game”. A neat feature on this version is the ability to pick a cabinet’s visual type to emulate. Options include black and white graphics, variations on coloured cellophane, and with graphics reflected onto backdrop of a moon against the stars. I opted for the latter.
“The Original Game”‘s handheld release on the Game Boy is particularly notable. When played on the Super Game Boy adapter for the Super NES, the game features two additional different versions of the game from what you would normally experience playing on the Game Boy. It includes a “Super Game Boy” version, based off the Game Boy original but with colour filter options similar to the Super NES release in addition to sporting borders mimicking arcade cabinets. Those borders would have been a nice touch on the Super NES version, I think. Most interesting, however, is that the cartridge also includes an “Arcade” version that is accessible only through the Super Game Boy and this is essentially the full Super NES version that I played. One cartridge, three different versions of the game. If you’re looking to check out this game, I recommend you get your hands on this Super Game Boy enhanced version.
Anyway, I enjoyed this game, more than I did PONG at least. Yes, it’s not entirely impressive today. But look at how much of a difference this is from PONG six years prior! We have a premise, we have the first use of continuous music, we have colour! It is also one of the earliest examples of a shooting game. Through the countless waves of marching, attacking aliens, and foreboding music, Space Invaders provided players with a sense of urgency that immersed players into the game. Released in 1978, it was the best-selling video game of its time having ranked in profits of over $500 million. The game was so popular that Atari decided they needed to have this game on their home systems. While Atari had released many of their own popular arcade games on the Atari 2600, they had never before considered another company’s game. It became the first title to sell a million cartridges.
Like PONG before it, Space Invaders also influenced some of the more well-known faces in the industry today with both Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima citing the game as having gotten them interested in video games. It also pioneered the genre of action or science fiction titles, and we’ll see a few more of those in the games we’re taking a look at today.
Asteroids
- Developer: Atari
- Publisher: Atari
- Release Date: November 1979
- Original Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: “Pong / Asteroids / Yars’ Revenge” (GBA, 2005)
It was the late 70s. Space Invaders was a big hit. The world was in the midst of Star Wars disco fever. Needless to say, space shoot ’em ups were the big things in arcades at the time.
While PONG was Atari’s first great success, and an important success story for the industry in general, Asteroids was their first true smash hit. More than a pub novelty, the game was simple yet addictive and designed to eat coins. The game went on to become Atari’s greatest hit ever. They sold well over 70,000 arcade units, ranking in an estimated $150 million in sales while arcade operators collectively earned upwards of $500 million from coin drops. Not to mention the home releases at the time and all the ports, remakes, and compilation releases since then as well as the countless clones.
In Asteroids, you are on the beat as part of the Cosmic Space Patrol and defending your Cosmic Spacecraft against the never-ending barrage of a deadly asteroid field. You must survive, and score points along the way, by vaporizing the onslaught of asteroids and the occasional enemy saucer. Destroying an asteroid will break it up into multiple smaller, but no less fatal, bits of rock for you to avoid colliding with. The longer you survive, naturally, the more difficulty things become and the more obstacles you encounter.
Like Space Invaders, there is a “heart beat” motif playing although much slower. However, at least on the Game Boy Advance version, you cannot hear it if you’re shooting and you are pretty much shooting the entire time.
Of note here is the amount of control you have the spacecraft you pilot. You begin in the dead centre of the screen. You can rotate your ship and thrust for movement. Once moving, you will continue to drift in that direction until you rotate and thrust elsewhere or eventually drift to slow stop. Your ship is also equipped with photon torpedoes to fire at the asteroids and saucers. Lastly, you have the ability to activate hyperspace, which will instantly transport your spacecraft to a random location on the screen.
Asteroids can be seen as “Computer Space: Redux” from Bushnell and Dabney, only now under the Atari banner. Not to credit them with the game’s creation, that honour goes to Lyle Rains and Ed Logg. But both games build off the premise and design of 1962’s Spacewar! game, aiming to refine it and create a single-player experience whereas Spacewar! was strictly a two-player simultaneous game. Heck, Asteroids even features “hyperspace” teleporting, which was originally from Spacewar!
If you for some reason feel compelled to try it out today, you can pick up “Asteroids Original and Deluxe” on the Xbox Live Arcade. It features “classic” arcade ports of both games (“Deluxe” being a sequel of sorts, or rather an “updated version”) and an “evolved” mode sporting HD audio/visual facelifts. Just bare in mind that fancy graphical effects don’t really mask the feeling of playing a now thirty-five year old game. It is archaic. You will curse yourself every time you use hyperspace to escape an asteroid only to find that in transplanted you right in front of another.
The original game was released as a hopeful Space Invaders killer. While addictive, I don’t think it succeeded as such. The game may still be easily understandable, innovative for its time, and striking in appearance thanks to vector display technology, but I found that Space Invaders did all of it better and is ultimately more fun.
Galaxian
- Developer: Namco
- Publisher: Namco / Midway
- Release Date: December 1979
- Original Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: Famicom, 1984
WE ARE THE GALAXIANS
MISSION: DESTROY ALIENS
Back to Japan now, and only a month after the release of Asteroids, we see Namco release a terrific space shooter called Galaxian. Galaxian is clearly inspired by Space Invaders, released as a direct competitor to Taito’s juggernaut in fact, but it significantly improves the formula and adds full colour to boot!
Namco was in the arcade machine manufacturing and distribution business and had recently gotten their toes wet in developing original software with “Gee Bee” in 1978. Today, they’re synonymous with Pac-Man of course, but Galaxian is where they first struck it big. This game changed everything.
With Galaxian, Nacmo revolutionized the industry by being the first video game to use true RGB colour model graphics. Colour! Beautiful colour! This looks like a video game. This isn’t PONG or Asteroids; it doesn’t look archaic. This isn’t Space Invaders, which faked colour by applying strips of coloured cellophane overtop of a black and white display. This is actual colour and it looked glorious.
Colour aside, the game is great fun! Namco saw Space Invaders and decided that not only could they make a game like it but that they could also best it. They wanted to compete against it. Galaxian takes the Space Invaders formula, expands it, and improves upon it. No longer did enemies march horizontally as they descended down the screen. Enemies now descend in pattern formations from different parts of the screen, breaking away kamikaze-style in various directions on a bombing run aimed at the player. The gameplay therefore was less predictable, more difficult, and more complex than Space Invaders and required an additional element of strategy to master. They did mange to give Taito and Space Invaders a run for their yen.
You control the Galaxip against the invading Galaxians. Unlike Space Invaders, there isn’t any cover to hide behind. So, be quick and accurate and avoid colliding with the bombarding aliens. There are three different colours of Galaxian in addition to the Flagships, each serving a different role with different diving patterns. You score different amount of points depending on the Galaxian type and the action it is performing when hit. Defeat a swarm and a new more aggressive one replaces it. The gameplay is simple yet complex.
Visually the game is impactful. The sprites are animated. The colour is used to great effect – from different coloured Galaxians, to coloured fonts for the score, the HUD icons showing your lives and number of swarms eliminated. The aliens blow up in an explosion of colour. The starfield constantly scrolls in the background. With audio, again we have a “beat” though far less foreboding and largely the sound field is based of off sound effects and jingles.
It all comes together wonderfully and is the most enjoyable game I’ve played thus far. Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Galaxian collectively ushered in the Golded Age of Arcade Video Games starting in the late 1970s and lasting until the mid-1980s.
Pac-Man
- Developer: Namco
- Publisher: Namco / Midway
- Release Date: May 1980
- Original Platform: Arcade
- Version Played: NES, 1984
Still in Japan, but we’re no longer in space. And that is key as that’s why Pac-Man exists.
According to Namco, the public was fed up with space shoot ’em ups and PONG clones. The game’s designer and creator, Toru Iwatani, sought to create something that could appeal to a larger demographic.
Legend has it that in 1979 Iwatani was staring down into a pizza box hungrily. Two slices were removed. The pie resembled a mouth. Bingo. Food. Food was the answer. This married well with some market research Namco was doing at the time on the female audience. They determined, apparently, that women like romance, fashion, and… eating. Iwatani says the first two don’t particularly lend themselves well as a compelling gaming concept. But, food? Everyone loves to eat.
And so it came to be that Namco made a game about a partially eaten living pizza that eats fruit. Pac-Man is a game centred on the joy of eating. The name “Pac-Man”, or rather “Pakku-Man” is derived from the Japanese phrase “paku-paku taberu” – an onomatopoeic phrase used to describe the sound of a mouth’s movement while being opened widely and then closed again in succession. Essentially, in modern vernacular, if the game were conceived today, Pac-Man may very well have been named “Nomnom-Man”.
Beyond eating, Iwatani threw in other elements to appeal to a wider audience and brighten up the young adolescent male dominated Japanese game centres. Iwatani wanted a game that would make people laugh and have fun. So, having Pac-Man navigate a maze was added, as was comical cutscenes, and the use of colourful kawaii gumdrop-like ghost enemies with unique personalities – Blinky the chaser, Pinky the ambusher, the bashful Inky, and the “slow” Clyde. The idea of the Power Pellet powering up Pac-Man was borrowed from Popeye and his spinach.
Gobbling up pellets and fruit while navigating a maze guarded by cute ghosts was a highly original, weird, and refreshing concept. And it was a massive hit. Pac-Man had his own cereal, an animated series by Hanna-Barbera, and hit single titled Pac-Man Fever. Not to mention all the other merchandising opportunities.
Pac-Man was the first video game mascot. It was the first game designed to appeal to a female audience. It was the first “maze chase” or “dot eat” game. It was the first successful example of licensing and merchandising in the gaming industry. It was the first game to include power-ups. It was the first game to feature cutscenes.
It was a big deal. And it was fun. Endlessly addictive and challenging. You’re just playing the same level over and over again, but it’s always exciting. The speed and challenge continually ratchets up and the ghosts always catch you off-guard. You know the game – navigate a maze eating dots, avoid the ghosts, eat a Power Pallet to make the enemy ghosts vulnerable, eat fruit for extra points, eat every dot, finish the level, repeat.
The NES port is pretty solid. It’s scaled down a bit so that the entire map can fit on one screen. The audio, graphics, and gameplay are accurate to the arcade version. All the elements are there and it is a classic.
Pac-Man has a bit of a funny history on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Namco released the original port on the Famicom, which Tengen then released in North America for the NES. Same game. Later though, once Tengen became an unlicensed developer they proceeded to release an unlicensed version of the game. Eventually Namco took the game and released it on their own for the NES. So, there are several versions of the game released. Doesn’t matter which one you play though as they’re all the same minus the copyright on the title screen. The same port of the game was again later released on the Game Boy Advance as part of the “Classic NES Series”, which was published by Nintendo.
That was a very informative and fun read. I think the takeaway point from this article is the importance of the mascot. PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, and Mario are still here today, while the other games (although successful at one point) have faded away somewhat. As you said, even Frogger (no way near as popular as PAC-MAN, DK, or Mario but a mascot nonetheless) became the basis for a pop song.