The need fulfilled by the creation of the console video game is not as apparent. Video games are a medium created solely for our pleasure, and satisfaction is not a particularly material thing. Neither is there an obvious expressive function, since in a video game the main objective is consumption where the player provides the impetus. After all, where is the artistic worth in a small white ball being driven back and forth by two faux paddles?
A thorough examination of the development and history of the video game would reveal much more than a simple diversion, or a technology without value. Video games have held a rather interesting position in the screen of pop culture. While electronic gaming in general has always fought for legitimacy in both technological and cultural history, it has also produced a billion-dollar industry, spawned cultural phenomena, and altered the way an entire generation perceives reality.
The idea of playing games with mechanical assistance did not originate with the advent of video gaming. The basic technology of pinball has existed since the nineteenth century, its origins in “Bagatelle, a form of billiards in which players used a cue to shoot balls up a sloped table. The goal of the game was to get the balls into one of nine cups placed along the face of the table” (Kent 2). Eventually the cue was replaced with a built-in plunger, and the game of pinball began to take shape before the turn of the century. In 1931 David Gottlieb created Baffle Ball, where the only moving part was the plunger. Once launched, players would guide the ball into scoring pockets “by nudging the entire Baffle Ball cabinet, a technique later known as ‘tilting’” (Kent 3). The game would become even more challenging by the addition of a pendulum mechanism that would end the game if the machine was rocked too hard, and electric scoring pockets “which knocked the ball back into the playfield” (Kent 4). The revised game of pinball became immensely popular and some slot-machine companies began creating machines that rewarded high scores with nickel pay-outs. Pinball was then considered another form of gambling, losing legitimacy as well as legality in many areas.
The game of pinball was greatly changed by the introduction of the flipper in 1947, because players now “scored most of their points by knocking the ball back into play with flippers rather than relying on luck and gravity” (Kent 6). The flippers “not only changed the basic landscape of the games themselves, but specific to the players, it really changed how they interacted with the games” (Kent 6). Mechanical gaming was no longer a passive activity. Both player and machine acted and reacted in response to each other’s actions.
Pinball was once more a legal activity, and manufacturers formed business relationships with the distributors of jukeboxes in order to find an outlet for their products. Pinball was joined by a legion of mechanical games that “simulated horse racing, hunting, and Western gunfights…one of the most popular themes was the shooting arcade” (Kent 10). These novelty games were beneficiaries of the interactivity established by the flipper, and in turn are the “direct ancestors of modern video games” (Kent 11).
The technology of video gaming has two evolutionary tracks which may sometimes often work together but more often one will outpace the other despite their interdependence. These are the hardware and the software. In computer terminology hardware is the “computer and associated physical equipment directly involved in the performance of data-processing or communications functions” (Houghton Mifflin) while software is “the programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation” (Houghton Mifflin). Video game hardware can be a personal computer, an arcade machine, or a home console system. Video game software is of course, the games. These games can be burned into the system, or inputted utilizing a variety of formats including floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and cartridges. A piece of hardware is useless without the functions provided by a piece of software, and software cannot do anything unless joined with appropriate hardware.
Though these two tracks are interdependent, they are not always equal. Software does not always take full advantage of the capabilities of the hardware it runs on, and advanced software has been created without hardware capable of running it. It can be years and sometimes decades before the full potential of any new advances are felt.
It seems impossible to create software that cannot be run on current hardware. After all, how would a game developer know if his program even works when there is no technology capable of testing it? Video games are unique because they have both a mentor and companion in the computer industry. In essence video gaming is but a subset of computing, since they utilize the same discoveries and concepts, the most prominent being the microprocessor. Video games were first developed on the computer, and it would be years before anyone would consider creating a specialized machine for game playing. In considering the role of hardware in the evolution of video games, it is arcade and console systems that should be looked at. While home computer games are popular and have influenced technology and culture in their own subtle way, their development is not as interesting or as pivotal because they are merely a side-product of the computing revolution. The software and the idea of playing games electronically conforms itself to a machine present in many homes and having many uses. Arcade and console machines were specifically developed for the purpose of playing electronic games. Their design has been limited and optimized for that purpose, and every new advance in that technology is made with the intent of improving game performance. The video game industry has created a system where the hardware and software are completely equal and interdependent, both technologically and economically.
The issue of hardware and software is especially relevant in deciding what invention holds the claim as the first ‘true’ video game. In 1958 the Brookhaven National Laboratory began tours of their facility in order to ease concerns about the atomic experiments performed there. One of their employees, a scientist named Willy Higinbotham, created a game he called ‘Tennis for Two’ as a way to make the tours more interesting. The program was rigged together using “an analog computer, one that used variable voltages rather than on-off pulses to represent information” (Anderson). A “giant collection of wires and machinery connected to a tiny 5" oscilloscope display” (Kosak 2) allowed players to perceive the virtual tennis court. Though the game became popular with visitors, “some of whom waited as long as two hours to try the new game” (Kosak 2), Higinbotham never considered his tennis game as more than mere novelty and did not think about marketing. As an instance of independent invention, other programmers would later create their own tennis games without prior knowledge of the contraption at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, undermining its overall importance. It is especially noted that this version of virtual table tennis operated on an analog system, while the remainder of the video game industry benefited from the development of digital circuitry.
Recognition as the first computer game is most often and rightly so given to Spacewar, a complex program created by Steve Russell on a donated PDP-1 [Programmable Data Processor] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. The first version involved “a simple duel between rocket ships. Using toggle switches built into the PDP-1, players controlled the speed and direction of both ships and fired torpedoes at each other” (Kent 18). However, Russell was a member of the Tech Model Railroad Club, whose members “loved jury rigging systems” (Kent 16) and would “write programs for the good of the computer-loving community” (Kent 17). Programs for the PDP-1 were stored on “ticker tapes in a drawer near the computer, where anyone could try them out or even revise them” (Kent 17). So it was not long before the members were improving the game, adding features like an accurate star map background, a sun with a gravitational field that affected the flight of ships, and the hyperspace button which randomly transported ships to an alternate location on the screen. Other members built custom controllers for the game that were “easier to use because they had dedicated switches for every Spacewar function” (Kent 20). This was the first instance of specialized game hardware.
As with Higinbotham, Steve Russell was not interested in making money from his program, creating it only for the challenge and stimulation it provided. The invention of dedicated game architecture would arise from the corporate sector, with those holding an interest in making money off everything they develop. A group of engineers at Sanders Associates led by Ralph Baer were assigned the objective of creating games that could be played on an ordinary television set. The team created several games, which were all two-person because “Baer’s machine was not powerful enough to control objects or run any form of artificial intelligence” (Kent 24). Eventually they even created their own ping-pong game. The team sold their invention to Magnavox, and the finished product became known as the Odyssey. Magnavox made a decision to leave out the game select switches from the prototype and “make games selectable by plugging in various cards that acted as switches to ‘redirect’ the console's circuitry” (ClassicGaming). So not only was the Odyssey the very first system, it was the first system to feature interchangeable games and use external hardware components to make that change. These concepts continue today, though in a more advanced format in which game data is actually stored on outside media. The cards of the Odyssey merely rewired the system in altering the circuitry with their presence.
Despite the technical innovations apparent in the system, manufacturing costs were high and the retail price was deterrent to healthy sales. The marketing was also amiss, since the advertising “showed it hooked up to Magnavox TV sets and gave everyone the impression that this thing only worked on Magnavox TV sets” (Kent 25). The Odyssey was a commercial failure.
The impact of the Odyssey is not entirely negligible, however. As part of the marketing campaign a series of demonstrations were held across the country for dealers and distributors. One of the attendees was Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari (Kent 46). While the Odyssey did not have any technological influence on the systems that followed, it certainly had an inspirational and ideological influence on the industry through its brief contract with this one influential man. An even stronger impact was made during Bushnell’s college years by his introduction to Spacewar. He attempted to market an arcade version of the game in 1971, renaming it Computer Space. The machines were built and distributed by Nutting Associates. However, buyers “saw little potential in Computer Space and very few of them bought machines” (Kent 33) while Nolan “admits that the instructions were too complex” (Kent 34). This failure encouraged Bushnell to form his own company. Achieving success in this new industry would require making the games more accessible to the audience. Any game created had to be cheap and “so simple that any drunk in any bar could play” (Cohen 23). Atari began by making pinball machines, but eventually vice president Al Alcorn was given the task of creating an electronic ping-pong game. Rather than simply reincarnating the previous versions of the game developed by both Higinbotham and Baer, Alcorn added a number of enhancements to the game. Instead of using a single line to represent each paddle, he “broke the paddles into eight segments. If the ball hit the two center segments of the paddle, it flew straight back at a 180-degree angle. If the ball hit the next segments, it ricocheted off at a shallow angle. Hitting the ball with the outer edges of the paddle would send the ball back at a 45-degree angle” (Kent 41). He also added ball acceleration by writing the game “so that after the ball had been hit a certain number of times, it would automatically fly faster” (Kent 41). The finished game was placed in a local bar, with instructions that simply read, “Avoid missing ball for high score” (Cohen 29). The game was approached by a group of college kids who stared at the screen for a few rounds before finally trying out the paddles and figuring out the dynamics of the game. The first game ended unevenly because of the initial confusion but “seven quarters later they were having extended volleys, and the constant pong noise was attracting the curiosity of others at the bar. Before closing, everybody in the bar had played the game” (Cohen 29). The following night Alcorn was called over for maintenance on the machine because it had stopped working. Upon examination the cause was not a defect with the hardware or software, but because coin box had overflowed. This was the very first instance of commercial success in the video game industry.
Atari began manufacturing the systems without a patent and could barely keep up with growing demand. In response imitators sprung up, and it was estimated that “of the hundred thousand Pong-type games produced in 1974, only a tenth were made by Atari” (Cohen 39). While this flooding of the market exhausted the success of Pong in six months, it also encouraged Atari to “be fast and out-innovate the competition” (Kent 59). Atari needed to move on to something better, and the industry in general would benefit from this progress. Atari began to develop games in a greater variety of genres, including a maze game named Gotcha and the racing simulation Trak 10. They developed “an unwritten manifesto that did not allow designers to make games that had been done before” (Kent 63). Other companies soon followed this ideology. The Japanese company Taito developed Gunfight, “a shoot-out in which two players controlled cowboys who shot at each other from opposite sides of the screen” (Kent 63). They licensed it to Midway for the U.S. market, who “introduced new technology to the videogame market… [David] Nutting not only sharpened the graphics, he placed objects between the fighters. Sometimes cactus or stagecoaches appeared in the middle of the duel to add to the challenge. To power these changes, Nutting incorporated a microprocessor into the game’s design, making Gunfight the first video game with a microprocessor” (Kent 64). Games became capable of greater sophistication and variety, and it was now possible to incorporate some degree of artificial intelligence.
Engineers at Atari created the first Home Pong system in 1974, but initially had trouble selling it because “electronics buyers, remembering that Magnavox had sold only 100,000 Odysseys, asserted that consumers weren’t interested in television games” (Kent 81). Eventually Bushnell made a deal with the sporting goods department of Sears Roebuck, and the game “sold out before it reached the stores” (Cohen 48). Initially Atari was not met with competition because the coin-operated and home video game markets were “two completely separate businesses, with different technologies, distribution networks, and markets. The manufacturing process is similar but requires new facilities” (Cohen 47). But success breeds imitators, so “seventy-five new companies promised to launch home television tennis games in 1976” (Kent 94). Fortunately the new success of home gaming also encouraged companies to innovate.
Fairchild Camera and Instrument responded by creating the Channel F system in August 1976. Though it never developed a large following, it changed the consumer market forever. The Channel F was the first system to play games stored on interchangeable cartridges. Each game “contained a microchip with a game programmed into it… consumers no longer wanted single-game consoles at any price” (Kent 98). Atari began work on the Video Computer System [VCS].
Consumers started to lose interest in video games, because “the novelty of playing games on a television had disappeared. Video games had been around for four years. People even had them in their homes” (Kent 104). Though a number of new systems like RCA’s Studio 2 and Magnavox’s Odyssey 2 emerged in this interim, consumers were possibly “confused by the sheer number of home video games, they didn’t buy anybody’s video product” (Cohen 63). Only Atari and Coleco weathered this depression. The VCS was released in 1977 but sales were initially lackluster.
The industry was reborn with the creation of Space Invaders, another Taito product. In a few months the game was a phenomenon in Japanese arcades, causing “a national coin shortage. The Japanese mint had to triple the production of the 100-yen piece because so many coins were glutted in the arcades” (Kent 116). The reaction was similar in the United States, and Space Invaders was even licensed for the VCS, the “first time a company licensed an arcade game for a home video system” (Cohen 79). This practice continues even today. Video games became “the most lucrative equipment a vendor could own” (Kent 117) despite their illegitimacy in the public eye due to early associations with bars and pool halls. To combat this image problem, Bushnell created the Chuck E. Cheese chain of restaurants. These establishments served pizza and offered a chance for the public to play arcade games while they waited. Bushnell hoped that the restaurants would make video games a family activity where “parents were practically forced to let their children play them” (Kent 119). While the chain was highly successful, it also served to marginalize video gaming as a juvenile pastime.
Sales for the VCS continued to grow and the technology began to stagnate. Atari was bought by Warner Communications and Bushnell ousted. Originally Atari “was an engineering company. The leadership took risks and pioneered new technologies” (Kent 124). Under new president Ray Kassar the focus shifted to marketing. The company concentrated on pushing the VCS to its fullest potential without consideration for future development.
The coin-op industry also experienced a boom, spurred on by Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Pac-Man was a “simple yellow circle with a wedge cut away for a mouth… players used a joystick to guide Pac-Man as he swallowed a line of 240 dots in the maze. Four ghosts swept through the maze as well, trying to catch Pac-Man. The player lost if the ghosts caught Pac-Man before he cleared all of the dots” (Kent 141). The game became insanely popular to the point where “people who don’t even know about video games know about Pac-Man” (Kent 142). The character emerged as a cultural icon, with “100,000 Pac-Man machines sold in the United States. Several companies published Pac-Man strategy guides. Pac-Man appeared on the cover of Time magazine, inspired a hit song, and translated into a popular Saturday morning cartoon show” (Kent 143). Pac-Man was not the first imaginary or created character to achieve such popularity, having been preceded by such luminous icons as Mickey Mouse, Superman, or even Santa Claus. He was the first video game idol, representing the industry in the mainstream, garnering new awareness and some legitimacy for video gaming. In holding such a prominent role in cultural consciousness, Pac-Man illustrated a shift in our perceptions toward the virtual or indirectly-experienced. Society became the audience rather than participants, with Pac-Man as an avatar through which the player interacted. Video games are about being someone else, and their overwhelming popularity during this time could indicate a societal need for façades.
While Pac-Man dominated the arcades, Coleco released the ColecoVision and Mattel created the Intellivision to counter Atari’s market dominance. The latter “had a newer and more powerful CPU than VCS, slightly more memory, and played better-looking games. Intellivision games tended to have more detailed graphics” (Kent 195). It went on to sell 3.5 million units worldwide in 1983 (Kent 196). The supremacy of the VCS remained intact despite its stagnant technology, encouraged by a team of Atari engineers who “proved to be masters at pulling a lot of power out of the [system’s] overtaxed hardware” and “found ways to expand its native capabilities and make it perform tasks that went far beyond anything that Al Alcorn and Jay Miner had ever envisioned” (Kent 180).
Several programmers defected from Atari to form their own company, Activision. They created programs for the VCS, becoming the first independent game publisher. Atari previously operated on a business model “built around selling console hardware as cheaply as possible and making profits from software” (Kent 193). With the establishment of Activision the creation of hardware and software were no longer synonymous or interdependent, and “Activision replaced Atari as the fastest-growing company in the history of the United States” (Kent 227). Other companies were quick to join in the lucrative practice, resulting in a windfall of games.
The sharp increase in third-party game publishers, as well as Atari’s own overconfidence eventually led to a glut in game releases. Most of these were of poor quality, and consumers began to lose interest. Eventually Atari “made the hardware upgrade that Nolan Bushnell had suggested in 1978: a new and improved game console called the Atari 5200” (Kent 229). Though the system was technically impressive, “it had a fairly small library of games, and Atari’s programming team could not devote its full attention to the 5200 because it was still making games for the huge 2600 user base” (Kent 230). Improved hardware alone cannot sell a system, since the video game industry in defined by the games. Profits continued to drop and unsold inventory piled up. Warner Communications sold Atari after incurring some $356 million in losses (Kent 240). Coleco ventured into the toy business instead, and Mattel sold off its electronics division.
The next few years showcased the creation of the computer gaming market, as the Commodore 64 and Apple II enjoyed a great deal of success. This period saw the founding of Electronic Arts, “a company with a central tenet that ran counter to the entire fabric of the computer and video game industries-promoting game designers” (Kent 260). Previously designers were not given credit for their work because of work-for-hire issues, as well as company fears that rival corporations would hire away the best designers. Electronic Arts also began packaging their games in “custom-made boxes with professional art and the designers’ names placed prominently on the label” (Kent 263). More than just illustrating commercial savvy, these changes were indictors toward a shift in perception of video game design as an art. The games no longer served simply as a consumer product, an avatar for the player alone. They took on the purpose of personal expression for the game designer. Games for the computer gained a sense of legitimacy, as well as providing a new reason to buy a home system.
For whatever advances were made for the public image of computer gaming, they could not salvage the reputation of its sibling, the console market. American retailers were seriously burned in the crash of 1983. However, the downfall did not affect overseas markets, and technological development continued in Japan. These advances were spearheaded by Nintendo.
Nintendo initially made a splash in America with the arcade game Donkey Kong, which “involved a gorilla escaping from its master, a carpenter, and kidnapping his girlfriend. First the gorilla climbed to the top of a seven-story construction site. When his master followed, the ape rolled barrels at him. Players helped the carpenter leap over the barrels as he followed the gorilla” (Kent 158). The game was created by Shigeru Miyamoto, who would go on to become the most successful game designer in history. This initial success along with steady sales in the novelty game market convinced Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi that they could create a “home-computer system designed as a toy” (Sheff 29).
The original Famicom (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in America) was built “around the 6502 processing chip, a close cousin of the 6507 that Atari used in the original Video Computer System (VCS). Technology had evolved, however, and Nintendo’s engineers were able to reap more power from the chip…the Famicom had a number of components that had been either unavailable or too expensive in 1976” (Kent 278). The employees at Nintendo were determined to improve upon the Video Computer System in every way possible, and to avoid the mistakes which caused Atari’s downfall. No where was this more apparent or essential than in the games.
Nintendo encountered a great deal of hostility when they even mentioned the possibility of a new game system in America. After talking to many people formerly involved with the industry, there “was a consensus that the ‘suck factor’ was one of the biggest reasons for the industry’s crash. The market had been glutted with terrible games” (Sheff 159). The engineers responded by creating a lock-out chip in the system such that it wouldn’t work unless “a chip in the cartridges unlocked, or shook hands with, a chip in the [Nintendo system]. The key was a kind of song the two chips sang to one another. If a cartridge was inserted into the machine that didn’t know the song, the system would freeze” (Sheff 181). This mechanism not only prevented counterfeiting, but also allowed Nintendo to censor games released on its system, “assuring consistent product quality and to keep the taste level high--no dirty games, no games with bugs or bad design” (Sheff 214). The company had final approval on every game produced by their licensees, rating the programs on a forty-point scale (Sheff 215). Nintendo also limited their licensees to make only “five games a year and they could not release them to play on any other video-game system from the time they were introduced” (Sheff 215). These practices would later be called into question, in an anti-trust suit brought against Nintendo in 1991 (Kent 389).
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came packaged with Super Mario Bros., another Miyamoto creation. The hero of Donkey Kong was renamed Mario, and Miyamoto “gave Mario a brother named Luigi and converted him into a plumber in the 1983 game Mario Bros.” (Kent 299). The release of Super Mario Bros. meant an even greater evolutionary leap for Mario, taking him “out of his single screen setting and placed him in a huge, vivid world…players now controlled him as he ran through a seemingly endless, brightly colored countryside filled with caverns, castles, and giant mushrooms. The goal of the game was to help Mario rescue a princess from a dragon named Bowser. To do this, players had to fight or slip past walking turtles, flying turtles, and little mushroom-shaped men called Goombas” (Kent 299). The game was revolutionary because it introduced “elements not often associated with computer terminals and controllers: wit and humor” (Sheff 1). This was the kind of creativity that the improved hardware allowed, creating opportunities for a larger world and more detailed game characters. The world and its inhabitants could have personalities now. Miyamoto was free to express a fuller artistic vision.
Within a year of its introduction the NES “could be found in stores coast to coast and in 1.9 million homes” (Kent 346). In 1990 they would sell 7.6 million systems and sales accounted for one-tenth of the Japanese-American trade deficit (Kent 347). In the years following its release Nintendo practically became a national pastime. Miyamoto designed Legend of Zelda, a role-playing game “in which players helped a young elf boy named Link explore a huge territory as he fought monsters, collected treasures, and explored dungeons. The ultimate goals of the game were to defeat an evil monster named Ganon and rescue Zelda, the princess of Hyrule” (Kent 353). Miyamoto was worried that the game would be too complex for American audiences, and so it “came with more documentation than regular games…as a final precaution, Arawaka [president of Nintendo of America] added a toll-free telephone number that players could call if they needed help with the game” (Kent 354). The phone started ringing the same day the game was released, and “throughout the 1990’s the help center continued to maintain a staff of 200 operators, fielding an average of 100,000 telephone calls, 3,500 e-mail messages, and 1,900 letters per week. During the holidays, the staffing grew to 500 operators fielding as many as 250,000 calls” (Kent 355). The movie The Wizard, starring Fred Savage and Christian Slater, was nothing more than a “one-hundred-minute advertisement for Nintendo that millions of families paid to see (it grossed $14 million)” (Sheff 4). The magazine Nintendo Power published by Nintendo of America became “scripture for up to 6 million readers a month” (Sheff 176) despite its obvious agenda as a tool of propaganda. It carried no outside advertisements. On the flip side, “Nintendo became a lightning rod for protests from several groups…educators and parents complained that Nintendo was distracting children from their studies, a 1989 study stated that Nintendo was partially to blame for a 10 percent decrease in the cardiovascular fitness of American schoolchildren” (Kent 347-48). But despite protests, it was undeniable that Nintendo was a cultural phenomenon, spurred on by the prosperity of the Reagan era. It could even be perceived as its own culture, with a language of game terminology, customs in how children played and when, and rituals embodied in tournaments that usually awarded scholarship money to the winners.
Nintendo reigned largely unchallenged for many years, its only competition being in lesser systems such as the Sega Master System and Turbo-Graphix 16. Sega was a well-known Japanese game developer founded by an American businessman. Like many other game companies, they started out selling pinball and novelty games (Kent 334). In 1986 Sega introduced the Master System, which was more powerful than the NES. Unfortunately the system was priced higher and most of the good developers were typed up in exclusive contracts with Nintendo. Sega would not make a huge impact until the introduction of the 16-bit Genesis system in 1989, “the first dedicated video-game system powered by a true 16-bit processor; it had the same 68000 processor that ran the Macintosh computer” (Sheff 352). Though the first batch of Genesis were not as much fun as the best Nintendo games, they compensated by creating a strong line of sports games, and finally Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was fast-paced and “traveled through a surreal world designed to show speed. His two-dimensional side-scrolling environment included loops, steep cliffs, and pinball-esque bumpers from which he could launch at high speeds…players had to make decisions in advance and react quickly to survive each level of the game” (Kent 430). The Genesis began to gain ground, and Nintendo could not afford to rest on its laurels.
One product developed during this period was the Nintendo Game Boy. Designed by the long-time Nintendo employee Gumpei Yokoi, it was an “inexpensive, lightweight, and efficient” handheld system. Paired with Tetris, the Game Boy was a package that attracted adults more than any other gaming system. Seven shapes of four blocks arranged in different combinations descended down the screen, and “the player had until they reached the screen’s bottom to turn them or move them so that they would fit snugly into a solid row when they landed” (Sheff 299). If a solid row was created it disappeared, while a row with gaps remained on the screen. Game play continued until the screen was filled with incomplete rows. The game’s simple graphics “lent themselves well to Game Boy’s LCD screen, and its style was ideal for travel and quick breaks” (Kent 416). The system became an instant and enduring hit, remaining active through its newest incarnation, the Game Boy Advance. This newest development is a 32-bit machine capable of 3D graphics yet fully compatible with all Game Boy cartridges. The real competition for Genesis came with the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1991. It had a true 16-bit processor and was designed “around visual and audio performance rather than processing speed” (Kent 431). The system could display 32,000 colors (Kent 431) and its architecture “enabled designers to set parameters for effects such as scaling and rotating backgrounds” (Kent 432). Despite this impressive array of hardware, the strongest selling point for the new system was the game it came packaged with, Super Mario World. Despite being released in the midst of an economic recession, the SNES sold over one million consoles in three months.
The battle between 16-bit systems remained close, with the Genesis holding a lead due to its earlier release and larger library of games. One of the strongest titles in the SNES library was Street Fighter II, an arcade conversion of a Capcom fighting game showcasing “a colorful cast of international brawlers…each character had unique abilities and special moves” (Kent 446). Learning these special moves became a reason for players to try the game again and again, with those knowing all the specifics of game play earning prestige among their video gaming peers. No clear winner in the hardware race could be declared, and both companies turned their attention to the developments of the future. CD-ROM was making a big splash in the computing industry, with its increased capacity for graphics and sound. Sega eventually developed a peripheral for the Genesis called the Sega CD. Though it had a more powerful processor and handled more colors, it was meant “only to expand the size of games” (Kent 451). Nintendo made a deal with Sony to build a joint system that would play both cartridges and CD-ROMs. They dumped Sony in favor of a partnership with Philips, and the engineers at Sony took their current work and expanded it into a completely independent and new system. This was the PlayStation.
A series of system emerged in the following years, hoping to benefit from the current boom in new computer technology. Systems were becoming faster, more efficient. New chips enabled better graphics and sound. And the CD-ROM allowed programs to be larger, combining audio and video into a more cohesive and cinematic experience, allowing games to gain a greater level of complexity and involvement. If a player ever transposed themselves into the games they played, the new breakthroughs allowed for greater depth and realism to these faux realities.
One of these systems was the 3DO, a 32-bit system unique in that instead of being manufactured by the company responsible for its development, it was licensed out to established electronics companies to manufacture. This was an attempted step toward the standardization that other consumer goods like VCRs enjoy. But the system was overpriced, the controller badly designed, and “3DO owners had little to play at launch” (Kent 487). Atari also gave the game business another try with the Jaguar, a simulated 64-bit system. As with the 3DO, it had few good games and eventually landed the company in deeper financial straits.
The next generation of systems was embodied more by the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, both released at different points during 1995. Both were CD-ROM-based 32-bit systems. The Saturn was highly successful in Japan, though an early release in America caught retailers flatfooted. The big star of the Saturn was Virtua Fighter, “a fighting game featuring 3D polygonal combatants using a variety of authentic fighting styles” (Kent 501). The buzz generated was quickly drowned out by the release of the PlayStation several months later. Engineered by Ken Kutargi, the PlayStation had “a single processing chip with a 3D geometry engine in its CPU. This processor, along with the excellent development tools Sony made available, made PlayStation extremely easy to program” (Kent 504). The management at Sony understood that game developers needed to be attracted to the system in order for it to succeed. By providing both excellent hardware and software to the game companies they ensured a steady stream of games to promote their sales. Sony’s reputation as an established electronics company also served to put the system into more living rooms, and it became the preeminent game machine of the 1990’s. Even the Nintendo 64, a cartridge system released in 1996, could not compete despite its established brand name in hardware and software. The decision to stick with the cartridge format for games proved detrimental because CD-ROMs “can be manufactured much more quickly and inexpensively than cartridges. They also have much more memory, which allows developers to throw in movies and clips” (Kent 511). Many developers shied from the Nintendo 64, and Nintendo would end up creating the majority of the games for it. Super Mario 64 is generally considered a masterpiece of design, with Miyamoto incorporating “new devices that could only occur in the 3D environment…huge slides and other kinds of activities that brought true variety to the game” (Kent 530).
The Saturn bowed out of the competition early, Sega choosing to throw its support behind the new Dreamcast instead. It “gave its design houses latitude to experiment” (Kent 578), eventually creating unique games like Shenmue, a fully immersive world in which the player guides a young man in search of his father’s killers. The system’s main competition was the technologically inferior PlayStation, other advanced systems not set to debut for almost another two years. These threats looming on the horizon included the Sony PlayStation 2, the Nintendo GameCube, and the Microsoft X-Box. Unfortunately Sega overproduced the Dreamcast, leading the company to announce that “the manufacturing plant was no longer in operation because of inventory concerns” (Kent 588). A month later Sega announced the discontinuation of the Dreamcast, followed by their withdrawal from the hardware business.
In November 2001 both the GameCube and X-Box were released within a week of each other, “set to clash over the hearts, minds, and $15 billion annual global sales of the game industry” (Taylor 58). They are joined by the PlayStation 2, finally taking off after a disastrous start in late 2000. A chip shortage along with a lack of good games hurt the sales and reputation of the PS2, placing it on somewhat equal terms with the latest arrivals. Both Nintendo and Microsoft “fought to win over independent developers, who are critical to any platform’s success” (Taylor 59). It is too early to declare any sort of winner, but the fact that the industry has progressed this far has proved it is more than just a passing fad, and instead has become a legitimate medium of expression for both designer and player. Video games are more than just a pastime, and certainly more than a simple business, they are a forever evolving art form.