1977.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

free999enigma (67)in #gaming • 8 years ago

1977.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series - The second generation of video game consoles began, the home computing craze was just getting off the ground, the arcades finally got a good version of Spacewar! And people in universities were still obsessed with text games. This was 1977.

In 1977 Romania was hit with one of the largest earthquakes of the century. A devastating event that left thousands dead, tens of thousands injured and many more homeless. It’s an event seared into the minds of everyone that lived through it and passed down to their children, with tales of how it felt like the sand worms of Dune were moving beneath the surface, how farm animals ran into houses and refused to go out long after the earthquake had died down. An entire nation banded together to rebuild. Meanwhile, New York was left without power for a day, so, naturally, everyone started looting. It was also the year that Wernher von Braun died, the man responsible both for the horrors of the V-2 rockets, and for the triumphs of the Saturn V rockets that propelled people to the Moon.

But, in much happier news, it was the year when one of humanities greatest space exploration initiatives began. NASA launched the Voyager Space Probes. It would be many, many years before the first fruits of this labor would be seen, but that image of a pale blue dot would one day inspire people to greatness. Much as the release of the Star Wars movie, a fantasy space epic that made people dream again, in a time when dreamers finally had the tools to achieve their fantasies. The home computing revolution had begun.

Within a single year we went from having very limited access to computers, to there being three major systems designed to be used by the general public, all three of them bringing endless, for the time, opportunity for creativity and even some productivity. Apple had the Apple 2, another machine designed by Steve Wozniak, that he obsessed over for many hours, spending weeks just to redesign a single board so that it would have less screw holes. It may have cost over 1000 dollars on release, still making it a somewhat expensive device, but it was still very popular. Commodore International would take its first steps towards dominating the early computing market with the Commodore Pet. A computer that some may not remember as well as the Apple 2, but a very important one, that paved the way for a lot of great games and software in general. And only cost around 800 dollars. The Tandy Corporation would also release the TRS-80, a machine that wouldn’t go on to sell millions of units, like the others, but one that still managed to make an impact. These computers were all powered either by the MOS 6502, or the Zilog Z80. Without these chips, this brave new world wouldn’t have been possible.

And the Atari 2600 wouldn’t have been possible either. And if it hadn’t then the home console market would have been in trouble. Ever since the Odyssey was released, the market became saturated with similar consoles, most of them trying to imitate Pong, with little in the way of innovation, or novelty. The gaming industry, barely half a decade old, was experiencing its first crash. Something different was needed. A home console capable of running multiple games, programmable, that didn’t require a new system every time someone made a new game. Not a new concept, as was shown last week with the Fairchild Channel F, but one that was a lot more popular. The Atari Video computer System, later renamed the 2600, launched for the price of around 200 dollars, the equivalent of 800 dollars these days, and came initially with only 9 games. You had titles like the Indy 500, a racing game where two players could run along an oval-ish track, competing in multiple game modes. Air -Sea batttle let players shoot things that scrolled across the screen, be they ships or planes. Basic Math, an educational game made to teach people the wonders of numbers, and trick parents into thinking the Atari 2600 could actually be used for school work. You had Combat, a game that looked very familiar to people that had played the arcade game Tank, released just three years prior. But it didn’t stop there. It also had airplane combat in it, and multiple modes that would affect the basic rule set. Sure it may not have been the greatest game line-up possible, but the console still sold well, people being tired of the Pong games. It and the Fairchild Channel F would sell roughly half a million units by the end of 1977.

And just because there were new consoles flying left and right, with their own games, mostly made by the same companies that created the consoles, it didn’t mean that the arcades were being ignored. You had titles like Canyon Bomber from Atari, and something that truly was overdue. Space War. A remake of the classic title that brought Atari into existence in the first place, now as close to the mainframe original as it could be, brought to the market by Cinematronics. Everyone could finally enjoy the game as it was meant to be played, in an arcade, without someone stuffing a room sized computer in an attic somewhere, tied to a terminal.

But the people that were still enjoying gaming on the mainframe did get something new. Though new would probably not be the right word. Enduring would fit better. Colossal Cave Adventure was very, very popular at the time. It had spread through the primitive internet in the US, into every university connected to ARPANET, and those that played it wanted to improve upon it. People like Dave Lebling, Mark Blank, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson from MIT. They worked an an improved version of the game, with more complicated puzzles, and more to it than just exploration. It was larger, grander, more complicated, capable of understanding an extended vocabulary. Their game was called Zork. Well, it was called Dungeon at one point, but TSR objected, so it remained Zork. Though it would still be a couple of years before the general public would have access to it. This was also the year when Classic Empire was created, and I’d like to take this opportunity to correct a mistake from the 1972 show, where I stated that Classic Empire was a remake of Empire, it wasn’t. That was Empire Classic, and using footage from Classic Empire when referring to Empire Classic was a mistake. This was a strategy game built on the PDP-10

Even though a whole new generation of Atari games were now available to the home market, and the home computer craze began, they didn’t yet have great enough games to be considered truly representative for this age. Zork, however, managed to stick around for decades, because like Colossal Cave Adventure before it, it spoke to people in a different way, it let them play in a different way. It wasn’t just Pong again. And it’s at this point that the gaming industry truly began to move beyond it and flourish with new ideas, new genres and fantastic possibilities. And we’ll get to those next week.