1986.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series
A year known for some of the most famous disasters of the last half century, and a year when we got some of the most memorable game of the last century. It’s also about the time when computing technology advancement slowed down, diversity started to die out, and everybody went nuts about cows.
We begin today by correcting another omission. In last week’s show I glossed over another one of Christ Crawford’s great creation: Balance of Power. It was, in a way, a predecessor of the grand strategy genre. You were put in charge of either the USSR, or the United States, your objective being that of expanding your influence and dominating over your AI opponent, but without direct confrontation. If war broke out, and the nukes started flying. The game was over. It was a game meant to be both engaging and have a point to it. Much like Ultima 4 did that very same year.
With that covered, let’s begin the year proper. 1986. A year when Mad Cow disease was first identified, and continues to be a problem to this day. The year when millions of people across the world look up to the skies and watched in terror as the dream of space died, with the Challenger shuttle explosion. Though, there was still some hope, with the launch of the MIR Space Station by the USSR. Though, if there’s one event relating to the USSR that people were aware of in that year, it was the one that happened on April 26th. The nuclear power plant outside of Pripyat had a catastrophic malfunction during a safety test, leading to what today we call the Chernobyl disaster. The explosion and the fallout from it affected the lives of millions of people. All living under the shadow of an irradiated cloud, caused by incompetence and more incompetence. “Don’t drink the water”, is what we were told, in the days following the disaster. “Don’t go outside.”, they said. “And hope it passes soon.”
But decades later, we still feel its effects.
Moving onto less depressing things… 1986 marked the release of the first commercial RISC based workstation from IBM, a machine that could do less things overall, but the things it could do were accomplished with a higher level of performance. It was also the year when the ancestor of the laptop appeared, another IBM device, the PC Convertible, that is notable for weighing a little under 6Kg, unlike the gigantic portable machines of yesteryear. The Apple 2GS was also released at this time, giving a color GUI to Apple 2 fans that had yet to embrace the Macintosh. This was actually one of the last few “new” machines we would get for quite a while. The computing boom crystallized, the winners were picked, and in just a few years, most machines would be IBM compatible x86 computers.
In games, however, diversity was blooming. New companies arose, like Acclaim, UbiSoft, Bethesda, Codemasters, a few hardware makers too, like Biostar, MSI and Gigabyte, if you’re wondering how old the companies making your motherboards are. The Pixar we know appeared this year. Activision even bought Infocom, that had been struggling recently due to it’s less than stellar foray into the database market. So, if you ever wondered why Zork is Activision property, that’s why.
The arcade scene gave us the classic Out Run. One of Sega’s greatest creation of that age. The game stood out for its excellent presentation, a soundtrack that you could customize, and for the general mood of it. Driving into the horizon, in a seemingly endless race, would be what people identified with racing games for the next few years. You can just about see its DNA even in most modern arcade racing games. The famous arcade game Rampage, about monsters tearing down buildings was released this that very same year. And by coincidence, it got turned into a movie in 2018, with not very good results. We also got one of the quintessential beatem-ups, in the form of Renegade, from Technos Japan. The direct predecessor to the beloved Kunion-Kun series, as well as the Double Dragon series. Popularizing knees to the face, headbutting and general ass-kicking in urban environments, with whips, chains, and a lot of leather.
Jon Van Caneghem released New World Computing’s first game this year, the classic Might and Magic 1: Secret of the Inner Sanctum. A game that, by today’s standards and frankly even by those of the age up to a point, was a bit clunky, but expanded on the first person dungeon crawling RPG experience with its own brand of craziness. The most noticeable one being that although it is a fantasy roleplaying game, with sorcerers and paladins, it all takes place on a giant ship, hurtling through space on a mission to colonize distant worlds and seed them with life. One of my biggest regrets is that Might and Magic lost that craziness in the past few decades. If you wanted space without the hassle of gnome vampires, then on PCs you’d find fantastic sci-fi classics like Space Quest 1- The Sarien Encounter, from Sierra On-Line and Two Guys from Andromeda, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy. A parody of Star Wars, Star Trek, and generally every SF thing you could find, where you’d be playing as a nameless janitor, out to save the galaxy from the evil. His name will be determined in later games to be that of Roger Wilco. Hero of the universe. But if you wanted to sink your teeth into something more consistent, then you had Starflight. Created by Binary Systems in three years, published by Electronic Arts, and beloved by many, it was a space exploration game that didn’t go the way of Elite. Instead, it aimed more towards Star Trek. You had your ship, you had a crew, and you went around the galaxy, exploring over 800 systems, discovering new worlds, meeting new species, and probably running from space squids. Starflight was a very influential game, inspiring many other similar titiles in the future, including the superb Star Control. They even shared a few developers. But we’ll get to that in a few weeks.
As beautiful as those computer games were, without a doubt this year belonged to the consoles. Not only the NES, but the new Sega Master System as well, that was just released in the US, with games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Maybe not the most memorable game of the platform, you wouldn’t get that until a certain hedgehog started making the rounds, and a few RPGs made their ways to it. Owners of the Nintendo Entertainment System, however, had their hands full. And I’m not talking just about the excellent Adventure Island, a port of the arcade game Wonder Boy, that had you skateboarding over snails. A game that, we can all agree, was rad, tubular, and extreme, before it was cool in the ‘90s. Though, technically, 720 degrees also was ahead of the curve, an arcade game where you’d skate around… or DIE. You can probably thank it for the rise of titles like the Tony Hawk Series… though I’m willing to bet that Tony Hawk had a hand in it too.
Coming back to the NES. One of the most influential RPG of Japan came out in 1986. Dragon Quest. Molding itself after Wizardry and Ultima, with a few personal touches from Chunsoft and game designer Yuji Horii, It is one of the most influential titles of its time, in Japan at least. It is the reason why the JRPG genre exists. If it wasn’t for it, for its success, certain other studios would have probably gone belly up and would have never have created genre defining titles that are still being talked about today, and are getting new releases constantly. And Dragon Quest itself is still getting sequels.
And the platform got a couple of other games that would, combined, and with time, define another genre. The Metroidvania. Though, hectically, the Vania part wouldn’t be valid for a few more years. Castlevania was one of Konami’s greatest achievements of that age. A great action game, where you would fight ghostly apparitions, annoying bats, the undead, and even Dracula himself, using your wits, crosses, holy water, whips, chains, all while dressed in leather. It was the style of the time. You’d also rob his castle in the process, and somehow find edible food hidden in the walls. Vampires are sneaky like that. Alongside it we had Metroid. A breakthrough title for its time, not pictured here to avoid copyright issues. A side scroller that wasn’t about going in a single direction, and it wasn’t just about blowing up your enemies. You did it with style, with a bit more effort than usual. You had to explore complex levels by making full use of your powers, find secret caches of weapons and upgrades, unlock the full potential of Samus Aran, run around levels you already visited to get new things, fight a pterodactyl, crazy space pirates and then destroy Mother Brain. Metroid had great sense of mood to it, taking inspiration from the likes of Alien, a bit undersold by the mostly upbeat theme. That would be fixed with time. And, let’s not forget, Metroid starred one of the longest running female main characters in a mainstream action game. Which you would think was also valid for the next game, but that just ended up causing a lot of confusion.
The Legend of Zelda, also not pictured here due to copyright issues, was another of Shigeru Miyamoto’s greatest accomplishments. A game with a similar design philosophy to Super Mario Bros. Easy to understand, easy to get, but with more of an emphasis on exploration. It’s been often called an RPG, but it doesn’t really fit that mold any more than Metroid does, since there is no emphasis on gaining experience or statistics, and apart from gaining more health there aren’t really any permanent enhancements you can make to your character. Regardless of that. The Legend of Zelda was a fantastic game, one that rewarded careful exploration, resilience to killing all the same respawning enemies endlessly, and navigating dungeons with challenging boss fights. The Legend of Zelda was an endearing adventure to many, and spawned a series that is as synonymous with Nintendo as copyright abuse. It also made a lot of people confuse the main character, Link, for the titular Zelda.
I know I’m skipping over a bunch of games from 1986, but the list is getting so long, that it’s getting difficult to cram more of them in. Which is why I’d like to thank Alianger for posting a list of the other games in the comments.
As for what was the game of 1986? I would say that was Dragon Quest. It can’t be glossed over how pivotal it was to bringing RPGs to consoles. And, let’s face it. The PC ones are fantastic, Ultima, Wizardry, they are marvels. But they have the downside of ease of use. On a console, with limited controls, there needed to be a streamlining of the process of playing. And, yes, that meant more limited interaction, going back to what the genre was about a decade earlier, but it still brought the RPG to many who would have not experienced it otherwise. And because it was a success, because it was a recipe that worked, RPGs on consoles became viable, they spread, they became the norm. It wouldn’t have happened without Dragon Quest.
Goodbye.
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