The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond—The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (29 page)
Authors: Steven Kent
Jungle King
became
Jungle Hunt.
Although Taito did not change the game itself, the Tarzan character was replaced with an explorer in a Patagonian jungle suit. The original hero had made a Tarzan yell as he swung from vine-to-vine, but the new hero made no sound at all.
In the beginning, most lawsuits over video games involved two game manufacturers suing each other over patents. After the golden age of arcades, much of the litigation involved ideas, titles, and names. The most bizarre suit involved Universal Studios. The judge handling the trial called it “a tale of two gorillas.”
*
Craig Kubey released
The Winner’s Book of Video Games
the same year. Kubey’s book was published by Warner Books, part of the Warner Communications empire that owned Atari. It listed Logg, Bailey, and several other Atari designers by their correct names.
**
Later renamed Sierra On-Line.
*
The original version of the game also included a level where the carpenter chased the gorilla through a cement factory. The level involved jumping vats of cement on a conveyor belt. This level was not included in the Nintendo Entertainment System version of the game.
*
K refers to 1,024 units of memory.
The Battle for the HomeOh, I mean … there are lots of anecdotes from those days. One of them was about this day I’ll never forget, when I walked across the street to the engineering building on Borregas, and went into coin-op engineering, downstairs—consumer engineering was upstairs. This is probably in 1979….
Anyway, they had this
Space Invaders
machine in coin-op engineering. I looked at it and went back to Kassar’s office and said, “Ray, take this goddamned
Space Invaders
and move it up to consumer. Make a consumer cartridge and license the goddamned name.”He just looked at me, and the only thing he said was, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
I said, “ ’Cause you’re very busy running the whole company.”
—Manny Gerard
Those of us who stayed at Atari called ourselves the Dumb Shits Club. They made $50 million and we made $20,000.
—Warren Robinett, former programmer, Atari
A core group of four programmers was hired in early 1977 to design games for the Video Computer System (VCS), Atari’s programmable video game console. Within a year, Atari hired four more programmers, and after a few more months the team grew to twelve. Larry Wagner managed the division.
Nolan Bushnell was already having problems with Warner Communications as he prepared to launch the VCS, but he remained at the head of Atari through the October 1977 launch of the system and into 1978. With Bushnell in control, programmers frequently came to work late, stayed late, and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere. Bushnell encouraged their laid-back attitude and had no problem with them partying after, and sometimes during, work hours. The programmers in the fledgling VCS project genuinely liked Bushnell, but there were occasional inconveniences.
Nolan would come through the game developers area every couple of weeks and make comments on the games that made a lot of sense. Then he would come two or three weeks later and tell you to reverse what he had told you the last time.
We started taking Nolan’s comments with a grain of salt and asking, “Do his comments really make sense?” A lot of times we ignored him because he would frequently spin you around in circles every two to three weeks.
—Alan Miller, former programmer, Atari
Atari recruited talent for its VCS team in a haphazard way. Instead of visiting engineering schools and placing employment advertisements around the country, it simply placed ads in local newspapers. Amazingly, many of the people Atari selected proved to be masters at pulling a lot of power out of the Stella chip’s overtaxed hardware. During the VCS’s six-year life span, they 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. Alcorn may have called the VCS an “empty box,” but the people who made games for it turned it into a full-fledged computer.
One of the first programmers Atari hired was Alan Miller, a graduate of Cal-Berkeley who had become addicted to such early coin-op games as
Space Race
and
Tank
during his final year of college. He responded to an Atari employment ad in 1977.
My first interview was with Larry Wagner, the guy who headed up the software group, and one of their hardware engineers, Joe Decuir.
The boss of the Micro Electronics Group, Bob Brown, was away at the time I was interviewing, so I didn’t have a chance to meet him. Bob was one of the technology leaders who I really respect. He understood technology and how to motivate technical people. I was very happy to work for him.
—Alan Miller
Unlike the engineers in the coin-op division who enjoyed socializing as a group, the people programming games for the Video Computer System formed cliques and never integrated. Owen Rubin, a coin-op engineer who helped design computer development systems for the consumer division, described the environment as “cutthroat.” Coin-op engineers generally stayed at Atari for years, but VCS people seldom lasted more than a year or two.
I was just there for a year and a half.
There really were kind of two rival cliques when I was there. There was one group: Al Miller, Bob Whitehead, Dave Crane, and Larry Kaplan, who, for some reason, kind of formed their own little clique.
Me and my two friends, Tom Reuterdahl and Jim Huether, were sort of another clique.
—Warren Robinett, early VCS programmer
Life in the consumer division was not as wild as it was in coin-op. The programmers did not engage in petty battles with the maintenance department or go to movies. They did not pull pranks on their managers. Coin-op engineers worked in teams, consumer programmers worked alone. Most important, through its first year and a half, the consumer division was a financial black
hole. Coin-op earned millions of dollars, much of which was used to cover losses accrued by the consumer division.
Unlike coin-op engineers, who wrote their code and then gave it to data entry people to input, consumer programmers entered their own code. Wagner generally assigned them their first game, but they were usually allowed to come up with their own concepts after that.
It typically took about 3 or 4 months to make a game, so the process was very fast paced.
Most of the first games were based on existing coin-op games. I came on board and they assigned me to do a game called
Surround
that was similar to a number of arcade games. At least I didn’t have to come up with a concept. That helped speed things along.—Alan Miller
In the beginning, programmers were responsible for creating every element of their games. The same person who created the concept was also responsible for the programming, art, and even the sound effects. The look of VCS games improved, however, when an artist named Marilyn Churchill was brought in from the marketing department to help. A lot of the first games for the VCS were based on popular arcade and board games of the time.
As they started their second generation of games, Atari’s VCS programmers came up with their own concepts, developed new skills, and accelerated up the learning curve. To make their deadlines, programmers worked long hours, for which they felt inadequately compensated.
After my first game, I was given free rein there to come up with all my own concepts and implement them myself. We did all the implementation in those days, including the music and the graphics.
We did the music, what little there was. I can’t say I’m a great musician, but I like music a lot.
I thought making games was a pretty creative, unique act that warranted compensation. I think I was making $27,000 or $30,000 a year at that time. It was not aggressive engineering compensation, frankly, even for that era.
—Alan Miller
The first games for the VCS were fairly plain. After designing
Surround
, Alan Miller went on to create cartridges based on
Hangman
and
Concentration.
Warren Robinett’s first game was
Slot Racers.
Other early games included
Pong
and
Breakout.
Within a year, however, the games became more intricate. David Crane created a football game and Miller created
Basketball
, a home video game shown from a 3D perspective.
Of the games I did at Atari, the one I like the best was the
Basketball
game. It was one-on-one or one against the computer. VCS hardware was designed explicitly to do the
Tank
kind of game, and the basketball game took sports to a new level of realism on the VCS. It had a really good playability.I was on the basketball team in high school and loved the sport. Wish I was better at it.
—Alan Miller
The team had four games ready by the time Atari unveiled the VCS at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1977. By the time the system was released in October, there were nine game cartridges:
Combat, Street Racer, Air-Sea Battle, Surround, Blackjack, Basic Math, Indy 500, Video Olympics
(variations of
Pong
), and
Starship.
The Video Computer System retailed for $199 and came with a cartridge called
Combat.
Designed by Larry Kaplan and Larry Wagner,
Combat
supposedly contained twenty-seven unique games. Most of the games, however, were variations of the arcade game
Tank.
In fact, the menu of games on the outside of the
Combat
cartridge contained the following list:
1–5 TANK
®6–9 TANK-PONG
™10–14 INVISIBLE-TANK
™15–20 BIPLANE
21–27 JET-FIGHTER
™
Most of the variations in the games involved trading out bullets for missiles and empty battlefields for mazes.
Despite shipping problems and slow sales through Christmas, the VCS outsold the Fairchild Channel F. This was not enough for Warner chairman
Steve Ross. He was disappointed with Atari’s sales and wondered if purchasing the company had been a mistake. Bushnell’s answer, abandoning the VCS and developing a more powerful home console, infuriated him.
Bushnell’s struggles were well known throughout Atari. When he was forced out of the company in 1978, many people believed the company had lost its soul. They expected Warner to impose a stricter culture. When Ray Kassar introduced himself as Bushnell’s replacement at a company-wide meeting, nobody trusted him.
Ray came on to run the company about a year after I was there. I don’t have positive feelings about him at all. He had no understanding or appreciation of the industry, no understanding or appreciation of fundamental technology. He was destined to run that company into the ground.
—Alan Miller
Naturally, when I came, they were all very suspicious. People get nervous when any new guy comes in. They were afraid, I don’t deny that, but I really had great respect for the programmers because I knew that’s where the products came from. I did everything to encourage them.
—Ray Kassar
Kassar’s East Coast “high society” mannerisms offended many Atari employees. The programmers and engineers at Atari did not care about Kassar’s Harvard credentials or his tailored suits. They viewed these traits as peculiarities and made fun of them in a rash of Kassar-jokes.
In Kassar’s mind, his job was to raise corporate revenues. As he surveyed Atari’s situation, he recognized that the company needed a focused marketing plan for its consumer products. He needed to build a quality-assurance program. Sears was complaining about defective VCS units, and no one knew how to respond. In fact, according to Kassar, the company’s relationship with its retail partners was beginning to disintegrate.