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This Week In Video Game History (Oct 30-Nov 5) – Culture of Gaming

This week in video game history- Simon Belmont returns, Atari launch a major hit, and two firsts: the first arcade game and the first handheld games console

This week in video game history … Simon Belmont’s whip gets an upgrade, a double feature from Atari who this  week kicked off the arcade and launched their most successful machine while the first handheld video game console is released by the makers of Connect Four,

Video Game History

Related imageSuper Castlevania IV (1991)

26 years ago this week, Konami released Super Castlevania IV. The action platformer features what is widely regarded as one of the finest soundtracks to grace the Super NES, it is also rated as one of the greatest video games of all time and of the entries in the Castlevania series. It is a remake of the original Castlevania and Vampire Killer, which features additional locations outside of Dracula’s castle.

Story

Every 100 years, the forces of good mysteriously weaken giving way to the forces of evil, allowing the darkness to gain a foothold in our world and manifest as evil incarnate, Dracula. So rises Simon Belmont, a descendant of the heroic and dedicated Belmont Clan, trained to fight the forces of evil with his whip, Vampire Killer, a weapon of mysterious power. He is sworn to fight the forces of evil and destroy Dracula every time he returns. Super Castlevania IV takes place in 1691 Transylvania as Simon Belmont arrives at the entrance to Dracula’s castle, a formidable fortress overrun with an army of darkness ready to defend their master.

Gameplay

SC4 features elements typical of the Castlevania series, navigating a variety of locations in and around Dracula’s castle such as the castle grounds, caverns, hallways, and chambers. Using Vampire Killer to battle a range of macabre monsters such as skeletons, walking suits of armor, vampire bats and flying medusa heads and utilizing alternate weapons powered by collectible hearts gained from fallen foes and destroying candles throughout a level.

These weapons include: an ax which can be thrown in an arc at distant enemies, a dagger which can be thrown in a straight horizontal across the screen, and a pocket watch which can stop enemy movement.

Some of SC4’s elements were not possible on the NES, particularly the capabilities of Simon’s famous weapon which now allows Simon to attack in 8 directions. It can be left limp and through rotation of the Super NES controller’s D-Pad, it can be whirled in a circular motion which can strike enemies and deflect enemy projectiles.

Vampire Killer can also be used as a grappling hook, allowing Simon to latch on to various hoops scattered throughout levels, these are far from arbitrary as they allow Simon to navigate larger gaps and in one case save himself from falling to his death in a unique rotating level. Improvements were also made to Simon’s movements, such as the ability to move mid-jump to a limited extent and move while crouched.

Mode 7

SC4 was the very first game to utilize the SNES’s impressive Mode 7, the visually spectacular graphical mode unique to the SNES at that time, it allows the scaling and rotating of backgrounds creating a sense of depth. It is utilised to tremendous effect in SC4, locations that use Mode 7 include an underground passage stage which features a completely rotating tunnel and a stage which rotates horizontally 45 degrees at a time.

This can potentially drop Simon into a pit unless the player utilizes Vampire Killer to latch on to hoops and wait for a platform to return below Simon’s feet, uniquely this turning is necessary to navigate through to the end. Thanks to the power of the Super NES, SC4’s levels feature complex and diverse colors and many unique details such as animated and scrolling backgrounds, flickering candles, ghosts and active storm clouds.

Soundtrack

Despite being one of the earliest SNES titles, Super Castlevania IV’s incredible layered soundtrack surpasses even later games in its quality, diversity, and complexity, and features what is widely regarded as a collection of some of the best sounds to come out of Nintendo’s famous console. It’s layered with dark moodiness, the muted and brooding tune heard in the waterfall area of the ‘Ancient Ruins’ stage (Stage 3-2) is positively chilling along with the occasional catchy tune the series is well known for. Such funky tunes accompany Simon in the woodlands of ‘Transylvania Wilds’ (Stage 2-1), the ‘Spinning Room’ in ‘The Sorcery Tower’ (Stage 4-2) and in a visually impressive, gold strewn and glittering penultimate stage known as the ‘Treasury Room’ (Stage 9) which begins subdued before dropping into a fast beat, and arguably the catchiest tune of the game.

Cover Art

Super Castlevania IV’s marvellous dark cover art was created by Tom Dubois, who also designed many cover artworks for other Konami NES and SNES classics such as Snake’s Revenge, Contra III: Alien Wars, Sunset Riders, Cybernator, The Legend of The Mystical Ninja, Axelay, Rocket Knight Adventures and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time.

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Asteroids (1979)

There had been many arcade games released throughout the 70s and 80s, not many made more of an impact nor were as influential in that golden era than that of Atari’s Asteroids, released 38 years ago this week in 1979. It was created by a trio of creators: Ed Logg (designer of Super Breakout and co-designer of Centipede and Gauntlet), Lyle Rains and Dominic Walsh.

Asteroids was derived from the same hardware used for the visually similar Lunar Lander, inspiration came from the likes of Space Invaders, the pioneering Spacewar, and arcade original Computer Space. Considering Asteroid’s presentation is rendered in black & white on a vector display, it’s visually impressive and it’s gameplay is elegantly smooth. The vector display was chosen over the traditional raster display (a more pixel-based approach) for this reason, the smooth control of the ship allowed for precise controls and aiming.

The simple objective of Asteroids is to survive, the player controls a small ship in a sea of ever-increasing Asteroids, in both size and number. The player’s ship can shoot and destroy the asteroids which break into smaller destructible and harder to hit pieces, the player must also avoid colliding with the asteroids.

An enemy ship also appears and will attempt to destroy the player’s ship. The golden era of the arcade is full of fine examples of brilliantly fun and simple video game concepts which are infinitely replayable, and Asteroids is certainly one of them. It became one of arcade histories earliest super hits, eventually pushing the great Space Invaders of its pedestal in the U.S and becoming Atari’s most successful arcade game ever.

Bug

There is an interesting bug in Asteroids. For every 10,000 points, the player gains an extra ship, however, there is not a number cap on this, should the player gain over 50 lives the game can lag. If a player was to gain 250 lives the game can actually end! This means for any player wishing to achieve a world record score, one would have to frequently engage in intentionally losing a life for every single one that they earn at that point.

“Lurking”

There is a tactic employed by Asteroid high score hunters known as “Lurking”. Lurking is the act of quickly destroying all but 2 asteroids on screen, the intention is to not allow the game to regenerate a new field and keep the game screen wide open. Then, the player continually thrusts their ship forward while picking off the attacking spaceships as they appear, which is a lot easier with fewer asteroids and additionally makes it harder for the attacking spaceship to hit the player.

Sequels

There have been 3 sequels to Atari’s Asteroids. In 1981, Asteroids Deluxe didn’t really offer much more than the original but is considered much tougher than its predecessor. The game was tinted blue for some reason, Hyperspace (which allowed players to warp safely to another game screen location) was replaced with a depletable shield, the asteroids rotate, and a new enemy was created, the Killer Satellite, which functions like the attack ship of the original, but can split into 3 smaller enemies when hit.

A year later in 1982, Atari released Space Duel, Asteroids second sequel, which offered colorful visuals and combined the features of Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe, namely the Hyperspace function of Asteroids and the Shield of Asteroids Deluxe. Finally, Blasteroids was released in 1987, this time presented in raster graphics over the usual vector. Blasteroids added the challenge of limiting the ship’s thrust in the form of ‘Energy’ which depletes as thrust is used. If the ship runs out of energy it is destroyed.

Blasteroids added extra enemy ship types, which when destroyed drop different ‘power-ups’ such as, but not limited to, the usual Shield, Blasters which adds double shots, Ripstar a kind of berserk attack which causes the player ship to spin and fire rapidly and the Cloak which turns the player ship invisible to enemies. It also added a Boss Battle in the form of Mukor, an alien with several tentacles that must be destroyed in order for it to be defeated. The player can also transform their ship into 3 different forms, the Speeder which is a faster variant, the Fighter which has the extra firepower and the Warrior, which can sustain more damage.

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Milton Bradley’s Microvision (1979)

In the early days, video game technology developed at a rapid rate. So it would make sense that many innovations would go almost unnoticed or even forgotten. 38 years ago this week, Milton Bradley, typically a creator of board games and toys such as Connect Four, Battleship, Twister, Yahtzee, and Simon, launched one of them – the Microvision.

Innovation

The Microvision was innovative for being the first handheld games console to use unique interchangeable video game cartridges. Only 12 games were ever made, a 13th was more or less completed but was never released. The Microvision suffered many issues, including faulty buttons, screen rot, and leakages, so finding a working model these days is rare.

Interestingly, over in Japan, Nintendo was hard at work on their own handheld, the Game & Watch, and the Microvision would prove useful as they designed their console around The Microvision’s shortcomings. The Microvision cartridges were not cartridges in the traditional sense, in fact, they were full fascias each completely unique to each game, with their own colour schemes, screen overlays, and buttons.

While mostly involved with the creation of board games, Milton Bradley had created some successful electronic and even single player games, such as memory game SIMON. Simon likely inspired the creation of the MicroVision, it was a huge success and on top of that video games were bigger than ever and Atari was huge with many companies trying to emulate their success.

Issues

As mentioned previously, the Microvision was plagued with issues, some the result of particular design flaws. The Microvision featured a 12 button keypad, the clip on game fascias would be positioned over these buttons, directing the players’ button presses. The primary issue with these plastic overlays was stretching and eventual tearing. These buttons also provided haptic feedback upon button release, not the button depression, which encouraged players to press these buttons harder. Eventually, these buttons would degrade to uselessness.

The Microvision also suffered screen rot, poor sealing of the LCD screen and various foreign bodies introduced during the production of the consoles resulted in eventual complete degradation of the screen. If anyone has seen a cracked LCD screen, they would remember the black splodges that would appear rendering the screen useless. This would happen spontaneously with Microvision screens and is an almost eventual and unavoidable fate.

The console was also lacking preventative measures against electrostatic discharge. The unit’s microprocessor was positioned very close to the cartridge connection pins, so if the user was to build their own significant charge it could jump into the console. Furthermore, the integrated circuitry of each game cartridge was also sensitive to electrostatic discharge, more so than the Microvision console, requiring only a small static shock to render a cartridge dead.

Despite its major shortcomings, the pioneering quality of Milton Bradley’s Microvision cannot be denied.

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Computer Space (1971)

46 years ago this week, one of the most significant moments in video game history occurred, Nutting Associates launched a striking machine called Computer Space created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. The first ever mass marketed arcade game. Computer Space was created when Nolan Bushnell (who would eventually co-found Atari) saw a working PDP-1 computer at the University of Utah. It wasn’t the computer that was inspiring but what it was demonstrating. The PDP-1 was displaying a working prototype of a game called Spacewar!

Spacewar was a space combat game created in 1962, it was the result of brainstorming by students at the University of Utah who wanted to create a new program to test the capabilities of their brand new PDP-1. Spacewar would prove so popular at the university that designers created a custom controller unit intended to make play less awkward than it was via the PDP-1’s original terminal. Inspired by what those engineers made, Nolan Bushnell felt there was great potential in a coin-operated version of their creation. What he and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney created they called, Computer Space. Computer Space could be more accurately compared to Asteroids, gameplay involves a player rocket exchanging fire in space combat with two spaceships.

Galaxy Game

At Stanford University in California, there was another coin-operated adaptation of Spacewar, Galaxy Game. It never made it past the prototype phase, though the commercial potential wasn’t really considered paramount by its designers. It is sometimes argued which came first, but what is certain is that Computer Space was indeed the first mass-produced arcade game and would inspire the likes of Asteroids and many games to follow.

The prototype of Galaxy Game was very popular, with queues consistently 10+ people deep, all lining up for a glance at what was at the time a completely new entertainment concept. Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, designers of Galaxy Game were in touch with Nolan Bushnell at the time, and the designers frequently discussed their near-identical projects. Pitts and Tuck were less focussed on the commercial potential of their machine and were more focussed on its technological development. Bushnell however, had a more business focus, while his and Dabney’s creation Computer Space was considered a weak imitation of Spacewar, it was more commercially successful.

Though Computer Space was still a bit of a commercial failure, it led Bushnell and Dabney to create Syzygy Engineering, upon the realisation that “Syzygy” was already trademarked in the U.S, Syzygy Engineering would eventually become Atari.

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