Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
thing!� We're always waiting for the next generation of consoles and
computers, because, well, just imagine what could be possible with more
technology. But in truth, we haven't been doing much with the technol-
ogy we already have—much of our potential is squandered.
Super Smash
Brothers
came out in 1998 for the Nintendo 64, but it could have been
created on the NES (so could
The Binding of Isaac
). We need ideas, not
more technology.
But in the so-called first generation of games, I'd say that this catch-
phrase may actually have been true. These were really the first steps in
digital interactive technology, the foundation of modern computing. So
while these games were extremely important steps, very few that came
out of this period have stood the test of time.
In 1972 Magnavox created the Odyssey, the world's first home digi-
tal-gaming system. These games are extremely rudimentary, with blank
backgrounds, one or two squares, and a few lines onscreen. Many games
are variants of air hockey, ping-pong, and table tennis. By the time Mag-
navox was finished producing new games for the Odyssey, only around
30 games had been created.
In 1975 William Crowther created
Adventure
(also known as
Colos-
sal Cave
) for the PDP-10 computer.
Adventure
is a text-based game in
which you type in various commands to navigate the world. This was
arguably the first text-based adventure style of game, which would con-
tinue to evolve and lives on today as interactive fiction Also in 1975, we
see the first ever computer role-playing game with Don Daglow's
Dun-
geon
, a game that incorporated many elements from
Dungeons & Drag-
ons
, which itself had only been created one year before, in 1974.
Very little truly creative work was being done in this first period—
there were table-tennis type games, text-based choose-your-own-adven-
ture style games, and simple get-out-of-a-maze applications. The name
of the game in this era was, “hey, we can make something that is actually
playable using computers.� Like I said, other than a few outliers, most
digital games to come out of this era aren't too helpful with respect to the
development of our lens. I'd still recommend you research the period,
but for the sake of developing our lens, we should move onto the second
generation.
The Explosion (Second Generation, 1977-1983)
If the first generation was the sparking of a match, the second genera-
tion was a nuclear detonation. In the six years between 1977 and 1983, a
massive, wide range of different kinds of games on all kinds of different
hardware started to emerge, and quickly! This rapid development would
