History of Video Games - Part 7
8-Bit Magic
Catch Up on the Series
3 - Have You Played Atari Today?
4 - The Great Video Game Crash of 1983
6 - Now You’re Playing With Power
SEGA!
Before America entered World War II, Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg, and James Humpert formed Standard Games in Hawaii in May 1940. The company would make amusement coin-operated machines and games aimed at the military personnel stationed on the island. After the war, they sold the company to establish Service Games, but the government outlawed slot machines.
The company set up a shop in Tokyo to make Service Games Japan, which was still aimed at military personnel. They would eventually expand into other countries like the Philippines, South Korea, and South Vietnam - but the success was cut short by the US government investigating the company for potential criminal reasons, and they sold the company once again. Bromley went on to establish two companies, which merged in 1964 under the new name of Sega. In yet another change, Sega was sold in 1969 to Gulf and Western Industries, a conglomerate that would eventually come to own Simon & Shuster and Paramount Pictures.
Sega expanded in the 1970s and became an early force in arcade gaming, eventually getting revenues of $200+ million. In Japan in 1983, Sega decided to try to beat Nintendo to the punch on a home video game console and launched the Sega SG-1000. It sold better than the company expected but was no match for the dominant Famicom Nintendo released. Sega wouldn’t stop; they released a variant of the SG-1000 called the Mark III, which would become the Sega Master System in its North American launch. While the Master System wouldn’t be anywhere as popular as the Nintendo Entertainment System, it was the start of the first major competitive race between two video game giants, or as gamers call it now - a console war.
The Magic of the NES
The NES would go on to be the home of countless classic titles that would include many debuts for iconic franchises. Super Mario Bros. 2 would be released, with the West changing things up and reskinning the game Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros. 2 since the original Japanese sequel tested badly due to its high difficulty. Following that, the third game launched and received incredible critical acclaim and record-breaking sales. Super Mario Bros. 3 came with a world map, improved graphics, and art style, and has gone on to become one of the most iconic games in video game history. The game was even used heavily in marketing the movie The Wizard. By the time we entered the '90s, Mario was more popular than Mickey Mouse, according to surveys.
Nintendo released many games that would go on to be consequential to gaming. My favorite video game franchise - Metroid, had its first title and gave gaming one of its first major moments. Players played the game thinking they were playing a male action hero, only for the reveal at the end to show Samus Aran was actually a woman in the suit. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! used the titular boxer and was a major hit for the system. Later in the system’s life, we got more important titles, including ports of Game Boy titles (more on that system later). These included games like Kirby’s Adventures and Tetris - with the former being a port of the Game Boy title Kirby’s Dreamland. Kirby is a pink puffball created by Shigeru Miyamoto and wonder kid Masahiro Sakurai (just 19 at the time of the character’s creation!). He sucks up his enemies and copies their abilities. He was named after lawyer John Kirby - who defended Nintendo when Universal sued them over Donkey Kong.
Third parties joined in releasing titles like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Castlevania, Bionic Commando, Contra, Battletoads, Ghosts n’ Goblins, and more. These were the first of many titles in franchises that are still well-known today. Final Fantasy, in particular, has gone on to become one of the most consequential series in video game history. Even some licensed titles, Disney’s Ducktales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, were a big part of the success of the NES. Some games were released only in Japan but eventually made their way outside the country later down the road; these include Mother and Fire Emblem. So yeah, the NES was filled with nothing but classic 8-bit titles, but outside of Mario, the most important new entry would come as a boy in a green tunic.
Hyrule Fantasy
While developing Super Mario Bros., Miyamoto also worked on a separate game. The plan for the game was to go for a medieval European fantasy setting, taking inspiration for exploration from Miyamoto’s childhood hikes in Kyoto. He hired the services of Keiji Terui, a manga writer who helped out before with Akira Toriyama’s Dr. Slump and Dragonball, to help with the plot and lore for the manual. The game would be nonlinear, and the player would explore dungeons to get stronger in their quest to save the princess.
The game was made to start with the player first confronted with a cave where an old man would give you a sword. This was done to make the player want to look around and search, as Miyamoto wanted to avoid holding the player’s hands and give them freedom to play the game the way they wanted. It would see the character of Link, inspired by Disney’s Peter Pan, search for pieces of the legendary Triforce around the world of Hyrule. At the end of the game, you would face the pig-like demon Ganon to save Princess Zelda. Koji Kondo was brought in for the score and planned to use Maurice Ravel's Boléro but realized he couldn’t. So in just the span of one day in an emergency, Kondo made the overworld Hyrule theme - a theme that has not only been used as the theme song for the series but is among gaming’s most iconic musical scores.
The game was released in Japan for the Famicom’s disk system, an add-on that allowed games to be played on floppy disks that required more memory—though the American NES console received these games in normal cartridges. It was called Hyrule Fantasy in Japan, but it would be the American name that had stuck with us since - The Legend of Zelda. A sequel was released later, titled The Adventure of Link - which didn’t use the overhead gameplay style of the original and was known for its difficulty. Despite this, The Legend of Zelda is now considered the most critically acclaimed gaming franchise. The world of Hyrule, the lore, Link, Zelda, Ganon, and the soundtracks have released many games considered among the greatest titles in video game history. In many ways, it can be argued The Legend of Zelda is the closest thing to gaming’s Lord of the Rings.
From Russia With Love
After helping Nintendo be put on the map with the Game N’ Watch handhelds, Gunpei Yokoi took a backseat as the Famicom and NES became Nintendo’s prized possessions. He wasn’t going to stop his innovated work, as he began to work on a very special piece of hardware. The code name for the project was Dot Matrix Game. Essentially, he was working on a portable handheld console. Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the Mother series (or Earthbound in the West), came up with the name Game Boy. However, the reception internally wasn’t great, as many in the company didn’t see the point of it.
Despite the lack of excitement among his colleagues, Yokoi pressed on and worked out a deal with Sharp for a grayscale screen with no color and backlight to save on costs and be able to sell the system cheap, which was very important to him. The project went forward, and the Game Boy was planned for a release in 1989, but it needed a killer app to get consumers to buy. At first, the plan was to package Yokoi’s own game - Super Mario Land; however, a meeting with developer Henk Rogers changed everything.
Tetris was created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet Union computer engineer. The game was made for PC, but he didn’t own the rights, as in communism, the government-owned everything, including artistic creations. Henk Rogers of Bulletproof Software became obsessed with the game after seeing it at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics show. What would follow would be Rogers’ battle with controversial publishing mogul Robert Maxwell (yes, the father of the horrible Ghislaine Maxwell), who wanted the rights for his company Mirrorsoft.
The back-and-forth negotiations got confusing as the Russians didn’t understand what gaming consoles were or intellectual property. Desperate for Tetris, Maxwell went to Russia to secure the rights. Ultimately, Russia sent him a fax with a deadline to respond, but Maxwell made a mistake in taking a trip to Russia and missed it. As a result, the rights were awarded to Henk, who immediately used it to provide Nintendo with the rights and package Game Boy with Tetris (and released the game for NES). Henk and Alexey went on to create the Tetris Company and became millionaires, selling the rights to the game to different companies after Nintendo had its time with it.
The Game Boy launched in 1989 and became a massive hit. However, sales of the system started to decline after the rush for Tetris began to calm down. Luckily for the system, it had one more trick up its sleeve later down the road.
Here Comes the Competition
Nintendo absolutely dominated the golden age of 8-bit gaming, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have some solid rivals. Computer gaming was still a big deal, especially in the United Kingdom, where the NES didn’t take off as successfully as in other parts of the West. In Japan, the Sony MSX computers became really popular, part of it being their ability to play some pretty solid premium games. Ironically, this was a precursor to Sony’s eventual entry into the game space. NEC launched the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in America) to great success in Japan. As mentioned before, Sega also was working hard to compete with Nintendo. The Sega SG-1000 and Sega Master System could do small dents in the market. But Sega wanted more, and they would get it as one of the greatest video game rivalries was just getting started.
SOURCES
Wikipedia (Sega, The Legend of Zelda, Gunpei Yokoi, Game Boy, Tetris, Third Generation of Video Game Consoles)