The History of Video Games - Part 2
The New Industry
Catch up on the Series
The Train Ride
In 1889, Vincent van Goh’s Starry Night was painted, the Eiffel Tower in Paris opened, and a new company called Nintendo was founded on September 23rd. Nintendo was known for making Japanese playing cards, specifically the “flower cards” called hanafuda. Founded by Fusajirō Yamauchi, the line of succession for the company’s head would eventually reach his great-grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi. Yamauchi was too young to fight in World War II and instead worked in a military factory to aid the war effort. After Japan’s surrender ended the war, he went to college and studied law.
Hiroshi’s grandfather suffered a stroke in 1948 and asked his grandson to leave his law studies and become President of Nintendo. Hiroshi agreed as long as he had all the power above his family. When 1949 came, he assumed the position following his grandfather’s passing and immediately asserted what would become his infamous leadership style. A factory strike was shut down by his firing of longtime employees, he made new rules that every product had to be approved specifically by him, and he moved the company’s headquarters to Kyoto. Despite his young age, he would earn a reputation as a tough-as-nails, extremely intimidating, and efficient businessman described as running the company in an imperialistic style.
In 1966, Yamauchi was touring a factory when he saw a side project from one of his employees - Gunpei Yokoi. He had made a toy of an arm that extended during his spare time. The boss fell in love with it and asked him to mass-produce it for the holiday season. The Ultra Hand, as it would go on to be called, became a massive holiday hit. Nintendo would start to move away from cards and start making toys. Gunpei would go on to become the company’s most important employee and toy maker.
One day, Gunpei was riding the Shinkansen, a high-speed railway line in Japan. He could see a businessman playing around with an LCD calculator in the corner of his eye. Bored, the man had used the calculator to pass the time by playing around with numbers. Then, Gunpei realized he could make a device to help people pass the time during these long train rides. He envisioned a watch or calculator type of device that was able to play electronic games (essentially video games). He would use his idea to create the Game and Watch, an LCD lineup of electronic games on a handheld system, which would launch in 1980.
On that train ride, that bored businessman had given an idea to Gunpei. That idea would be the catalyst for the most acclaimed video game publisher in the industry’s history. The train ride would forever change Hiroshi Yamauchi’s company into a cultural and entertainment giant. But before this train ride, there were many more pioneers and events that would help lead to this. Whether it was the creative thinking of a Jewish escapee from the horrors of Hitler’s Germany, Nolan Bushnell discovering Spacewar!, A slice of pizza during lunch, or a young Japanese man in college playing the guitar and dreaming of being a manga artist… the industry was taking shape with many more train ride stories.
The Brown Box
With Hitler’s poisoning words filling Germany with hate for the Jewish people, Lotte and Leo Baer left their home country for New York City with their kids, luckily before Kristallnacht. Their son Rudolf Heinrich Baer would go on to study electronics and graduate from the National Radio Institute in 1940. He ended up drafted into the war and served in London, stationed there for military intelligence gathering. He took advantage after the war to use the G.I. Bill and graduated from the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1949. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Baer would work for a few companies using his skills in electronics engineering, including contracted work with IBM.
In 1966, while working for Sanders Associates, Baer started thinking about playing games on a television screen. He wrote up a four-page proposal to show his supervisor to get approval to make his idea a reality. It was approved, and work started. His team would go on to make a prototype device and call it the “Brown Box.” They slowly but surely came up with games that would be part of the system. These included games such as a light gun game and a ping-pong game. However, a combination of downturns for the companies involved with the prototype prevented it from going to market.
In 1971, Baer and his team finally struck gold after getting a contract with Magnavox in January 1971. A team at Magnavox made changes to the final product. Due to color TVs still being seen as a luxury, they made it black and white. They also canceled plans for a rifle or light gun style controller and a joystick, instead deciding to go with a three-dial controller. They also came up with game cards to switch the game selection. The games were designed by Ron Bradford of Bradford-Cout Design and Steve Lehner, mostly based on what Baer’s team had already planned. During its development, the device was known internally as the Skill-O-Vision.
On September 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was launched at a price of $99.95 (in 2023 dollars, about $719). The system would rely on plastic overlays that would stick on the TV using its static. Board game aspects, such as paper money, playing cards, and poker chips, were packaged. Baer wasn’t happy with the addition of these or the price, but it was how his idea would get to the consumers. The light gun game, Shooting Gallery, was an add-on sold separately. In many ways, the system was an extremely interactive board game on your TV more than a games console, but it was the start of something. The dedicated home video game console was born.
The Odyssey would prove to have issues getting going. For starters, Magnavox only sold it in its own dealerships. While the system could be used on any brand of television, many consumers were left to believe you needed a Magnavox television to use it. Coupled with its high price, it didn’t become the mass-market product that Baer envisioned. However, those who did buy the Odyssey reported loving it, which kept the system around. A few more games would be developed as add-ons to the system. In 1973, Magnavox offered the system for $50 (about $340 in 2023) if you bought one of their TVs. It went on to launch in countries like Mexico, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
The Odyssey was finally discontinued in 1975. Pong was a big hit by that year as Atari began its journey to become the first major video game brand. Despite men like Christopher Strachey and his contemporaries, Ralph Baer has gone on to earn the title of “father of video games.” Baer embraced the title.
In 2006, President George W. Bush awarded Baer with the National Medal of Technology for what the President said was due to his groundbreaking pioneering in the creation of video games. Largely forgotten for a long time after the modern console era began… Baer’s legacy made a comeback towards the last years of his life as people started to give him well-deserved props for his contributions. Most of his inventions are now part of the Smithsonian.
Baer being an immigrant escaping Hitler’s Germany is a show of power to what immigrants have meant for America. Today, the United States is arguably the most important country in the industry, and it’s all thanks to Ralph Baer.
“"In view of the fact that the President of the United States of America hung the National Medal of Technology around my neck in a White House ceremony in 2006, and in view of my having been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, I really don't feel neglected." - Bear’s response when asked if he had been overlooked in video game history
Moving Forward in the 70s
The 1970s was a decade of constant turmoil and world events. Inflation was reaching high levels, oil and gas shortages became a headache for Americans, the Watergate scandal rocked Americans’ belief in their government, and the war in Vietnam divided public opinion. Movies had started to open the envelope, and questions about controversial art mediums like pornography were beginning to enter the mainstream. Social questions around women’s rights and abortion had also engulfed the start of what today is known as the culture wars. It was also a decade that was consequential to the video game industry as it hit the mass consumer market, and many of its pioneers for decades to come were getting their fates set up to create magic.
The term video game became a thing in this decade. The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first printed mention of the term in a 1973 BusinessWeek article. However, there have been debates on who deserves credit for the term, as magazines that reviewed earlier games like Spacewar! had used it. Nevertheless, the 70s would be the decade that made video games known to the general public. It would quickly rise to have its first big boom at the end of the decade, just before what is still its biggest crash to date.
In the mid-seventies, Pong clones flooded the market. One of these clones was Taito’s Elepong. Taito was known for making electro-mechanical games. These were the first arcade games, which used electronic circuitry and actions from the player to move items in the cabinet. Most of these were light guns or simulation-style games. Tomohiro Nishikado joined the company in 1968 and would begin to make the company’s first video games, producing them on arcade cabinets. He made games like TV Basketball, Speed Race, and Western Gun, which would all come to America thanks to Midway.
In 1978, Nishikado’s most important creation would launch – Space Invaders. The game had you play as a defender of Earth against invading aliens. The player controls a laser cannon that moves at the bottom of the screen and shoots as aliens slowly get closer. The game became a cultural and financial hit across the world. To this day, even people that don’t play video games know what Space Invaders is. Space Invaders was the first cultural hit for the industry since Pong. Its impact helped create the first big boom in the video game industry.
The Golden Age of Arcade Video Games
Arcade gaming was around before Space Invaders made it famous. Coming off the success of Pong, Atari was one of the first names to make multiple arcade titles and popularize public arcades. They released several games, including 1974’s Breakout, which Steve Jobs worked on before he would go to create Apple.
Space Invaders had blown the doors open to a new industry, video games and the arcades that made them available for just a handful of quarters. Just like Pong did, Space Invaders would be joined by a wave of new shoot 'em-up games looking to capture the market Invaders got. Many companies were hitting this goal at the right time, as arcade gaming would become a major part of childhood during the late seventies and early eighties.
One major new feature that these new arcade titles had was colored graphics. Thanks to new technologies, pricing for these kinds of graphics was coming down, and arcade makers could afford to make more and push new ideas. Coming off the success of Space Invaders, Namco (a Japanese company with a long track record of amusement-operated rides that included work with the Walt Disney Company) released Galaxian, a fixed shooter that was inspired by Star Wars. The company would become one of the major players during this era producing consequential and impactful games like Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position. Atari was still coming out with arcade games, such as the vector-based Asteroids, which went on to become an icon of the era.
Other important games from the era would include Centipede, Q-Bert, and Dig Dug. Namco was building itself as the king of quality arcade titles. The next step for the company was to create the first massively popular character in video game history.
Pac-Man Fever
Toru Iwatani, a 24-year-old employee of Namco, was assigned to help make arcade games using NEC-made microcomputers. Iwatani was not a fan of arcade culture in terms of image. He felt many saw arcades as seedy and mostly male-driven. He also wasn’t a fan of similar types of games flooding the market, which he felt were violent. He wanted to make a game that could have families and couples attend arcades and change the image of gaming to being more than just for men. He set out to make a cheerful game and wanted eating as a factor in the gameplay, as he felt it would appeal to women who liked snacks.
Iwatani would take advantage of new technologies the company acquired to use bright pastel colors to create a cheerful atmosphere and make characters. He decided to make ghosts as villains, inspired by his love for Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons. He then added fruit power-ups to mimic the same icons you would see used in slot machines. The gameplay would focus on a character eating energizers and, with special powerups, being able to eat the ghosts that were chasing him inside a maze-like structure. The final touch was for the main character.
The inspiration came from a combination of the simplification of the Japanese character “kuchi” which meant mouth, and the shape of the pizza he saw while at lunch when it was missing a slice. The ghosts were given different personalities and colors. One idea for the main character’s name was Puck Man, but eventually, it was settled to be closer to the game’s Japanese name of Pakkuman. With a round yellow body and a sound effect that would invade 80s culture, Pac-Man was born.
The game would go on to become a massive hit. It would go on to dethrone Space Invaders and make a reported $1 Billion in revenue. The pop cultural impact was there too. The character and game would be known around the world, with President Ronald Reagan even mentioning the character. A song called Pac-Man Fever by Bucker and Garcia would release. Pac-Man was the first video game star and icon. Before there was Mario, there was Pac-Man. Along with the cultural impact, Pac-Man was a major consequential game for the industry. It was the first game to appeal beyond males and be played by women, created the idea of character-driven games (which Nintendo would use), created the concept of power-ups, used AI for the enemies, and used cutscenes.
A New Way to Play
During much of the 70s, the young industry mostly played on arcade cabinets. However, the Magnavox Odyssey would usher in a new way to play in the form of the dedicated home video game console. As arcade gaming entered its golden age, companies were trying to make the first true mass-market home video game system. The Odyssey had largely failed due to confusing marketing and high price point. The first competitor for the system would come from Fairchild Channel F. The Atari would go on to create the Atari VCS, later known as the Atari 2600. Multiple companies tried their hands at game consoles with some success. And in the arcade front, an eccentric visionary that just wanted to play guitar was about to kickstart a career that would propel Nintendo to become the Disney of the industry. In Part Three, we will take a look at the rise of the console industry and the start of the most consequential video game designer – Shigeru Miyamoto.
ARTICLE SOURCES LINKS
Video game industry - Wikipedia