Working in the gaming industry

Our weekend journey through the pages of the February/March 1983 Aardvark Ltd. software catalog continues, with pages 9 and 10.  (Were out of the Dave Edson pages now, though not all of these games are credited to an author.)

Page 9 focuses on TRS-80 Color Computer games, with a few that are also compatible with the Ohio Scientific Instruments kit computers that gave Aardvark its start.  Like a lot of early home computer games, most of these are simple renditions of tried-and-true game ideas, written in BASIC in somebodys den:



Starship Hercules is yet another version of the classic, unlicensed Star Trek games that appeared on mainframes and just about any other system with an addressable text display back in the day; my own introduction to this once-thriving genre came via Radio Shacks Space Warp for the TRS-80 Model I.  This CoCo version required a whopping 32K of memory, unusual for a game with no real graphics, but as its written in BASIC there was probably some resource wastage afoot.

Breakaway is yet another Breakout clone, also written in BASIC.  Biorhythm is a very 1970s concept, based on the then-popular pseudoscientific idea that people function on precisely timed cycles of various types that intersect in propitious or negative ways, and can predict compatibility via comparison.

Killerbot sounds like a version of the arcade gamer Berzerk, but its actually an older, simpler idea that inspired the Stern coin-op -- the player moves, the enemy robots move toward the player in turn, and the player tries to get them to run into obstacles or each other.  Calling this "real time" is a bit of an exaggeration, but the concept is a classic; I played a Dr. Who-inspired version called Daleks on the Atari ST in the late 80s.  It was originally available for the OSI platform and was ported to the TRS-80 Color later on.  The same goes for Battlefleet, which sounds a lot like Battleship but appears to have a little bit of Mastermind thrown in, as feedback scores the players 6-shot volleys in terms of how many squares were hit.

Page 10 continues the trend, with more CoCo renditions of established game concepts:


Space Wall sounds about as exciting as its title -- two players duke it out through a wall... in space!  For some unspecified reason, the (I assume) more playable machine code version is accompanied by a BASIC version.  But in the early home computer hobbyist days, when third-party software was scarce and everybody needed to learn how to program to some degree, this wasnt too unusual.

Golf purports to provide a "very accurate simulation" of the sport, but like a lot of early golf games, it plays more like pool, with an overhead 2-D perspective.  But it looks like it was a decent attempt at the sport -- some details are available here at L. Curtis Boyles excellent TRS-80 Color Computer Games List site.

Crosswords (aka Parizeks Crossword Game) wasnt really a crossword puzzle game -- that is, there wasnt enough storage available to provide clues for word-guessing.  Instead, players took turns placing words into a computer-generated crossword grid, making the game more like Scrabble.

And Space Shuttle is nothing like Activisions sophisticated simulation for the Atari 2600 -- from the description, this sounds more like Ataris coin-op Lunar Lander in reverse, as the player tries to fly up to dock with an orbiting space station but may have to land back on the planets surface for refueling.

Were nearing the end of this vintage catalog -- next time, pages 11 and 12!

Back in the mid-1990s, Ataris Jaguar console was trying to gain a market foothold.  It was a tough road -- the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System were still going strong with solid software support, the 3DO was out and arguably flashier with its CD-ROM standard hardware, and Atari was having a hard time convincing gamers and developers to commit to its new system. 

The struggling Atari lacked the marketing capital to run a major television ad campaign, and mainstream retailers were quite happy with the Sega and Nintendo lines; the demand for the Jaguar was failing to materialize according to plan.  So the company engaged Sendai Publishing to include a 16-page full-color brochure in an issue of the companys popular Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine.  (Im inclined to believe that Sendais design department had a hand in it, as well, as some of the "new" material looks a lot like the EGM of the time.)

The cover features Ataris always striking Jaguar logo, which promised mind-ripping 64-bit power that the software library didnt always live up to.  Theres also a good picture of the memorable "toilet" CD-ROM add-on:

Good thing I didnt sit down!

Ataris promotion, like its Lynx ads at the time, treated the hardware specs as the main selling point.  The Jaguar was a complicated system, with a mixture of 64-bit and 16-bit processors that made programming the beast a bit daunting.  Witness the carnage as Atari attempts to link the systems raw power to the gaming experience, both overstating -- "combat games thatll drain pints of your blood" sounds dangerous -- and misstating -- what the heck is 850 million pixels-per-INCH rendering speed supposed to mean?

Feel the turf burn!

Theres no question that the system had power -- the Cinepak rendering did make Dragons Lair look better on the Jag than on the competing 3DO and Sega CD systems, and Jeff Minter was clearly able to synthesize psychedelic gaming intensity out of the complex array of processors.  And Ataris foray into VR gaming was forward-looking, although it never came to market despite its "Coming Soon!" promo below.  The table-of-specs marketing approach, used to sell stereo systems and home consoles in decades past to a knowledgeable geek-insider market, was starting to become obsolete as video gaming became more mainstream.  I doubt this carried a lot of weight with mid-90s EGM readers:

Tote bags!  Oh yeah!

The hardware was impressive, but youll note that none of the awards listed on the right were for specific games.  The Jaguars power didnt necessarily lead directly to great software -- the few third-party publishers that did produce Jaguar games generally played it safe, producing experiences that were not too different from the 16-bit systems already on the market.   Well take a look at the Jaguars library as this cover-to-cover series continues.

Were continuing our cover-to-cover pagethrough of the 1992 Virgin Games catalog, up to pages 15 and 16.

Page 15 features Scrabble Deluxe, an enhanced edition of the classic physical-world word game:


Scrabble is Scrabble, of course, but having The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary online is a nice touch (noting that hard disk installation is required, as the 100,000-word dictionary likely spanned more than one 3.5" diskette.)  And the big draw with most of these adaptations is that the computer can provide AI opponents, so dedicated Scrabblers need not round up actual human beings for a quick game.  The game also features PULL-DOWN MENUS, presumably with mouse compatibility, which was still a pretty neat new thing in 1992.

Page 16 features a genre near and dear to my heart, with KGB, a graphic adventure game set behind the newly post-Cold War-era, rapidly shredding Iron Curtain: 



KGB was developed by the French software house Cryo Interactive, and is a point-and-click adventure game with a dense plot that, reportedly, may be difficult to grasp unless the player is very, very thorough about explorations and conversations.  There was a CD-ROM upgrade released later on, with new video clips featuring Donald Sutherland and a retitle as Conspiracy, presumably to make the game a little less historically specific.

On to pages... drum roll please... please?  Hello?  Never mind... well look at pages 17 and 18 tomorrow.