Video Essays

Resident Evil 2 – 20th Anniversary Retrospective

February 10, 2018 by arcadology Leave a Comment

It has been 20 years since Resident Evil 2 was released. The game is considered by many to be one of the best that the franchise has to offer despite its rocky development process. The original version of the game, now colloquially known as Resident Evil 1.5 was scrapped at about 70% complete nearly a year into its dev cycle, pushing the release of the game back from May of 1997, to September of 1997, and finally to a release date of January 1998. Today we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Resident Evil 2 by looking back at its journey from concept, to product, back to concept, to final version. Welcome to Arcadology: The Development of Resident Evil 2.

Development of Resident Evil 2

In April of 1996, once month after the release of Resident Evil, work began on Resident Evil 2. Shinji Mikami, the creator of the franchise and director of the first game moved into the role of producer. Hideki Kamiya who was a planner on the first game was promoted to director and the team got to work. By July of 1996, with only three months of work into the game, Production Studio 4 already had a demo to show at the V-Wrap Festival in Japan featuring two new protagonists, Elza Walker and Leon S. Kennedy.

The reason for moving on from Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield differed depending on who you asked. Mikami’s reason was quite straightforward: Jill and Chris had already experience the terror of zombies, and new characters were needed in order to keep the horror fresh. On the other hand, eventual RE2 team member Noboru Sugimura would state:

“Jill and Chris’ motivation was simply to escape the zombie-infested Spencer Mansion, so they weren’t given any independent characterization or motivation. That made it hard for us to give them big dramatic arcs. That’s why for the sequel we decided to create new characters, with suitable motivations for the dramatic plot…”

During the course of production, Mikami and Kamiya would have frequent disagreements about the direction of the game. So often that Mikami eventually had to take a creative backseat for the sake of the project. In November of 1996, a press release was sent out by the US office of Capcom revealing the release date for the game to be May of 1997, a little over a year after the release of the first game.

The timeline for when Resident Evil 1.5, or the Elza Walker Build was scrapped is a little hazy. What I do know, is that as of February 1997, it still seemed as if 1.5 was intended to be the final version of the game based on an interview Shinji Mikami gave to GamePro. At this point, the release date of May had been pushed back to September, but the screenshots used in the article are clearly the 1.5 version of the game.

At some point after this, Yoshiki Okamoto, Mikami’s supervisor, was given a demonstration of the game and expressed his dissatisfaction with it. A screenwriter by the name of Noboru Sugimura would be brought on to consult on how the scenario needed to be adjusted. His ultimate suggestion? Tear it down and start over again. In his own words:

“It was all too realistic. The ominous atmosphere from the first game, as represented in things like the Spencer Mansion itself, the armor room, key items like the jewelry box and gemstones… all that had been removed. The Police Station, too, had been changed to a very modern building. As a result, everything felt too modern and strangely sterile. “This doesn’t feel like Resident Evil…” Of course, wiping the slate clean and going back to zero on a project that’s already 70% complete is no mean feat…”

Sugimura’s involvement grew from consultant to narrative designer, bringing a professionalism to a plot that up until that point was a little bit ramshackle. Each developer had their own idea of what the narrative was, and no one was actually working off of a centralized document, or what they call in the TV world, a story bible. In an interview with the late Sartoru Iwata, Hideki Kamiya took the full blame for the scrapping of version 1.5. He considered it his fault because he would agree to every suggestion that the people on his team would throw at him. He was truly grateful that Mikami kept him on as director after it became apparent work would need to be scrapped.

The game was torn down to the studs. What could be reused, was reused, but many graphics would have to be changed in an effort to sharpen the presentation. Initially character models used a lower polygon count which allowed for more enemies to appear on the screen at once. As this need waned, the fidelity of the character models increased. By June of 1997, one month after the original release date Capcom was demonstrating a new demo of the game at the E3 convention.

Aside from graphical changes, there were a number of changes to the characters in the game. The original female protagonist, Elza Walker, was replaced by Claire Redfield, the sister of Chris Redfield. Marvin Branaugh, who was supposed to be a support character for Leon, had his role minimized to only a cameo. The start of the scenario was moved from the police station to the city itself. Speaking of the police station, the design of the building was changed from a typical modern aesthetic, to a former Art Museum that closely resembled the style of the Spencer Mansion.

As they reshaped the story, Kamiya wanted to implement an idea they didn’t utilize in version 1.5 called the zapping system. I’m not entirely sure why they named it this, but the zapping system was what allowed the actions from one scenario to effect the other. It was an idea originally suggested by Kamiya during the development of the first Resident Evil game, obviously though it was not implemented. This resulted in Resident Evil 1 having two stories that are roughly the same, with some minor changes, whereas Resident Evil 2 allowed the protagonists to have wildly different experiences. Sugimura was initially against the idea of interweaving the plots because of how complex it could become. Eventually though, Kamiya won out, and the result was a total of four scenarios: Leon A, Claire A, Leon B, and Claire B.

Regardless of how the player approached the game, the story beats remained largely the same. An outbreak of the t-virus wreaks havoc on the citizenry of Raccoon City. The battle against the zombie horde reached its tipping point not long before the arrival of Leon and Claire, who find the city broken and battered with few survivors. Those that remain, Robert Kendo, Marvin Branaugh, among others, are not long for the world. While Leon and Claire try to escape the madness, evil big pharma company Umbrella is attempting to recapture one of the few extant samples of the G-Virus, a more mutagenic plague that is affecting its creator, William Birkin, who prowls the entirety of the game. There are twists, and turns and a good old fashioned countdown to destruction timer. The game also features one of the most iconic enemies in the Resident Evil bestiary, the inside out looking creature known as The Licker. A funny plot point though that I never thought about until now is that Ada Wong somehow does not have a cinematic cut scene. It would have been apt given the kiss that Ada and Leon share. Hideki Kamiya’s explanation was that all the cut scenes were created earlier in the production process, at a time when Ada’s plot line was different. There simply wasn’t enough time to create scenes for her.

Upon release, Resident Evil 2 was critically well received by the major publications of the era, including EGM, GamePro and Game Informer. One of the most common criticisms was a repeat of the first game: the voice acting. In an interview for the book Biohazard 2: Final Report, Kamiya mentions that because the voice actors recorded before there was any footage for the game it was difficult for Capcom to direct the voice actors into performing in a more genuine way.

It also sold well, ultimately selling nearly five million copies on the PlayStation alone. To promote the release of the game in Japan, Zombie movie legend, the late great George Romero, was hired to direct several commercials. According to Shinji Mikami, he didn’t think that the suggestion to get Romero was serious but thought it should be pursued, and much to his surprise, George said yes. Romero would eventually be considered to direct the film adaptation of Resident Evil and he even wrote a draft of the screenplay before getting the axe. Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto famously said, “His script wasn’t good, so Romero was fired.” Now, I’m not going to defend George Romero’s first draft of the Resident Evil movie. It’s… it’s eh. But it was better that what Paul Anderson would eventually put together. And I know some of you are probably fans of the Anderson movies. I am not. I think they are hot garbage. But that’s just like… my opinion man. Anyway, back to RE2.

Now, the early days of the franchise are often associated with the PlayStation. This makes sense given the massive sway that Sony’s first console held over the market. Resident Evil 2 would be ported to other consoles over the years after its release, most notably, the Nintendo 64. There is something jarring about the thought of Resident Evil on a Nintendo console. Only several years prior, Nintendo was acting like the narc of the game industry during the Senate hearings that would lead to the creation of the ESRB, with Sega taking most of the negative attention from Senator Joe Lieberman. For those of us who were in our teens and 20s at the time, it felt like tonal whiplash for Nintendo to be interested in allowing Capcom to port what was then one of the goriest franchises in production.

The responsibility for the port would be given to Angel Studios. In a post-mortem for the game written by programmer Todd Meynink on GamaSutra, he mentions that the team’s efforts lead to a very efficient port which maximized the reuse of preexisting assets, as well as the successful compression of FMV onto a cartridge, which at the time was still quite a feat. Some delays occurred however when the game was handed to Nintendo for approval. Despite the minor hangups, the game shipped in November of 1999 after a 12 month development cycle with a team of 10 people and a budget of $1,000,000. It received a lot of praise as well.

One of the more fascinating ports of Resident Evil 2 was the one for Tiger Electronic’s Game.Com handheld system. You guys remember Tiger right? They made those little LCD games that, were barely games? Well the Game.com handheld was a Tiger handheld on… well, normally I’d say steroids, but in the spirit of the topic… the G-Virus. The game was a simple black and white, and featured screen and after screen of encounters in a pseudo-3d environment. The audio seems surprisingly effective from the gameplay I’ve watched but overall I feel sorry for those that had this as their first encounter with Resident Evil 2.

[ In the years since it’s release, there has been fascination with the scrapped version of Resident Evil 2. Although RE2 is beloved by many, the screen shots and demos that permeated games media back in 1996 and early 1997 of the 1.5 build have kept people wondering “what-if” for nearly 20 years. Several years ago, a group of fans named Team IGAS decided to put those what ifs to rest. Using bits of code from leaked demos of RE1.5 as well as code found in the finished game the team slowly but surely created a working version. Despite the digital archeology, not all the game could be reconstructed. In an interview with Kotaku the project lead who went by the name Birkin mentioned that while they were able to figure out 90% of Capcoms intentions there was still some creative license they had to take.

Recently there has been inconsistent news of Resident Evil 2 receiving the REmake treatment that gave Resident Evil 1 a facelift. Unfortunately since the announcement of the Resident Evil 2 Remake back in 2015, there has been very little official news about a release date or progress on the game. According to the youtube channel Residence of Evil, there have been some leaks about the game being in development hell, while this seems likely, I can’t independently verify that. Back in 2016 Hideki Kamiya, the director of the original game, admitted in an interview with Polygon that he had been prodding Jun Takeuchi, director of Resident Evil 5, to lead the remake the game. As far as rumors that Kamiya himself would want to direct the Remake, those were put to rest in an interview he game to Metro’s Gaming site. In it, he said when he got to play the Resident Evil 1 Remake, it was like he got to play the game for the first time:

“Even though a lot of the maps and designs were carried over from [Resident Evil 1] there were enough tweaks and adjustments in the remake that they made me feel like, “Wow, I’m playing this game for the first time”. So in that regard I have the same feelings for this Resident Evil 2 remake, which is that I would want to play it if only I could experience it as a consumer.”

Resident Evil 2 is being remade in another way however, as a board game. Capcom is partnering with Steamforged Games to create a table top version of Resident Evil 2. The development of the game was funded by a kickstarter that raised over 800,000 pounds. I’m interested in seeing how both ultimately turn out.

Resident Evil 2 has a longstanding legacy as one of the greatest survival horror games ever made. It also kicked off the career of Hideki Kamiya who would go on to create classics such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and Bayonetta. The success of 2 prompted further development in the series as well, but we will be discussing the period between 3 and 4 in another video.

Question of the Day, what is your favorite Resident Evil game? Thanks for watching Arcadology. The sources are available in the description below and if you enjoy this kind of content, please consider subscribing. Until next time, take care everyone.

The History of XCOM

January 4, 2018 by arcadology Leave a Comment

“The idea of defence as opposed to offence is so much more emotional. Protecting something precious from attack is much more visceral…” -Eugene Jarvis

With the exception of aliens, Julian Gollop’s strategy game, UFO: Enemy Unknown has absolutely no gameplay commonalities with Eugene Jarvis’s arcade side-scrolling magnum opus, Defender. The games both touch on a primal emotion however, defense against the unknown and fear itself. UFO: Enemy Unknown, or as most would eventually know it: X-Com: UFO Defense was the result of an iterative development process for Julian Gollop and his brother Nick, spanning a decade of prior work, and the game kicked off a cherished, though oft-mishandled franchise. Today we are going to journey through the history of the X-Com franchise, beginning with Julian Gollop’s earliest inspirations and works, through the original series, up to the War of the Chosen. Welcome to Arcadology: The History of XCOM.

Julian Gollop’s Early Career

There are four distinct eras in the history of the XCOM franchise. You have the pre-history, which consists of Julian Gollop’s early life and career as a Game Dev. You have the original series, starting with the release of the game from 1994, through Apocalypse. You have the dark times after Apocalypse, and then you have the Current Age, with the 2012 reboot. As with any story, we are going to start at the beginning and dive into Julian Gollop’s life as a young game developer.

Like many who would find themselves designing strategy games in the 1980s, Julian Gollop had a childhood filled with board games. Family night centered around the board game and around the age of 14, Gollop found himself getting into the more complex fare published by Avalon Hill, and Dungeons and Dragons. As he grew up, Gollop made the same realization that many of his peers did: The growing power of personal computers would be perfect for simplifying and streamlining some of the complexities of tabletop gaming.

Gollop with his coding providing by friend Andy Green, released two games while he was still in school in 1983: Time Lords, which was for the BBC Micro Computer, and Islandia. Islandia is the more significant of the two, as it’s in this game that Gollop first experimented with the concept of Action Points, which he had seen implemented in SPI board games. Soon after Gollop began to learn how to program on his own, designing and coding his first game called “Nebula” on the ZX Spectrum.

Julian’s next games would come while he was attending University. Chaos was based on a tabletop game that Gollop designed several years prior, which itself was influenced by a Games Workshop game named Warlock. In 1984, Gollop released the game that could be considered the first version of XCOM, called Rebelstar Raiders. While crude and not having a single-player mode, the basic concepts of squad-based tactics would begin to gestate and develop as Gollop became more comfortable as a programmer and designer. The sequel, simply titled Rebelstar was also intended to be a two-player game, but the publisher forced Gollop to give it a single player campaign as well. This made Gollop learn path algorithms, which basically dictated how the AI could move around the map.

Rebelstar was a marked improvement in many ways over the original with larger, maps and refined gameplay. There would be another sequel, Rebelstar II released in 1988, again on the ZX Spectrum. Following Rebelstar II, Gollop, joined with his brother to form a development studio called Mythos Games, to develop Laser Squad, which can be seen as a direct precursor to the XCOM franchise. Among the gameplay mechanics that they introduced with Laser Squad, some of which would become very important for X-Com, were line-of-sight, weapon and armor loadout changes, and destructible terrain.

The Gollop brother’s turned their attention to Lords of Chaos, which was a sequel to Gollop’s earlier game, Chaos. Lords of Chaos represented a significant shift for Mythos Games, as they journeyed away from self-publishing and found a publisher named Blade Software. Unfortunately the royalty deal they had was atrocious, Blade Software ended up owing the Brothers Gollop money, so when they began plans for a second Laser Squad game, they realized they needed a more serious publisher. From the shortlist they formed, the company they ended up reaching out to was MicroProse, whom they showed a demo of Laser Squad 2. Upon showing a isometric Laser Squad 2 demo to MicroProse, Pete Moreland, head of MicroProse development at the time, said they they liked the game, but wanted something bigger.

The Development of X-COM

Grand narrative, a phrase used to describe strategy games that tell player controlled stories on a huge scale, is what they wanted. Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, these were what MicroProse was looking for. Among the requirements were; the game must be set on earth, it needed to have a research tree and something equivalent to Civilization’s civilopedia. Gollop went back to the drawing board and began research on UFO’s per Moreland’s suggestion. The result was Mythos games taking inspiration from several sources. The style and theming came from the British TV series UFO, and the claims made by Bob Lazar about Area 51’s practice of reverse engineering alien technology as written in Timothy Good’s book Alien Liason: The Ultimate Secret. The concept behind the X-Com organization in the game came from the SHADO organization in the UFO TV show. Several of the game design ideas were inspired, first, by Gollop’s previous tactical games, tabletop games such as Sniper and Freedom in the Galaxy, and a sci-fi RPG called Traveller.

The Gollop brother’s crafted a design document with the ideas of having two separate layers of the game, the command layer which had base building and research, and the tactical squad-based layer. This element of the game was in part inspired from Freedom in the Galaxy, which Gollop has mentioned allowed him to appreciate having more than one scale in a game. Moreland and MicroProse loved it. Julian and Nick Gollop would be responsible for the coding and design of the game. Two Artists named John Reitze and Martin Simillie, were loaned to Mythos by MicroProse. According to Gollop during his GDC Post-mortem for the game, there were several other MicroProse employees who would be involved in significant ways, such as Mike Brunton and Stephen Hand. Stephen Hand was a Laser Squad fan who pushed for the game to be signed by MicroProse, and he was the one to come up with the name X-COM. Towards the end of the development process, composer John Broomhall was brought in to score the game and Andrew Parton did the engineering and sound effects.

There were several ups and downs during the course of the development. During the middle of production, Spectrum Holobyte acquired a controlling stake in MicroProse, and the game was nearly cancelled. In fact it later came out that the game was officially “cancelled” by Spectrum Holobyte. According to Gollop in an interview with PCgamer.com, while he was interviewing people to prepare for a GDC Post Mortem on the game in 2013, he discovered that Spectrum Holobyte had given the cancellation order, however MicroProse executives, such as Peter Moreland, decided it would be best to ignore the cancellation notice and allow Mythos to complete the game. The last three months of development were all in crunch time, as the Gollop brothers worked 12 hour days for seven days a week. Gollop stated that the game was finally finished in March of 1994 with a final development cost of around $180,000 dollars.

UFO: Enemy Unknown would be well received upon release and I remember sinking a fair number of hours into it between the ages of 10 and 14. The opening sequence of the alien attack was incredibly stylish. For those that have played the newer iteration of XCom however, the gameplay of the original might seem a little overwhelming at first. The user interface is littered with a number of buttons that if you are missed the instruction manual could cause some confusion. However with some patience it still feels like a rewarding game to play with some elements, like multiple bases, that would be cool to see in the new series.

Julian Gollop believes the initial success of the first XCOM game to be caused by a few coincidences. The X-Files had become very popular and much of the shows mythology was based on the same folklore and source material that Gollop had used for the game. Also, the PC Strategy market was growing and evolving in a number of ways. Gollop was never quite happy with the fact that the tactical missions had a randomly generated element to them, feeling the sum of the game was definitely greater than its parts. As of six years after its release, X-Com had sold around 470,000 copies across all platforms which included the PC, Amiga, and Playstation.

Terror from the Deep

Following the success of UFO Defense, MicroProse, now owned by Spectrum Holobyte, wanted to get a sequel for the game out in only six months. The Gollop brothers balked at this idea, stating nothing could be done in six months other than swapping sprites and using the original code. They agreed to license the code to MicroProse who would produce the first sequel, Terror from the Deep in house after a year of production. Gollop on Terror from the Deep: “I didn’t really play it that much to be honest. The graphics were quite impressive, but I think they made a mistake trying to expand the scope of the game by making the missions bigger and longer.”

When you fire up Terror from the Deep you are treated to a pretty cool (for 1995) CG cinematic. However once you get into the game you quickly realize that it literally is just a reskin of the original game. Obviously for fans of the first game this was not necessarily a bad thing: more XCom with a new locale, the depths of the oceans, to battle it out with the Alien menace. Unfortunately- any and all issues one might have had with the original game, including the overly complex user interface were translated directly into Terror for the Deep.

X-Com: Apocalypse

While MicroProse worked on Terror from the Deep, Mythos Games worked on the next installment. The game, titled XCOM: Apocalypse, would be the final game in the franchise that Julian Gollop would have involvement in. The core concept from the game arose from a Judge Dredd game that Gollop had conceived years prior, featuring a city in which the player had to deal with different corporations and factions.

Apocalypse never quite clicked. The game had a lot of concepts, but the vision was unclear. Mixing real time and turn based combat led to both feeling unfulfilling, and constant friction between Mythos and MicroProse over the art style for the game. According to Gollop in an interview with Eurogamer, MicroProse wanted to control the art style, even going so far as hiring a famous artist to create models of the aliens that would be in the game, and then scanning them into MicroProse’s software. Unfortunately, the MicroProse art team never quite grasped how to translate those models into sprites that would work in an isometric perspective.

Gollop stated in another interview on the final artwork: “Apart from the guy who designed the vehicles, who did a very good job – the aliens, city and buildings didn’t look that good.” In the end, Julian stated that he regretted simply not taking on the task of creating what would Terror from The Deep in six months, and then quote “just taking a year like they did!” Despite this, Apocalypse was still a profitable game.

Julian’s Departure

After the acrimony over the handling of X-Com: Apocalypse, Nick and Julian Gollop decided that Mythos games would no longer be working with MicroProse. In addition to the poor relationship, MicroProse was undergoing a bit of a transitional period, as Spectrum Holobyte, its parent company was being purchased by Hasbro. Mythos ended up signing a development deal with Virgin Interactive, but could not bring their most valuable intellectual property with them. Gollop stated to Eurogamer that:

“There was some dispute about who owned the licence. In those days, companies weren’t terribly good about intellectual property protection. Our lawyers said that if it went to a court battle, we’d probably lose, and have to hand over the X-Com name. But strangely, their lawyers were telling them the same thing! We eventually struck a deal that we would get increased royalty rates for X-Com Apocalypse, and they would take the licence.”

Interceptor, Enforcer, Cancelled Games

X-Com continued on after the split between MicroProse and Mythos. The first game to be developed was X-Com Interceptor. Dave Ellis would take the seat formerly filled by Julian Gollop as the game’s designer. Ellis began his career at MicroProse in the early 90s working first in their customer service department, and then transferring to quality assurance after a few months. He was in a unique situation heading into the development of Interceptor, as he had previously been moonlighting as the strategy guide author for UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. When the split between MicroProse and Mythos occurred, there was no one more knowledgeable at the company than Dave Ellis who mentioned in an interview with the website The Last Outpost, that he was appointed the X-Com Guru.

Part of the inspiration for pushing X-Com beyond the boundaries of its initial genre was LucasArts experimentation with the Star Wars games. As Ellis outlined it, the goal was to use one of the flight simulator engines and to set the game during one of the X-Com games, so the player would experience similar events from a different perspective. Ellis defends the game from the idea that this was an attempt to slap X-Com onto anything. The intention was to take X-Com and turn it into something grand, because Ellis and other MicroProse management felt strongly about its potential. This never quite happened.

During the course of Interceptors development , Ellis and his team felt strongly about calming fan concerns, and attempted to do so by allowing the “Cult of X-Com” to be able to contact the team through both a forum and an open e-mail address.

The game would stick to the retro-futurist aesthetic that the MicroProse art team had established with X-Com: Apocalypse despite the team’s desire to distance themselves from Apocalypse itself by setting the game in the years leading up to the third X-Com game.

Interceptor ended up with middling reviews despite the efforts of Ellis and team, and only sold around 30,000 copies. The side effect of Interceptor’s 18 months in development was that many at MicroProse were suffering from X-Com fatigue, leaving Dave Ellis to be the only champion for his next idea for an X-Com title, called Genesis. It would be six months before development began on Genesis but when it started, the team became populated by many who worked on Interceptor.

Genesis was intended to be a game designed in the mold of the original X-Com, with strategy, research, and tactics layers but with real time battles in place of turn based. According to Ellis, Genesis would have had an identical geoscape layer to the first two games, UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep, with the intent to also include alien races from those two games with both land and sea missions. Unfortunately none of it would come to pass. As Dave and Team were working on Genesis it became clear that Hasbro’s purchase of Spectrum Holobyte would not end well, given Hasbro’s history of trouble with video game development. The MicroProse Chapel Hill office, which is where the team working on Genesis was housed; was shut down on January 17th, 2000. According to Ellis, the design document for the game had been 80% completed and they had a semi-playable demo.

Running concurrently with the development of Genesis, was another doomed project, X-Com: Alliance. Alliance’s roots predated those of Genesis and the game survived for a few more years prior to getting the axe. Originally started in the Chipping Sodbury MicroProse office, under the direction of Terror from the Deep’s Stuart Whyte and Andrew Williams, the game’s development moved to the Chapel Hill office when Chipping Sodbury was shut down. When the Chapel Hill office was eventually shut down as outlined above, the development of the game moved over to the Hunt Valley office.

The development of Alliance was troubled, so the Hunt Valley office put the game on hold in favor of developing X-Com: Enforcer. MicroProse had been wanting to use the Unreal engine which was planned for Alliance, but with Alliance’s issues they flipped many of the art assets that were designed for it and used them for Enforcer instead. Enforcer is barely what one might consider an X-Com game, a third-person action shooter. It received mixed reviews. Shortly before Enforcer’s release, Hasbro, which had had enough of the video game world, sold off Hasbro Interactive and all its properties to Infogrames. Alliance, and X-Com in general was in stasis.

XCOM lands at Firaxis

Intellectual property law is bonkers. Though necessary in many regards, it has a myriad of complexities that often cause confusion. How did X-Com, which was originally owned by MicroProse find its way back to the spiritual successor of MicroProse, Firaxis? Much like another MicroProse title, Civilization, there was some IP shuffling that had to take place. After Hasbro Interactive was sold, X-Com ended up being held by Infogrames as well as the Atari name. Shortly thereafter, Infogrames rebranded itself as Atari and in the late 2000s, Atari sold the X-Com IP to Take Two, which then transferred it to its subsidiary, 2K Games, to eventually be developed by its OWN subsidiary, Firaxis. The responsibility for the development would fall on the shoulders of Jake Solomon.

The Reboot

As a highschool student, Jake Solomon could not get enough of X-COM: UFO Defense when it came out. He would play it every night for hours before falling asleep, going to school only to come home and do it all again. This was 1994 and Jake was on the precipice of going off to college. The plan, as laid out from his parents, was to go to medical school and become a doctor. But that was not in the cards. The mid-90s was a transformative era for gaming, and much like the golden age of the arcades leading many to become game designers, X-COM lead Jake Solomon into the field of computer science where he had only one goal, make a new X-COM game. Jake Solomon started at Firaxis right out of college around the year 2000. Sid Meier took Solomon under his wing, mentoring him through those early years of being a designer. Solomon refers to Meier as his “professional father” demonstrating a very strong bond between the two.

Solomon’s obsession over X-COM never waned. Whenever the discussion came up at Firaxis as to which game should be made next, XCOM was often Solomon’s suggestion. In 2003, he would get his first chance. From what I gather, Firaxis had not acquired the right to make the IP yet, however that hadn’t stopped others from playing within the confines of the genre. Julian Gollop had just designed Laser Squad Nemesis in 2002, keeping it very much in the same vein as X-COM. Jake Solomon took to making a prototype of an XCOM game with zeal. Unfortunately, it was not very good. Solomon in an interview with Polygon, stated:

“I made one of the shittiest, shittiest prototypes of a game that anyone has ever made,” Solomon says. “I mean, I’d only been in the industry for three years. I’m lucky I even got the opportunity. … And it was so shitty … I had so much to learn. It wasn’t fun. It was awful. It was awful. I’m not only the guy who remade XCOM, I’m also the guy who almost fucking killed it.” The game was a quote “Hot-key driven mess” and made very little sense despite being very inspired by X-COM. After the disastrous showing, Firaxis canned the project, letting Solomon learn from his mistakes rather than dragging it out any longer.

Solomon spent the next four years working at Firaxis, doing everything he could to earn another chance at designing a game. And when his turn came around, it was once again, a chance to design XCOM. At the time, Solomon was working on Civilization Revolution, spending his days at the office working on that, then working on the code for XCOM at night. And less than a year into the development cycle, Solomon thought he had finally gotten the prototype that he had intended to design several years prior. Except he hadn’t. The new proposal leaned on many things from the original that many thought could be refined. Time units, which determined how many actions you could take in a turn, large squads, and random, procedurally generated maps. Solomon would eventually have to walk back all these ideas, especially the maps. After the team completed a vertical slice of the game and showed it to the rest of Firaxis they received the bad news. Most did not enjoy it. It once again, only appealed to hardcore XCOM players.The vertical slice, was a failure, and a year of design had been wasted.

Solomon spent a lot of time talking to Sid Meier after that, trying to work through the issues that he was having with the game. Looking back on it, Solomon realizes the issue was basically attempting to remake the original game.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. It was the original game, and then over the top of that I had put … soldier abilities … a cover system … new alien abilities … new weapons. It was … incredibly complicated — not complex. Complex is fun, complicated is bad. This was a very complicated game. It was more complicated than the original.” Jake Solomon, “The Making of Jake Solomon” Polygon.

The first iteration of the game was completely thrown out, much to the dismay of many of the leads on the project. Solomon would spend days working on a new version with his team, while simultaneously developing a tabletop version of Sid Meier in order to work out some of the gameplay kinks. The process worked, eventually leading to a point where Meier and Solomon both programmed a playable version of the tabletop game. Many of the elements of Solomon and Meier’s different takes on that table top game would be combined into what would become X-Com: Enemy Unknown.

Reboot Reception

The game launched with lingering bugs, something that Solomon and team took rather personally. Given the final stretch of development it was to be expected. However the bugs didn’t effect the critical reception for the game, the vanilla version of which hit an 89 on MetaCritic. What’s more is that the game would go on to receive numerous game of the year awards, reaching levels of recognition that the original game never quite achieved. Though without the fever pitch of nostalgia, without people going back and remembering what that first hit of XCom was like, would the reboot have made as big a splash? Possibly. Divining an answer to that question would be pure conjecture. What isn’t conjecture however is the effect the game had on players.

Civilization has long been known to cause players to take just, quote: One More Turn. I even started my history of Civilization by speaking that oft used mantra of strategy gamers. X-Com Enemy Unknown truly lived up to that phrase, coined to describe Sid Meier’s addictive game. In a review for Official Playstation Magazine, David Houghton referred to the gameplay as “compulsive.” Develop of the game would continue with additional DLC expanding some of the gameplay elements, before X-Com: Enemy Within rewrote some of the core mechanics, adding a new faction, the Alien friendly EXALT, to deal with. It was overall well received.

But what t would not be so well received would be an XCom spinoff game known as The Bureau: XCom Declassified.

The Bureau

While Jake Solomon was undergoing severe growing pains at Firaxis, another 2K games studio, Irrational, would be put to the task of developing an XCom property as well. Irrational had been acquired in a Take Two spending spree, Take Two being the parent company to 2K Games. Irrational was known for being home to Ken Levine, whose System Shock 2 had been considered one of the best games of the previous ten years. Irrational had two studios, one in Boston, and one in Canberra. The Boston one was the headliner with Canberra acting mostly in a support capacity for the games that were developed, which would include BioShock.

Much like Firaxis, the idea of developing an XCom property had excited people at Irrational, with Ken Levine being a huge fan. The game took many forms over the years, from a team based tactics game, much like the original XCom franchise, to eventually being a third person shooter.

The full story, into how The Bureau happened, is not going to be told here. It shifted between three of 2K’s studios before getting its original 2010 release date pushed back all the way to 2013, after the world had already been introduced to Jake Solomon and Firaxis’s new vision for XCom. There would be no repeat of the late 90s, where a splintering grasp on what to do with the franchise spelled its doom. After the failure of The Bureau, the only XCOM in town, was tactical. In his first Gollop Chamber article in PC Gamer, the father of the franchise, Julian Gollop made a great point: “The XCOM genre is something special and distinct, and diverging too far from its fundamental design pillars results in something less than satisfactory…[The Bureau] looked like it could be an interesting game, but it just wasn’t X-COM, and unsurprisingly the reaction from X-COM fans wasn’t very favourable.”

XCOM 2

For all the ups and downs of the franchise, the development of X-Com 2 was comparatively normal. There would be no hidden cancellations, or tensions with the art department. No years wasted on ultimately discarded prototypes. No XCom 2 would be more of what made the first one successful, with some additional twists. One big twist would be the setting- the game’s setting was a future after a player loss in the first game. Losing XCom 1, became canon, strangely enough.

Another twist of a decision made during development would be that XCom 2 would start as a PC Exclusive. This allowed Firaxis to focus on higher end graphics as well as modding support. Firaxis would also partner with the developers of one of the most popular mods for XCom 1, The Long War, allowing them the access needed to release several mods on day 1 of the game’s release.

The release though, had some pain points. Many computers had issues running the game, as it wasn’t properly optimized for a number of graphics cards. My personal experience had me dropping the settings down as low as possible. For a point of comparison, I would run Doom 2016, released a few months later, on almost the highest possible settings. Many of the issues would be resolved with patches in the following months. The game currently sits at an 88 on metacritic, one point below its predecessor.

The phrase DLC gets used to describe a wide variety of content, from the infamous Horse Armor of Oblivion to massive expansion packs. XCom 2’s DLC the War of the Chosen, was the latter, so much so it was discussed, briefly, to possibly just be XCom 3. In an interview with Polygon, Jake Solomon said: “We definitely talked about [making it XCom 3] we have a lot of features that could have been the basis for a sequel, but for us a sequel also requires an entirely new narrative.”

Where does the franchise go from here? Ostensibly, XCom 3. I have a feeling that lessons have been learned about slapping the name XCom on things that don’t fit. Meanwhile, the genre is expanding broader than ever before. 2017 saw Nintendo and Ubisoft collaborate for an XCOM-lite style game called Kingdom Battle: Mario + Rabbids. But perhaps the most salient bit about the future of the series, comes from Julian Gollop himself, who is currently hard at work developing his own XCom style game, Phoenix Point. The first entry of his PC Gamer column was titled “XCOM is now a genre.” In it Gollop argues that the core pillars of design that represent XCom are unique enough that simply calling a game “an XCom game” should be enough of a genre descriptor. To quote the closing of his column: “There is such a thing as ‘the XCOM genre’, and I am really excited for the future. I am not alone any more.”

Thank you for joining me on what is my longest video to date. My sources can be found in the description down below, and if you notice any errors, please note them under the pinned fact check comment. If you are interested in additional histories in the same vein, check out my videos on Civilization and SimCity. My name is Spoiler Kevin, and thank you for watching Arcadology.

The Unlikely Success of Resident Evil

July 26, 2017 by arcadology Leave a Comment

Why did Resident Evil work? It’s not an unfair question. While many agree that it was Resident Evil 2 that turned the franchise into the powerhouse that it is today it required the success of the first game in order to happen- a game that has been released several different times and remastered. Twice!

By all accounts the first Resident Evil had terrible voice acting, a dodgy story, and one of my top five worst control schemes of all time, tank controls. And with all that going against it, the game turned out to be a hit. Why?

Today on Arcadology, we are going to dive into the creation and subsequent success of Resident Evil.

The horror genre was underutilized in the early days of the game industry. Before the crash of 1983, there were only a few games that could be reasonably considered horror like 3D Monster Maze. In the decade that followed, most of which was during a boom in the slasher genre, there were more efforts to design horror games, and some of these games were both successful and memorable to this day: including Splatterhouse, Alone in the Dark, System Shock, and more.

But there wasn’t a moment in which the industry collectively decided to push toward developing horror, not yet. In the late 70s, Space Invaders prompted many companies to ride the “defending the earth against alien invasion” wave. Pac Man created a fascination with “maze chases.” Super Mario Brothers pushed everyone in the direction of side scrolling platformers.

Horror’s gaming moment arrived in the form of Resident Evil. Called Bio Hazard in Japan and released 1996, Resident Evil sparked a golden age of horror in game development that lasted through the early 2000s. The game’s origin though dates seven years prior, with another game titled Sweet Home.

Sweet Home is something that was out of place when it was released, in a good way. The game is a top-down 8-bit RPG that graphically would look familiar to fans of old school Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. Unlike those games though, it was a horror title, based on a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film of the same name. Capcom and game designer, Tokuro Fujiwara were brought on by the studio to make a game adaptation that would have a day and date release with the film. Prior to this, Fujiwara had worked mostly on arcade classics like Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Commando, and possibly my favorite platformer of all time, Bionic Commando.

The game, loosely based off the film, takes place in a mansion where a documentary crew has been trapped by a spirit while attempting to preserve the fresco’s of a dead artist.

Some of the choices Fujiwara made for the game were a bit experimental. Unshackled from the need to follow the plot of the film exactly, as well as not needing to consider an arcade version of the game, Fujiwara developed game mechanics that were rather ahead of their time. These included being able to split the party up, dropping and picking up items, and permadeath. Also, check out this door transition. Look familiar?

Fujiwara’s success with Sweet Home would land him with a promotion up to Producer, which from what I can gather, meant that his days with direct, hands on development of games were over. Fujiwara though would carry the experience of developing Sweet Home and horror with him.

A few years later, on the verge of a new generation of consoles, a Capcom executive sent out a memo recommending that the company begin investigating the development of a horror game using 3D technology. Fujiwara, who had been wanting to get back into horror since his experience with Sweet Home decided to assign the project to his protoge, Shinji Mikami.

Mikami up until that point had been working exclusively on Capcom’s Disney license, his best seller being the SNES version of Aladdin, which let’s be honest, is a pretty tight game. According to Fujiwara, Mikami at the time was terrified of the horror genre, which meant that he was perfect for the role.

Mikami was unsure about the game- he didn’t know if mainstream horror game would sell and all evidence up until that point made it seem like a dicey proposition. Whether the game was ever intended to be a remake of Sweet Home or not is anecdotal information at best. What we do know though was that Sweet Home and another horror game, Alone in the Dark served as inspiration points for several of the design choices made.

So what were those influences? For Sweet Home first and foremost would be the conceit of the story, a group of people are somehow trapped in a spooky mansion, only instead of a documentary crew they were police officers. Additionally, concepts like strict inventory management originated in Sweet Home and found their way, in a way into Resident Evil. Additionally, Sweet Home placed an emphasis on puzzle solving, something that was quite prevalent in the gameplay of Resident Evil. In fact it is probably this element that is most inspired by Sweet Home.

And, as I mentioned, the door transitions.

What parts were inspired by Alone in the Dark? The camera angles, which, are honestly a bigger part of the design of the game than anything taken from Sweet Home. When Resident Evil was in early stages, the idea was to develop it from the first person point of view and build the game entirely out of polygons.

Technical limitations though prevented that idea from coming to fruition. After playing Alone in the Dark, Mikami and team understood the effectiveness of using a fixed camera angle with pre-rendered backgrounds. While he was certain immersion and therefore horror would be lessened by the switch, they did it anyway for the sake of creating higher resolution and more detailed environments.

This is a complete side note however, but Resident Evil 7 was widely considered a return to form for the franchise while ditching the third person camera angle in favor of the first person camera angle that the series was intended to have at the very beginning. Another fun nod to the early days of Resident Evil is the documentary crew, which could be seen as a reference to sweet home. But I digress.

Character and story shifted through development as well. Zombies were decided on as the ubiquitous enemy by either Fujiwara, or Mikami. Literally, both have claimed to be the progenitor of that idea in different sources. Eventually, after a prolonged development process, well, prolonged for the time period, Resident Evil would be released in 1996.

Reviews for Resident Evil were great, many reviewers echoing that the game was one that could be a game changer for the industry. But even the reviewers with the most effusive praise still could not overlook the voice acting. In 1996, voice work was uncommon in video games, bit even then it was just downright awful. The dialog itself was poorly written, but it was the combination poorly written, and poorly spoken that made Resident Evil’s voice acting the height of hilarity. Historically, it was the voice talent that has been blamed for this. Is that fair?

Well, according to DC Douglas, the current voice of Albert Wesker, no, its not. On a voice acting panel in 2014, Douglas, unprompted defended the work of Sergio Jones, the original Albert Wesker stating that in the early days of game voice over work, actors were often brought into a booth with all their lines printed on a spreadsheet with no context given as to when these lines were actually being spoken. The director would then have the actors read each line with a different emphasis on each word and then files would be sent to the audio engineer in Japan who would pick and choose dialog based on what sounded best to his ear, not to what sounded best to the ear of a non English speaker. Special thanks to Josh Wirtanen from Retrovolve.com for this scoop.

Another common criticism of the game were the controls. Similar to those used in Alone in the Dark, tank controls were a necessary evil because of the fixed camera angle. In traditional free floating third person camera angle games, the directional controls are relative to the camera. When the camera angle is fixed the way it was in these two games, the orientation of the camera relative to the character had the possibility of switching between rooms, therefore left from one camera angle, would not be left in another. Make sense?

Tank controls solved this problem. On the d-pad, up was forward, down was backward, and right and left rotated the character clockwise or counter-clockwise respectively. The downside of these controls were that it made moving your character in any sort of evasive manner extremely difficult, because you couldn’t change direction, and move at the same time. Perhaps this added to the tension, but for me it was often an immersion busting frustration.

Strangely something that I saw repeated several times across reviews in different major publications of the time was praise for the story of the game. Maybe I’m pretty far off base, but the plot is intriguing in that it exists – but if you placed it directly into a movie you’d be accused of writing derivative pulpfiction, but without the self awareness that modern pulp stories bring to the table. That being said, did the plot factor into the game’s success? Well, let’s explore some possible reasons.

First, the rental gambit. Did you know there was a difference in the difficulty between the Japanese and US versions of the game? Most of the time that means the game was harder in Japan and easier in the United States, but in this case it was the reverse. In the mid 90s, rental store chains were a big deal in the states and many of them carried all the latest video games. Capcom of America wanted the game to be more difficult so that it was less likely for the game to be completed on a rental. Now it would be tough to determine whether this had any impact without some raw data that I have a feeling blockbuster is no longer able to provide.

Still that’s one possibility. Let’s talk about the marketing. From what I can find, the game had a commercial that aired, but only in the Japanese market. The earliest commercial I was able to find for Resident Evil 1 in the United States market was this Christmas commercial for the director’s cut and Resident Evil 2. Obviously TV time is only one part of the equation. Many gamer’s in the mid 90s were subscribed to one of several gaming magazines, the most popular being EGM, GamePro, Game Informer, and the like. My thinking was that surely there had to have been a blitz in the magazines, right? Well, yes and no – prior to the game’s release, there were not many paid ads to be found in these magazines, it was only after March when these spots started appearing. There were two varieties, one featuring this iconic art from the game, and the other that basically gets the plot of the game wrong.

An interesting aside was that there were plenty of ads to be found for another horror game called “D” which at the time was soon to be released for the Playstation. It had already been released a year prior for the doomed 3DO.

While there weren’t a ton of ads to be found, there were plenty of preview articles, which sometimes felt like advertisements back in the day. These articles were filled with the gory, pun intended, details of the upcoming game, and for an adolescent horror fan such as myself, I ate it up. Like a zombie. Eating a –never mind.

So how about the plot? Well, despite the plot being, by my subjective measure kinda bad, the fact that it existed and had a tremendous amount of detail was no small feat for the type of game that Resident Evil was. Abundant plot was still something that was more likely to be found in an RPG in the mid 90s. Most games used it simply as an excuse to prop up gameplay. Resident Evil had an attempt at mystery and suspense in the story that unfolds throughout the game, with one decent twist packed in there, it definitely gets an A for effort. How did this factor into the success? This is probably the most anecdotal piece of this video, so take it for a grain of salt, but I recall in the early days of Resident Evil’s release, that there was enough plot to spark a conversation amongst other kids my age. Rumors about Wesker living were born immediately at the lunch table, as well as other elements. The plot, mixed with Easter eggs and hidden items possibly contributed to a strong word of mouth, which was gold to game executives in the 90s. But that, keep in mind is my conjecture.

Finally, lets circle back around to what started me on this discussion. Genre. Perhaps, the executive at Capcom simply read the tea leaves correctly, and identified that finally the market was actually ready for a horror game, and Mikami’s team managed to capitalize by offering gamers something inspired by some of the best horror games of the previous few years, and remixing it into something brand new.

As I mentioned at the top, the original Resident Evil would be re-released several times over the following years. The Director’s Cut promised to restore the gore to the cut scenes, except it didn’t. Capcom blamed it on some sort of localization issue. The Director’s Cut also returned the game to its original difficulty by adding in an auto-aim that was in the original Japanese version that had been stripped away for the American release.

The director’s cut would be released again with dual shock support and possibly the most controversial change, a completely brand new score by composer Mamoru Samuragochi. Samuragochi, known as the Japanese Beethoven because of his deafness created a new score for the game that was widely panned. Just listen to this one track. Yes that made it into the game. The story gets weirder though when it comes out years later, that Samuragochi didn’t even write the music he was credited for, he had been paying a ghost writer. So not only was it bad, it wasn’t even his bad. Such a weird moment.

The horror genre in gaming did go on to see a boom period after Resident Evil’s release. Capcom benefitted with continuing the Resident Evil franchise, as well as starting the Dino Crisis series, which was basically Resident Evil with dinosaurs. Konami threw their hat into the ring with Silent Hill, and Square Enix had Parasite Eve. Clock Tower, a SNES game which predated Resident Evil, was given new blood, pun intended, as a 3D survival horror. In another video though, we will talk about the decline and rebirth of the genre.

For all the fun and quirks of the first Resident Evil, as a relatively early PlayStation game, it ultimately aged rather poorly. It’s interesting to look back on 3D games from the mid-90s and compare them to the pixel art games of the same time. Frequently, pixel based games have aged rather well over the years, and the 3D games, much like the earliest use of CGI in movies, have looked a bit worse for wear. Combined with the shoday voice acting, Resident Evil was ripe for the remaking when it came time to honor a contract Capcom had signed with Nintendo. But the remake, and what it meant for the franchise is another story altogether.

That will do it for this episode! If you like this stuff take a look at this video on the history of Dark Souls! You can find the channel on twitter at Arcadology, or you can follow me for my own personal thoughts @spoilerkevin. Until next time, thanks for watching Arcadology!

The Rise and Fall of Sim City

June 9, 2017 by arcadology Leave a Comment

Reticulating splines. If that phrase tickles your nostalgia bone, you probably have spent time playing SimCity. The series that inspired a genre once held a lofty status as one of the greatest ever created. But hard times have befallen both the franchise and the studio that spawned it. Today on Arcadology, we are going to examine the rise and fall of SimCity, from its roots as a level builder to its unfortunate resting place as an also-ran.

Raid on Bungeling Bay. No one would blame you if you hadn’t heard of Will Wright’s first game, The Raid on Bungeling Bay. Wright himself calls it “mediocre” but it’s clearly an attempt at self-deprecation. Raid on Bungeling Bay was a top down shooter released in 1984 in which the player controlled a helicopter whose mission it was to destroy military infrastructure such as roads and buildings. The origin of the game though starts several years prior when Wright lived in New York City. His primary interest at the time was robotics and had an Apple II computer that he used for them. While at the computer store, the only one in New York at the time, Wright noticed that computer games were going on sale. Wright had been a gamer in his youth, mostly intricate tabletop wargames, like the kind that inspired Dungeons and Dragons.

Wright’s interest piqued and he began playing games on his Apple II. Over time, he became convinced that he wanted to try his own hand at creating a game. While the Apple II market was seemingly saturated, a brand new computer system, the Commodore 64, was not. So he became an early adopter and started learning everything he could about programming on the Commodore. His inspiration for Bungeling Bay was his love of helicopters, a game that he played on Apple II called Conway’s Life, and the urge to create a world big enough for the player to get lost in.

During the production of the game, Wright created two programs called Chedit and Wedit, the former being a character editor and the latter being the world editor. The second one, Wedit, is the key to this story, as it would be this program that would go on to become SimCity Classic. By the time he finished programming Bungeling Bay, Wright had moved to the Bay Area in California and began shopping the game to the publishers. All passed except for Broderbund, which at the time was housed in an old liquor store.

Broderbund worked with Wright to finish the game. Upon its release in the US on the Commodore 64, Raid on Bungeling Bay would go on to sell 20,000 units. Wright mentions in is GDC Post-mortem that he believes piracy may have played a a part in supressing the sales numbers. Broderbund also had the game licensed and reprogrammed to appear on two other platforms, the MSX, which was a Japanese home computer, and the Famicom or the NES. In fact, Bungeling Bay, along with Lode Runner were among the first US produced games to appear on the NES.

The NES port of Bungeling Bay would sell a whopping 800,000 copies in Japan. Wright attributes the staggering difference to the cartridge system that Nintendo used being very difficult to pirate. Regardless, the money received from that allowed Wright the freedom to toy around with Wedit, which was calling back to him now that he had finished Bungeling Bay. As Wedit evolved Wright began taking inspiration from the works of Jay Forrester and his book Urban Dynamics. Wright was also inspired by the Stanislaw Lem story “The Seventh Sally” about a tyrant being given control of a simulated city. SimCity was born. However, it would be awhile still before it found its way into the world.

Meanwhile, Jeff Braun was looking to get into game developer. A font developer for the Amiga, Braun had started hosting pizza and beer parties in an effort to meet people in the game industry. At one of these parties, he met a man who had programmed a city simulator game, but was feeling kinda down on it because all the publishers he and shown it to had passed on it. The man, obviously was Will Wright, and the game was SimCity. Apparently, in the 1980s, publishers were wary about a game that couldn’t actually be “completed.”

Wright showed Braun the game, and Braun knew that they had a winner on their hands. Using the funds left over from the sale of Bungeling Bay, Wright and Braun joined together to form their own publishing company, called Maxis. The name Maxis means nothing. Anecdotally, the name was chosen because it is Six AM backwards, however the name actually comes from a contest that Jeff Braun held amongst friends and family.

Before they got to work on publishing SimCity, Braun pushed one game titled Sky Chase through the pipes in order to work out all the kinks of game publishing. Strange to think that the honor of first game published by Maxis was not actually SimCity, but this game that not many have heard of. Regardless, after the initial experience of publishing, Braun and Wright would reach out for help for SimCity. Help came in the form of Wright’s friends at Broderbund, who would work as distributors for the game.

The impact the game had on the strategy and simulation market was, well, legendary. Many games, including Civilization, were inspired by SimCity’s release and its audacity to be a game where the objective was set by the player themselves. The game would receive numerous accolades, but quite possible the biggest moments in the game’s young life was when two publications, Time Magazine, and the New York Times, acknowledged its existence. In the New York Times article, several city planning professionals were interviewed, alongside Jeff Braun, to talk about the effectiveness of SimCity in actually demonstrating how a city would behave.

In the period following SimCity’s release, Wright, Braun, and Maxis began the expansion of the Sim empire. SimEarth put the player in the position to simulate the development of an entire planet by giving them control over temperature, atmosphere, and other elements. SimAnt was probably the weirdest of the original entries, by allowing players to take control of a simulated ant colony. Though both games were well received, they weren’t the hits that SimCity was. Another game that Maxis would publish was A-Train, which was actually the third game in the Japanese “Take the A-Train” series. Though it wasn’t developed by Maxis, A-Train would have a similar isometric point of view that the upcoming SimCity 2000 would utilize.

In 1993, Maxis released the highly-anticipated sequel to SimCity, called SimCity 2000. The game was a smash hit. 2000, co-designed by Will Wright and Fred Haslem, is probably the most well known version of the game among the late 20s and older set. Among the changes between SimCity 1, or Classic and 2000 were: a new point of view, dimetric instead of top down, allowing for placement of individual development tiles instead of 3×3 blocks. Educational facilities, water pipes, subways, more power plant options and so on. Most importantly, however, was the introduction of the phrase I started this whole episode off with. Reticulating splines. Something very soothing about that.

During the development of SimCity 2000, Wright was thinking about the future of game design. In interviews that come packaged with the special edition of SimCity 2000, Wright mentions the idea of data being interconnected between games. This was a pretty intriguing idea back in the early 90s, however putting it into practice, at least for Wright, would have to wait for the better part of the rest of the decade. For now, though, SimCity 2000 marked the departure of Will Wright from the SimCity series as the project lead.

SimCity 2000 was a critical darling and a best seller for Maxis. The company would find the game ported on a variety of platforms and it remained a strong seller for the following several years. During that time, Maxis started to experiment a little bit more with its Sim releases, and the board became more interested in simply just shipping games for the sake of shipping them, rather than because they were ready. Will Wright and Jeff Braun would be put aside at the top for a man named Sam Poole, who had no prior experience running a game studio.

Maxis went public in 1995 and for a time, between its public offering and the sales of SimCity 2000, the gravy train wouldn’t end. However, with a bunch of failures and dodgy acquisitions, such as the Texas based studio Cinematronics, it wasn’t long before Maxis was in dire straits. During this time they turned to the thing that they knew best, the SimCity franchise. Will Wright, as I mentioned before, was no longer involved in any meaningful way. In an interview, Wright once stated that he only could only muster about 10 years of interest in any given franchise, so he was off to work on something new, a game that the board had no interest in pursuing. But we’ll touch on that later.

SimCity 3000. The company pinned its hopes on SimCity3000. Coming out the gate the idea was to push the game as a 3D, which to many in management at Maxis at the time, made sense. 3000, 3D. Right? Sure. Anyway, the game was a disaster at this point, with computers being unable to generate the horsepower to manage a 3D city simulation in the vein of SimCity. Following a disastrous showing at E3, and on the brink of ruin, Maxis started looking for buyers, and one came willing to spend. Electronic Arts, one of the largest publishers in the business, purchased Maxis in June of 1997 through a $125 Million stock swap.

Upper management would be weeded out in the months after the purchase. What EA had acquired was a company with low morale, but sitting on a gold mine of an IP as well as one of the sharpest game designers on the planet. EA placed Luc Barthelet in charge of its newest subsidiary, and he looked at what was going on. SimCity 3000 in 3D appalled him and he quickly put Lucy Bradshaw in charge to right the ship.

The 3D design was entirely scrapped. Instead, the game would be the same style as 2000. There were a few other changes, including the introduction of tunnels, the ability to trade with neighboring cities, and switching out the newspaper for a ticker. The game was a well-received continuation of the franchise, however I’ve seen some articles in my research that claim that 3000 is the weakest of the middle three games in the franchise. In an article by Richard Moss on arstechinica.com, he states that the problems were many: poor terrain tools, annoying water management, as well as contradictory advisors, and poorly thought out historical landmarks. That 3000 was released in a good shape though, after the disaster that was the 3D version is amazing.

SimCity 3000 was released in January of 1999 and would go on to become a multi-million copy selling game for Maxis and EA. SimCity 4 would be a few years off, and in the interim, a new champion for the company would step forth- The Sims. We will talk more about The Sims in the next episode of Origin of the Series, however the impact that it had on Maxis and EA was massive, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that around this point, The Sims became the studio’s primary focus.

SimCity 4 was the first Maxis SimCity game to be created using 3D graphics, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it as the game utilizes a similar isometric style point of view as the previous games. One of the interesting aspects of SimCity 4 was the introduction of the MySim mode, which allowed for the player to import their characters from The Sims into the game. I find this neat given Will Wright’s thoughts on this very idea 10 years earlier with the release of SimCity 2000. Though SimCopter and Streets of SimCity allowed for importing of maps, the MySim mode was a more fleshed out version of Wright’s ideal, though not to the extent that games would take it in the future.

Released in January 2003, four years after SimCity 3000, SimCity 4 was generally well received by the critics, however it was noted for having a very steep learning curve. Will Wright in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, would be later quoted as saying, “SimCity worked itself into a corner. We were still appealing to this core ‘SimCity’ group. It had gotten a little complicated for people who had never played ‘SimCity.” Regardless, there is an overall aura that 4 was a step in the right direction for the series, after many felt that 3000 was a step backwards. Even if that step involved creating a possibly overwhelming game. Personally, I probably have spent the most time with 4 out of all the games, and it is my favorite, so tastes in this matter are very subjective.

We could say that the franchise, for the most part ended here. I don’t mean that to disparage what followed, but what did follow were two games that were disappointing. One because it was incorrectly labeled a SimCity game, and another because it’s sheer number of technical difficulties and reduction of scope.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on SimCity Societies. It wasn’t developed by Maxis, and in all honesty, its not that connected to the series proper. It was more of a game with SimCity flavoring, rather than a SimCity game. SimCity Societies basically stripped away all the city building elements of the SimCity series, in favor of focusing on the social engineering element. Players managed concepts like prosperity as resources in order to make certain buildings work. It’s an odd game, and undoubtedly disappointed fans that at the time were looking forward to something more along the lines of SimCity 5.

And here we are. SimCity 2013 is not a bad game. With a few slight changes to its launch, and without the weight of expectations as the first proper SimCity game in a decade, SimCity 2013 might not have had the negative backlash it initially received. Unfortunately, the game for better or worse is irrevocably tied to its time and place in gaming history. And until we hear otherwise from EA, it may have been the final bow for this legendary series.

Stone Librande, lead designer for the game, said that Maxis took feedback that SimCity 4 was too complicated to made an effort to strip away some of the unnecessary complexities in the game. This was part of the reason why the game was not called SimCity 5. He mentioned in an interview with The Atlantic that this decision was particularly freeing, because they could redesign SimCity from the ground up, rather than just make SimCity 4 with some more stuff thrown in. SimCity 2013 ditched the traditional isometric-style view its predecessors for a full 3D camera. Additionally, 2013 was the first game in the series to allow for curved roads without the use of mods.

Before the game’s release, SimCity was receiving a huge amount of buzz however clouds started to form almost immediately with concerns over the “always online” component to the release. The DRM for the game required an internet connection to validate, which prompted people to wonder what would happen when the servers for the game were ultimately shut down. As the game circulated around publications for review however, the initial feedback was positive. But when the game was released on March 6th, 2013, and EA’s servers could not handle the load. Players had to wait for hours to play the game and EA and Maxis scrambled to try to push out adjustments to make the game work. In an interview with Game Informer, Ocean Quigley, the game’s creative director, said that although he was proud of the work they had done, watching this happen was like being on a sinking ship.

SimCity 2013, would never quite recover from the early launch woes. A game that should have taken the same gaming mind space as grand strategies like Civilization, slowly petered out over the past several years. The most recent release in the series, has been a mobile free to play version of SimCity. The game’s value as an intellectual property is seemingly damaged, and with games like Cities: Skylines taking the lead in the city simulation genre, it’s tough to imagine the franchise rising back to prominence. In what may be the final nail in the coffin, EA shut down Maxis in March of 2015.

This episode feels somewhat somber. It’s easy to pin the fall of the franchise on SimCity 2013, but in all honesty, there was rot in the bones since the near disaster that was SimCity 3000. The closure of Maxis, even if it was just a name at this point, seems like a metaphorical stone tied to the feet of the franchise. Will we see another SimCity in the future? I’m unsure. However if the past few years have shown us anything, with franchises like Doom and Resident Evil finding new life, its that we shouldn’t count out the comeback.

That will do it for today’s episode of Arcadology. My name is Spoiler Kevin, follow me on twitter at spoilerkevin. If you enjoyed this video, leave a like and a comment down below. Today’s question, what is your favorite simulation style game? If you enjoy this content, consider subscribing with notifications. Thanks for watching, and take care everyone.

The History of Mass Effect

March 18, 2017 by arcadology Leave a Comment

The History of Sonic the Hedgehog in the 16-Bit Era

March 3, 2017 by arcadology Leave a Comment

Introduction

For a kid, exclusivity meant conflict. For my part, I never involved myself in the arguments surrounding Mario and Sonic, but I was keenly aware of them as a seven year old. Over the lunch table lines were drawn and fierce debate swirled over which character, which game, and inherently but never mentioned, which company was better. Today on Origin of the Series, we are going to be focusing on the Genesis Era of Sonic, starting with a brief history of Sega and going through the release of the first game. Welcome Origin of the Series: Sonic in the Genesis Era, Part 1.

Historical Context

The origin story of Sega is rarely straight forward. There are many important dates to consider as an appropriate jumping off point, but for the purposes of brevity, we are going to go to the one that serves as the catalyst for modern day Sega, 1983. The video game market which by the early 80s encompassed both arcade games and home consoles turned into a bit of a dumpster fire in 1983. At least, in the United States. The market had become saturated, between limitless releases of Atari games, to the other consoles that were flooding the market, including Colecovision and Mattel’s Intellivision system. With too much supply and too little demand, the fall was gargantuan. Mattel suffered tremendous losses, and Atari would need to declare bankruptcy.

How did this effect Sega? Right around the time of the collapse, Sega had just entered the home console market with their SG-1000 console, auspiciously on the same day that Nintendo did with the Famicom. The SG-1000 was an underpowered unit compared to most of the systems, and weaker than the Famicom, but it would be on this that many Sega employees would cut their console programming teeth including Sonic programmer Yuji Naka with his first game titled Girl’s Garden.

Their home console launch notwithstanding, the crash of ’83 spooked Gulf and Western, the company that CEO David Rosen had sold Sega to in the 1970s. Their response was to sell off the American manufacturing divisions of the enterprise. Not willing to let the company completely fall apart, Rosen and Hayao Nakayama, an executive from a Sega acquisition in the late 70s, led a buyout of the rest of the company. Sega came out of the crash as a brand-new company, David Rosen remained Chairman, and Hayao Nakayama became the new CEO.

Sega would release a revision to the SG-1000, the Mark II, the following year. It made up a bit for the lackluster performance of the original SG-1000, but it wasn’t until the Mark III, otherwise known as the Sega Master System, that Sega took its first real steps into competing in the console market. Well, baby steps. Sega determined they would need a mascot to compete with Nintendo. Mario, the plumber, created as the protagonist of Donkey Kong when Nintendo had to pivot from making a Popeye game, had risen to immense popularity in both Japan and America. Sega’s first shot at a mascot was a spaceship named Opa-Opa from the game Fantasy World. Doesn’t that seem odd? Yes, it was odd – Sega realized it quickly and moved on to Alex Kidd.

It is silly to feel bad for a digital mascot that never truly existed. Regardless, Alex Kidd’s run as the mascot of Sega is a bit of a downer as the character seemed setup for failure. Maybe the red jumpsuit was too close to Mario’s red overalls, and it was moot, but the first game in the Alex Kidd series looked like a seriously fun experience. It was titled Alex Kidd in Miracle World, and the player guided Alex through his adventures on the planet Radaxian. The gameplay was varied and colorful featuring strange bosses and interesting level designs. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite perform as well as one would hope for the mascot to take on Mario.

The following game reflected the uncertainty Sega had in both the character and the design of the first game. Alex Kidd and the Lost Stars was a traditional platformer with all the elements of the original Alex Kidd that made it interesting stripped away. Following that they stuck Alex into a BMX game, and then a strange game that was a bit of a commercial or Sega. Honestly, this is not an atypical treatment for a mascot. Mario is in all sorts of games, from Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros, and even appeared as an NPC in games like Punch-Out. The problem was, without a single unifying success to tie the franchise together, Alex Kidd just seemed more and more scattered.

Alex Kidd was shelved, after a few more games, and with the launch of the new Genesis console. Hayao Nakayama still wanted a mascot, and he turned the development of one over to the employees of Sega at large by holding a companywide contest.

Game Development

After hundreds of submissions, there were a few finalists chosen for the new Sega mascot. And of those, one became the ultimate winner. A rabbit. Not the hedgehog you were expecting, the original winner of the mascot competition was a rabbit submitted by eventual Sonic character designer and Naoto Oshima. With the mascot settled, for now, Oshima paired with programmer Yuji Naka to develop a demo for the new mascot. Oshima had worked with Naka previously on the Phantasy Star games, some of my personal favorites, and recently Naka had completed work on Ghouls n’ Ghosts, demonstrating that he had the platforming chops needed. Fortuitously, Naka’s most recent project had been cancelled, giving him the bandwidth to work on the new tech demo. Around this time Hirokazu Yasuhara would join the team as the director of the project. He had been en route to joining the Sega Technical Institute in in 1990, however his trip was delayed, and in the meantime, he joined Sega’s AM8 division, now known as Sonic Team.

The rabbit didn’t seem to be working for Naka, Oshima, and Yasuhara. Naka’s technical demo prioritized speed above all else. His inspiration for this was Super Mario Bros. in that there was a definite cap in the speed at which you could clear the level. Naka said in an interview with Retro Gamer Magazine: “Every time I played the first stage, I wondered why I couldn’t clear it faster the better I got playing it.” The rabbit however was envisioned to be able to pick items up with his ears, but the action took too long. In an interview with Sega Visions, Naka mentioned that because speed was important, that they thought a character that could turn itself into a ball would work. After toying around with an Armadillo character, the other Oshima and Naka settled on a hedgehog, named Sonic. Oshima had doodled with the idea of the character before, then named Mr. Needlemouse, but it was not submitted to the contest. A possibly anecdotal story of the design of the character is that Oshima combined Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat for the basic sketch. This early version of Sonic had fangs, a human girlfriend named Madonna, and a rock band.

Meanwhile across the Pacific, Sega of America had a new president and CEO. Tom Kalinske, the former CEO of Mattel. Kalinske’s history was primarily in the toy business however his knack for running projects that appealed to kids was unparalleled. Before Mattel Kalinske was responsible for turning a vitamin chewable into Flintstones Vitamins – a product so ubiquitous with its jingles that I am hearing them in my head as a read this. Kalinske was recruited by Mattel after a particularly bright showing while testifying before a Senate subcommittee and became a shining star for the company. In the 1980s, he took over Mattel as CEO.

Internal politics forced him out from Mattel in 1987, and after a brief stint as the chief executive officer of Matchbox, Tom found himself vacationing on a beach. Where Hayao Nakayama, who knew him from Tom’s days at Mattel, found him. After a brief courting period, Hayao successfully recruited Tom.

Tom’s mission at Sega of America was evident – sell the Genesis to the American market. He didn’t have a lot to work with, unfortunately. Until word that Sonic was ready to be shared with SOA by Sega of Japan. When Tom and team received the proposed design, Sega of America had concerns. Primarily that his look wouldn’t appeal to a western audience. Madeline Schroeder, a product manager, was tasked by Kalinske and Marketing Director Al Nilsen to take SOA’s suggestions to the SOJ headquarters. The suggestions: lose the fangs, the girlfriend, and the band. Naka and team hated the idea of losing these features, but after a brief impasse, Nakayama informed Kalinske that the design changes for Sonic were approved.

While the debate over the look was happening, Naka, Oshima, and level designer Hirokazu Yasuhara got to work. Using Naka’s tech demo as a basis, Yasuhara began developing levels that took advantage of the speed of the engine and reached back into an older style of game for inspiration. Pinball. It’s obvious when you think of it, but much of Sonic’s level design was inspired by the way pinball machines would play. This inspiration struck a balance that Yuji Naka was seeking to appeal to both Japanese and American audiences.

Despite the game containing six zones, it was the Green Hill Zone that got probably the most attention of them all – with good reason. Green Hill Zone was the first stage and the one that was needed to convince players to keep playing. First levels of games are fascinating, and there is a lot of good discussions to be had about them. Most importantly they should teach the player how to play and what to expect. Green Hill Zone does this by introducing many of the game’s mechanics, including enemies, traps, and alternate routes. Naka mentions that the iconic design of the level drew its inspiration from the artwork of Eizin Suzuki, as well as the natural beauty of California.

Naka and team worked doggedly to finish the game, most days upwards of 19 hours trying to finish the game. Despite the effort there were several things that needed to be cut from the game, including a two-player mode which would be later found in Sonic 2. and as the approached the finish line, they needed to find the right music. That music came from Masato Nakamura, the leader of the J-pop band Dreams Come True. The limitations of the Genesis sound chip, which could only produce four simultaneous notes, forced Nakamura into creating some of his most memorable work.

During the development of the game SOA worked on creating a marketing plan to use Sonic as a way to gain market share in the US. Following the mantra “the name of the game is the game” originally said by Nintendo’s Peter Main, SOA did what they could to showcase the blazing fast gameplay. Character teases were used at various industry events before the releases. As the game reached completion Al Nilsen orchestrated a tour with the game where he had players compare Sonic to the later Mario Bros game. It was Sega’s version of the Pepsi challenge.

Reception and Legacy

The game was released in June of 1991 and sold well after Sega of America’s marketing campaigns proved fruitful. The edgy marketing attitude that was created for Sonic would carry over to Sega’s marketing strategy because after the release, Sega and Sonic were no doubt synonymous. The game garnered high praise among the gaming press as well. In a review from Gamepro, Sonic scored four screaming heads in four of the five categories, with only sound getting a happy face. Yeah, I know. Reviewer Boogie Man (not this Boogie) wrote that: “[Sonic] shows what programmers, artists, and game designers can do when they set out to produce a winner.”. EGMs review crew gave the game straight 9s out of 10 and one said “if you don’t buy it, it’s because you don’t have a Genesis yet.” What is strange is most reviews are harder on the music of the game with Raze magazine rating the sound an 82 out of 100 in their three-page review. Today the games standing on metacritic which considers all reviews past and present a very promising blank. Soon after the game’s release, Sega of America got the go-ahead to replace Altered Beast as the Pack-In game for the Genesis. The move, though a gamble, allowed Sega to gain ground on Nintendo in the fabled console wars of the early 1990s.

My personal view of the game. Sonic The Hedgehog is a fun platformer with a simple, well executed concept that has let it age with grace. The graphical fidelity of the game remains as sharp as ever, fitting in perfectly with the current renaissance that pixel art is enjoying. As far as the game’s legacy: Sonic The Hedgehog is considered one of the greatest games of all time. The debate becomes, what is the legacy when you consider all that followed? While I can attest of the value of the 16-bit generation of games, the following eras of Sonic were met with rising and falling levels of consistency. The character remains a fan favorite that hangs like a specter of past successes over Sega.

Sonic 2: Historical Context

Despite the game’s massive success, Yuji Naka was not happy. Known by some as a bit of a hot head, Naka did not like the fact that Sega of Japan prevented the development team from putting their credits on the game. Hiding developer identities was an old practice of game companies dating back to the days of Atari. In fact, the first Easter egg in a video game was in the Atari game Adventure and was a credit of the game’s programmer, Warren Robinett. The use of this was designed to prevent poaching by other companies. However, for Naka, it was beyond the pale for the company to celebrate such a success without giving credit. He would quit Sega, but his absence wasn’t long.

There are two versions of the story of Naka’s recruitment over to Sega of America. One version, as told by the Blake Harris book Console Wars unfolded like this: Shinobu Toyoda, Tom Kalinske’s right hand at Sega of America, and the acting liaison to the Sega of Japan, immediately traveled to Japan after he discovered Naka’s departure. Kalinske knew that Naka was an important part of the team, and gave Toyoda a lot of leeway in his efforts to re-recruit Naka. After a promise of better pay, recognition, and the ability to choose his team, Naka agreed to work at the Sega Technical Institute, headed by an old colleague, Mark Cerny of Marble Madness fame. Yasuhara, who was supposed to join the Sega Technical Institute a few years prior, joined Naka.

In the other version of the story, it wasn’t Toyoda who convinced Naka to join the Sega Technical institute, but rather Cerny himself, given that the two of them had worked together previously. As always, the truth in these accounts usually tends to fall somewhere in the middle, with Toyoda and Cerny working together to convince Yuji Naka to join.

Game Development: Sonic 2 and Sonic CD

Mark Cerny wanted to get moving on Sonic 2, with his biggest assets on his new team being two of the three creators of Sonic. However, when he pitched this idea to marketing he was told to hold off. In an interview with a fan site, Sega-16, Cerny said, “Bizarrely their response was…’no, it’s much too soon.” While they were waiting they began work on another game, only to have that development interrupted when SOA came back to the Technical Institute, telling them they indeed had to get to work on Sonic 2.

Sonic co-creator Naoto Oshima remained behind at Sega of Japan and in charge of Sonic Team. While the Sega Technical Institute produced Sonic 2, Sonic Team Japan’s responsibility was to create a “revamped” version of Sonic 1 for the Sega CD add-on system. Sonic 2 would see the addition of the longtime sidekick, “Tails.” The development of the two-tailed fox was one of the sore points between the American marketing teams and Japanese developers of Sonic Team. While the character’s design was universally accepted, his name was not. Miles Prower, a pun on Miles Per Hour. Al Nilsen hated the name and wrote a short story, as a method of proposing a new name, Miles “Tails” Monotail. The story warmed everyone’s heart, and eventually, there was a compromise. The official name of the fox would be Miles Prower, and Tails would be the nickname.

During the development of the game, the two sides of the studio found it difficult to work together. Cultural and language barriers prevented the Japanese and Americans from working together fluidly, except for Cerny himself who was fluent in Japanese. Craig Stitt, one of the American artists on the game felt that many of the American contributions to the game were either dropped or reworked simply because it came from the American side.

In Japan, development continued for Sonic CD. During the early meetings between Sega of Japan and the Sega Technical Institute, some of the ideas that were floated back and forth were considered for both projects, however as development truly got underway dramatic differences began to emerge. The most noticeable were the supporting characters. Where Tails was introduced in Sonic 2, a female character named Amy Rose would be added, as well as an additional antagonist in the form of Metal Sonic. Another idea that was discussed for Sonic 2 that would only be used in Sonic CD was time travel. This element gave Sonic CD its most defining feature, extremely unique level design, allowing for Sonic to travel to the same levels in different timelines. Past, Present, Bad Future and Good Future.

Another key difference between Sonic CD and Sonic 2 was the pressure. Oshima has been quoted as saying that because they were not making a “numbered sequel” the pressure was not as high as he felt it probably was on Naka, Cerny, and the rest of the Technical Institute. During the final days of development, the Sonic 2 team needed to fly out a large complementary group of programmers to finish the game. The reason of the pressure to finish on time, was because of the marketing of the game.

While Sonic 2 was in development, Al Nilsen, who had orchestrated some of the more effective marketing campaigns for the first game, and Madeline Schroeder, the “mother of Sonic” came up with an idea that was revolutionary at the time: A street date for the release of Sonic 2. Named Sonic 2s Day, the goal was to have the game released on the same day around the globe. Ultimately the game was released a few days earlier in Japan, but the rest of the world saw the game come out on Tuesday, November 24th.

As with Sonic 1, the music of Sonic 2 was created by Masato Nakamura, leader of the Band Dreams Come True. However Sonic CD decided to go a different route using music composed by Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata. At least, that was the case in the Japanese and European versions. To much dismay, the US Version was completely rescored with a different sound than the Japanese version, eschewing the electronica-dance sound in favor of a jazz fusion approach. The original Japanese soundtrack would be available in the 2011 re-release of the game.

Reception and Legacy: Sonic 2 and Sonic CD

The game was another smashing success for Sega, Naka, and company. Despite the short production schedule, they managed to create a sequel which managed to not just rehash the ideas of the original, but enhanced gameplay mechanics. Most magazines would give high praise to Sonic 2 as well, except for one, UK Based magazine GamesMaster which rated Sonic 2 a 65 out of 100. Perhaps harshness was because it was the first issue of the magazine and they were looking to make a name for themselves. Or perhaps the criticism of the game being too easy and being too derivative of the first one were their honest assessment. In editor Jim Douglas’s final assessment, he states: “Technical excellence alone, which Sonic has in spades, does not a good game make.” Despite this outlier, the game received mostly good marks.

Sonic CD would also be well received with its unique time traveling level design, however, given that the Sega CD was an add-on, it naturally had a smaller install base leading to lower sales of Sonic CD to Sonic 2. Sonic CD still managed relatively impressive sales.

Game Development: Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles

The Sega Technical Institute would see some changes after the release of Sonic 2 with Mark Cerny departing and Roger Hector, a veteran of Atari, stepping in to lead the division. Yuji Naka, Hirokazu Yasuhara, and the Sonic Team that had taken residency at the Technical Institute would stay on to begin work on Sonic 3. However this would come with a caveat – Naka wanted to only work with the Japanese developers at the Technical Institute, to avoid the conflicts that occurred during the development of Sonic 2.

With each Sonic game, Naka and team were growing more ambitious. Initial concepts of Sonic 3 involved using an isometric point of view, which would end up shelved and used instead for Sonic 3D blast. As with previous Sonic games, Sonic 3 would see the introduction of a new character to the roster, Knuckles the Echidna. However, Knuckles would not be a playable character in the base version of Sonic 3. The problem was as they were developing the game, it was growing prohibitively too large, and it would be too expensive to manufacture the cartridge. Roger Hector the new head of the Technical Institute knew that there would be issues when he saw the list of ideas that were proposed.

Not only was the game too big, but it was also going to take much longer than anticipated. Sega had tremendous success with their holiday release of Sonic 2 and wanted to replicate that success. Sonic 3 would not be ready however but Christmas of 1993 though, so it fell to the American half of the Sega Technical Institute to create something to tide Sonic fans over. The result would be Sonic Spinball, a game that took the pinball elements of the previous Sonic games, and, well made them the entire game. Spinball is not a bad game, it has some fun features, but it wasn’t the true Sonic experience despite the best efforts of the developers.

The decision was made during the alpha stages of the game to split Sonic 3 into two parts. The second part was called Sonic and Knuckles and allowed Knuckles to be a playable character. Each game could be played as a standalone, or together. Playing them together gave the gamer the original experience that the team envisioned when designing the game. In a fun twist, attaching Sonic 2 to the Sonic and Knuckles, cartridge allowed the player to play as Knuckles in Sonic 2.

Aside from the lock-on cartridges, the most interesting piece about the development of Sonic 3 was the potential inclusion of Michael Jackson onto the team to provide the musical score. Dreams Come True had become relatively popular in the time between Sonic 2 and 3, and their cost had gone up significantly. Michael Jackson however, a fan of the game, was interested in taking on the job. However, he is not credited in the final game. There are multiple accounts as to what happened. In one version of the story, Jackson’s involvement in the project was terminated by Sega after the news of pedophilia charges came out. Another version of the same story posits that Jackson left the project when he became frustrated with the methods of creating the music, much like Nakamura was with Sonic 1.s

Unfortunately, it would take nearly eight months to deliver the two halves of the game in the United States and Europe. In Japan, there was a delay in delivering the first half as the team attempted to jam both halves onto one cart. This plan was ultimately abandoned and the game was released with the “lock-on” technology that the other regions received.

Reception and Legacy: Sonic 3 And Knuckles

While Sonic 3 was, well-received sales were noticeably down from the successes of the first two games. Each “part” of the game so to speak sold over a million copies, down from the multi-million sales of the previous games. There could have been several reasons for this to happen; perhaps marketing had run out of the magic juice to get people interested. Or perhaps simply it was a case of Sonic fatigue setting in as there were five Sonic releases between 1991 and 1994. Whatever the case the downturn marked a perfect timing for a break. When the next big Sonic game would arrive, it would be at a markedly different Sega.

Closing

Sonic and Knuckles would be the last “main” Sonic game to be released for the 16-bit generation. In the next video, we will start with the discussion of the 32-bit era for Sonic, or lack thereof, and continue to present day. If you enjoyed the video, please let me know in the comments below. If I missed anything, please let me know on the pinned fact check comment. One of the difficult things with this project has been the number of sources that have slightly different versions of the same information. However, if you have another source for me to check out, let me know! If you enjoy this content, please consider subscribing with notifications. My name is Spoiler Kevin, and I will see you in the next video.

The History of the Dark Souls Franchise

January 15, 2017 by arcadology Leave a Comment

The Dark Souls Trilogy is known for its punishing difficulty and fever dream plot. Set in a world where characters fight and claw at the dying of the light, the games have made a lasting impression on gamers far and wide. Today on the Season One Finale of Origin of the Series we are going to examine at how those games came to be, starting with the founding of From Software and venturing forth to present day. Welcome to Origin of the Series: Dark Souls.

From Software and King’s Field

By all measures, 1986 was a tremendous year for video games. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dragon Quest, Bubble Bobble are just SOME of the games that were released in that year. What also makes 1986 remarkable is that Naotoshi Jin would have a life changing experience that led him to found From Software. That experience was a motorcycle accident that left Jin bedridden while he convalesced. While he was injured he considered what he could do with the money that he received from the insurance that he was paid after the accident, and decided to start a software company. Out of the wreckage of the accident, From Software was born. Initially From Software created business and commercial applications, such as agriculture software that managed pig feed.

Then in 1990 an economic slow-down hit Japan, prompting From Software to begin thinking about ways to diversify or change industries. Several employees within the company had already become interested in 3D modeling and it’s potential application with game design. Jin, despite loving the idea of getting into the gaming industry, was not sold on the hardware capabilities of any current PC or Console. From Software ended up waiting several years, until an opportunity arose in 1994 with the introduction of the Sony PlayStation.

The Sony PlayStation, currently in its fourth generation (fifth if you count the upcoming PlayStation 4 Neo), was something of an oddity born out of a failed partnership with Nintendo. The common method for playing games at the time was via cartridge – the PlayStation eschewed this in favor of more cost effective Compact Discs. Naotoshi Jin and From Software saw an opportunity to get onto the new console, which would be looking for third-party support. The result of this effort was a first-person dungeon crawl RPG titled King’s Field.

King’s Field told the story of a young royal who was looking for his father while dealing with an evil that has been spewing forth from an abandoned cemetery in the land of Verdite. Something I love about the From Software games is that all the kingdom names have a certain chewiness to them. Verdite, Boletaria, Lothric, to name a few. The game was a brutal challenge and featured dark, dank locales that remind one of a lo-fi version of the later Soulsborne games. King’s Field would be released on December 16th, 1994, only 13 days after the original PlayStation went on sale. It was the first RPG to arrive on the new system and was a success in Japan, successful enough to warrant a sequel.

In an interview with Game Informer in late 2015, From Software Managing Director Masanori Takeuchi mentioned that despite the massive success of the Souls games, King’s Field, to him is the most important game that From has released. Not only because it was their first, but because it encapsulates the consistent world view and game design aesthetic that From has been known for since its release in 1994.

King’s Field II would see a release in the United States, and would be titled simply King’s Field. Re-numbering for different markets was customary in the 80s and 90s. Other examples of this happening include the Final Fantasy series which saw Final Fantasy 4 and 6 released in the United States as 2 and 3, as well as Super Mario Bros, which had its sequel retitled as “The Lost Levels” and another game, Doki Doki Panic reskinned to be Super Mario Bros. 2.

Nothing happens in a vacuum and the King’s Field series is evidence of the essence of the Soulsborne games existing within the walls of From Software long before their development. From would continue to the series with two more King’s Field games, but their attention in the late 90s and early 00s shifted from dark dungeons to massive mechs with the Armored Core series, which is where Hidetaka Miyazaki would get his start.

Hidetaka Miyazaki

If you talk to Hidetaka Miyazaki today and asked him what his influences are, he would have a laundry list of books, manga, and more. Among those he readily lists are Devilman and Berserk, as well as works by George R.R. Martin and Umberto Eco. He also keeps RPG rule books close at hand. That is today, but as a child, he lived a very different literary experience. Miyazaki was born in a poor family and as a child, rarely had the opportunity to purchase books. This led to him finding his way to the library, which he would use to borrow books that were often somewhat above his reading comprehension.

Whenever he came to a passage that he couldn’t understand, Miyazaki would often use his imagination to fill in the gaps in the story. When he grew up he attended Keio University where he obtained a Social Sciences degree. Miyazaki sums up his childhood this way: ““Unlike most kids in Japan, I didn’t have a dream. I wasn’t ambitious.” We are all our own harshest critic, but I can certainly relate to Miyazaki’s feeling of aimlessness as a youth. Discovering passion can sometimes take time, and for Miyazaki it would be a few more years. After attending University he landed a job at Oracle working as a typical salaryman job of Account Manager. He would work there for several years.

It wasn’t until he met up with some friends from University that Miyazaki’s life began to find the spark that he had felt was missing. One of his friend’s suggested that he check out the game Ico. For those of you unaware, Ico is the first game by the team that created Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian and puts the player in control of a boy named Ico as he attempts to escape a castle with a princess named Yorda. The game, much like the subsequent games that Team Ico has created relies in minimalist design and 3D puzzle solving.

Playing the game awoke something in Miyazaki. He began to applying for jobs at game studios across Japan and eventually was accepted by one. From Software. As part of his early duties for the company, Miyazaki would find himself directing sequels for the companies somewhat popular Armored Core series. After several years wrangling Mechs, an opportunity arose within the company, and it was a perfect match for Miyazaki.

Demon’s Souls

Demon’s Souls was the first game that From Software collaborated with a publisher on, as well as the first game that they had the intention of a world-wide release for. Per Masanori Takeuchi, the project initially started around 2004 or 2005 as an attempt to create a new game that had the same game design philosophy as King’s Field. The game however was a failed project. Which, Miyazaki thought was a perfect opportunity. In an interview with The Guardian, he said this about it: “I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game I could turn it into anything I wanted. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care—it was already a failure.” Unfortunately, the project was floundering. Miyazaki’s work and leadership completely revamped the game. However, as a game on the precipice of failure, it launched with very low expectations, especially after a poor showing at the Tokyo Game Show.

Demon’s Souls had poor initial sales and a lack of support from its publisher. Sony head of WW Shuhei Yoshida thought due to the game’s challenging nature, the game was unbelievably bad. Because of this they passed on publishing the game in North America and Europe. Demon’s Souls though found itself in a strong lineage of games, like prior Origin of the Series subjects: Civilization and The Elder Scrolls, that vaulted into cult status based on a strong word of mouth campaign.

Hardcore gamers in North America found themselves importing the game across the Pacific, and eventually the overwhelming urge for the game prompted Atlus to pick up the publishing for North America, and Bandai-Namco to publish the game for Europe and Australia. With a global market finally available for the game, it thrived as a title that enticed gamers looking for something new and challenging. In a testament to the games popularity, the servers hosting the online portion of the gameplay have remained online well beyond the planned shutdown date in 2011.

The story of Demon’s Souls is somewhat more straight forward than later games. It centers on the Kingdom of Boletaria which has become enshrouded in a hellish fog after its ruler, King Allant conducted a dark ritual to gain more power. The ritual unleashed The Old One, as these rituals tend to go, the fog, and legions of demons into the kingdom. Knights from neighboring kingdoms have often attempted to broach the fog to never return. Your character is a plucky knight who managed to breach the fog and even make his or her way deep into the castle before coming upon a demon called The Vanguard. This is one of those planned death things.

From there, your soul awakens in the Nexus, and you are told you can never leave. You can get your body back however. From the Nexus, you can travel to different parts of the kingdom to take on hordes of evil that are infesting the kingdom.

Demon’s Souls features a combat system that feels like future Soulsborne games. Caution, defense, and timing are all paramount as you face off against enemies that can kill you with a well-placed combo. My personal feeling having replayed a bit of Demon’s Souls after extended sessions wish Dark Souls 3 was that the difficulty while an extreme challenge, is not quite the white-knuckle experience that later games would be.

In an interview with Game Informer, Miyazaki stated that he doesn’t like using the word “difficult” and that difficulty isn’t the true goal. Instead that he wants the players to feel a sense of accomplishment when they overcome obstacles. “The element of failure… was necessary to give players a sense of accomplishment.” In that same article, written back in November of 2009, Miyazaki hedged on whether there would be a sequel to Demon’s Souls stating, “he’s just an employee at a company” but that he would like to have another chance to implement the things he learned on Demon’s Souls.

Dark Souls

Miyzaki did not have to wait long to get his chance at improving upon the concepts of Demon’s Souls. The next game, Dark Souls would be disconnected however and a brand-new IP, giving From a chance to select a new publisher for the game. When the game was first announced, From played coy with the details, only teasing a logo and a title, “Project Dark” no doubt the internal project name for the game. The game made its formal announcement with title and details in February of 2011. The intriguing thing that changed between the initial tease and the wide announcement, other that the title, was the games exclusivity. Originally planned as a PS3 exclusive, the game was also announced for Xbox.

Despite looking and playing similarly, there were a number of key differences between Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. The hub model would be deemphasized, and in its place a more seamless world. Soul tendency, a function in Demon’s Souls would not be making the leap into the new franchise. Another difference is the difficulty, or out of respect for Miyazaki, challenge. Miyazaki and team wanted Dark Souls to be much more challenging than the previous game. A quote from the game’s producer Daisuke Uchiyama is telling. “We want the players to scream, yell and be frustrated.” Not as eloquent as Miyazaki and Takeuchi espousing that the theme is the sense of accomplishment of overcoming obstacles, but just as accurate.

The story of Dark Souls is very minimalist. It would be unfair to say that it’s shallow though. The plot of Dark Souls is like a rabbit hole. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much but once you start going down you become surprised at how far you’ve traveled and you have really no other choice but to reach the bottom. I’m not going to go into the lore here, there are several channels that have thorough recaps of the lore. I will link a few in the description below. The brief version is that a long time ago dragons ruled the land and everything was gray and undying. There was no disparity. Then from the depths of the earth came a fire, giving power to the humanoids who dwelled there. Among those that took power included Gwyn, and he and his fellow lords strike down the dragons, bringing life and death, darkness and light to the world. When Dark Souls starts, it is now much, much later and the initial fire is going out. And when it does, the world will be plunged into darkness. Bad times.

It only took one week for Dark Souls to outsell its predecessor, positioning From Software further into the realm of high level developers.

Dark Souls II and Bloodborne

When Dark Souls II was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards back in 2012 there was much excitement around getting another entry into the Souls-verse. Excitement for some fell away to consternation though as it was eventually revealed that Hidetaka Miyazaki would not be the lead for the project, only acting in an advisory role. Instead, the game would be handed over to the founder of From Software himself, Naotoshi Jin. Some fans posited dismay at what they were considering to be the From Software “B” team, a somewhat harsh assessment of the crew that created the sequel.

There were some rumors though that started to bubble up. One of the gaming blogs I perused during my research phase even had a post around the time that wondered whether Miyazaki was working on another huge project and couldn’t commit to Dark Souls 2. This would turn out to be correct.

Dark Souls 2 was designed with the same philosophy as the previous titles. The game’s director Yui Tanimura started in an interview that he felt this was two fold: first the sense of accomplishment in overcoming challenging obstacles, and second, the indirect connection with other players in that sense of accomplishment. On that second point part of the team’s goal was to create a stronger bond between the players they struggle through the game. From Software tried to remain very sensitive to not changing the core of the game, however they understood that things needed to change in the sequel. Tanimura in the same interview mentioned that: “…if we try to keep everything the same, this prevents us being able to provide a new experience and world to the players.”

On March 11th, 2014, the game was released to massive critical acclaim. It has gone on to sell nearly 3 Million copies world wide and won numerous game of the year awards. With the success of Dark Souls II, From Software was riding high in prestige and value. They would be acquired by the Kadokawa Corporation in May of 2014, and a corporate reshuffling took place. Naotoshi Jin, who just designed a tremendous success in Dark Souls II would step down from the company he founded and into an advisor role. Hidetaki Miyazki, would take his place. The following month, in June of 2014 at E3, fans of the Souls series would discover why Miyazaki was absent on Dark Souls II main crew list with the announcement of a brand new IP, Bloodborne.

Bloodborne is similar to the Dark Souls games, in some aspects, different in others. The setting of the game is more similar to a Victorian era England as opposed to an King Arthur Meets the Upside Down medieval fantasy. The development for Bloodborne began while From was putting the finishing touches on Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition, and ran in parallel to Dark Souls II. Prior to the announcement of the game, footage of gameplay had leaked online with the title “Project Beast” attached to it, which led to some speculation as to what From had been working on.

Bloodborne, a PS4 exclusive was also a massive success for From Software. Though it didn’t have the cross-platform exposure of the other Souls games, it still did exceptionally well, selling over 2 million copies.

Dark Souls III and Legacy

Rewinding a bit, it’s interesting to realize how busy From Software must have been in 2013. Development of Dark Souls II and Bloodborne was ongoing, and then suddenly, Dark Souls III materialized with Miyazaki pulling double duty to finish Bloodborne, and begin the process of getting Dark Souls III of the ground. Miyazaki has been saying for quite some time that he views Dark Souls III as a turning point for both the franchise and for From Software. Often when people think of that phrase they assume that something is going from good to bad, or vice versa, but in this case Miyazaki simply meant change. Dark Souls III would be the last game he would work on as a game designer and not a game designer-slash-president.

Dark Souls III for some is seen as taking the best elements of the original game, as well as Bloodborne and finding a balance. Combat was a lot more aggressive in Bloodborne but in the Souls games, aggressive play was often foolish. Dark Souls 3 still espoused being somewhat conservative when it game to attack but allowed the player a little bit more room to act. Despite this, the game was as challenging as ever.

Much like in the previous games, Miyazaki didn’t think in a scale of difficulty, but rather “unreasonableness.” While this may seem like a semantic difference, I can understand what he means. The famously difficult level in Battletoads isn’t simply difficult, but also unreasonable. The expectation of having to develop such muscle memory to execute in such a perfect manner is unreasonable. On the flip side, Dark Souls III presents you as the player with an opportunity to overcome a tremendous challenge, and to learn how to overcome that challenge when you die.

Dark Souls III ends the trilogy and the current story. The storyline is as vague and difficult to grasp as ever, but the elements needed to make sense of the three games are there for those willing to look. Something that I read in an interview with Miyazaki was very intriguing when it comes to Miyazaki’s relationship with plot. As I mentioned earlier, Miyazaki would often fill in the gaps of stories he couldn’t comprehend with his own imagination. In an article for The Gaurdian, which featured an interview with Miyazaki, writer Simon Parkin wrote: “…the story is hazy. You, like young Miyazaki, must fill in the blanks with your imagination, co-authoring the narrative…”

When coupled with the idea that Miyazaki has a “most correct” story for the Dark Souls games in mind, with all the different endings, yet doesn’t share what that is, it suddenly gives you a satisfying picture of Miyzaki’s overall design aesthetic.

Dark Souls III, like the previous games has been another critical and financial success for From Software. While Miyazaki intends it to be the last in the series, he would not dismiss the idea of another From Software designer asking to pick the series back up in another ten years. Miyazaki, for his part, has completed the trilogy. For fans of his though, he assures that despite now being president of the company, he will remain a presence in the game design process and that From software already has new IPs in the work, as well as a return to an old one, Armored Core.

This episode is different than previous episodes because of the relative freshness of the series. To assign a legacy to the Dark Souls games would be a little premature. So on that note, I’ll end on a quote from Miyazaki himself:

“To be honest, I’m really not interested on how I’m viewed as. The only thing I’m interested in is to keep creating something special.”

Closing

Thanks for watching everybody. I will be leaving a list of the sources that I used to put this video together in the description below. If you enjoy this type of content, please consider leaving a like, comment and subscribing to the channel. As always, if you find something that is factually incorrect about the video please point it out in the pinned comment down below. Eventually I will be doing a corrections video on my first season of Origin of the Series. This officially ends the first season of Origin of the Series, I don’t have a date planned quite yet for Season Two but follow me on twitter @spoilerkevin and I’m sure I’ll be making an announcement there soon enough.

But that is all for today, and until next time, take care everyone.

The History of The Elder Scrolls

December 18, 2016 by arcadology Leave a Comment

Arena. Daggerfall. Morrowind. Oblivion. Skyrim. The games of the Elder Scrolls series are loved by many. They are games of great scope, of gods and mortals. But they are also personal, and carry great thematic meaning to the player. Today on Origin of the Series, we are going to go through the history of The Elder Scrolls, from before the founding of Bethesda to Skyrim and beyond. As always, I have a few guests joining me to speak about the impact the series has had on them. Welcome to Origin of the Series: The Elder Scrolls.

Born in Bethesda

Chris Weaver wore many hats before founding Bethesda. He was what he considered to be a technology forecaster for the TV and cable industry. In that role Weaver held positions with ABC, the National Cable Television Association and even Congress, working for the House Subcommittee on Communications. It was there that he did minor things like help break up the telephone monopoly.

When he moved back into the private sector he created his own media consulting firm, called Media Technology. One of Weaver’s employees, an engineer by the name of Ed Fletcher, had the idea that Media Technology should expand into video games. Specifically, he wanted to create a football video game, something that Weaver wasn’t terribly familiar with. However, Weaver was an expert on something extremely critical to understanding sports gaming. Physics.

The result was the first Football Video game to use real physics called “Gridiron!” and Bethesda Softworks was born. The name comes directly from the town the company was founded in, Bethesda, Maryland. In the early days, the principals were Weaver, Fletcher, and a Danish programmer named Benni Jensen, but Elder Scrolls fans know him better as Julian Lefay.

Electronic Arts, was interested in the way Gridiron worked and contracted Bethesda to develop the first John Madden Football. Bethesda would not end up completing the programming- but the underlying physics engine belonged to the work that Weaver and Fletcher created for Gridiron.

The young company left EA to the football simulations and shifted focus to Ice Hockey. They worked with the Hockey community and legends like Bobby Orr to create their next series of games which featured Wayne Gretzky on the cover. Eventually, Weaver and Bethesda began work on their first nonsports game, which was a movie to game adaptation of The Terminator. Weaver says that the focus on sports wasn’t intentional, but because of the real-time physics tools they had created they were looking for as many areas to apply them as they could.

The Importance of Pen and Paper

Jack Chick, the infamous author of the heavy handed fundamentalist Christian comic strips known as Chick Tracts, died in 2016. He believed that Dungeons and Dragons, and roleplaying, was the path to hell and damnation. Thankfully the developers working at Bethesda Softworks were unfazed by the father of the satanic panic’s proclamations of fire and brimstone. Because in the early 90s, staff at Bethesda held a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game which they had set in a world very familiar to Elder Scrolls players. Tamriel.

Arena is the first entry in the Elder Scrolls series. As a game, it doesn’t have the grand scope of Daggerfall or the growing 3D polish that entries Morrowind and beyond would receive, but it was one of the earlier first person RPGs to have that kind of scale. However, the game didn’t begin its life as an RPG. Initially, the game was true to its title, functioning as a Medieval-style gladiator combat simulator. As the player you built a team of fighters and took them from city to city, tournament to tournament until you reached the grand stage of them all, fighting in Imperial City.

The designers of the game were Ted Petersen and Vijay Lakshman, with the project being spearheaded by Julian Lefay. According to Ted, the story was that there was an evil wizard that you needed to fight at the end of the game when you reached Imperial City. Gradually they began adding side-quests that you could do in each town. Then came the dungeons. Eventually, the idea of there being a tournament vanished from the story, as the role-playing side-quests and dungeon diving became the primary focus.

The game had evolved from a first person fighting game to a hard-core D&D inspired RPG over the course of development, but the name Arena remained. Why? The story in the “lore” is that the land of Tamriel was so violent that it had been nicknamed “The Arena.” However, the real reason was that they had already printed up a bunch of boxes and materials with the name Arena on it and it was too costly to change the name. Vijay is credited with giving it the series title “The Elder Scrolls” mainly because it was vague enough that they could work with it without having to develop much more story.

The story of the finished game went like this. Uriel Septim’s battlemage Jagar Tharn used the Staff of Chaos to imprison Uriel in an alternate dimension and take the Septim’s place on the throne in disguise. Your player character works for the Emperor (ostensibly, this is not made crystal) alongside a character named Ria. The two of you attempt to expose Jagar but are thwarted. Jagar kills Ria and imprisons your player character in the dungeon. Ria’s ghost helps you get free and teleports you to your home province where you must begin your quest to piece together the now shattered Chaos Staff and rescue Uriel Septim.

The game featured a character creation system which allowed you to select your character’s gender, class, and home province. The map in the game features all the ones we’ve come to know and love, such as Skyrim, Morrowind, Hammerfell, and so forth. While the size of the map is smaller than later iterations, especially Daggerfall, the scope of the game is immense given the game’s historical context.

The release of Arena begins a thread of tenuous existence for the franchise that doesn’t truly develop into a sturdy rope until Morrowind. The game missed its holiday of 1993 release window and ended up coming out in March 1994, which was considered to be one of the worst times of the year to release at the time.

Additionally, distributors were not thrilled that the game did not resemble the original gladiator action game pitch. Thankfully for Elder Scrolls fans everywhere, the game spread by word of mouth and became, in Ted Petersen’s words, a minor cult hit. The next year, Bethesda would re-release the game on CD-Rom as the Elder Scrolls: The Arena Deluxe and testing that would be Todd Howard’s introduction into The Elder Scrolls world.

Todd Howard’s Arrival

Todd Howard has been firmly rooted in geek culture his entire life. As a kid he loved Star Wars and gaming, specifically spending a lot of time in games like Ultima which would eventually have an influence on the Elder Scrolls series. While Howard was in college at William and Mary, he spent much of his time teaching himself programming and playing video games when he wasn’t in classes earning a Finance degree. Todd actually mentions that William and Mary is a terrific school and that he, unfortunately, did not take advantage of that fact.

While playing one of Bethesda’s Wayne Gretzky Hockey games, Todd noticed the address for their offices were way home from college, so during Christmas break, he boldly stopped at the headquarters and asked for a job. Though rejected, Todd continued to pester Bethesda for work each time he encountered representatives for the company, including at expos like CES. Eventually, his perseverance paid off, and Bethesda hired him in 1994. Todd’s first games as a designer were in the Terminator franchise that Bethesda had been producing since before Arena and then he was pulled in to assist on Daggerfall as a new designer.

Daggerfall

With Arena out the door and achieving minor cult hit status, attention turned to the inevitable sequel, Daggerfall. Over the course of two years, Ted Petersen and Julian Lefay wrote the story while consuming many influences. Ted’s stated goal was to make the world of Tamriel less generic. New influences included additional bits of Dungeon’s and Dragons, but also the pen and paper version of Vampire: The Masquerade as well as the Alexandre Dumas classic “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Whereas Arena had been influenced heavily by other games, such as Darklands, Legends of Valor, and Ultima Underworld, Daggerfall was influenced more by the pen and paper, and literary sources.

Daggerfall was ambitious. The game had large portions of procedurally generated landscape and came out to be approximately 62,000 square miles. Arena’s map technically didn’t have any boundaries, therefore was undefinable, and travel between provinces was only available on the fast travel map. Daggerfall though was designed to be one continuous map over parts of High Rock and Hammerfell. For years it held the record as the largest game until No Man’s Sky procedurally generated it right into second place.

All that ambition came at a price, however. Daggerfall had numerous bugs at launch, and many of the features that the designers wanted in the game were never fully implemented. Ted Petersen mentions that the intent was to have warring factions that actually having real world consequences, like seeing cities under siege. The sieges, as well as dragons were left on the cutting room floor of the game because of technical and time limitations.

Reading preview articles from old gaming magazines is an enjoyable past time for me. Something about the optimism married boundless speculation is charming, especially when you know the outcome. One found in NEXT Generation Magazine proclaimed that if Daggerfall were able to put all the pieces that they had in motion into place for the release of the game, then Daggerfall would be the “best role-playing game ever made.” While I don’t believe Daggerfall is in the consideration, it is a truly remarkable experience. By the game’s release in 1996 however, there was some pushback from the gaming press. Computer Gaming World put Daggerfall as one of the top “vaporware” titles of all time.

Strange that being delayed a few years in the mid-90s was enough to earn the title of vaporware, whereas presently, game delays are met with groans but not enough to deem a game vaporware. See The Last Guardian, and No Man’s Sky as examples.

Despite the success of the game, the goodwill earned by Arena was dissipated by the bug-ridden Daggerfall. Things would get worse before they got better for Bethesda.

Between Daggerfall and Morrowind

Sales took a bit of a decline for Bethesda after Daggerfall. Daggerfall’s follow-ups were not met with the same enthusiasm, or sales, that Daggerfall initially had garnered. Follow up games that used Daggerfall’s code included Battlespire and Redguard. Battlespire was the first and was considerably pared down compared to Daggerfall. A lot of the free-roaming exploration that made Daggerfall the game that it was tossed for a focus on combat and very specifically designed dungeons.

Battlespire wasn’t met with particular enthusiasm. Like the game it was based on, it launched with bugs and was found to be a tepid entry into the Elder Scrolls gaming catalog. It sold poorly, as did the next game, Redguard. Redguard was played entirely from the third-person point of view, which until that point was not available in The Elder Scrolls games.

Bethesda was nearly bankrupt, so Chris Weaver made a bold move and founded a new company with Robert Altman named ZeniMax Media, and then moved Bethesda into it from its original shell of Media Technology. The move saved Bethesda’s existence from an untimely end, but at the expense of Chris Weaver’s position in the company. He moved from CEO to CTO in favor of Altman, but within a few years, he would find himself out of the company that he founded.

Morrowind

If you strictly compared the map sizes of Morrowind and Daggerfall, you would think that the series took a significant step backward. But size truly matters not when it comes to creating a memorable experience. As we said Daggerfall was huge – possibly even too big. It was also procedurally generated. What it had in scope, it lacked in story and theming. Morrowind was different.

Morrowind entered the concept phase during the development of Daggerfall, and at that time it was going to be created in a very similar fashion. However, it was determined that with Battlespire and Redguard needing more staff and the technology not being available yet, Morrowind would be put off for a spell.

When Bethesda returned to Morrowind, the thinking was that it would not be another game simply like Daggerfall, it would be redesigned from the ground up. Every inch of Morrowind was designed with intention. What resulted was a much more immersive, and satisfying experience than Daggerfall had to offer. Don’t get me wrong, Daggerfall is still a great game and tremendous achievement, but Morrowind’s intentional design made it instantly the best game in the series.

Morrowind marks the first main Elder Scrolls game that Todd Howard lead the development for. His lead designer for the project was Ken Rolston, representing a complete change of leadership for the franchise. Although Ted Petersen was no longer with the company, he still made his presence felt by contributing much of the text you find in books and poems throughout the game.

Morrowind is also the first entry in The Elder Scrolls for someone who is nearly impossible to imagine the games without, Jeremy Soule. Soule’s score for Morrowind gave the game a depth and character that was not present in the previous titles. Jeremy has continued to make his indomitable musical presence felt in the rest of the series.

Quite possibly the most important thing for the longevity of the series though was the introduction of The Construction Set during the development of the game. The Construction Set allowed the developers to quickly iterate and add new content to the game. It would be this tool that would be available for the gaming community to create new mods for the game, which enhanced and elongated the staying power of both Morrowind and the rest of the series to come.

The game was a critical and financial success for Bethesda, a big part of that was the agreement to publish it for the Xbox where a majority of the games sales would come from. The game was also validation for Todd Howard’s new vision for the direction of the games that he would manage.

The Expansions

Daggerfall was intended to have expansion packs, however as we have discussed they were spun off into their own games. Morrowind was the first entry into the Elder Scrolls series to have true expansion packs and because of development of The Construction Set, they were relatively easy to create. The development of Tribunal lasted five months, starting on the day that Morrowind was released.

Tribunal was set in within the city of Mournhold, which was not accessible from the main Morrowind map, players would have to teleport there. The storyline continues to tell the tale of the Tribunal deities.

Tribunal also made some other cosmetic improvements to the game, and the overall reviews were positive. The second expansion was called Bloodmoon which had development started the day of Tribunals release – just as Tribunal was with Morrowind’s release. Unlike Tribunal however, Bloodmoon actually expanded the main map of the game to include a new island, which players felt added more to the free form feel of the vanilla game. Reviews were mixed however on the added Lycanthropy element.

Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls series can be probably divided into two groups. Before Morrowind and after Morrowind. Before, you have Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard. They were games that all had value, especially Arena and Daggerfall, but had yet to put the entire “package” together.

Morrowind and its expansion packs were the first big step in the direction of creating a complete experience. In terms of crossover mainstream appeal, Oblivion was the next step. Todd Howard mentioned in an interview that when he would look at the forums, there would be only a certain amount of people discussing Morrowind at any given time, and that when Oblivion came out, that number jumped quite significantly. It’s more of an anecdotal appraisal of the games popularity, but the observation does bear out when you see that Oblivion’s a few million more copies than Morrowind. (vgchartz.com)

Oblivion entered production as soon as Morrowind was published. While half of the Elder Scrolls dev team worked on the expansions to Morrowind, the other half started its work on Oblivion with Ken Rolston and Todd Howard steering the ship once again.

In a trend that started with Daggerfall, Oblivion was not so much a sequel, but another game taking place in the same world. Oblivion would take place after Morrowind, but the player character and location would be completely different. Howard’s stated goal for the game was to take a look at what worked and what didn’t work for Morrowind and try to make adjustments for the next entry but to also take risks, something that he felt emboldened by doing on Morrowind. An “RPG for the Next Generation” he called it, in a blog post on the now defunct Elder Scrolls website, a web archive link will be in the description below (https://web.archive.org/web/20070320172701/http://www.elderscrolls.com/codex/team_rpgnextgen.htm).

One of the anecdotal criticisms of Oblivion I have seen around the web was that it was “dumbed down.” While that is a more subjective opinion, it may be based in the truth that during the design of the game, Howard stated that the game would be more focused. The game while overall larger than Morrowind, would end up having fewer NPCs and Quests in favor of more meaningful NPCs and longer quests with more variety in them. This lines up with the philosophy that they took with Morrowind, which did not have the grand size of Daggerfall in favor of more meaningful interaction. Not all may agree, but it does seem consistent. One major change, at least for Oblivion only, was the return to procedurally generated landscape. The design team used procedural generation and then hand sculpted the finer details into the game.

Technically, Oblivion, like Morrowind before it, stretched the capabilities of the machines that could run it, but Bethesda did a much better job giving players control over the graphics settings so that a wider variety of computers could play it. The game also shipped with an updated version of The Construction Kit. Additionally, an Elder Scrolls game was ported over to a Sony console, the PS3, for the first time.

The game was another critical and financial success, as mentioned previously it would become the best-selling game in the series, outpacing Morrowind’s numbers. The sharpest criticisms for the game came against the voice work, which included many high profile names, like Patrick Stewart and Lynda Carter, but would feel repetitive as the player progressed. The game would go on to win a number of game of the year and other industry awards.

DLC

Prior to Oblivion, most additional content for games came in the form of big, bundled expansion packs. Think of the expansions for Morrowind, or even going back to the expansions for Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. (Both of which, ironically, are published by Bethesda now!) Oblivion took a different approach. While it did have expansions, and we will get to those in a moment, the initial release saw the use of small DLC for a minor price. Not all things were priced appropriately though.

Horse armor, it all started with horse armor on April 3rd, 2006. The horse armor, which provided the player’s horse a set of armor, cost $2.50. Players were none too happy with the price of what seemed to be a minor addition to the game and Bethesda listened. Following content would be released at a lower price with more content, including new quests and new homes for the player character.

Morrowind’s content expansion packs were clearly defined as such, but Oblivion’s first official one existed in a bit of a roundabout way. Initially it was rumored that there would be no official “expansions” to Oblivion as had been done in the past. Only a focus on the micropayment DLC. Suddenly however an expansion, titled Knights of Nine began to hit the rumor mills. Initially billed as a PS3 exclusive, the expansion came to all platforms and added a new faction to the mix. However unlike other types of expansions, the new content didn’t call itself out, the player would have to discover it.

Knights of Nine added more mission content to the game, but didn’t expand the map like previous Morrowind expansions had. Shivering Isles, the next expansion, would however by introducing the titular isles by way of a gate that the player had to pass through. Shivering Isles was also well received.

Skyrim: War Never Changes

With all previous Elder Scrolls games, work on the following game started when the previous one was released. This time however, Todd Howard and company were focused on something different. Bethesda had acquired Interplay, the company responsible for the Fallout series and set out to work on Fallout 3. I won’t go into too much detail because the history of the Fallout series will be covered in another video that I have planned. Let’s just say that Fallout 3 was hotly anticipated from legions of fans that had been teased and tortured by screenshots of vaporware as well as games like Brotherhood of Steel that failed to capture the essence of the original games.

Fallout 3 made it through a relatively brief development cycle, brief when compared to Morrowind and Oblivion. When Fallout 3 was released in 2008, development of Skyrim began in full. Howard, with lessons learned from both Fallout 3 and Oblivion got to work with changes that he had in mind. Oblivion had returned to some of the procedural generation that was used to develop Arena and Daggerfall, but Skyrim, like Morrowind would once again abandon that method of landscaping. In fact, it would not be crazy to say that Skyrim takes what worked best of Morrowind and Fallout 3, and used those ideals to develop a new Elder Scrolls Game.

The plot of Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion and begins with your character in a dire situation, much like the opening of the other Elder Scrolls game. Your player is about to be executed for unknown, possibly non-existent crimes. Just before the execution a dragon, which will be revealed to be the dragon Alduin interrupts and kills just about everyone. You escape, and eventually make your way to the city of Whiterun and after slaying a dragon alongside the city guard, absorb its power and reveal yourself to be a Dragonborn, one that can take the souls of Dragons.

The art direction of Skyrim sets it far apart from Oblivion. Art director Matt Carofano said in an interview with Game Informer that the typical fantasy style of Oblivion would not work in Skyrim, which is a colder, harsher world inhabited by the Nords. The phrase he uses to describe it is epic reality, meaning that wherever you go in the world of Skyrim, you have a sense of amazement at what you are walking through.

One of the big changes in terms of game play, and possibly an inspiration from working on Fallout, was doing away with Character class. In Fallout, players can develop their character’s abilities however they wish by way of assigning perks and through the distribution of the SPECIAL attributes. In Skyrim, it works in somewhat of a similar way, without the inclusion of SPECIAL. Instead, each race provides a particular bonus, which you can use to your advantage when rolling a new character.

Skyrim received critical acclaim despite, like most Elder Scrolls games, or any game of such breadth, a certain amount of bugginess. Skyrim is the bestselling Elder Scrolls game to date and won numerous game of the year awards from media outlets across the globe. It is estimated that the game has sold 22.7 million copies worldwide.

Skyrim like Morrowind and Oblivion had multiple expansion packs, but some of the best additions to Skyrim came from the modding community. Mods like Requiem added a level of realism to the game while Endereal added expansion level content. I spoke with my friend Belmont Boy about the Skyrim modding community.

Future of the Elder Scrolls Series

Whew! This was a long one, before we go, let’s talk a little bit about the future of the Elder Scrolls series, and its legacy. There is not a whole lot of information about what the next Elder Scrolls game has in store, no release date or location have been confirmed. If Bethesda has a pattern though, it is that they being work on their next big thing after the last big thing has been released. With the introduction of Fallout on the docket, I can imagine that pre-production of the next TES game only started with Fallout 4’s release in late 2015.

The matter of that pre-production though is uncertain. Todd Howard himself said “Of course we are making it…it’s a long way off.” Now as I did in the last video, I’m going to turn to my panel to see what their take on the legacy of The Elder Scrolls series is.

Closing

Thank you so much for joining me in the third episode of Origin of the Series. I will be deciding on the next episode shortly, so stay tuned for that. If you enjoyed this video, please like, comment, subscribe and share! I will be putting the sources of the video in the description down below. Check out my previous episodes of Origin of the Series, and I will see you guys, next time.

Sources

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_83/471-Bethesda-The-Right-Direction

The History of Sid Meier’s Civilization

October 20, 2016 by arcadology Leave a Comment

One More Turn. If you have spent any time playing strategy games, this is a very familiar refrain. For decades, the Civilization games have pulled legions of gamers back to the keyboard for one more turn. The gameplay mechanics are both fundamental and straightforward, yet grandiose in scope, a combination that grants immense entertainment value.

But like Rome, Civilization was not built in a day! In this video, we are going to take a look back at the early days at MicroProse and the development of the first Civilization and also delve into the game’s legacy.

I also spoke with fellow creators Drew, Stacy, Hadrian, and Phil about their relationship with the series over the years.

Bill and Sid

Civilization started with a wager. Sort of. The journey towards developing Civilization begins up at a company called General Instruments Corp. in 1982. Sid Meier was a 28-year-old University of Michigan graduate and gaming enthusiast working for the company as a programmer. “Wild Bill” Stealy was an analyst at the company and also a member of the Air Force reserves. The two were introduced to each other during a company event in Las Vegas.

Stealy, the Air Force pilot, was sure he would beat Meier at the arcade game Red Baron, only to be surprised at Meier’s proficiency at playing the game. Meier explained he was merely analyzing the programming of the game and predicting the games actions, and he could program a better game in one week’s time. Stealy said if Meier could program that game, he would sell it. Sid made it, and Bill ended up selling it, and the two went into business together founding MicroProse with their first game, Hellcat Ace.

An interesting aside to this: in 1988, MicroProse employees were able to track down the very Red Baron game cabinet that inspired Sid and Bill to go into business together.

The Early Days of MicroProse

MicroProse was founded on the niche genre of vehicle simulators, but also produced strategy games like NATO Commander. Regardless of the style, most of the games produced by the young company stayed firmly within the boundary of the military and combat theming associated with the co-founder Stealy. This laser focus let MicroProse grow and develop into one of the more successful game companies of the mid-80s.

Meier however was beginning to feel the urge to explore other genres. Sid and a fellow designer wanted to try their hand at a role playing game with an idea that would eventually develop into Sid Meier’s Pirates! While developing the game however there was a bit of pushback from Wild Bill who was unsure about entering into a new genre. This unease about non-military based games would become a recurring strain between Sid and Bill over the next few years.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Pirates! was a success. Another team of MicroProse designers would use the leverage gained by Bill’s genre foray, as well as some of the technological tricks created during development, to create Sword of the Samurai. An interesting tie-in to the first episode of Origin of the Series is that one of the writers for that game was Sandy Petersen, who would go on to work for iD Software as a level designer for Doom and Doom II.

Pirates is also notable because it started a trend that lasts to this day. It boasts Sid Meier’s name above the title, a space normally only reserved for the biggest names in an industry. There are a few variations of the story as to why this happened. From all accounts, Sid is probably the last guy in the world to ask for that kind of recognition. One version of the story is that it was comedian, and noted gamer, Robin Williams who had the idea and pitched it to Sid and Bill Stealy at a gaming conference. He said it would make Sid a star. The other version of the story is that Bill did it to differentiate Sid’s new passion projects, like Pirates! from the other games that he believed to be the bread and butter of the company. Maybe it was one or the other, or something in between, but either way the naming convention stuck, and to this day Sid’s name appears above the games he creates.

Bruce Shelley and Railroad Tycoon

For those that are familiar with Bruce Shelley’s work, two games immediately come to mind: Civilization and Age of Empires. However, Shelley developed his working relationship with Sid Meier on the game Railroad Tycoon.

Shelley came to MicroProse by way of Avalon Hill where he was a board game designer. After seeing what was possible with Pirates! Shelley knew he wanted to change industries, and found his way to MicroProse. One of the games that Shelley worked on while at Avalon Hill was an adaptation of a board game by Francis Tresham called 1829. The resulting game, 1830, served as one of the inspirations for the next important game in Meier’s career, Railroad Tycoon.

Railroad Tycoon was the first “God” game that Meier designed. In it, you controlled a businessman with $100,000 in assets that is looking to build the next great railroad empire. Besides Shelley’s work with 1830, another important inspiration for Tycoon was SimCity, Will Wright’s 1989 classic that took the gaming world by storm. Much like SimCity, Railroad Tycoon unfolded as a real-time strategy game with the option to pause and start time.

Railroad Tycoon was another success for Meier. However, it became apparent to Stealy that Meier was less interested in running the business. And for Wild Bill that business was producing vehicle and combat simulation and strategy games. I have not been able to find an exact date, but at some point between Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, Sid Meier was bought out of the company that he co-founded and stripped of his Vice President title. He would be rehired as a contractor who received money upfront to develop games and royalties on any copies of games sold. This was the situation Meier was in as Civilization entered the horizon.

Development of Civilization

After Railroad Tycoon’s success and Meier’s exit from MicroProse Meier found himself looking to his past for the next game he wanted to develop. He had fond memories of playing Risk as a child, and wanted to create something along those lines, merged with the idea of the development of a (small c) civilization. So he and Shelley began work on the first iteration of Civilization, capital c. Meier and Shelley worked with an iterative process; Meier would do a round of design, and Shelley would play it, providing feedback as to whether it was fun or not.

The initial push to design Civilization would be interrupted by business matters, though. Stealy was not thrilled with his best team working on another project that was not the company’s primary focus. Meier convinced Stealy of how important the development of Civilization was to him, and Stealy cut him a deal. If he and Shelley worked on a game called Covert Action. At this point in Civilization’s development, it was a real time strategy game like Railroad Tycoon.

After finishing Cover Action, Meier and Shelley came back to Civilization and realized something important. Real time would not work for the game they were envisioning. Instead, they reworked the game as a turn-based strategy, without which there would be no “one more turn!”

Accuracy

The history presented in the game was never intended to be entirely accurate, as Meier prioritized fun above all else. That’s not to say there isn’t anything true; Meier did have some reference material. It was Bruce Shelley that did the bulk of the research for the manual, which according to Meier was nearly 200 pages, and the Civilopedia, which had never really been done in a game before. For those unfamiliar, the Civilopedia has information on just about everything in the game, unit, building, or wonder.

With the game nearing completion, the final hurdle was getting the attention of the MicroProse staff that would be needed to finish the game. Meier’ s projects were considered low priority at the time. When MicroProse employees finally got their hands on the game, a funny thing happened: they couldn’t stop playing. However, the game was also overwhelming, and they needed to make cuts. Meier and Shelley ended up reducing the world size by half and cutting out a branch of the technology tree.

Civilization was released with a limited marketing push, but the game’s addictive nature gave it the word of mouth needed to spread like wildfire amongst gamers. One More Turn was born.

The Legacy of Civilization

Not long after Civilization’s release, MicroProse was purchased by competitor Spectrum Holobyte. While owned by them, MicroProse would release Civilization II, also considered one of the greatest games of all time. It was Civ II that introduced the isometric point of view that is familiar to most civilization players. Meier, however, was already on his way to Firaxis games by the time Civ II was released.

The legal status of the franchise bounced around a little bit. There were lawsuits regarding the name. MicroProse would be sold again. In the meantime, Firaxis was brought on as the developer for Civilization III and would eventually own the rights to the franchise again by Civilization IV. A rare time in gaming history where an IP ultimately ends up in the hands of those who care for it the most.

It’s hard to poetically encapsulate the legacy of a game as grand as Civilization. So I’m not going to. Here are some facts. It was one of the progenitors of the 4X strategy genre. It lead to Bruce Shelley creating Age of Empires, and inspiring strategy gamers and developers alike for years to come. Here once again are (interview subjects) to talk about what they think the “legacy” of the game truly is.

Conclusion

Thank you for watching the second episode of Origin of the Series. I want to take a moment to call out the sources for this video. The primary source was an article and interview found on Gamasutra. Additional sources include an interview with Sid Meier from venturebeat.com and retrospectives from Kotaku and arstechnica.com. The links to these articles are in the description below.

I’d like to give my utmost thanks and appreciation to Drew, Stacy, Hadrian and Phil for their support of this project, and for lending their voices to it.

The first episode was about the history of the Doom franchise which you can check out here. If you enjoy this type of content, please leave a like and a comment below, and consider subscribing and sharing this video. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next time. Take care everybody.

Game of the Year 1980: Superman for Atari 2600

September 29, 2016 by arcadology Leave a Comment