retrogameessays

[retrogameessays]

The Open(ish) World of Kanto

Pokémon may look its age, but its take on open world design is timeless

“Open world” games have existed since nearly the dawn of the video game medium. Text adventures from the late-seventies like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork had the feel of an open, interconnected world and gave the player the freedom to explore that world however they saw fit. A decade later, the original Legend of Zelda became a landmark in open world design that, at its core, was trying to accomplish the same thing as those early text adventures. These games were attempts to build worlds from their creators' imaginations that were fun and compelling to explore.

Pokémon was developed by Game Freak and released in North America in 1998. It carried on the world-building legacy of those early 2D works, despite arriving in a polygon obsessed, post Super Mario 64 world.  It can be difficult to convey to a younger generation of gamers just how mind-blowing 3D technology was at the time. In film there is an infamous urban legend about the Lumiére brothers' short film "L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat", that because it was one of the first films ever to be screened and the audience was not accustomed to moving pictures, they fled from the train arriving on-screen in a panic. Although it's almost certainly an exaggeration, that story is a testament to how ingrained the medium of film has become in society since those early days. Gamers were similarly shocked in the mid-nineties at the freedom of movement and exploration Super Mario 64 presented, and indeed many spent their first hour in the game just running around the courtyard of Peach's castle, coming to grips with this new paradigm in game design. The world seemed boundless as each new area presented a whole new 3D environment to explore, from a sunken ship to a haunted house, a sprawling desert to a snowy mountain.

Of course much of the seeming enormity of early 3D games could be attributed to simple math. Adding depth to a medium that had always dealt primarily in two dimensions would naturally make the games feel larger, but in retrospect many of those early games are neither as large nor as open as many gamers remember them. Someone who knows the game well can beat Super Mario 64 with the minimum number of stars in around five hours, and can likely obtain all 120 stars in ten. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time gives the player very little of the freedom present in the original Legend of Zelda, with each dungeon necessarily being completed in order and the infamously naggy fairy Navi constantly directing the player where to go next. Even Final Fantasy VII, which is an objectively long and sprawling game, mostly gives the player the illusion of freedom and exploration. The world map often just serves as a “level select” screen, not unlike Super Mario Bros. 3, as the player cannot make progress until they go to the correct location and take the correct actions.

All of these observations may seem like criticisms, but gamers were probably not yet ready for a fully 3D open world in the vein of Grand Theft Auto III or Oblivion. Exploring 3-dimensional environments on a 2-dimensional screen is not a trivial endeavor. Early 3D camera systems had difficulty maintaining effective angles, with a tendency to get caught on or behind level geometry, and judging distances without the benefit of actual depth could make navigating a 3D world frustrating. Baby steps were necessary not only to help gamers grow accustomed to 3D, but for game designers to experiment with the new technology.

And apparently strangle you with her bare hands

Pokémon, on the other hand, relies on decades of 2D game design experience, rather than visual appeal, to draw players into its world. It looks more like a game from 1988 than 1998, with the Game Boy's monochrome NES-era graphics, and in some ways it plays like one. Pokémon's mechanics, from the turn-based, one-one-one, menu-driven battles to the overhead perspective used for exploring the overworld, echo the original Dragon Quest and the many Japanese RPGs that followed it. It's in the way that the game guides the player through its world and gradually gives more and more freedom to explore that Pokémon feels more like a game of its time.

In the beginning Pokémon appears to be a fairly linear, quest-based RPG with the first several tasks necessarily being completed one before the next. The player must obtain their first Pokémon, retrieve the Pokédex from Viridian City, then do battle with Brock at the Pewter City gym. The guided experience at the outset is almost certainly informed by the lack of guidance in early 8-bit games. Games like the aforementioned Zelda and Dragon Quest can feel open and exciting from the beginning, but can also be frustrating and obtuse when the player struggles to figure out where to go and what to do. By guiding the player through the basics of game progression, the game's designers ensured that players wouldn't get stuck wandering and give up on the game entirely.

The hand-holding doesn't last for long, and most players may not even notice when the training wheels come off. The exit to Pewter City is gated, somewhat arbitrarily, by a youth that won't let the player pass without winning the Boulder Badge from Brock. Despite being slightly inelegant from a narrative perspective, forcing the player to challenge the first gym leader in this way sends an important message that, when there is no where else to go, future gym leaders may hold the key to progress. The next town, Cerulean City, does not require that Misty the gym leader be defeated before leaving, but players are likely to do it anyway given that the first gym was so important.

If the player chooses to skip the battle with Misty, they will eventually find their progress stalled by the inability to use the “Cut” HM (short for Hidden Machine) outside of battle. HM's can be used over and over again to teach Pokémon abilities like “Cut” that are needed to get past certain obstacles, and they are the player's primary means of navigating the world. For Pokémon to use these abilities outside of battle, the player must earn badges from certain gym leaders, presumably representative of their progress as a trainer and their ability to better control their creatures. It's a clever way to make the player's journey through the world feel more organic and less like a series of levels to be completed.

There are items to be found as well, such as the Silph Scope, Poké Flute, and Bike, that combine with HMs to make the world seem more and more open as the player gets further into the game. This progression is not unlike The Legend of Zelda, where finding certain items opens up new areas of the map where even more new items can be found to gain access to more parts of the world (Related note: Pokémon is not a Metroidvania). As the game continues to open up more and more, it's possible for different players to reach the end of the game by taking very different routes. After acquiring the Poké Flute, a player could choose to take Routes 13-15 to Fuchsia City, get the Surf HM from the Safari Zone, then fly back to Pallet Town and surf on down to Cinnabar Island. Alternatively, the player could take Cycling Road to Fuchsia City, come up Routes 13-15 to get back to Saffron City, and complete the Silph Co. quest. Even the order in which the eight gym trainers are defeated can vary wildly from game to game. Since the ThunderBadge is only used for the inessential (but incredibly convenient) Fly ability outside of battle, Lt. Surge, who is the third trainer that can be challenged, doesn't actually need to be defeated until the very end of the game.

Not pictured: a crazed Captain Ahab

Just what exactly constitutes the end game is a bit more open-ended than just defeating the final boss. The stakes in Pokémon are incredibly low, and there is barely even a villain to speak of. Team Rocket is an antagonistic force that drives the plot forward, but their half-baked schemes are too easily foiled by a ten year old child to be considered threatening. The player's Rival can certainly be classified as an antagonist, and indeed plays the role of final boss, but there is never anything more than pride at stake when doing battle with him. It is fair to say then that the world of Pokémon, and the eponymous creatures in it, are what make the game so compelling. When Time magazine interviewed Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri in 1999, they asked him why the game was still so popular one year after its release. He replied,

“When you're a kid and get your first bike, you want to go somewhere you've never been before. That's like Pokémon. Everybody shares the same experience, but everybody wants to take it someplace else. And you can do that.”

Defeating the Final Four and the Rival to become the greatest trainer in the world is certainly one way to end the game, but there is much more to be done within the game's world. There are 150 (or 151, with the exploitation of a glitch) Pokémon to acquire to complete the Pokédex and the ability, through the use of the Game Boy's link cable, to compete against other players instead of the game's limited AI. Pokémon's competitive scene, in particular, is a world unto itself where strategies that worked against the in-game trainers are rendered useless in the more chess-like meta game of player-versus-player combat.

It's remarkable that Tajiri and his staff at Game Freak were able to create such an expansive and immersive world on the Game Boy's limited hardware. It must have seemed like an odd decision at the time to use a nearly decade-old, 2D gaming system to capture the hearts and minds of the youth. Yet by putting a strange and compelling world into the palms of gamers' hands, Pokémon created a social phenomenon that was largely made possible because so many gamers already owned the outdated hardware it was released on. It gave the kids of 1998 a reason to turn off their Playstation or Nintendo 64 (maybe Sega Saturn, but probably not), dust off that old Game Boy, and get lost in the open world of Kanto.

Sources:

TIME Magazine Staff, (1999, November 22). The Ultimate Game Freak. TIME Magazine, volume(154) no(21).

[retrogameessays]

Living the Life of a Horror Hero in Zombies Ate My Neighbors

25 Years Later, Zombies Ate My Neighbors still provides a unique take on horror

LucasArts, founded as Lucasfilm Games in 1982, didn't make its first Star Wars game until Star Wars for the NES in February of 1991. The primary reason for the delay was that the Star Wars brand had been licensed to other development companies (Atari had the rights to Star Wars in 1982). The more romantic perspective is that George Lucas didn't want his company to just make games based on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones properties, but to make more ambitious, technologically advanced works. The early efforts of Lucasfilm Games support this point of view. Habitat, in particular, was released in 1986 and was a way-ahead-of-its-time, graphical, massively-multiplayer online game, that allowed for customization of player avatars, bartering for resources, marriage, and even player-versus-player violence. Either way, the fact that Lucasfilm Games was unable to make Star Wars titles opened the door for the slew of critically-acclaimed adventure games the company became known for. In his keynote speech at Pax Australia 2013, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert said that, “Had we been able to make Star Wars games, I’m sure that’s all we would have made. Not being able to make those games creatively freed us in ways I don’t think we understood at the time. Without that freedom, there would be no Maniac Mansion, or Grim Fandango, or Monkey Island, or Loom.”

Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis is very much cut from the same creative cloth as those titles, and yet serves as proof that adventure games were not necessarily the mandate at LucasArts. It's difficult to even say exactly what kind of game Zombies is. It's a top-down, free-scrolling shooter wherein the player must rescue at least one and as many as ten “neighbors” per level from (usually) infinitely spawning monsters. If a monster touches a neighbor before the player does, the neighbor dies. As with a player's lives, the number of neighbors saved carries over to the next level. If the player runs out of lives or neighbors, the game is over. Zombies is similar to Gauntlet in that it's an action game with maze-like level layouts, but also contains shades of Defender in that it's a shooter that requires the player to save victims while defending themselves against an endless onslaught of monsters.

I find your lack of panic disturbing

The game that specifically inspired Zombies Ate My Neighbors' creator, Michael Ebert, was an obscure arcade title named Kyros from Alpha Denshi Corp (better known as ADK and for their collaborations with SNK). Kyros is a top-down, vertically scrolling arcade brawler in which the player must fight through endlessly spawning hordes of monsters to reach the top of a haunted mansion. The visual resemblance is striking; both games use the same perspective and contrast a horror-movie theme with a bright color palette. The gameplay differs greatly in that Kyros is a fairly straightforward brawler while Zombies is a shooter with victims to rescue, but both games include power-ups to augment the player's abilities and fast-paced, relentless action.

In addition to being influenced by Kyros, Ebert told Gamasutra in 2007 that Robotron and Smash TV, which were also arcade titles, were two of his favorite games. The influence of these two games may not be as direct, but both were critically-acclaimed shooters and Robotron included saving humans as a play-mechanic. Action games dominated arcades in the late eighties, so it was only natural that as consoles began to take off in the early nineties, game designers like Ebert would try to replicate those experiences for the home market.

The influence of these arcade games is evident not only in Zombies Ate My Neighbors' play mechanics, but in the game's difficulty. Most monsters spawn indefinitely and randomly, making it virtually impossible to get through any one level unscathed. Enemies will occasionally even spawn near a neighbor that the player cannot reach, making them impossible to save. In arcade games, intentionally random design conventions are meant to coax more quarters out of patrons, but without some way to balance out the randomness, they can be frustrating for console gamers who have already invested 200 or more quarters in buying a game at retail price.

Zombies' designers balanced the game's difficulty by using another relic of arcade games, the player's score. For every 40,000 points scored, the player gets another neighbor to replace any that have been lost, and if the player already has the maximum of 10 neighbors, they receive an extra life. The concept of a score had become less relevant in console games of the time because beating the game had become the point of playing rather than earning a high-score. Zombies brilliantly takes a somewhat outdated concept and makes it relevant again by weaving it into the fiber of the game's design, and in doing so created a risk-reward cycle that adds depth. Exploring every corner of a level can yield bonus point pick-ups and more ammo, but at the risk of taking too much damage or wasting too much ammo in defense.

While the arcade influence is somewhat subtle, the influence of classic horror movies is overt. Every bit of the game's visuals and audio pay homage to horror. Level titles are often parodies of classic horror titles (“Evening of the Undead” vs. Night of the Living Dead), enemies include both classic Universal Pictures monsters and more modern frights (ax-throwing dolls reminiscent of Child's Play and a chainsaw-wielding maniac that combines Leatherface with Jason Vorhees' hockey mask), and the music uses surf guitar and howling theremin samples to evoke a spooky-sixties atmosphere. (Incidentally, if there is a connection between Star Wars and Zombies, it's that Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, appeared in a number of the British Hammer Horror Films.)

More childhood nostalgia: mowing the lawn

The combination of Ebert's nostalgia for eighties arcade games and horror films create a uniquely terrifying experience. The aforementioned difficulty in saving all the neighbors is part of the game's horror atmosphere. There should be a sense of anxiety and loss because that is indeed what happens in a horror movie; people die. Victims are even assigned point values based (subjectively) on how likely a movie-going audience would be to sympathize with their death. Cheerleaders, babies, and dogs are at the top of the list, while men and schoolteachers are at the bottom. In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the player becomes the protagonist of a horror film. Monsters appear from unexpected places, weapons are fashioned from household items, and sometimes a victim just can't be saved.

George Lucas has always had a talent for creating experiences that connect with people and capture their imaginations, often by riffing on the films and shows that captured his own imagination in the past. Whether it was by his influence or coincidence (or perhaps a bit of both) the game studio that he founded has had a similar knack for capturing gamers' imaginations. If there is a connection between Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Lucas' two most famous franchises, its that they were all born of their creators' nostalgia. In the same way that Star Wars was Lucas doing Flash Gordon and Indiana Jones was Lucas and Spielberg modernizing the movie serials of the '30s and 40's, Zombies was Mike Ebert combining his love for arcade brawlers and shooters of the '80s with horror film nostalgia. It is a testament to the importance of history and shared experiences in pop culture. Someone who plays Zombies may not have the same affection that Mike Ebert has for horror films and eighties arcade games (and almost certainly has not played Kyros), but Ebert's experiences, like Lucas' love for Flash Gordon, are passed along through his art.

Sources:

Kalata, Kurt (October 19, 2012) Kyros/Desolator/Kyros no Yakata. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/kyros/kyros.htm

Kuchera, Ben (July 19, 2013) Adventure Games Took Off Because Ron Gilbert Couldn't Make Star Wars Games. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20130721093143/http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/ron-gilbert-was-saved-because-he-couldnt-make-star-wars-games

Szczepaniak, John and Derboo, Sam (October 19, 2012) Zombies Ate My Neighbors Legacy. Retrieved from https://hg101.kontek.net/zamn/zamn1.htm

Wallis, Alistair (January 11, 2007) Playing Catch Up: Zombies Ate My Neighbors' Mike Ebert. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12360

[retrogameessays]

Master of Orion: The Original XXXX-Rated Game

Happy 25th Anniversary to Master of Orion

Genre designations generally come about organically and it can be difficult to pin down exactly when and where certain terms were first used. It is generally accepted that Donkey Kong was the first true “platformer”, but who was the first to coin it as such? The term “beat 'em up” was sometimes used to describe games that are now regarded as fighting games, so who can be sure exactly when the term was being used as it is understood today?

On the other hand, the origin of some terms is extremely well understood. For instance, Capcom famously invented the term “Survival Horror” to market the original Resident Evil. Then there is a genre that many gamers, particularly those who prefer consoles, may be unfamiliar with: the “4X” subgenre of strategy games. The origin of the term is so specific, in fact, that it can be traced back to a preview of Master of Orion in the September '93 issue of Computer Gaming World.

The article in question, by Alan Emrich, is titled “Microprose' Strategic Space Opera is Rated XXXX!” Emrich admits in the beginning of the article that the title is jokingly provocative, but there was serious meaning to the four X's. Each “X” represented an element that he believed to be an essential part of the PC strategy genre: EXplore/EXpand (“player must rise from humble beginnings”), EXploit (“build up the largest most efficient empire possible”), and EXterminate (“other players will be trying to do the same”). After the article was published, the “XXXX” was shortened to “4X” and retroactively applied to classics of the genre like Sid Meier's Civilization and SSG's Reach for the Stars.

The fact that Emrich's article had such an impact on gaming vernacular is a testament to what a small community gamers were a part of back then. He and his friend and fellow strategy game enthusiast Tom Hughes (who he credits with coming up with the term “4X”) appear in the credits for Master of Orion under Special Thanks for “invaluable design critiquing and suggestions,” and the two would even go on to work as designers on Master of Orion III. In a retrospective written for the Master of Orion III website, Emrich would further clarify his role in previewing the first game:

“After intense, repeated playing of the game, Tom and I were soon making numerous suggestions to the game's MicroProse producer who, in turn, got tired of passing them on to the designer and lead programmer, Steve Barcia. Soon, we were talking to Steve directly. The telephone lines were burning regularly and a lot of ideas went back and forth.”

It's difficult in the modern era to imagine a journalist ending up in the credits of a game after simply being asked to preview it, but such was the state of the gaming community in the early nineties.

Emrich's article may not have resonated the way it did if Master of Orion had not become a classic, but it is certainly that. Few games before or since have so perfectly balanced the four X's of the genre. Exploration is simple, requiring a simple point and click to send a ship to an unexplored star system, but vital to efficient expansion of the empire. Colonizing planets is not cheap in the early parts of the game. Sending a colony ship to a random system could result in wasting resources on a poor planet that won't contribute much to the empire or wasting turns flying to a planet with a hostile environment that can't be colonized yet.

Expansion is the most basic way to increase the empire's resources. Resources are represented by factories and factories cannot be built without more land or operated without more citizens. Colonizing new planets provides more of both, which makes expansion essential to increasing the number of factories that can be built, which in turn allows each planet to do research, build ships and planetary defenses, and make ecological improvements.

It is this Exploitation of resources that forms the meat of the game. Each planet has a set of sliders that determine how that colony's resources are being used. Balancing the use of resources is essential to efficient expansion of the empire. Devoting too many resources to building more colony ships and transporting colonists to new planets can spread the empire thin and leave little leftover for developing new technologies and defending against hostile races. Conversely, spending too much on research can stagnate the empire's expansion and allow other races to claim the largest, most mineral-rich planets.

    Don't laugh at my thematic ship names for the ant-like Klackon race

The final component of the game is interacting with other races and, if the player so chooses, Exterminating them. Much like in Civilization, where winning the space race would end the game, total annihilation of other races is not necessary in order to achieve victory. Through diplomacy it is possible to enter into trade agreements and alliances with other races, exchange technologies or, naturally, declare war. Spies can also be sent to perform sabotage, incite rebellion, steal technology, or simply gather information. How the player chooses to interact with other races greatly affects their path to victory. Through diplomacy it's possible to play a relatively peaceful game that ends by being elected High Master of the Galaxy by the High Council. It's also possible to ruthlessly annihilate every other race in the game as soon as possible.

Which race a player chooses to play as will also influence how they play the game. Each race has unique advantages and disadvantages that encourage the player to try different strategies. Humans, for example, gain bonuses in diplomatic relations, so it behooves a player who chooses them to interact peacefully with other races as much as possible. On the other hand, the bear-like Bulrathi only have an advantage in ground combat, which requires the player to invade other races' planets on foot to exploit their strength. Needing to learn how to maximize each race's advantages makes the game endlessly more replayable than if they were all essentially the same.

All of these systems are simple enough on their own. It is the way in which they interact that creates the complexity necessary for players to develop unique strategies and express themselves through gameplay. That bit of self-expression is at the core of what makes a 4X game so fun. There is very little in the way of plot in Master of Orion because, like its board-game ancestors, it is more of a set of rules for players to create their own narratives. Each game plays out differently, and there is even an inherent morality that emerges based on the decisions a player makes. Is it better to honor pacts and alliances or to destroy other races at the first sign of weakness? Is it worth using powerful biological weapons that other races will not approve of? These decisions allow the player to play the part of ruthless dictator or benevolent ruler as they see fit.

    Zak Snyder presents: Yoshi

Like many games of its vintage, Master of Orion can be difficult to recommend to younger gamers. Some of the finer points of the game (including specific racial characteristics and the nuances of battle) can only be learned by reading through the manual, as was often the case with PC strategy games of the day, and the presentation is what one would expect from early-nineties VGA graphics. The game's own sequel would add more depth and some quality of life options (such as the ability to automate ship design or skip turns where nothing happens), but there is something comforting about the simplicity and almost board-game-like quality of the original. It may be a bit of a slow-burn, but the more time spent with Master of Orion, the easier it is to appreciate its greatness. In Emrich's article for Computer Gaming World he expressed doubt that Master of Orion would ever measure up to Sid Meier's Civilization. In the retrospective he wrote while working on Master of Orion III, he mentions a conversation he had with his friend Tom Hughes shortly after the article was published:

“We talked about Master of Orion, of course, and Tom said, 'You know, I think this game might become more addicting even than Civilization.' I replied, 'You know, I think it already is.'”

Sources:

Emrich, Alan (1993, September). Microprose' Strategic Space Opera is Rated XXXX!. Computer Gaming World, volume 110, pp. 92-93.

Barcia, Stephen (1993) Master of Orion Game Manual. Retrieved from www.gog.com

Emrich, Alan (2001) Master of Orion: The History of a Game Series - One Man's Telling of a Cosmic Tale. Retrieved from http://moo3.quicksilver.com/game/history.html