We are staying in the sports arena this week. This time it's a slightly less-flashy and far less dangerous sport compared to bullfighting. Darts is... an odd sport to me, to say the least, but one that has a cult following (as far as I can tell,) particularly in the United Kingdom. While odd, I have come to appreciate it, through my research for this article, as a neat sport that combines a physical skill (throwing) with a mental skill (speed arithmetic) that alsodoesn't require you to have a perfectly sculpted athlete's body to be good at. My beanpole figure certainly appreciates that - it's the throwing that worries me.
Developer(s): David Sweet, Walter J. Koetke (and students)
Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation
Ever wanted to be a bull fighter? No? Me neither. Not a fan of risking my life for entertainment's sake. Bullfighting is something of a disgraced sport these days, due to changing views on animal cruelty. Regardless of what anyone thinks of it as a blood sport, it remains a national, cultural spectacle in Spain and across Latin America, with a long, storied history across the Iberian peninsula, and also possibly holds ancient roots.
Combat sports involving animals have a history that goes well-beyond Spain's form of bullfighting. Of course, there were animals involved in the Roman gladiatorial arena - bulls included. Even further back than that, however, is evidence of the ancient Minoan people in Crete (we're talking ~1,500 B.C. here) engaging in some sort of bullfighting games. A Minoan fresco was discovered that pictured three individuals engaging with a bull in various manners - one grabbing the horns, and another cartwheeling over its back.
Where exactly in time Spain's particular form of tauromachy (that's one of my new favourite words, by the way) appeared seems to be entirely lost to us. It evolved over the centuries as the different ruling parties modified the bullfighting games, first the Visigoths, and then the Muslims. It seems as if the tradition solidified somewhat into organised tournaments in the 11th century A.D., where bullfights commonly took place with the matador on horseback, equipped with a lance - still very different from the stereotypical idea we have of the caped matador doing the dance of death with the bull on foot. In Spain specifically, this format persisted for roughly 600 years before the transition to on-foot bullfighting occurred. Horseback bullfighting persisted in neighbouring Portugal, despite the changes occurring in Spain. Bullfighting also carried over with the Spanish and Portuguese into Latin America.
That's enough of a real-world history lesson for today. Moving on to digital-world history, we have the first video game adaptation of the sport (or some would say art) of bullfighting. Bull, or Bullfight as it's called in the microcomputer edition of 101 BASIC Games, went through a few hands before landing in David Ahl's book.
Bull - 1, Matador - 0
The original author of Bull is David Sweet of Dartmouth College. It's unknown whether Sweet was a student or faculty at the college, nor when he programmed Bull, as there's no indication of this in the source code. It's evident that Bull was around prior to July 1973, as the game somehow made its way into the hands of Walter J. Koetke, who had his students at Lexington High School, MA, convert it into BASIC, after which it ended up with David Ahl, and included in 101 BASIC Games. Steve North would then modify it again for the microcomputer edition of the book. Koetke was a pioneering educator through the 70s and 80s for his work in integrating computers into education, and Bull is the first of 20 games he had some involvement in that we know of (according to MobyGames.) We'll see later on in 1973 the first couple of games he wrote, but he's more active in the 80s after the microcomputer revolution.
Where's the fun cartoons?
Bull tries to make a somewhat in-depth attempt to simulate a fight. Not only does it include several moves and options for you, the matador, to choose from, but the matador's assistants are also included in the gameplay - the toreadores and picadores. Although, I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. From my research, the assistants are known as picadores and banderilleros, not toreadores. That being said, I knew absolutely nothing about bullfighting prior to writing this article, so I may be completely wrong about everything. Feel free to correct my understanding in the comments.
Back to the game, when you start, the first phases of the fight are generated randomly, and you must react based on how the fight has gone up to then. The bull and the performances of your assistants vary in quality, and your assistants can even be killed by the bull! Boy, this game isn't messing around...
Here's the lowdown, "bloodlover." That's the name of my new metal band.
I was rather fortunate on my first go - I drew an "awful" bull. Even the game thought that was lucky. The picadores did alright in the first round, but one of my toreadores was killed in round 2. May his noble sacrifice never be forgotten - whoever he was.
Fire my toreadores.
In order to get my bearings, I played it safe when it came to my turn in the ring. While the bull was charging I opted for the safest option, the regular cape swirl. Once it calmed down after the first couple of passes, I went for progressively more dangerous moves.
I think I'm doing well? Haven't died yet, so must be.
The game recommends not going for the kill until the seventh pass, so that's what I did, opting for the over the horns kill. I was indeed successful, living to fight another day. The crowd seemed pleased, and awarded me "ONE EAR OF THE BULL" as my prize. Doesn't seem like much of a reward, but I did play it safe, to be fair to them. Might make a good chew toy for my dog - if I had a dog.
The moment you've all been waiting for.
Probably warrants a few more goes to see where the limits are. Taking a peek at the source code indicates that there are four different awards the crowd can give you after a fight - alive or dead doesn't matter.
If you do poorly, you get nothing at all.
A successful but safe fight will award you one ear of the bull.
A brave fight will award you both ears of the bull.
For outstanding bravery, the crowd will chant "OLE! YOU ARE 'MUY HOMBRE'!! OLE! OLE!"
This is what happens if you choose the coward's way out.
After a few attempts, I got all of these outcomes. Most of the time, if you get a "superb" bull, you're going to die within the first few passes no matter what you do. The game is actually quite merciless - it's very unlikely that you'll get a successful kill, and will die more often than not. The nice thing is that most rounds take no more than 30 seconds to complete, so it's pretty easy to do a whole bunch of tries in one go.
You don't need to survive to earn the highest honour.
That run above was quite the exciting one. I was gored several times, but kept getting back up. Never gonna keep me down! Eventually was able to get to the moment of killing the bull, but failed. The crowd rightfully acknowledged by bravery, as you can see above. It took a lot of attempts to get this result, and I wouldn't want to try for a result like this but where I successfully kill the bull. The game outcomes are mostly up to chance, as far as I can tell, with your chances getting worse the perkier the bull is.
Well, the crowd's given their verdict. Now it's time for mine.
Time Played: 15 minutes
My initial estimate was 20, but all the recorded files come out closer to 15. Rounds go by so quickly - many in a matter of seconds.
Difficulty: 4 (Mild)
It's hard to quantify Bull's difficulty. On the one hand, it's very difficult to get a round where you get to the bull kill, and even more difficult to get the bull kill instead of just dying. On the other hand, how much of this difficulty is in the player's hands is highly questionable. Between the random game setup and likelihood to succeed or fail dependent on that and also your move choices, is a whole lot of random chance. So, I can't completely rule out the game's challenge, but I also don't want to overstate it, since most of it, in my opinion, is up to the RNG being nice to you.
Gameplay: 3
The more and more I though about the game design, the worse Bull became in my eyes. It's a lot like Slalom, in that, once you know the right sequence of moves to choose, it becomes a matter of just brute force playing the game over and over again until you win. Only there's far less nuance with Bull - so much so that it ends up in an "illusion of choice" type of situation. On the surface, it offers a variety of scenarios with the random generation at the start, and multiple ways to react to that situation. However, the game rewards riskier play, and because rounds are so short, it encourages you to only take the riskiest option, no matter the scenario, until it works. Banging your head against the brick wall until it cracks, to analogise it. I have other "illusion of choice" games scored at a 3, so that's where Bull will go also. It's not bad enough to go with the 1s and 2s.
Controls: 5
Nothing really of note here - standard inputs for the time.
Visual: 1
Also nothing of note here. Very plain and standard for the time. A reminder that text-based games go at a 1/10 score at base when they don't do anything beyond just present the text in plain fashion. Functionality: 5
No problems here.
Accessibility: 3
Going to put this at the standard 3/5 for text-based games. Requires solid reading ability.
Fun Factor: 4
Probably more fun than the game is well-designed. It helps that it's quite humorous and has plenty of personality in the writing. Short rounds, while detrimental to game design, are great for replay value. In the moment, I found myself playing dozens of rounds without even really thinking about whether I was bored or not. Would I go back to the game after playing it in that moment? No, probably not. It's crippling lack of depth, paired with the "illusion of choice" problem prevents it from raising any higher in my esteem.
I award Bull with a score of 21. This mediocre tauromachy earns an E-tier finish, and one ear of the bull for effort. It's smack-bang in the middle of the tier, but wins the tiebreaker with the other 21s on Fun Factor, making it 21st overall at the time of writing. How fitting. It's all about which game I'd rather play again in the end.
Next week, I have something special for you all. I'll be taking a break from the 1973 coverage to complete and release the long-delayed PLATO overview. If you don't know about PLATO, you're going to be amazed at how ahead of its time it was.
[Ed. trying out some new colours on the blog - let me know what you think!]
We're re-entering the strange world of text-based sports games for this next entry. It's always seemed rather peculiar to me that early game developers thought that sports were suitable for text-based games, especially for more fast-paced sports like the one we're examining today. They seem diametrically opposed on the surface, but maybe, because of that, there's the making of an interesting game here?
Slalom is a winter sports game, based on the slalom discipline of skiing. It's not exactly the first of its kind, as Magnavox's Odyssey console does have a ski game from 1972, creatively titled Ski (plus there's also its cancelled Ski Festival game.) But it is at least the first text-based attempt at a winter sport I know of.
The 1978 edition of BASIC Computer Games informs us that the author of Slalom, J. Panek, was a student at Dartmouth College when he wrote the game. Once again, this is a one-and-done author, though there is fortunately a good amount of information about him online. A quick search provides a LinkedIn profile of a Jonathan Panek, who fits the profile of scant information provided by the book and MobyGames. MobyGames adds that the J. Panek who wrote Slalom attended a St. Paul's school in 1977, which matches Jonathan Panek's LinkedIn profile. He also continued at Dartmouth College after St. Paul's School - in electrical engineering, no less, and later worked at Hewlett-Packard. From this information, I think it's a reasonable conclusion to say that this Jonathan Panek is the most likely author of Slalom.
Game description is savage. Maybe David Ahl didn't like skiing?
Dating the game might be confusing at first (it was for me,) as the source code in BASIC Computer Games has the game's setting as the 1976 Olympic Winter Games. Panek being at St. Paul's from 1971 - 1977 would also suggest that a later date may be likely (IMDB's entry for the game has it listed as a 1975 game.) However, the original source code is online, saved on the Sol-20 website, where it confirms the 1973 date. Panek tells us in the fourth line of the source code that his last work on the game was completed March 8, 1973. He also originally intended the game to be set at the '76 Winter Games, so that mystery is also solved. I do love it when all the data comes together neat and tidy like this.
Now, only one question remains: how do you simulate slalom skiing in a text-based game? The solution Jonathan Panek came up with was to have exclusive focus on one of the main controllable elements of skiing - speed. Slalom then, is all about speed management. At each gate of the slalom course, you have the choice of how much to speed up or slow down (or to maintain your current speed.) Go too slow, and you won't get a medal. Go too fast, and you'll hit a flag and crash out. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? You're even given to option to try and cheat by attempting to skip a flag, which got a chuckle out of me when I first saw it.
Slalom runs a little differently to most other text games I've covered so far. The first thing you do in game is not to look at the instructions. Radical game design. No, you first choose how many gates the slalom course you want to run will have. It can have as many as 25 gates, and as few as a single, lonely, solitary gate. I can't imagine one gate being much fun (spoilers: it isn't,) so I went for a moderate number for my first attempt: 10 gates.
Once you're done with that, then you can read the instructions. But, once again, Slalom does things a little differently. At this point. you've got three options:
Read the instructions.
View maximum speeds.
Start the race.
1 and 3 are self-explanatory, but option 2 appears an odd one on the surface. Basically, this option tells you the approximate top speed for each gate. You'd theoretically want to aim to pass each gate at around this speed in order to get the best time, without going over it, which would risk you missing the gate or crashing. In practice, however, it really doesn't work like this. At all. More on this later.
If I - an Australian - am America's only hope, we're in big trouble...
So I get the maximum speed list for the gates, and off I go. Although, there is one more thing to do before you get to start the race: difficulty selection. The game asks you how good a skier you think you are, with 1 being "worst," and 3 being "best." These are, apparently, the difficulty modes. I'm assuming that 1 is easiest and it gets harder from there. I haven't attempted the harder modes as I write this part. I think this is the first game to have actual difficulty modes, though. Sure, some previous games have had customisation options that affect difficulty, but not actual difficulty modes.
Obviously, I selected 1 for my first go. I've literally never even seen snow before in my life, so you can be sure I've never skied before. With that, I was off on this perilous journey down the course. Gate 1's max speed was 14 MPH, and I started at 13 MPH, so I opted to select option 3 and speed up a "teensy" bit. I pass the gate at 14 MPH.
Gate 2's max is 18 MPH, so I figure I can speed up a bit more, and choose to speed up a "little." 17 MPH passing the gate. Things seem to be progressing smoothly so far. Before I choose what to do at Gate 3, I check my time: just over 29.34 seconds. I don't know if that's good or bad.
Gate 3 represents a big speed jump - I can take it at 26 MPH. I speed up a lot. Up to 25 MPH, to which the game comments, "Close one!" Got to risk it for the biscuit.
However, this risk fails to pay off any further. Gate 4 is at 29 MPH, so I keep speeding up. I snag a flag, and it's game over. Although, I must say I was very confused at this stage of the game. It told me I had gone over the maximum speed, but I had not. My speed at Gate 4 was only 28 MPH.
Err, no I didn't. I want to speak to an official.
The game allows you to try again, and so I did. Same thing happened again, only at Gate 3. The maximum speed was 26 MPH, but this time I was only going 21 MPH and was told I went too fast. I played a fair bit safer on my next attempt, and got to Gate 8 before the same thing occurred. Its max speed was 32 MPH and I crashed out at only 28 MPH.
I then went for another attempt and... something very strange happened. The game printed its race start line, and then I was greeted with the message, "!OUT OF DATA IN LINE 540," and then the game stopped.
This time, the game wiped out.
Did it just crash on me? Several more attempts ended in the same fashion, so it appears to be a bug in the game. There was also a typo I noticed, where "MAXIMUM" was sometimes misspelled "NAXIMUM." What's weird about this typo, however, is that it isn't in either the original source code or the BASIC Computer Games revised code. Both of them abbreviate the word "MAXIMUM" as "MAX." so I have no idea where this error comes from. In fact, the entire line saying you've gone over max speed has been entirely re-written in the version I got from Vintage BASIC. Who did this and when is a complete mystery. I won't be holding this against the game in scoring, and I in fact went into the game code and fixed the spelling, just so that I wouldn't have to think about it anymore.
Right, with that out of the way, back to the game. I had an overnight think about the strange stuff going on with the max speeds not lining up, and decided to do a test on the game. I started with a 1 gate race, and played it several times over to get an idea of what was going on in the game, repeating the process with 2 gate, 3 gate races, and so on. This is Obsessive Gaming Chronology, after all, I'm gonna do deep into these games.
What I discovered is that I have no idea how anything in this game works, and it all seems mostly random and inconsistent. Fun!
First, I can't tell if the difficulty modes actually do anything. I was able to get bronze, silver and gold medals on all modes, so I really don't know what difference the choice makes.
Second, your end results - if you don't crash out - appear to be mostly random. And wildly random at that. The same race I got a gold medal time in, I can get a time up to 20 seconds slower, even if I use the same inputs. On top of this, you can actually become a time traveler in Slalom, because you can crash out of a race with a negative time.
I found a rift in the space-time continuum.
The third thing, and something I alluded to earlier, is that the max speed chart lies to you. I discovered from doing 4 gate races that what that chart tells you (the values are static) is either misleading at best or blatantly incorrect at worst. Gate 4 is always set at a max speed of 29 MPH, but you'll always crash if you get anywhere near that speed at this gate. You actually need to slow down to have a chance to pass this gate cleanly, after the first three gates often allowing you to go at full pelt.
What this means is that you actually need to play more reactively than you'd think. The random nature of game results, and the variability of your starting speed and speed gains means that what you actually need to do to have a successful run is to listen to what the game tells you. This is the most likely way you'll get a medal. If it tells you that you went over speed at a gate, it's probably best to slow down a bit for the next one - same if it says "CLOSE ONE!" If you consistently wipe out at one particular gate, you probably need to slow down more at it in future attempts. It's honestly not how I expected the game to play at all coming into it. I also find it very frustrating, as I feel like my success in game is more reliant on luck than skill. Everything is just too random.
And yet, I press on. The other point of me putting the word "obsessive" in the blog title is that I'm a completionist - I'm usually not satisfied just beating a game - I need to master it. Every collectible, every difficulty mode, every achievement... I leave no stone unturned in exploring any game I play. There hasn't been much opportunity with previous games to lean into this tendency of mine, but there is with Slalom.
But, how do I even determine completion of Slalom? The difficulty modes don't do anything discernable, and I don't even know which one is supposed to be the "hardest" one, so there's no point in using that as a metric. That just leaves the race length. 25 gates is the longest a race can be in Slalom, so that's my goal: get a gold medal on a 25 gate race. The successful attempt will be added in a video at the top of the article, if and when I do so. [Ed. video is up now.] The releases of article and video will likely become desynched the longer and more complex games become, especially because I want the videos to be of a high gameplay standard. Eventually I want to start live-streaming all my gameplay, but that simply isn't viable for me at the current time.
[Ed. Update on Slalom progress: Look, folks... I think it's impossible. I managed to snag a Silver medal on the 25 gate race, after about half an hour and several Bronzes in a row, and switching from mode 3 to 1. Which was great - I though Gold couldn't be far off. I also thought now, maybe the difficulty modes made a difference... I eventually went back to mode 3, and got another Silver. And another. And another. So, maybe they do, only in the opposite direction. Mode 3 might actually allow to get faster times, as my first mode 3 Silver time was over 20 seconds faster than the first Silver. I went from 64 seconds to 42 seconds.
So... what does it take to get Gold, then? I assume under 40 seconds. So I kept trying for over an hour. Nothing better than the 42 seconds. In fact, I didn't even come close to beating that time. I even tried the cheat option - which worked once, and never again - but no, nothing remotely close. It's so frustrating because I'm not in control of the outcome. I feel like I'm doing Gran Turismo license tests again, except I can only suggest to the car what it should do.
Therefore, I think I have to call it here for Slalom. Whether or not the Gold time is possible, I don't know. I don't think it is, and I don't care to find out anymore.]
All that's left to do now is score Slalom. Is it in the running for a podium finish? Probably not, but let's find out, anyway.
Time Played: 2 hours (most of which was spent attempting to get gold in the 25 gate race...)
Difficulty: 6/10 (Challenging)
It's difficult (irony) to rank Slalom's difficulty on account of the randomness built into the game. This makes it hard to tell how well you're doing, and sometimes you can fail without warning. Learning the game isn't particularly difficult, and is just a matter of knowing what to do at each gate. The in-game difficulty modes have no discernable bearing on the game, so I've not factored them into this score.
[Ed. I've increased the difficulty score 2 points after my failed attempt to get the 25 gate Gold medal.]
Gameplay: 6/20
There's a lot of problems with Slalom, but also some meritorious gameplay. The foundation of the game is good, and I appreciate the range of choices it gives you that allow for more precision (even letting you cheat, which I've never seen be successful to date.) Managing your speed requires learning the course, knowing when to speed up and when to slow down. The game also does a reasonable job of warning you when you're going too fast, allowing you to react accordingly.
Slalom's chief issue is its sheer inconsistency. The game can just fail you at any moment. You might've gotten through that gate at that speed with no complaints from the game last time - but not this time. The speed gains and slow downs are somewhat unpredictable, and the actual time you earn at the end of the course can fluctuate wildly without reason.
Other issues include the max speed chart the game provides being very deceptive, as closing in on the reported max speed will often result in a crash. It ends up being better to learn by ear what each gate requires, and reacting to the randomness of the game accordingly. I also can't tell if the "rate yourself as a skier" difficulty modes actually do anything.
Controls: 5/10
Aside from the commands at the start of the game, the rest is your standard single-key inputs. Makes sense and does the job it needs to do.
Visual: 6/10
I will give Slalom props for doing a very good job with its formatting and presentation. It's clear to me that some consideration was given to ensuring that the game is neatly presented, and with some writing charm, to boot. The race start text, and even the instructions are good examples of the writing and neatness, respectively. Even the little indenting of the speed text at each gate is a detail that elevates the game presentation. Functionality: 4/5
Obviously it loses a point for the "out of data" bug that causes the game to crash. Fortunately, it doesn't directly impact gameplay and takes a while to show up.
Pro tip: when doing a 25 gate race, don't pull up the instructions and max speed chart. The game will crash immediately upon trying to start a race. Starting the race immediately will not cause this issue.
Accessibility: 3/5
It's fairly standard for a text-based game. A decent level of reading proficiency is needed.
Fun Factor: 5/20
Look, the game has some merit to it, despite the raft of flaws. There is a degree of skill and learning of the game required to do well, which encourages replaying. However, once you learn the game, its extreme randomness results in a "grind until the game lets you win" type of situation. Then it becomes more work than fun if you actually want to "complete" the game (by my standard of completion, anyway.)
This one was an interesting, but tricky game to rate. I don't think I've encountered a game on the blog so far that's had so many aspects, both positive and negative, to consider. Then end result is a middling, but appropriate score of 29, which puts Slalom very far away from a podium finish (11th overall,) near the bottom of D-tier, just ahead of Warfish. The result is another proof of my scoring system working, as Warfish was the game I ended up comparing Slalom to the most in terms of where and how to grade it. That, at least, is quite satisfying.
Before closing out this article, I have a couple of updates to share:
For anyone wondering, the PLATO article is still in progress. The development history segment is complete, and I'm in the process of recording game footage for the game library section. If you don't know PLATO, you're mind's gonna be blown at what's on that system.
Also, by way of reminder, there's now an OGC Discord and Patreon where you can get involved in the growing community and support the work I do here. Links are in the sidebar.
Don't forget - if you enjoy my blog, be sure to leave a comment and follow so you don't miss any updates!
What can be said that hasn't already been said about Pong? Commonly misidentified as the first video game - it's not even the first arcade video game ever made - due to its overwhelming status as the game that truly launched the arcade industry, if not the entire video game industry (I know Ralph Baer had a word or two to say about that...) Pong is simply legendary, and a defining part of the legacy of a company that would dominate the much of the arcade and home console space all the way up till the infamous video game crash of 1983.
Much of the story of Atari's founding I've already covered in my Computer Space article. The short version is, Atari was originally founded as Syzygy Engineering by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, after Bushnell got the idea to make a commercially sellable version of Spacewar!, which would eventually turn out as Computer Space, developed in partnership with amusement manufacturer Nutting Associates.
Computer Space didn't do terribly well with the public, and was considered too complicated for drunk bar patrons and the like to understand - a hilarious statement to make nowadays considering Computer Space only had 4 buttons. Regardless, Bushnell was forced back to the drawing board. He needed a simpler game.
The idea he needed came in May of 1972, although maybe not quite as he thought it might. Bushnell was attending a demonstration of an innovative new device that could play games through a TV set - the Magnavox Odyssey. He observed, and played the Table Tennis game. He was not impressed by what he played. Bushnell is quoted by Ralph Baer (creator of the Odyssey) as saying,
"..it had no scoring... [or] sound effects... the motion was erratic and difficult to control. I felt that it was not a satisfactory game playing device."
Regardless of what Bushnell thought, it's clear that what he saw at that demo stuck with him. Atari had recently hired a young, talented engineer in Al Alcorn. While Bushnell had a contract to create a driving game for arcade manufacturer Bally, he thought that would be too much for the greenhorn engineer who'd never seen a video game in his life. Instead, Bushnell wisely wanted him to get his feet wet with game design, and so set him a test project - replicate the Odyssey's Table Tennis with arcade hardware.
Bushnell had a few different ideas in mind for this test project. Initially he wanted the two paddles to be more akin to two people holding racquets with a button press making them swing the racquet (more akin to later tennis games.) He also wanted sound - he wanted to hear something akin to the cheers and roars of a tennis crowd. Ted Dabney asked for boos and hisses when you missed the ball. What Alcorn came up with - in a week-and-a-half - was much simpler than that. He had two paddles, controlled with rotating dials, a score counter, and little beeps and boops for when the ball hit the paddle and for when you missed. Crucially, the game also had a mechanic that sped up the ball every so often. The circuit board was connected to a black & white TV set, with Dabney constructing a small wooden cabinet around it.
Bushnell was happy with this, and Atari employees found it quite fun to play. However, it was still a test project, and Bushnell stated that it wasn't seen as a viable product. Atari had contracts for more complex games (like that driving game.) Still, it had piqued Bushnell's interest, and so he decided to give it a public test run anyway. This first test was done at Andy Capp's Tavern, an establishment Bushnell had already built a solid friendship with - Computer Space was first tested here. The Pong box was placed on a barrel, with a rudimentary coin box glued to the side.
The first Pong prototype.
There's this legendary story about this first Pong cabinet that's akin to a prophetic utterance for the future of the video game industry. The story goes that, after two weeks, Atari gets called up by Andy Capp's owner saying that the game is broken. It was stuck on attract mode, and a game couldn't be started. The tavern owner was getting rather frustrated, by all accounts. What happened, in actual fact, was that the game wasn't broken - it was, rather, so popular that the coin box mounted to the side of the game was full to overflowing with quarters!
Another story from Pong's can be summed up in the meme "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" There was an issue in the way Al Alcorn designed the game, resulting in the paddles not being able to reach the very top of the screen. This meant that, if you were skilled enough, you could get the ball into this gap and always score a point, preventing an endless rally between equally skilled players. While testing the game, it was decided that this little error actually enhanced the gameplay, and so the choice was made to keep it in the game. Al Alcorn recalled in one interview that he learned from this that, "if you can't fix it, call it a feature." I'm sure that's happened a countless number of times to many a game developer.
From here it's actually a bit difficult to piece together a timeline of what happened. Unlike Ralph Bear, who meticulously documented everything, Bushnell did not. He was a more spontaneous, haphazard individual (which would have consequences later in dealing with copycats.) There's plenty of information about the time between the Andy Capp test in August 1972 and Pong's official debut on November 29, 1972. It's just that there are no dates attached to anything, so putting the information in order is a tough task.
In one interview, Bushnell recalls that the incident at Andy Capp's convinced him to invest into Pong. He marketed the game to big name arcade companies Midway and Bally, who where interested initially. Bushnell tricked them into pulling out by telling the respective companies that the other one was interested in making a licensing deal. Bushnell had decided Atari could make more profit out of Pong if they manufactured the game themselves. Atari at first could afford to produce eleven cabinets of Pong. Bushnell searched for financial backing, but no banks were willing to invest, as they viewed Pong in the same way they viewed pinball - a game associated with the Mafia. Eventually, they found Wells Fargo willing to give them $50k. This money, from what I gather, was used to expand Atari's business offices, and to purchase an abandoned roller skating rink to set up as an assembly plant. On November 29, 1972, Pong was officially unveiled. Early on, production of cabinets was slow and of substandard quality, as they had hired unskilled workers who often stole parts and were involved in heavy drug use.
Meanwhile, Atari had an established contract for pinball machine maintenance in the Sunnyvale area. There was already an established "Atari pinball route," and Bushnell utilised that route to advertise Pong to their existing clientele. Orders began coming in. Ten units here, ten units there. The snowball had begun. By the end of 1973, they had 2,500 units of Pong on order. 1974, it was 8,000. These kinds of numbers were unheard of at the time, and Pong was raking in thousands upon thousands of quarters. Atari even began exporting Pong internationally, most notably to Japan, where the imports would be first handled by Atari Japan, and later by a little company called Nakamura Manufacturing Co., otherwise known as Namco. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about them later on.
Now, one of the consequences of Bushnell's haphazard management style is that he didn't really get around to patenting anything. What this resulted in is only what I can describe as complete anarchy. Everyone took notice of Pong's success, and they wanted in on that sweet, sweet coin. So, what did they do? Well, they stole, of course! Every electronics and arcade manufacturer (both in the US and overseas) known to man copied, copied copies and copied copies of copies of Pong over the course of just a couple of years. These weren't just loosely-based versions of Pong - no - they were exact replicas, only in different garb. Every company out there had their own reskin of Pong.
Without patents, Atari couldn't to a thing to stop all the chaos. Even just a cursory glance at Wikipedia's best-selling video games charts for 1973 and 1974 will show that Pong clones were not only rampant, but dominated sales. The insanity of the Pong clones was even more extreme in the first home console generation. For reference, the first generation of home consoles, according to Wikipedia, had 997 consoles. Almost a thousand consoles. And, I'd say maybe at least 75% of those were Pong clones. Such was the money-making machine Pong was perceived to be. In the end, Atari only manufactured roughly a third of all "Pong-like" games in circulation.
As for what Atari could do, it could capitalise on its new found success by expanding on the Pong brand. Sequels were created for Pong, such as Pong Doubles and Quadrapong. A home console version was made. Some of the more unusual ideas they came up with were Puppy Pong and Dr. Pong. These were just Pong, but with redesigned cabinets for business use. Puppy Pong had a more childlike design, and was meant to be placed in the waiting rooms of pediatric offices to help kids pass the time while waiting for appointments, and was free to play. Dr. Pong was the same concept, only for adult waiting rooms. It had a sleek, wood-grain finish design, and could also be purchased with a specially designed bookcase. It could also play a Volleyball game. Neither of these products gained much traction, and sales were very limited. There was also the humorous Barrel-Pong, which is exactly what you think it is. Predictably, this one was an Aussie creation.
Beer Pong taken to its logical conclusion.
Naturally, Pong has seen about as many re-releases as Sonic the Hedgehog over the years. The many Atari compilations, as well as flashback consoles, other anniversary-or-otherwise collections. There's even web browser and mobile ports. You could probably play Pong on a toaster these days, such is its ubiquity.
One more notable incident in Pong's legacy is, of course, the infamous lawsuit between Magnavox and Atari. I've already gone into the details of the lawsuit in the Odysseyconsole overview, so I'll keep it short. Magnavox took notice of Pong and the various clones on the market, and sued Atari for infringing on several patents. It appears Bushnell originally attempted to hide his attendance of the May 24 Odyssey demonstration at deposition hearings, however Magnavox lawyers had evidence proving his attendance. Bushnell, seeing that Atari could not afford the legal expenses of the case, settled with Magnavox. The terms were very light, with Atari paying a small, upfront license fee, becoming the sole licensee of Magnavox. Magnavox would then zealously go after other competitors, forcing them to pay royalties to Magnavox.
While Magnavox were in the right to sue - Atari had directly recreated the Odyssey's Table Tennis - the settlement worked out very well for Atari in the long run. Atari were able to maintain their position as one of the most dominant video game developers / publishers until the 1983 crash. Magnavox, on the other hand, were relegated to only a minor player on the scene that cashed in on all those sweet, sweet royalties.
There's an interesting little footnote to add here; another layer to the already twisted and fractured dynamic between Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey. Fans of Pong saw the Odyssey as a means to play a Pong-like game at home. The success of Pong, therefore, had resulted in an upsurge of sales for the Odyssey. Funny how that worked out, considering that Atari would make their own home Pong version later on... but that's a story for another day.
I did actually opt to play Pong for this article, in spite of it being a multiplayer game. I might as well, seeing as it's very simple to play, and I've played both sides on my own before. As I just mentioned, there are several means available to play Pong, including trusty old emulation. I also had a proper play of it with my girlfriend through my Switch copy of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. As a side, that is how you honour a company's legacy.
Sometimes you get stuck in a back-and-forth loop.
And I must say, it was nice to play a game that's not text-based for a change. Even if it's not exactly in an optimal form. Paddle controls don't translate particularly well to a keyboard or analog sticks. Nor does playing against yourself. Fortunately, the rounds with my girlfriend were more enjoyable, and she - not a gamer - also rather enjoyed herself. Nolan Bushnell noted in one interview that women tended to be quite good at Pong, and that it broke a few social barriers. He claims several marriages were started from a man asking a woman to play Pong with him.
No score for Pong, as it's a multiplayer game. Part of me is also thinking that there wouldn't be much point to critiquing Pong in my usual style anyway. It's just so foundational to the very core of video games that I wouldn't know how to score it. Maybe I'm just making excuses, I don't know.
What I can say that this is an essential video game everyone must play at least once in their life. If I were to compile a "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" type of list, this would probably be the very first game on that list. If I wasn't doing it chronologically.
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I don't know how I got on this train of thought, but here we are anyway.
I was revising the master list, and revisiting some online game collection websites I used to peruse, and somehow Digital Championship Football from my seventh Prehistory article got stuck in my mind.
There were a few things I realised from this that I want to address in this quick post. The first is a pretty minor one, but from now I'm going to refer to Digital Championship Football as DartmouthChampionship Football. The latter of these is what the original game actually calls itself, the former title is from the Sol-20 microcomputer port. In the interest of being historically accurate and precise - even in minutia such as these - I needed to make this change.
I also made a slight error in the original article. I said that the version of Dartmouth Championship Football in the 1978 version of 101 BASIC Computer Games was credited to Raymond Miseyka. This isn't actually true. This game is clearly credited to John Kemeny in the book, while a second football game was included, which was the one developed by Miseyka. I was misled by the title on the web version of the book hosted at Atari Archives. This second game by Miseyka was also in the original 1973 version of the book, alongside a different football game made in-house by DEC. Interestingly, Kemeny's game wasn't there. An easy solution for this omission would be that Kemeny's game simply wasn't known about; it hadn't been discovered at that time.
The evidence in question.
However, the most important lesson that I gleaned from these reflections was that I was being inconsistent. Comparisons with PDP 10 Timesharing Basketball started flooding my mind while I was prepping a new profile on a certain site, and I realised that these two games are actually very similar. Both have very similar gameplay in how you choose plays, and the outcomes of both are likely random, or at least semi-random, as far as I can tell. (I don't know anything about Grid-Iron or Basketball strategy to know what plays are better when, and if choosing good real-life strategies correlates to better outcomes in the game. Any of my more sporty readers - feel free to enlighten me in the comments.) You even choose the name of your opponent in the same way. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if John Kemeny re-used much of the Dartmouth Championship Football code for PDP Basketball.
Yet, in spite of these similarities, I saw it appropriate to change my mind on PDP Basketball and score it, but didn't do the same for Dartmouth Championship Football. Why did I do this? I have no idea, to be completely honest. Chalk it up to inexperience and a bit of laziness.
I have to admit, I was quite lazy with those early articles in terms of research and whatnot, so maybe I just couldn't be bothered; threw it into the "too hard" bucket. I had little idea what I was doing - how I wanted to review games, or what I wanted the blog to be back then.
With over a year of experience under my belt now, I see things quite differently. Having a better understanding now of how I want to score games, I see that Dartmouth Championship Football probably is game enough to warrant giving it a score (it's final score will justify my stance.) It's more game than some other later titles I've done, I can certainly say that (looking at you, War...)
Therefore, I've decided to give Dartmouth Championship Football a score. This does necessitate me playing it again, which isn't too much of a problem as matches are very quick to complete. I played out two matches for this - the first ending in a nil-all draw, and the second I won 15-0, including a Touchdown and a Safety. I know enough about Grid-Iron that I've heard of a Safety before, but I still don't understand the concept entirely. We actually get some NFL games broadcast on free-to-air TV in Oz, so I've seen a few games. My former pastor is from the US, so we watched a couple of the more recent Superbowls together also. I think I maybe saw a Safety occur once in all of those matches. Fun facts.
Time Played: Maybe around 20 minutes, all up. Playthroughs are so spread out for this game that I have no idea anymore.
Difficulty: 0 (N/A)
Doing this because the game determines the run of play mostly at random, as far as I'm aware.
Gameplay: 3/20
For being only the second ever game written in BASIC, it has a surprising and appreciable amount of detail. It adheres to the basic rules of Grid-Iron/American Football, but also includes some additional rules I didn't expect or see in my first go around. The Safety is in the game (as I just mentioned), as well as penalties (which you can choose to accept or refuse), and the opening coin toss. Players can fumble the ball in various ways, and the game can even be delayed by a dog on field. Bizarre, but also hilarious that this was included.
The chief, overwhelming issue, of course, is what I've been harping on about during the article - the (potential) illusion of choice, as I've begun to call it. It's my new number one pet peeve in video games. I hate being presented with a situation in a game where there's a perceived significant choice (or choices) to be made in a game, but the actual outcome of said choice(s) doesn't actually matter, as the outcome is already predetermined (or completely randomised), regardless of your choice. That's likely what we have here, as the outcomes of your selected play are either completely or partially random. I have no way of knowing, as I don't know BASIC, so I can't look into the code, and I'm not playing this game for hours to test the theory, either. There's enough detail in the game to disguise it a bit better than, say, PDP Basketball, but not by much.
Controls: 5/10
Controls are regulation for an early text game. The plays are all integers - no irrational decimals in sight - so that makes things pretty easy to manage. However, the game also has you type in full words for the coin toss and penalty accepting/refusing, which is a little different.
Visual: 5/10
Very plain, but that's to be expected for one of the first text-based video games. One interesting little detail is that your opponent's plays are all indented one space. I don't know exactly why this would be, but perhaps to help distinguish between your and their plays when scrolling back through the game timeline.
Functionality: 5/5
Nothing to see here.
Accessibility: 3/5
It's standard for text-based games, provided you understand Grid-Iron on a fundamental level. I do, but just barely.
Fun Factor: 4/20
I think all the random extra details in the game sway me to give this an extra point or two, despite the ever-present illusion of choice. It does make replaying the game of some value, just to see if there are any other extra hidden details or events that may occur. It's actually kind of impressive, considering Dartmouth Championship Football was developed at the infancy of BASIC. Most games after this for several years don't include anywhere near as much detail as this one.
Dartmouth Championship Football justified a score, as it ends up with a 25 [35.71%], which actually places it at the top of the E-tier, believe it or not. The 1965 game outperforms several games developed years after - some significantly so.
That does this odd little bonus article. Currently, looking down my list, it's unlikely that any other untiered Prehistory games will get this same treatment. I still disqualify the playable ones for various reasons. I'll only revisit this era when new discoveries are made from now on, I think.
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Oh boy. Horse racing. If it's not my most hated sport, it's certainly up there. Seems to me to be a sport purely made up as an excuse for stupid hats, drinking profusely and gambling your life savings away. All for a race that lasts for what, a minute or two? I have far more respect for other equestrian events, as there's far less pretentiousness involved, and far more substance.
With that mini-rant done, it's time to look at Horserace, a BASIC horse racing simulation programmed by South Portland High School student Laurie Chevalier. It was included in the original 1973 version of Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games, and was carried over into the 1978 microcomputer edition. Curiously, the author was unknown when the 1973 version of the book was published. The 1978 version has been slightly revised from the original, including a visual representation of the horses racing down the track, whereas the original simply told you what position the horses were in at certain distances along the track. I'd prefer it if there wasn't this constant fiddling with these programs, as I'd rather play them in their original form. But, this is all that's available (as far as I'm aware), so I just have to deal with it.
What paper?
I'll be honest with Horserace - I'm really unimpressed by it. It's another one of these games that's barely a game at all, to be blunt about it. The only part of horse racing this game focuses on is the betting aspect. You have a list of 8 horses to choose from, with their randomised odds listed next to them. You can bet a maximum of $100,000, but only on one horse. The original version allowed you to place bets on multiple horses, and I don't know why this change was made. Not like it matters anyway, because the game doesn't keep track of your purse, only what you won if you made a successful bet. I assume the purse was to be managed the old-fashioned way. The one interesting thing is that this is technically a multiplayer game, supporting up to 10 punters at once. 10 players is quite a lot for 1970, so at least Horserace has a degree of innovation to its name.
Bet on the horse named "Horse." What could possibly go wrong?
That's what.
I tried a couple of rounds, failing to win most of them. I did win $450 on one, placing a bet on the favourite horse at 4.5:1 (I didn't record this win). That was more than enough for me. As a side note, the visual representation of the racetrack scrolled far to quickly when running Horserace through Vintage BASIC. It's not meant to run that fast, but I don't know of any way to slow the game down with that particular program.
The visual representation of the horses racing down the track. The finish line is just off screen.
So, that does it for Horserace. On to the scores.
Time Played: 5 minutes.
I threw down a handful of bets, which doesn't take terribly long, and had enough after that. There's nothing else to see here, so no reason to play for longer.
Difficulty: 0
There is no difficulty. It's all luck, anyway.
Game Design: 0
Barely even counts as a game, since what 'gameplay' there is consists of making a bet and seeing what the computer spits out. It could possibly be slightly more interesting if one made use of the multiplayer, but I only consider the singleplayer experience for my scores anyway.
Controls: 10
I can at least give Horserace full marks for controls - it's dead simple and the inputs are easy (not like there's that many needed to begin with).
Sound and Story are N/A, as per usual with these early text games.
Visual: 5
For an early-70s text game, it's not that bad. Everything is formatted nicely, the table of horses is clear and understandable, and it does also provide a very primitive depiction of the race itself.
Functionality: 5
Again, full marks here. Very little that could probably go wrong with a program like this in the first place.
Accessibility: 2
Really hinges on whether you like betting on the horse racing or not, I suppose. Once again, there's very little to access anyway, and it's not overly compelling, so I imagine most people wouldn't bother to begin with.
Fun Factor: 0
Putting aside my distaste for horse racing, this game really offers nothing whatsoever in terms of gameplay, and thus enjoyment. Or, really, anything for me to actually enjoy.
Horserace really is a bit of a throwaway program. A couple of bets, and you've seen everything the game has to offer. It therefore ends up with a rather miserable final score of 22, and percentage of 31.42%, giving it a placement low in the E tier of the tier list. It scored slightly better than Qubic and Digits, and was one point below PDP Basketball.
[Add.] Upon completing the rescore project, this game's score has been rightly revised down to a pathetic 17/70 (24.28%), relegating it to the shame of the F-tier.
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After completing the previous post on the second helping of early BASIC games, I couldn't help but mull over in my mind overnight whether PDP 10 Timesharing Basketball was enough of a game to throw a review score at it. I went over my metrics in my head over and over again, and determined this morning that I can, in fact, give it a score. It won't be a good score, but it passes enough metrics to make it worthy of one.
PDP 10 Timesharing Basketball (1967)
Release Date: May, 1967
Platform: PDP-10
Genre: Sports
Developer(s): Charles Bacheller
Publisher(s): DECUS
I'll first start with the metrics that don't apply to it. Sound and Story are all not applicable, as it has no sound and no narrative. That's a fairly standard exclusion list for text games, meaning that the total score is out of 70 for this one.
Time Played: 20 minutes (an individual game can take anywhere between 3 - 5 minutes)
Difficulty:2 It's fairly negligible as far as challenge is concerned, especially as it mostly comes down to luck.
Game Design: 2
While I can appreciate it providing different offense and defense options, they mostly become moot when the outcomes are mostly left to luck. It's very tricky to grade games that rely almost entirely on RNG. Ultimately, the fatal flaw of the game is that it feels a lot like my choices have no impact on the outcome whatsoever. That's a cardinal sin as far as I'm concerned.
Controls: 9
It's very hard to rate controls on a text-based game. I have to go by how simple and logical the inputs are to execute. By that logic, this rates extremely highly, as the inputs are mostly single-digit integers. What's not making sense to me is the decimal inputs. All of the game's choices fit neatly within 0 - 9, so having the decimal inputs seems completely unnecessary, unless I'm missing some reason why that wouldn't work in BASIC. It's a fairly minor gripe, all things considered.
Visual: 2
The formatting of the instructions is a mess, to be plainly honest. It's a mess of numbers, parentheses and punctuation that could've been easily broken up into easily readable lines. For the most part, the rest of the text formatting is fine; each play is broken up with a blank line in between. Sometimes this isn't the case, and the formatting gets messy again with "your shot?" not being on its own line as it normally is.
The writing within the game is very dry and matter-of-fact; effectively devoid of personality in the play-by-play commentary. There's also couple of typos, with "alignment" being spelled with one-too-many Ls, and "Man-to-man" lacking the second hyphen.
On the positive, I appreciate how it clearly defines the "end of first half/game" with the use of asterisks.
Functionality: 4
There's one small quirk, where if you type in an invalid number when asked for your starting defense, the game will skip the naming of the opposing team, leaving it blank for the remainder of the game. Otherwise, the game appears to work as intended.
Accessibility: 3
Text-based games are almost always going to score low on the accessibility metric, particularly in this modern era where graphics are king. That being said, this one is pretty easy to get into due to its simplicity, and doesn't require much reading proficiency to understand, either.
Fun Factor: 2
The dependence on probabilities devalues the playing experience quite significantly when you feel like your choices don't have any material impact on gameplay. It honestly discourages me from playing the game, and I don't want to come back to it at all. I did find myself wanting to come back to win during my first try of the game, so that's at least something this game has going for it. I enjoyed the second, third and fourth games more than the first, but after coming back to it later, it lost almost all appeal.
That gives PDP Basketball a total score of 23/70, or 28.75%. This puts it in the middle of the E tier. Ouch. It's really not a good game, but it is from 1967, and everyone's still figuring out this video game stuff, so we shouldn't be surprised that the earliest games available aren't that good.
[Add.] Upon doing the rescore article, I realised I made an error with the percentage calculation. 23/70 should have been 32.85%, not 28.75%. I apologise for this error, but the game has since been rescored to a 21/70, or 30.00%
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