Week 3 - A history of Games, part 2 - from 1980 - 1990

Time goes by so slowly, for those who wait, no time to hesitate. - Hung Up, Madonna

So here I am, sat in my room, thinking what to write, I feel that I should begin by answering the question posed by Mr P in his comment, a wiccan is a person who follows the religion, rules and restrictions of witchcraft, in all essance a Wiccan is a Witch by another name.

Right then, work time, that picture btw is a picture of the case of the Dizzy game for the Master System, or Mega Drive... can't remember which now.

And thank you to my flatmate, Sarah, who found Sanctuary, the Kingdom Hearts 2 intro song.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Sorry...

Right, will focus and not be distracted by the little bunny rabbit boucning up and down in my line of vision.

I hate plot bunnies.

Especally plot bunnies that have nothing to do with the thing you're trying to write at the moment.

Kingdom Hearts plot bunnies are taking over the world!

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Right games from 1980 - 1990...

The start of the 80s games companies sprang up, but not all of them were legit and some companys were formed that cheated developers. Some early 80's games were copies of arcade games, but later on in the century other 'genre defining games' www.wikipedia.com has this to say about the games described as such...

"Defender (1980) established the scrolling shooter and was the first to have events taking place outside the player's view, displayed by a radar view showing a map of the whole playfield. Battlezone (1980) used wireframe vector graphics to create the first true three-dimensional game world. 3D Monster Maze (1981) was the first 3D game for a home computer (meanwhile a 3D game for the PET computer was discovered, dating back to 1977), while Dungeons of Daggorath (1982) added various weapons and monsters, sophisticated sound effects, and a "heartbeat" health monitor. Pole Position (1982) used sprite-based, pseudo-3D graphics when it pioneered the "rear-view racer format" where the player's view is behind and above the vehicle, looking forward along the road with the horizon in sight. The style would remain in wide use even after true 3D graphics became standard for racing games. Pac-Man (1980) was the first game to achieve widespread popularity in mainstream culture and the first game character to be popular in his own right. Dragon's Lair (1983) was the first laserdisc game, and introduced full-motion video to video games."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games#The_1980s)

What it says is true as the rear view racer format is used pretty much all the time in racing games, Pac-man has recently been reinvented for the Nintendo DS and remains popular to this day, Dungeons of Daggorath sounds a lot like a fore-runner for quite a few modern fantasy based rpgs nowadays.

1985 showed the development of 16 bit consoles, improving the quailty of games, but thier dominance was short lived as more and more developements occured over the course of the 1980s. Interactive games started to be played at the start of the 1980s but until 1987 they only used text.

Nintendo's Game and Watch console appeared in this age, something that reappeared in Super Smash Bros Melee recently as a playable Character and a battle level.

In 1987 Final Fantasy was born as an attempt to save Squaresoft from bankruptcy and has survived the course of time to be one of the most popular games series ever made and the most successful RPG franchise ever. Though the graphics are impossiblly

In the same year Metal Gear Solid came out, and was ported to the NES just two years later (1988). The birth of this game proved to be the the birth of the stealth based game genre, which nowadays includes things like Hitman and Splinter Cell.

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So that's what I understand about the 1980s - 1990s for games development, it was a time of great development for the industry and it has kept being improved since then.

Joey