High Score Ep 6 Recap - Level Up!

There are 2 big things which normally would define games in the modern day. The first was the genre. In the beginning it was puzzle or action platformers, with a few other genres. The second element were the graphics. Today this ranges from the 8-bit appearances like “The Messanger” to something like “Crysis” and “Cyberpunk 2077” where the game was moving toward photo realistic. But there were a few games that defined this part of gaming history. 2 of these games were “DOOM” for PC and “Star Fox” for the Super Nintendo (SNES).

The episode started talking about millions of internet users poised and ready to trigger a download. This was at 11:59pm on December 9th, 1993. The download of the installer went live, the downloads immediately started flooding the server. It wasn't long before the server crashed. It was rebooted, but got the same result from the massive flood of downloads. But after that, other servers started sharing the load. Here we get introduced to the first interviewee: John Romero. He went on and explained the basic setting and story for the game that caused all this trouble: “DOOM.” Dark, violent and scary, “DOOM” would be a trendsetting game for years and decades to come. It was also the game to break open the emerging genre of games: the First Person Shooter (FPS). But first, there was the story of how “DOOM,” and studio that made it, Id Software came to be.

Romero started this journey working for a monthly software service called “Gamer's Edge.” He explained it was a service that you signed up for a particular computer platform and the subscribers were sent a demo disk with numerous short games on it. Whatever was on it, that was what the players got, for better or worse. In time, Romero hired another programmer to work for “Gamer's Edge,” John Carmack. It turned out “Gamer's Edge” was a branch of a Fluorescent Light company. The two of them got their own office (with a few other programmers). They blacked out the office, stocked their own fridge, and someone brought in a boom box that everyone could use. Usually it was one person who would bring in the music and then just play all the albums over the course of a day. There was a lot of heavy metal. Everyone would be having a great time at work while learning more about programming and creating a lot of games.

In this setting the pair started in on the first big thing they wanted to get working on a PC: smooth side scrolling. Carmark and Romero were playing a lot of “Super Mario Bros 3” at the time. One night Carmark got an idea and decided to start coding. When Romero came in the next day, Carmark had left him a disk simply titled: “Dangerous David in Copyright Infringement.” Romero loaded the disk into his computer and found their character, “Dangerous David” in “Super Mario Bros 3.” The pair of them knew they had something big and it was about then that the pair left “Gamer's Edge” to found their own company, Id Software. A few years (and a number of games later), and they had a successful company. Wit this new freedom, they looked to make their magnum opus, the game that would define the FPS genre, “DOOM.”

“DOOM” was ambitious from the start. They wanted the lighting to flicker to aid to the atmosphere, the game to be fast-paced, and they wanted people to play online. To make things harder for themselves, Romero did a Press Release when they were starting to develop the game, stating it would be out by the end of the year (with no specific date). This release brought lots of attention to the studio, with frequent calls to the offices of Id asking about its unstated release date. Carmark was helping code the game as well as develop the multiplayer portion of the game. This was cracked and they got it working over a Local Area Network (LAN) and then over dial-up. Romero coined the term “Deathmatch” from all the killing that players would do during the matches themselves. The final thing they would do came after the release of “DOOM.” They opened the doors of the game to the community, allowing them to mod it (as long as they had bought the full game) with level editors and guides. A modding community making content for the game immediately sprang up and the game flourished. This community persist to this day.

There was a second story being told in this episode as well that was interspersed throughout the tale of “DOOM,” that of Dylan Cuthbert, Giles Goddard, Argonaut Games and, “Star Fox.” This tale began with Argonaut Games wanting to create a game for the Game Boy. Dylan Cuthbert had recently joined and was given the job of working on this. The catch was that Argonaut Games had not developer kit and had not gotten permission to do this. Cuthbert was given a Gameboy and his task. To bypass the sercurity of the Gameboy, Cuthbert took it apart and learned to inject code directly into the device. In a while, he had developed a basic 3D flight game that people could play. However, Nintendo got wind of this demo, called “Starglider.” Instead of hitting Argonaut Games with a Lawsuit, they invited the programmer out to Japan to demo it! After seeing the game demo, Nintendo was impressed and offered them a contract to make a game for the Super Nintendo using this 3D technology for a flight game. The offer was accepted and they began working on the game. Cuthbert of Argonaut Games brought on Giles Goddard and they got to work with Krister Wombell (unmentioned in the episode).

Getting the game working on the existing Super Nintendo hardware proved to be near impossible. This led the team to look at hacking again to get the game working. A brainstorm later and the Super FX chip was developed to aid the game. This allowed the cartridge itself to augment the power of the SNES, enabling it to do more than it could initially. With the chip added to the cartridge, it would cost more, but enabled the SNES to manage everything the game needed. This technology would be used later in a few other games.

Cuthbert and Goddard were kept in their own part of Nintendo while developing “Star Fox,” keeping them in the dark with everything else the company was working on. This relative isolation did put them in frequent contact with Miyamoto who could only smoke in the room they were working! They initially resisted the anthropomorphic characters of the game, but it did grow on them. They both talked about the evolution of the gameplay as well.

While “Star Fox” was linear in its progression, it started with an open range for players to engage with. The problem was it wasn't as fun. Eventually, the design team hit on the idea of using gates to help guide the player (and eliminate the worry of getting ambushed). They drew inspiration from the local shrine, “Fushimi Inari-taisha” dedicated to a Fox Spirit with thousands of red Senhob Torii gates. This gave the game its path, creating a sense of direction as well as the game's main character, Fox McCloud. The ship would move forward, weaving through the gates and taking on the waves of enemies. The game was fun and engaging to play.

The episode wrapped with one more segment with Nolan Bushnell. He talked about his experience in college in 1964 where a fraternity brother introduced him to the early game “Space War!” Bushnell remarked on how fun the game was. He talked about the origins of the game from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and how fast it caught on where it could be played. This gave him the idea to look into making games and would lead to the founding of Atari.

This felt a bit off for a concluding episode. It would have been great to have something that looked a bit more forward. Another thing they could have done was give some more time to looking at the developments of gaming after that. Just knowing how much more there was to many of these parts of gaming history could be frustrating. It was simply shown as a montage of gameplay clips going forward to the modern era. And that was how the episode ended.

It has been fun looking at this series and how it showed the history of gaming. It is an okay starting place to learn about some of the bigger events throughout its history. It went into things lesser known, but did gloss over some of the bigger items as well. Easily the interviews were the most interesting part of each episode. The topics covered were quite varied, making it a fun watch and the people interviewed knew how to tell their story. It was great to see the people behind names that have been within the gaming community for years. They all have brought much into gaming and all have left their mark on it.