Game of the week: SimCity for SNES

Since its original release in 1989, SimCity has been one of the most popular video games of all time. It first was created for the Commodore 64 computer, but since it has been ported to other home computers, PCs, Macintoshes and all kinds of home and handheld video game systems. There also have been numerous sequels to the original SimCity game, as well as many other games similar to or based upon SimCity.

It's easy to see why the game is so popular and down-right infectious. You work as an architect of sorts, building a city from scratch. You put down the power plants, the roads, the parks, the residential districts, industrial areas, just about everything you can think of for a city.

Over the years I've played multiple versions of SimCity, but my favorite version always has been the one for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I think it has to do with the control scheme and the ease of use of those controls. You don't have to jump all over a keyboard or click a billion times on a mouse like you have to do with computer versions of many games. It's just you and the SNES controller. Click a button or two, move around on the screen, and you can do everything you need to do.

And maybe I always just got lucky or maybe I always had a good television screen, but for some reason the SimCity colors seemed brighter and sharper to me when I played the SNES version hooked up to my TV than when I played computer versions.

Another great thing about SimCity was it could last seemingly forever. I know there were nights back in the day when I would turn off my TV but leave my SNES on, then I'd go to bed and wake up the next day with SimCity still playing away by itself (in truth the game didn't technically play by itself, but the turns within the game would continue while I collected money and my city would grow or decline). That way, I could play the same city within the game for days and days, sometimes week.

SimCity for the SNES. Truly a classic game.

What was the very first video game?

In January of 1947 a patent was filed in the United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann for an interactive electronic game called the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. It used analog circuitry to display a missile game on a cathode ray tube (basically an early television screen). Basically this was a simple missile simulation game in which a player could move a dot on a screen. The Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device was a gigantic, bulky early computer hooked up to a cathode ray tube. The patent was eventually approved in December of 1948.

Does this qualify as the very first video game? Some historians suggest it does, and I tend to agree with them, but others argue the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device is only a precursor to video games and not a true video game because it did not utilize raster (bitmap) graphics nor did it use a digital display. Personally I think this is skipping the point since the term "video game" has become a semi-generic term to mean many different types of electronic games that make use of a viewing screen.

But to go further a few years, in 1952 University of Cambridge Professor Alexander S. Douglas created the first game to use a digital display. The game was known as Naughts and Crosses, and is basically the game to tic-tac-toe.

Then in 1958 the game Tennis for Two was created by physicist William Higinbotham for the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Used was an analog computer with an oscilloscope as the display device utilizing vector graphics.

Then in 1961 along comes Spacewar! It even sounds like a video game, doesn't it? Two MIT students, Wayne Wiitanen and Steve Russell are credited with making this game with vector display graphics.

So far, none of these games mentioned were ever released to the general public.

Now we got to the first home gaming system for sale to the public. It was originally known as the Brown Box, but when it hit the stores in 1972 it was officially called the Odyssey, made by Magnavox. The Odyssey, created by Ralph Baer who had been working on the project off and on for nearly 20 years, could be hooked up directly to a television. The earlier prototype, the Brown Box, then is the first video game system to use raster graphics.

So, does the Brown Box or the Odyssey qualify as the first video game? Opinions will vary, of course, and you can make your own decision, but I'll stick with the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device from way back in 1947.

Video game of the week: Satan's Hollow

In the early 1980s, the arcades were full of spaceships defending the Earth, spaceships defending the moon, spaceships defending Mars, and spaceships defending ... well, you get the picture. There were a lot of video games with a lot of spaceships shooting down a lot of bad guys.

Then along came Satan's Hollow from Bally Midway in 1982. Right away gamers could tell there was a difference. Not only were the colors fresh and strong, they were bright. Lots of warm colors, reds and oranges and yellows. Most shooting games at the time were on a dark deep-space background of little more than floating and twinkling stars.

And the villains of Satan's Hollow were different. No longer was the gamer saving some planet from alien invaders. No, no. Here you faced off with Satan himself, perhaps for the very souls of all mankind. Or maybe not. Who knows? It was just a game, but it was a ton of fun.

It had some typical shooting-game action. You piloted a craft at the bottom of the screen, moving left and right while shooting at falling gargoyles in the burning sky above. Yes, I said gargoyles. And yes, I said burning sky above. But so far it seemed like a typical shooter. But you also had a shield you could use, though it only lasted for a few seconds.

And you had to build a bridge on the right side of the screen. How did you build this bridge? First, you had to shoot one of the bad guys. Then a piece of the bridge would appear at the bottom left of the screen. Next you move your craft over to pick up the new piece of bridge, and then you carry it to the right of the screen to drop it off. Eventually, once you killed enough gargoyles and captured enough bridge pieces, your bridge was completed and you could cross the bridge over to another screen.

Which is where you faced Satan. Which, to be honest, was kind of a disappointment. Yes, Satan was fast. And yes, he dropped little missiles really, really fast. But the graphics for Satan were kind of lame, which sucked considering how awesome the graphics were for the rest of the game. Satan looked like a little red square, little better than something you'd find on one of the home video game systems of the day.

Still, it was awesome game play, and it wasn't something new and different in the arcades of the time.

Movie Versions of Classic Video Games in The Works

Remember the arcade game Asteroids? Where you flew a tiny triangular spaceship around an asteroid field while blasting away at asteroids and enemy spacecraft?

What about Missile Command? Where you protected a planet's bases by launching missiles into the sky to knock out enemy missiles?

If you do remember those games, you're probably pretty old, at least if you remember playing them in actual arcades or at home on your Atari.

But apparently you are right in line for a demographic Hollywood is attempting to tap into, those in their 30s and 40s.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a movie version of Asteroids is currently in pre-production after Universal Pictures earlier this year won a four-studio bidding battle over the game originally released in 1979. As the film is still in pre-production, there have been no public releases on a possible plot nor information on who will star in the movie.

A film version of Missile Command is not quite that far along yet. The Los Angeles Times has reported Atari, the company which released Missile Command in 1980, is still shopping around the game, pitching it to various studios in hopes of finding interest. Will they? Time will tell, but the studios might be waiting to see how well Asteroids will do at the box office before biting on another arcade classic.

Pac-man Video Game Celebrates 30th Birthday

May 22, 1980, was the date thirty years ago when the Japanese company Namco released one of the most popular video games of all time. I'm talking about Pac-Man, the game where you control a little round yellow ball around a maze while munching dots. And let's not forget the four colorful ghosts who chase Pac-Man around the maze.

Soon released in the United States by the company Midway Games, Pac-Man became an enormously-popular icon of the 1980s, and to this day is still one of the most recognized video games of all time.

The game was originally called Puck-Man in Japan, but renamed Pac-Man in the U.S.

Pac-Man has proven so popular it has spawned 16 sequel arcade games, two pinball games, at least a half dozen versions of the original game for classic (1980s) home gaming systems, at least 16 spin-off games for modern home video game systems and 11 games for mobile phones. Also, there have been several hand-held Pac-Man video games and even a small tabletop version of Pac-Man. There has been a Pac-Man animated cartoon television show, a Pac-Man board game and the song "Pac-Man Fever" which went all the way to number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1981.

Besides its sheer popularity, Pac-Man had a huge influence on video games of the day and continues to have an influence today. Pac-Man might not have been the first maze game, but it definitely was the first popular maze game, and it changed the faces of video games during a time when the majority of games where science fiction or military shooting games.

So, Pac-Man, I salute you. Happy 30th birthday!