Ed Logg knew a thing or two about the lines. You were created Asteroids at Atari, a game in which players have sailed and smashed some unknown local rocks into tiny little pieces. Released in 1979, Asteroids were black and white, but the images were shallow and smooth with raster images, a process that drew graphics from the lines.
But the game he watched was more than anything he had ever seen. In the Atari ST model, the lines separated by different conditions – the appropriate "L", the "L," a detailed construction block, a straight line that can be drawn vertically or horizontally – rain drops from the sky in stacks. down. There was no one in the controls. It was an automated document, which the arcade developers called the attraction mode.
When Logg looked, the AI directed the lines to fill in the gaps in the stack. Lines could be changed to deal with different directions as they fell, such as puzzle pieces adjusted to fit their spaces. When the blocks formed a straight line, it peaked and disappeared, and the number went up. Logg tapped the key and started playing. With every block he threw and every line he filled, his addiction grew. It was a puzzle, almost almost mathematical in its accuracy. The blocks fell, and they had to be straight in place to form horizontal lines very quickly before the fullness of the screen.
© Ed LoggLogg went to follow the manager. This game, Tetris, would be the next big thing for home consoles, and be the one to write it.
Curiosity directed the Logg to the computers. In high school, she enrolled in programming classes as a means of learning what made machines tick. Programming fed a part of his brain that was addicted to problem-solving. After studying computer science in college, he was hired by the Directorate Corp., where he has written a few and how: games, calendars for Snoopy, printable art work. “I made the first change An adventure and Star Trek between CDC Fortran and IBM Fortran, ”he said. "So even though I was paid to support CDC software, I used to make games on the sidelines."
Logg discovered Adventure, an Atari programmer for the game Warren Robinett where players were controlling a square exploring simple holes and caves, at a Christmas party when someone brought in a prototype for the Atari Video Computer System game show (2600). The following year, he built his own computer and wrote games for himself. The games continued to be a hoax until a friend at the CDC got a job in Atari, which happened to be across the street from the CDC's offices. His friend encouraged him to apply, and he was hired in February 1978.
Logg worked for a team led by Dave Stubben, an engineer known to the team for what some Atari called "Stubben's experiments." A beast of almost 350 pounds, Stubben would whistle, bend, twist, and make hardware handsets to know how long they last. Logg's first project was to be completed Avalanche, a Reflex-based game where players catch rocks as they fall from the rows at the top of the screen to the bottom. The game was started by Dennis Koble before moving on to the consumer category to write 2600 games. After the Avalanche, Logg wrapped up another Koble title, Dirty Bike, but failed Atari's field test – putting a wardrobe in the field to see how players responded to it – and didn't import the product.
Logg hit a milestone when, in 1978, in response to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell demanding an extended version Come out. The game, named Logg Super Breakout, bridge Atari past with his future. The Super Breakout came to the arcades in 1976, and became Logg's first commercial venture. He rode his momentum when composer Lyle Rains suggested they come together to write a space play like that Space Invaders, but ships and asteroids can travel in any direction. That game became the Asteroids.
The Calm Before the Storm
Things were looking for Logg, but he looked bad for Atari Nolan Bushnell. Atari's founder had sold the company to Warner Communication in 1976, which he admitted was "stupid" to bring back, and because of his failure to hold Wall Street equipment. To create a wild company culture, Warner brought in Ray Kassar, an expert in the textile industry, as a consultant. Kassar remembered wearing a suit on his first day only when he was greeted by Bushnell wearing a T-shirt that read & # 39; I like to excel! During a meeting later the same day, Bushnell interrupted the proceedings to give Kassar a cannabis joint. It was, Kassar went on to find, the only mindset of free drug use within the company. He immediately left the meeting. The smoking pot did not bother him. This was California; everyone shone. She was worried that they were shining at work.
Toward the end of 1978, following a dispute with Emanuel “Manny” Gerard, a Warner manager who had pressured his management to find Atari, Bushnell was fired by Warner. (Bushnell says the decision was consistent in his account of the incident, and that he decided to simultaneously withdraw Warner's attempt to fire him.)
Kassar wasn't sad to see her go. Atari has not been able to work at high speeds with two buses. Currently in charge, Kassar made a call to dump all of Atari's heavyweight after the 2600-year-old contract that Bushnell wanted to put in the pasture. He flooded the turmoil and chaos of the returning corporate culture and instead replaced one with a focus on efficiency and efficiency. Instead of advertising his games just in time for Christmas, Kassar has worked with marketing to promote the Atari brand throughout the year. Under his leadership, the sale of Atari, Inc. it jumped from $ 75 million in 1977 to $ 2.1 billion in 1980. The participants were very excited. The presenters of the program were less commended. They no longer received public debt for their work and had to resort to burying Easter eggs in their games. "There seemed to be a small company situation without Time Warner being our owner at the time," Logg recalls. "Of course there was less management when I started than I did later."
In 1979, after program coordinator David Crane and others complained about the lack of compensation, the marketing department wrote a memo to break down the most successful cartridge games. The purpose of the memo was to raise awareness of the program managers about the types of software most popular with consumers so that they could write more games on that bone. Crane and several others interpreted the memo differently: Right there, in black and white, there were sales figures for each game they made. To them, it was proof that they were important. In fact, Crane found that the games he had organized alone had generated more than $ 20 million. So why is he working overtime every week on a $ 20,000 salary?
Another promoter, Alan Miller, has set up Kassar and other executives in a refund program that will give creditors and royalty control over their software. When the management shot them down, Miller, along with Crane, Bob Whitehead, and Larry Kaplan decided to leave. Their team made Atari over $ 60 million, and went straight to Kassar to congratulate him. According to Crane, Kassar told them that they were less important than the workers in the assembly lines who threw boxes at the box.
The "Gang of Four," as they are known, came from Atari and founded Activation, the first third-party publisher to release hardware for a hardware company, 1979. At Option, Crane continued to develop topics including Pitfall, the action platformer that became the second best selling game on the 2600, after the conversion of Tom Frye & # 39; s Pac-Man.
Atari and activation found themselves in a harmonious environment in 1983, when the North American video game market collapsed under its weight. Atari's extensive involvement in the gaming business prompted Warner to make up the $ 425 million loss, leading to a telecommunications company selling PC and consumer segmentation on Jack Tramiel's computer for the song. Tramiel revisited its acquisition as Atari Corp., while the arcade division continued as an Atari game under the auspices of Warner.
Confusingly, Logg has continued to release games. His other big hit was 1985 & # 39; s Gauntlet, a collision clash where up to four players enter and break their way through labyrinths displayed in a low-level view. The Gauntlet was a success, but on a different level than the previous games because of the effects of market risk. Over 7,800 Gauntlet cabinets sold for & # 39; 85, but that was a far cry from the 70,000 Asteroids machines operating worldwide, making it Atari's most lucrative video title and coin-op seventh game the greatest of all time.
Logg, who is employed by Atari Games, quickly gained a clear understanding of how far the division has gone. “I had made some sort of Centipede for the NES in 1986 when we found out that it was unclear whether we could remove our qualifications from the consumer group, ”he said. Logg partnered with Atari engineer Dona Bailey to design Centipede, a scanner in which players opened fire on the giant's shoe as it started down the screen, back in 1981. "So we had to (ask) another company to find out what we could do. The result was that we had no consolidated articles made before the breakup in 1985, so I couldn't get my Centipede out."
Namco sold Atari Games to Atari Corp. in 1985, but there was another obstacle on the way to freeing home ports of Atari's coin-op games. Nintendo reportedly woke up with one of his cars at a North American gaming market saying Atari was guilty of murder. Seeing that the lack of software quality control was one of Atari's mistakes, Nintendo, which rides on the success of the NES, completely controls the number of who can make NES games, how many, and how often. “Pain in the ass is a gentle way to put it,” says Logg. "Consider mistrust."
Atari's designers went from furious to exotic when they exploited its Nintendo publisher development contract. According to its dragon principles, Nintendo allowed NES software developers to release no more than five titles a year, a quality control mechanism to ensure that the market was not flooded with less games. Atari Games wanted to appear in coin-op. To do so, it will need to have its own consumer architecture, separate from Atari Corp. It chose the name Tengen, Japanese for the central part of the Go game board. Other publishers have used the same loophole to produce more NES titles, such as Contra and The castlegumi Konami studio is launching Ultra Games as a shell company that introduces topics such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Metal Gear.
Nintendo has allowed Tengen to publish games on the NES. The two parties were in place until 1988, when Tetris split between two was fine.
From Russia With Delight
Soviet investigators Alexey Pajitnov and Dmitry Pavlovsky knew that all work and no play were done by needy scientists. Employed at the Russian Academy of Science's Computer Center, Patlovsky saw thirteen-year-old Gerasimov write a system encryption system using Microsoft's & # 39; s DOS-line system. They started chatting, and Pavlovsky said he liked writing games in his spare time, and introduced Gerasimov to Pajitnov. The trio decided to write their own computer game, with Gerasimov taking over as programmer and graphic designer. They warm themselves by turning over some of Pavlovsky's old projects and dream of selling a collection of their work, which they call computer funfair.
Within weeks of their working relationship, Pajitnov came to his friends with an idea. A while back, he wrote a game called Genetic engineering when a player shoots four pieces, called tetraminos, into groups. Gerasimov thought the game sounded like a towel, until Pajitnov agreed with ways he thought to improve it. Tetraminos would fall from the top of the screen into a stained glass area, and accumulate without the player collecting them to form horizontal lines, causing them to disappear. Excited, the three friends expanded the view so the two players could challenge to find out who could clear the lines so quickly. They called their game Tetris.
Though excited about their creation, the trio can't just dump the floppy disks into a Ziploc bag – a common compilation in the days before the colored boxes – and sell it in stores. They lived in a communist country, meaning that the empire was ruled by Tetris, not its creators. Instead, they upload it to the network, where it spread to all computers. Robert Stein, president of publisher Mir Miroftoft, caught wind and approached Pajitnov with Tetris' offer worldwide. Stein acquired the copyrights and donated them to Spectrum HoloByte, where developer John Jones-Steele converted them to Atari ST.
That's where Ed Logg got it. Impressed by Tetris's instinctive and addictive-giving nature, he approached Robert Stein and discussed the rights to the Atari game distribution. According to their agreement, Atari Games will bring the game to the arcades, while Logg is developing the NES port under Tengen's label. "I realized it was better for the home market because the game might not last," Logg said. “I have asked our management to get a home market license which they have made with a small license for a few groups. It turned out that later the contract was not ironclad and the parties were too unreliable to deal with it. "
Logg kicked off the project by writing Tintris for Nintendo & # 39; s 8-bit Famicom. “I completed one version of the Consumer Electronics Show before the start of the financing game. When someone wanted it in a cooperative market, the other party took over, ”he said.
Just then Logg was ready to get started, Nintendo threw another roadblock. According to the manufacturer, there is a shortage of ROM chips holding the NES game code in cartridges. To satisfy demand, Nintendo would specify which companies would get cartridges, and how many. Frustrated, Tengen's engineers have decided to redo the chip Lockout developer, a small piece in all NES cabinets intended to prevent pirates from boot boot software. They have called their conversion a Rabbit chip.
Logg found out about the project when he entered Tengen's lab and asked three engineers how they met at a hardware-filled table. One of them looked up and said, "don't ask."
In the meantime, Logg continued his transformation of Tetris. He did not use the code written by Pajitnov and other Russian engineers, designing a visual and playable image by playing the game on PC and restarting it with his code. The basic idea, making the pieces fall apart, was easy to use. Within weeks, his game looked better and played better than before. Logg focused on understanding what Tetris's creators were doing, adding a multiplayer mode of competition and a collaborative style in which the two players worked together to clear the lines. Another improvement was increasing the speed of the blocks over time, a more subtle, flowing path than Pajitnov's jump when he was in office. While each of the original game tetraminos were made of a solid block painted in a single color, Logg was initially black and white.
“The first edition of the January CES might have been much better," he recalls. Ahead of the June Consumer Electronics Show, he added colors and used a composition that gave each piece a distinctive, 3D look. When the Atari program organizers were ready to upgrade the arcade wardrobe Tetris, Logg provided this code as a base. The embedded process revealed one of the few examples where the console version of the game influenced arcade hardware.
After three years of working between the NES and the arcade adaptations, Tengene sent his NES version of Tetris to Nintendo for approval in the spring of 1989. Once again, Nintendo hit the brakes, this time by ordering a small amount of cartridge.
Following the incidents, the company's agents were working to stop Tetris. That March, the manager of Bullet-Proof Software, Henk Rogers flew to Moscow and met with management to discuss licenses. Governments were willing to listen. They knew the likes of Tetris and were eager to monetize the work done by their creators. To their surprise, Roger offered up to $ 5 million in exchange for the rights to all handicraft and hand-held contracts, a much higher offer than they expected. Rogers repeated himself again by delivering on a promise from Nintendo that a Japanese gaming giant would make a difference if their genius failed to reach the 5 million mark.
Tetris rights are briefly categorized as a holiday pie. Nintendo signed patents worldwide (excluding Japan) on Tetris on March 22, 1989. Mirrorsoft claims Europe and, with its division Spectrum HoloByte, in North America. Atari Games reserve the rights to release its arcade, and Bullet-Proof has allowed Nintendo to collect a portable version of Tetris and its Game Boy, will be out soon each year.
When Two Nations Go to War
Nintendo US legal adviser Howard Lincoln wrote and filed a letter of suspension and resignation to Tengen on March 31, announcing that his company had acquired all of the company's rights. If Atari did not release its Tetris-made version of the Tengen for the NES on the shelves, both companies could settle the matter in court. The whole war followed, but both companies had shot in the front.
In December 1988, Atari filed a lawsuit accusing Nintendo of regulatory practices based on the company's chip lock. On the same day, Atari Games announced that Tengen would release the games without having to go to the proper channels established by Nintendo. There were three, Pac-Man, R.B.I. It's baseball, with Gauntlet, and more on the way. Tetris would be the subject of that spear.
Nintendo was unable to allow Atari to resell unencrypted NES software. Its executives believe its policies are a reservoir that overflowed with malicious software that could kill the North American gaming market. To a point, Nintendo wanted control. The company responded by delivering a one-two punch. First, it sued Atari for copyright infringement on February 2, 1989. In a similar way it threatened traders: Anyone with Nintendo's un-licensed gaming software would suddenly find that its Nintendo product source had dried up. Vendors sent. They had no choice. Nintendo was hot, and they would rather lose a few Atari and Tengen games than their relationship with Nintendo.
© Ed LoggSome software developers in North America were sympathetic to Atari. Nintendo's actions were disappointing, but the reality is that they rely on Nintendo for money. Atari is also suing, claiming $ 250 million in damages from Nintendo.
The war lasted until May 17, 1989, when Tengen, in his own words, released the NES Tetris. Not that anyone can find it. Few stores were brave enough to keep it up, and Nintendo doubled by filling in another one and a suit eight days later. Now both companies were blaming the other for violating its rights to develop Tetris for corpses.
In June, Nintendo launched a scandal when a Federal judge issued its ruling, ruling that Tengen and Atari were prohibited from selling any Tetris home brand, and had to remember all unchanged cartridges. Atari and Tengen officials estimated that about 50,000 copies of the game had been sold. Hundreds of thousands were restored. Although Tengen continued to develop games – which apparently dropped its weight behind Sega Hardware, which rose to challenge Nintendo's metal platform in the console market – Ed Logg was devastated. He had fallen in love with its Tetris brand by working hard for three years, only a few figurative buyers to enjoy it.
“A sad heart is a good summary. It was much better than that the version that Nintendo made, "he said. While critics and gamers often agreed. While there was no denying the simplicity of the Game Boy line – and the NESNintendo system itself was free – Logg's NES version boasted far better features and game modes than the ones Nintendo put into the market.
“I was happy that I had started working in the consumer market. It is very disappointing that my early efforts, Centipede and Tetris, did not make this visible to the public, ”said Logg. His recognition of the support of his work troubled him and justified his work. To do this, after many years of working for another company and wanting to make a version of Tetris on our platform, our executives went to Blue Planet, I believe, who had Tetris rights at the time. In an interview they revealed that the best version they had ever seen was the one behind them. . ”
This feature comes completely from it David L. Craddock & # 39; s book Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Characters Entered the Living Room, available now Amazon.
