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Play History

@playhistory.bsky.social

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Independent games researcher, Ethan Johnson. Preserving gaming history!

Patreon: tinyurl.com/pdp5pdrj
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@play_history/videos
Blog: thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/

Editor of Gaming Alexandria

Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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The most visible change is on Matt Alexander's face. Which is ironic because he's so invisible people forget he even existed.

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SEGA-16's avatar SEGA-16 @sega-16.bsky.social
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Today I can announce my next book! Due next year, this new work will take a deep dive into Sega's portable! It presents a comprehensive narrative of the Game Gear's Japanese development and launch, as well as its launches in NA, Europe, Brazil, Australia, and South Korea.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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The early pioneering action RPG Dragon Slayer by Yoshio Kiya, released by Nihon Falcom. It was discovered recently that the game was inspired by the obscure American RPG Caverns of Freitag by David Shapiro, AKA Dr. Cat. He gave me the scoop on Freitag.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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There was definitely room for exploring the Ultima Underworld-type genre at that time - but something like Menzoberranzen shows what a game like Arena might have been. It would have had a hard time competing with Doom as a pure action game.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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The original Elder Scrolls game, Arena, was not originally an open-world adventure, instead more of a story-based combat game. Bethesda devs actually used scale models to create some of the game's scenes! Seen in the second picture.

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The SFBOX, an official Super Famicom development system created by Ricoh.

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The trackball! An iconic arcade controller, most famously utilized in Missile Command and Centipede by Atari. But Atari was not the first to apply a roller controller to video games! Their use in Atari Football was inspired by Sega's World cup, engineered by Shikanosuke Ochi.

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SEGA-16's avatar SEGA-16 @sega-16.bsky.social
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Attendees at the 1993 AOU Expo marvel at Sega's new Model 2 board. 59 companies displayed their wares, and over 27,000 people showed up. Images: Game Machine March 15, 1993.

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🎃 LIQUID 🎃's avatar 🎃 LIQUID 🎃 @liquid.skyboxgang.com
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Along with these design documents for Metal Gear, he also showed documents from Snatcher and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (there's 4 or 5 binders worth of documents for Snatcher, and maybe 1 or 2 for MG2). The MG2 and Policenauts binders were still on Kojima's desk in the late 90s.

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🎃 LIQUID 🎃's avatar 🎃 LIQUID 🎃 @liquid.skyboxgang.com
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These were posted by Hideo Kojima on Twitter about 13 years ago. The detailed maps were likely drawn by Kojima, since he has talked about making these maps himself. There are rumors of a "warehouse" where Konami keeps its old design documents from this era, but it's just hearsay.

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Design documents for the first Metal Gear on the MSX2. Not sure who wrote them - or where they are now.

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VGDensetsu's avatar VGDensetsu @vgdensetsu.bsky.social
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A short thread about Mega Drive games that used an SVP (Sega Virtua Processor) or for which the inclusion of an SVP was considered.

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The Video Game History Foundation's avatar The Video Game History Foundation @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social
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[tap tap tap] this thing on Hi!! We're here, and we've been busy. Here's what we've been up to for the last six months to make game history better.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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The odd beast of the Microvision. The faceplates each include a microcontroller with in-built memory, rather than a ROM chip. On the console itself is a processor for driving the display. This was - oddly - cheaper to do, as Jay Smith told me. Also, it inspired Game & Watch!

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Brian Clark's avatar Brian Clark @bclarkomp.bsky.social
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This episode of Scrolling Down the Belt, we go back to something from my teen years...and also down the demon road to hell, with Lone Wolf and Cub! youtu.be/rY0Dztrku0U

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Namco's iconic "Namcot" advertising campaign for their first Famicom games - circa 1984.

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The days of massive, floor-unit racing games.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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It's been a bit over a year since Norm put out the Channel F video, which I wrote and researched.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nio3...

Still super proud of this video and amazed that close to half a million people have watched it!

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On this day, thirty years ago, a specification was written for the upcoming game Kamui by Namco. Also known as Tekken.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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Part 3 of our dramatic readthrough of Console Wars is now on VOD!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6J2...

We tackle the questions:

-Did SoA influence Sonic's design?
-What's wrong with Electronic Arts?
-How dramatic was the Sega boardroom?

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Mattel, the once promising claimant to the video game crown. Seen here hawking Intellivision games at CES, 1983-1984.

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Console Wars dramatic readthrough, Volume 3!

www.twitch.tv/play_history

We are getting into some REAL juicy stuff. The American influence on Sonic the Hedgehog, Electronic Arts and Sega, and so much *amazing* dialogue. Join us for the ride.

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Tonight we'll be doing another Console Wars reading livestream! 7PM CST. Come by for fun.

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Sometimes small time players can still be remembered. This is Sydney Donaville, who helped to program the very early commercial 3D game Tail Gunner at Vectorbeam. Lead programmer Dan Sunday took him under his wing due to his enthusiasm. He later moved to Exidy; died in 1995.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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In 1994, two UK developers were working on games both titled "Powerslide."

Elite Systems worked on a Super FX sim with flat polygons (and trippy colors).

www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/07...

Readysoft had a 3D Rally racing game with textured polygons for the PC.

Both were unreleased.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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It's well known that Enix held programming contests to find talent and build up their product development, but they were far from alone. Even large companies like Taito cast a wide net for talent, in their case bringing in creators of games like Arkanoid in the process.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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We don't know exactly how Playtron was supposed to play, other than you are a whale that eats fish swimming through the water. I presume it's basically a "lane game" where you catch the fish. Interestingly, both the flyer and concept art are reverse direction from the cabinet's gameplay.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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Jay Miner (1932-1994), the chief engineer of the Atari VCS and Amiga graphics chips. Absolute legend (along with his dog Mitchie) who went too soon.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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The burgeoning days of Lucasfilm Games, a set of visionaries out to change the world. Some of the early cast included computer gaming pioneer Peter Langston, Maniac Mansion co-designer Gary Winnick, and programmer extraordinaire David Fox. (Click "Alt" for line-ups)

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In Intellivision's case it's largely because they intended to expand it to have computer functionality from the start. The idea of overlays or multi-functioned keys was a big deal on keyboards of the era.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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One of the (many) neat things about Atari Protos is being able to see the production dates of cartridges versus their final release. It's hard to remember that creating physical cartridges often took several months of manufacturing approval - just to put it into perspective.

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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I mean at least that's a separate company. Is Tengen counted separately?

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Promoting Battletoads v. Double Dragon, we have representatives from Rare Ltd: Simon Farmer, Gregg Mayles, Tim Stamper, and Kevin Bayliss. All right before the breakout Donkey Kong Country.

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Thirty years ago, this profile on Funcoland gave us a couple wonderful photos of a fully stocked store in the height of Console War fever.

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A currently lost early IBM PC game, Aqua Run by Soft Spot Micro Systems. One of the earliest PC titles utilizing joysticks (which were uncommon on the system at the start).

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The Battletech Centers were a fascinating project in large scale coin-op, virtual reality, and as an enormous step in 3D graphics. They debuted 25 years ago at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, premiering at dedicated locations the following year.

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Kevin Bunch's avatar Kevin Bunch @ubersaurus.bsky.social
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I am extremely happy that I had a chance to work with Rob and the VGHF to get this story told. Tarzan is really impressive for a 2600 game and all that hard work that went into its creation deserves to be experienced!

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Play History's avatar Play History @playhistory.bsky.social
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I've also been steadily documenting hundreds of recorded sales numbers for games across time. This stuff is not easy to search for and you can't just take a number at face value. You really have to look at number trends to see if things line up with expectations.

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