Game Design Theory

A short time after the collapse and dissolution of Atari and their two systems–the Atari 2600 and the 5200–video game consoles had devolved into rumors of legend, more or less. What was once a booming industry, releasing millions of new and exciting titles, had now been shelved; with little to no remembrance until the next garage sale came about. Unsold titles were scrapped and buried within forgotten landfills across the country, companies were sold and bought off to be later liquefied as a last-ditch effort to making any amount of money back. A few years of this new age had passed before any amount of substantial spark was brought back to the decaying industry. The proverbial iceberg that was ET the Extra Terrestrial bore through the Titan’s hull, and its support washed away from the flow and the current of time; it would take a miracle to revitalize it. Luckily for the public of these times, there were two. In today’s entry, I would like to talk about two of the most prominent posts in the foundation of this new era of video games, and why each one was successful in their own right: the illustrious Tron, re-imagined from the ever popular theatrical release, and the gilded Mario, unknown plumber turned adventurer on a galactic scale.

Set within the digitized bounds of code, the story of Tron takes place inside a computer program where you, the User, are tasked with navigating through four “Digital Arenas”–their take on levels–in order to escape and beat the game. It was based off the widely popular film released under the same name in 1982; published by Disney. Its levels were highly stylized, often with bright neon, grid-like designs–often with angles and vectors–as it was meant to exhibit the aspects of computer code. This alone wildly subverted the expectations of the public during its initial release; compared to the banal and ordinary visual entertainment had been suppressed into for so long. Midway, the developers behind the arcade title, increased the realistic immersion even further by adding those same lit-neon effects to the arcade cabinets released to the public. In addition, it was a stroke of genius to implement a replay feature within the game, so once the player had beaten the levels they would go through them again at a higher difficulty.

Through the pipeline of video game’s history however, another hero had emerged. While unofficially making his debut in the original Donkey Kong cabinets as Jumpman (the character under the player’s control), the developers at Nintendo recreated this character into the popular Mario from the original Mario Bros, released in 1983; though still donning a swapped color palette than the typical blue jeans, red hat and overalls. The goal of this game was to score the highest amount of points by clearing various levels and defeating every enemy during each phase. Atypical of the platforms of that time, Mario Bros utilized a unique style of gameplay called wraparound; every sprite that travels through one edge of the screen reappears at the start of the opposite end, but only horizontally. With only a mindset of clearing phases, there was no need to implement a definitive end to the game; just repeat the same levels and increase the difficulty until the max score is reached or the player runs out of lives.

Though titans in their own right, both of these titles served as foundation blocks for the latent obelisk the video game industry had yet to become. But that, is a story for another time. I hope you enjoyed this week’s entries into the history of video games. Next week, I plan to tackle the first console war between the first two rival companies; Sega and Nintendo. Until then, I hope you have a great rest of your day!

As always, cheers.

-Ethan