A History of Video Games: The Commercial Years

In my last installment of this potted history of computer games, I talked about Nintendo, and how, by bringing Mario to North America, they rescued the console market from a catastrophic crash. At around the same time, a Russian named Alexey Pajitnov was working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He created a game he named Tetris.

Tetris was very addictive. Like Space Invaders, it was a potentially never-ending game. Players have racked up 12 hour sessions on a single game. Like Pong it was incredibly simple - no backstory, characters, or complex controls to remember. The basics could be picked up in seconds, but it was challenging enough that experienced players would stay hooked - always aiming for a higher score. It appealed to everyone.

It was immediately recognised as a winner - and a fair few people started selling the game without purchasing the rights to it. A British company called Andromeda picked it up, and, before finalising any deals with Pajitnov, sold the license to Spectrum HoloByte, a US developer that had been set up in 1983 (demonstrating that not everybody believed that 1983 was the end of video games…). Much bickering ensued, and lawsuits passed back and forth. Various versions were made and then pulled, sometimes before even hitting the shop shelves.

Nintendo ended up with the rights, after it went through the courts. They made a handsome profit - and Pajitnov made very little. It was the time that the video game corporations came into their own. Nintendo had strict licensing laws, that forbade any game that appeared on the NES to appear elsewhere. In North America, the NES was easily the most popular console. Elsewhere, in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, it was the Sega Master System. The Atari was bowing out of the console market with its Atari 7800.

Nintendo emerged as the clear winner of this generation of consoles, Mario helping to push over 60 million consoles, while the Sega Master System trailed with only 13 million sold. With the fourth generation, however, Sega unleashed a new weapon with its spiky blue mascot. Sonic the Hedgehog was aggressively marketed. Mascots and franchises became the name of the game. Many long-running and much-revered series were created at this time - Metroid, Zelda, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and Street Fighter.

As Nintendo and Sega clashed, blood was shed. Virtual blood, that is. Nintendo censored the gore in their port of Mortal Kombat. Sega didn’t. Sega won that round - and in the future, violence was increasingly part of a game’s marketing strategy… a fact that holds true right up to the Grand Theft Auto series.

It is worth stepping aside for a moment, and considering the global market. Japan and North America have tended to be the global heavyweights when it comes to designing, developing and consuming games. This was partly because Japan and North America were both on the NTSC format, whilst Europe, et al, were PAL. (Strangely, when DVD’s were invented and given regions, Japan and the UK were linked together). The UK, Australia and New Zealand were somewhat lucky in that English games required no translation. Europe, however, very much received the short-end of the stick. Russia, as we’ve seen, was the country from which Tetris emerged - but otherwise would appear to have made little dent into the industry. For most of the world, video games were interesting only to psychologists, computer engineers, and scientists. Of course, imports existed. Indie games and consoles existed. But the release of games was half-hearted, and for the most part the industry trailed behind Japan and North America. The Sega was most people’s best bet - and I (being from the UK) have personally always favored the Sega over the Nintendo in my nostalgia dreams of yester-year.

It was around this time that imports began to pick up. Several high-profile games made it off the beaten path and into the video game wilderness. New markets were found.

The next generation of consoles sees the Playstation enter the ring. Suddenly Nintendo is on shaky ground. The Nintendo 64 continued to use cartridge based games, whilst the Playstation used CDs. CD’s were cheaper, and contained far more data.

The corporations strove constantly to out-do each other. The next-gen rolled around with clockwork timing - the Playstation 2 combating the Gamecube, while Sega cut their losses and moved onto the Dreamcast.

Meanwhile, the PC had been advancing in leaps and bounds. Graphics cards, memory, you name it. With the consoles warring against each other, the PC quietly benefited from emulation software, from indie developers who produced shareware and demo-levels of episodic games, and from the birth of a genre in which it undoubtedly ruled - the RTS.

These years are probably the most familiar to the people reading this blog. This was the time when innovative new ideas gave way to graphics, marketing and name recognition. It was a time when licensing laws were hammered into stone, when lawsuits were almost constant, when graphics became the gold-standard and merchandise started to become part and parcel of the industry. Merchandise filled a double role - it made money and it marketed the game. The games themselves were used to sell the consoles - the headline acts were locked to one or another. The PC, interestingly, was the most adaptable gaming machine - and also the platform for many of the smaller, more interesting genres.

Tune in this time next week for a look at the PC, at the rise of RTS (and the rise of Blizzard), and for that media-altering new invention - the internet.

The Full History

A History of Computer Games: The Early Years
A History of Video Games: The Golden Years
A History of Computer Games: The Plumber is Nigh
A History of Video Games: The Commercial Years
A History of Computer Games: The Strategic Years
A History of Video Games: The Multiplayer Years

Related Posts

• A History of Computer Games: The Plumber is Nigh
• A History of Video Games: The Golden Years
• A History of Computer Games: The Early Years
• Follow Up! “Console Issues: Wii”
• Got Console?

One Response to “A History of Video Games: The Commercial Years

Aaron Miller Says:
December 18th, 2007 at 4:15 am

Pajitnov had a hand in Hexic and its sequel, too. It’s great to see that he’s still making games, and good ones.

I guess I’ll have to finally install my C&C Gold to refresh my memory on the first High King of RTS games, in anticipation. Probably a decade since I’ve played it, yet I’ve got one of the songs from the soundtrack running in my head right now. Obviously, I played that game entirely too much!

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