STACK #164 June 2018

GAMES FEATURE

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Words Paul Jones One of the most popular games in the world turns 40.

A longside fellow Japanese video game luminaries Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima, the name Tomohiro Nishikado may not be as instantly recognisable. However, working solo, the game he unleashed on arcades forty years ago this month would not only revitalise a declining industry, but would define a genre and go on to become one of the most influential video games of all time. Known as the grandfather of video games, Ralph Baer touch lit what would become a prolific decade for the video game industry when he released the Magnavox Odyssey home entertainment system in 1972. Nolan Bushnell’s Atari unveiled a coin-operated version of Pong late the same year, and the concept of the modern video game arcade was defined. But in a fanatically growing market, a profusion of Pong -clone home entertainment systems across the globe – with scant regard for copyright – led to an industry crash in 1977. The future looked bleak. Tomohiro Nishikado joined Taito in 1969 and began his career

Tomohiro Nishikado

and renamed Gun Fight, going on to sell close to 8,000 units. Impressed with how well Gun Fight looked, and ran, using microprocessors, the developer began work on his next project. He began by building his own microcomputer from the ground up. Taking inspiration from the level progression system in Atari’s hit Breakout , Nishikado decided to design a shooting game. His initial idea was to render tanks and aircraft but, dissatisfied with the inferior graphic representation on screen, he considered using humans instead, and after several trials was happy with the smooth animation. This was vetoed by management at Taito, however, who were reluctant to produce a game on moral grounds where players could fire at humans with

He began by building his own microcomputer from the ground up

mechanic, were Nishikado's first games, followed up by the racer Speed Race in 1974; a game that gained some traction in the American market. Western Gun followed in ’75 and was licensed by Midway for the States, rebuilt using the nascent microprocessor,

designing electro mechanical games. Following the release and subsequent success of Atari’s Pong , the Japanese company switched tack and decided to invest in the development of their own video games. Davis Cup and Soccer , based on the Pong

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JUNE 2018

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