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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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ith his latest book, 1983, game journalist and historian Chris Kohler has chosen to take a slightly different tack then he employed for his massive treatise Power Up: How America Gave Video Games an Extra Life a few years back. Rather than approaching the topic of video games from a wide-ranging, all-inclusive perspective, Kohler instead drills down here into a single crucial moment in time for the young medium: The near-crash of the industry in year 1983.

Despite the Orwellian overtones of the title Kohler has selected for his work, there's nothing ominous about the story contained herein -- perhaps, except, the idea that video gaming could have been snuffed out entirely a mere decade after Pong's debut. A combination of gold-rush greed, incompetence, and '80s corporate culture nearly suffocated the fledging entertainment medium just as it was hitting its stride. The Warner corporation's eagerness to cash in on their purchase of Atari, combined with the influx of low-quality, externally developed 2600 games after Activision broke away to become the first third-party developer, nearly buried the industry beneath a deluge of self-cannibalizing mediocrity.

I like to play games in what I imagine is an unusual manner, or at least I thought this to be the case until 1UP members revealed they share some of my habits. One of these things, my propensity for systematically exploring an area before moving on, has reared its head in particularly noticeable fashion as I make my way through Max Payne 3. Playing in this way was clearly something the game's designers accounted for, as evidenced by the collectables scattered throughout, and yet it feels almost as if I'm being punished for deciding to be a completionist.

My process for approaching each area in Max Payne 3 follows the same pattern, only being altered if I'm low on health and out of painkillers (health packs in Max Payne's world). I kill everyone and then proceed to sweep over the entire room, seeking out any hidden spots or areas which do not appear to lead to the next area. As I make my way from one combat area to the next, I'm mindful of my surroundings and am sure to double back to check behind staircases and to see which doors can be opened. I do this all while searching for golden gun components, painkillers, and clues which can be examined. The latter can fill in the backstory but is hardly needed to get the gist of the narrative. I'm able to comfortably do this because there is no ticking clock, even if what Max is doing at any given time suggests there should be, and because enemies come in limited numbers and only in certain areas.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

People love to look back at the past and ask, "What if things had gone differently?" Navel-gazing at history spans cultures and races. Whether it's author Harry Turtledove making a fortune by contemplating how differently the American Civil War would have gone if someone had time-traveled to give the Confederate Army machine guns, or the manga Konpeki No Kantai in which the Japanese navy beats up America in World War II before teaming up to kill Hitler, second-guessing ourselves seems to be human nature.

Maybe it's the competitive nature of the medium, but video gamers seem especially fond of revisiting the past and wondering about alternate outcomes. As the Three Fates in the image above suggest, games have woven a rich and complex tapestry in their mere half-century of existence -- a tapestry whose design and nature could have changed radically had things turned out differently.

1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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UP's cover story this week revolves around the question, "What if?" In keeping with that theme, we'd like to offer this glimpse into one of many alternate realities of video gaming: A world where video games never came home. A world where the arcade still dominates gaming. How would a site like 1UP be different in such a place? We talk to our mirror universe counterparts about the state of gaming and their thoughts on the medium.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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et's be honest, when we think about Activision-Blizzard as a company, at least a few of us get a mental image of a dark overlord with hooked fingers looming over a burning landscape. This image is usually accompanied by a deep-voiced demand for sacrificial virgins. Given Activision-Blizzard's status as The Biggest Thing That Has Ever Existed in Gaming, it's easy to forget that prehistoric Activision fought for the right to develop third-party games on the Atari 2600 -- a battle that it eventually won in court.

Activision's victory essentially made it possible for third-party game designers to ply their trade on home game consoles.

Activision's drive for justice wasn't exclusively about being paid its deserved royalties, either. During the 2600 era, Atari had a nasty habit of not crediting its game developers (or even letting developers bring attention to themselves, which convinced Adventure developer Warren Robinett to bury his name in the game, possibly creating the first digital Easter Egg). When Activision won the right to make its own games for the 2600 in 1982, credit was no longer a problem.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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or RPG fans of the early 1990s, Square practically had their own branch on the Nintendo family tree. This held especially true on the Super NES, where Square came into its own with Final Fantasy IV and VI, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, and wealth of Japan-only releases that loomed just out of reach for Americans. By the end of 1995, the union seemed solid. Nintendo's long-awaited Nintendo 64 system was on its way, and would be home to Square's next Final Fantasy.

There seemed no reason to worry until the spring of 1996, when those same RPG fans opened game magazines and learned that Final Fantasy VII wouldn't release in the form of a Nintendo 64 cartridge. It was now headed for the Sony PlayStation, as with every other game Square planned to make for the latest generation of consoles. By the end of the year, Square sewed up a publishing agreement with Sony, and their first PlayStation release, the fighter Tobal No. 1, sat on store shelves. It came as quite a surprise to players who'd effectively grown up with RPGs on Nintendo systems.

Final Fantasy VII didn't just amount to a critical PlayStation success; it was also instrumental in establishing the Japanese RPG in North America's mainstream game industry.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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hen Steam first appeared in 2002, its success was far from a sure thing. Bugs and network problems outnumbered the available games on Valve's digital distribution platform by a wide margin. Users who disliked having to launch an extra application before playing their games doubted the necessity of the program itself. It took years for Steam's library to grow, for Valve to smooth over the rough spots, and for the public to embrace the concept of digital distribution. Today, Steam is synonymous with PC gaming, putting Valve in a unique position from which they can influence the industry in a number of ways.

What if the initial stumble had resulted in a full-on faceplant? How far would the ripples of that failure have spread? I don't claim to know exactly how things would have played out differently, but a lifetime of regret and PC gaming -- which occasionally go hand in hand -- has sharpened my hindsight enough to make a few educated guesses.

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1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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magine that Star Wars had been a flop at the box office. Maybe George Lucas was allowed to release his original edit, or maybe word just never got out. Regardless, while it's not a disaster on par with Heaven's Gate--which brought down a whole studio--it's still pretty bad. It might survive as a cult film, and possibly even merit a reboot, but its influence is gone.

Now imagine the failure of Star Wars as one gigantic shock wave running through the video game industry. Genres, studios, even basics concepts vanish as it goes along. Now you see that, while the industry would (obviously) still exist without Star Wars, it would be very different indeed.

1UP COVER STORY

1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF?

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don't know if you're old enough to remember Donkey Kong, but I am. You don't really hear much about DK these days. He's been all but expunged from the annals of game history, and the tiny handful of arcade cabinets and Coleco carts that weren't destroyed back in the '80s remain a rare commodity traded among truly dedicated game collectors (quietly and in private forums, since eBay and other online auction houses instantly cancel all DK-related transactions at Universal's behest).

I miss DK. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but I always felt his games -- regardless of how derivative or illegal the character himself may have been -- demonstrated a lot more creativity than the King Kong games we've seen ever since the lawsuit that outlawed him. Any student of video game history knows the story there, of course: It was one of the landmark events that helped shape the industry's early days. A plucky little Japanese company called Nintendo created a fun platform-climbing game starring a carpenter named Mario as he attempted to rescue his love Pauline from the clutches of an ape called Donkey Kong. Not a very subtle reference, but that's homage for you. Universal Studios didn't share that gee-whiz sentiment, though, and they brought the full freight-train force of the Hollywood legal system to bear on Nintendo, claiming infringement on the King Kong trademark. The tiny game company never stood a chance.

With the runaway success of 2009's Borderlands, Dallas-based developer Gearbox created a reputation for itself as more than just the studio behind a few Half-Life expansions or WW2 shooters, but one capable of offering its own serious creative output. With the long-in-development Aliens: Colonial Marines finally set for release early next year, Gearbox's latest trailer is capitalizing on the film franchise's return to theaters with next month's prequel-in-all-but-name, Prometheus.