|
Quantum
1982
Developed by General Computer Corporation
Quantum, one of
Atari's more obscure titles, has one of those game ideas that seems to float
around the game industry, popping up randomly in various places, even though
it's unlikely each use was influenced by prior art.
The recent DS game Pokemon Ranger, for example, has play
that ultimately can be traced back here, and aspects of it can even be found in Sonic Team's
Nights Into Dreams. But Quantum is obscure enough that it's
probably not due to a conscious effort to steal -- the idea just seems to
suggest gameplay.
In Quantum-style
games, the player has a cursor that leaves a trail behind it of limited length.
Depending on the game, the trail is controlled with a trackball, joystick, analog
stick or stylus. Various enemies litter the screen, moving slowly.
The player's
task is to surround them with the trail, making a complete loop and clearing
them from the board. Some enemies try to
foil the player by attacking the trail, others the cursor. Capturing more
enemies with a single loop is worth bonus points. That, by and large, is Quantum.
The control scheme tends to matter
a lot to games of this type. This one is
controlled with a trackball, and like Marble
Madness, the control method is not merely an aesthetic choice here.
The
speed of the ball, combined with the skill needed to manipulate it rapidly, make
a big difference to the experience. Arguably, if you aren't playing Quantum with a trackball, you aren't
really playing it.
It should be noted that while Atari published this game, its
developers did not design it. It was produced
by General Computer Corporation, who also made the better-known Atari game Food Fight.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
The speed was unparalleled for 1978, and featured two steering wheels, as it was meant to be played with one player controlling the front, and another at the back. Unfortunately the game is completely broken if you just play the back end, as the computer will drive the front flawlessly for you, and you have more time to adjust if you're in back, but still, it was pretty neat for the time. I also quite liked how the game would reverse image polarity when you reached a certain point - everything black became white. Goooood times.
Heh heh heh... good one, Ed & Atari. Good one. I hope you're enjoying the fancy car I must have bought for you. :)
There were a few of mistakes I thought that should be corrected.
Asteroids was not the first game to have controls where a ship had left/right buttons and thrusted in the direction the ship was facing. That belongs to what many consider the first video game, Space Wars which was released in the arcade by Cinematronic and pre-dates Asteroids by several years in creation and at least a year in the arcades.
Tramil was not responsible for the Atari 8bit systems. He was at Commodore, making Atari's competitor at the time. He may have been around for a few of the last models.
Also, where did you get the info that Marble Madness used the POKEY chip for its sound? Having programmed the POKEY for many years I would never have guessed it could make those sounds, at least not unassisted.
And Gregg's suspicions are correct: Marble Madness did not use POKEY for sound. That duty was handled by a Yamaha YM2151, the sound chip developed for Yamaha's line of DX synthesizer keyboards. Atari's Marble Madness was the first arcade game to use it.
There is some confusion about Space Wars. Cinematronic's Space Wars was released in 1977, two years before Asteroids. It was inspired by the 1962 DEC PDP-1 computer game Spacewar!, which is sometimes credited as the first video game or graphical computer game (although it missed that honor by decade). Spacewar! was never a coin-op, but another game that was inspired by it was, and it was the first. It was called Computer Space, and like Asteroids, had Spacewar!-like controls. It was released in 1971 and was created by future Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
In the interest of fairness, I'll mention that the very, very first coin-op video game was another Spacewar! inspired game called The Galaxy Game. It was released two months before Computer Space. Only one them was ever made, and at 10 cents a play on $20,000 worth of hardware, it could never be economically viable, so I'm not sure it should be considered a legitimate coin-op.
Deleted the bit about POKEY being responsible for MM's sounds.
Thanks for the tips.