Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 1
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The Intertextual Arcade: Tracing Histories of Arcade Clones in 1980s Britain / Alison Gazzard
Abstract The videogame arcade has created franchises of iconic, recognizable characters and game mechanics from their inception during the 1970s and beyond. Whereas some videogame arcades were deliberately ported by companies to home gaming consoles, in Britain a microcomputing culture emerged in the 1980s focused on national computer literacy as well as users being actively engaged with programming and creating their own games. This culture spawned various clones and remakes of popular arcade games as a way of experimenting with well-known graphics and game mechanics often under the radar of the larger corporations releasing the initial <6> titles. This article explores the various remakes and clones of the popular games Pac-Man and Frogger made for both the ZX Spectrum and BBC Microcomputer platforms. In doing so it draws upon magazine articles, reviews and interview commentary from a ZX Spectrum developer as a way of piecing together an alternative history of the arcade game and the role these games played in wider computing cultures in Britain during this time.
Keywords arcade, clones, Britain, 1980s, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, video games
Introduction
<1> In the introduction to David Surman’s chapter ‘Pleasure, spectacle, and reward in Capcom’s Street Fighter series’, the author notes how as a child he “visited the videogame arcades in the sleepy town of Ilfracombe on the North Devon coast [in the UK], to watch the seasoned local gamers play Street Fighter II (1991)” (205). This remembrance of the British seaside arcade can also be found in Flickr groups such as “Growing up in the Arcades: 1979-1989” that expose some of the photographic evidence of players captured at various arcade sites around the world the 1980s. This group includes images of an arcade at the seaside town of Hunstanton on the Norfolk coast in England taken by Smithy No. 7 that depict two boys playing Out-Run (Sega, 1986) and Paperboy (Atari, 1984) at some point in the mid 1980s [1]. My own journey into the arcade games of this time was in my local family-friendly public house, playing table-top versions of Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) as a way to keep me entertained at weekends and occasionally after school. Arcade culture in the UK often existed in the rows of arcades that once lined seaside towns (and have since been in decline, much like some of the towns themselves). The machines stood side by side with penny-slot machines, pinball and catcher-machines enticing you to pick up a cuddly toy, some sweets, or even try and win back some of your money. The arcade became engrained into popular seaside culture, as well as in public houses in towns and cities, or within the bustling centre of the Trocedero in the heart of London.
<2> Since the introduction of arcade games into general use during the late 1970s by companies such as Midway and Atari in the USA as well as Taito, Namco and Nintendo in Japan, players have come to know and recognise popular games in mainstream culture again and again. Well-known titles such as Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) and Space Invaders have since been officially ported to home consoles, during the late 1970s and 80s at the time when the arcades were around, and subsequently through next generations of consoles and gaming platforms. Players can now pick up versions of Pac-Man on a smartphone or tablet device, or play it bundled in Anniversary editions of Taito’s Space Invaders as released on more modern consoles such as the Playstation 2 in 2004. As Sheila Murphy notes, ports of games such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders, are commonly available on mobile phones, allowing for portability and a nod towards gaming’s past (112). The interactions of 1970s and 1980s gaming are abundant in later years, as manufacturers continually try to resell popular game ideas in a multitude of ways.
<3> Similarly, the iconic imagery of such games has also been rebranded on mugs, t-shirt designs, wall coverings, key-rings and other related memorabilia sold for both gaming aficionados or those seeking to keep up with the rise and fall of 1980s pop culture appearing as fashion statements in clothing stores on the high-street. As Kline et al discuss, this rise in merchandising continues after the 1980s as companies (including videogame companies) strive towards infiltrating the youth market with popular culture memorabilia and tie-ins as a way of continuing not only the success of the brand, but hopefully capturing new audiences (110). This growing trend for nostalgic memorabilia, for those that actually remember the time of the product’s creation, and for those that feel the need to remember or celebrate a time gone by, means that imagery is constantly re-made, re-branded and traded upon in commercial enterprise. Maria Garda also recognises this in current game design itself with games such as Fez (Polytron Corporation, 2012) and FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games, 2012) drawing on nostalgia for not only the 1980s aesthetics of pixelated design in the 8-bit era, but also the story and game mechanics flowing throughout the games as a whole. This move towards retro or what Garda terms to be “neo-retro” game design appeals to both longer term gamers and new gamers alike with those having a longer history of playing being able to see the intertextual references more easily.
<4> Today, the arcade machine as an object is still treasured by those seeking to collect, maintain and resurrect them with online forums such as the UKVAC dedicated to offering advice and support to those willing to take on such challenges. Retro gaming events in the UK such as ones attached to the Eurogamer Expo or Margate’s GEEK festival also see a revival of such machines for the public to remember and play once again [2]. At the same time these machines sit alongside microcomputers from the same decade such as the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum as another form of retro amusement from a time once passed. These machines were the British public’s source of gaming amusement in the home for when the arcade was not accessible, and it is via these platforms that similar arcade games were brought into the home for them to play.
<5> By examining the intertextual references of 1980s arcade games and drawing on reviews and programming examples from magazines from this time, this article traces two arcade games from their original inception through to the various remakes that were created for the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro platforms. In doing so, the concept of copying becomes a central theme running throughout this article in reference to both the game mechanics and the repurposing of the game design as these games moved from the arcade to the home. As Erkki Huhtamo notes in his discussions of the histories of electronic gaming, these games “did not appear from nowhere; they have a cultural background that needs to be excavated” (“Slot of Fun, Slots of Trouble”, 4). The same is true of the arcade game clone. Whilst arcade gaming emerged in amongst a long line of mechanical machines from gambling to pinball, the arcade conversion, clones and re-makes also became embedded within the home videogame market via a trajectory of users creating software and learning to program. Utilising magazine archives from this time, such as The Micro User and Crash magazine, it is possible to see the push towards not only various software companies selling these games, but articles in the magazines themselves showing readers how to program their own games. It was by analysing common themes throughout these magazines that Frogger, and Pac-Man have been chosen due to their frequent reference throughout the early 1980s, and the multiple clones that drew inspiration from these titles on both the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro. These games are detailed in contrast to the officially released ports that were available on these and other platforms as a way of showing the home computing programming culture of the early 1980s, and the influence of the arcade game genre on these events.
<6> By exposing these histories, it is possible not only to expose alternative histories of computer games in general (away from commonly dominated American and Japanese perspectives), but also to see how the arcade game itself is reincarnated outside of the arcades and into players’ homes. These reincarnations can be seen in light of Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka’s discussions of “zombie media” where they state, “media embodies memory, but not only human memory; memory of things, of objects, of chemicals, and circuits that are returned to nature, so to speak, after their cycle. But these can be resurrected” (5). Although these arcade clones, re-makes and conversions were brought about alongside the arcade machines that still continued to be in use, this type of software was resurrecting some of the themes present within arcade gaming as a way of spreading these games amongst a greater population of potential players. In the UK at least, these games allowed human memories of playing within the arcade to be prolonged beyond the cabinets and into the home, and at the same time these games allowed programmers to play with their construction in their remaking. Therefore, the games become part of the ‘undead arcade’ as is the theme of this journal issue, both through a reconstruction of the arcade into the home as well as the increased longevity of arcade type play that was enabled on microcomputers and beyond. Subsequently these games can be framed as belonging to the ‘zombie arcade’ that started to manifest itself throughout gaming cultures. Whereas Hertz and Parikka’s notion of “zombie media” is discussed in terms of reconstructing hardware practices, the zombie arcade can be seen as a mediation between the arcade hardware and imagery displayed and the reworked software practices that reconstructed the mechanics and imagery of arcade gameplay. By moving from hardware to software packages the arcade game becomes more malleable amongst the community, and subject to reworking again, producing even more instances of similar outputs yet all retaining trademark qualities of those that remade them. This “mutation” or “hybridization” (Manovich, “Software Takes Command”, 161) of programming processes allowed for numerous games to be made, and recreated from the original arcade game releases. As Parikka and Hertz’s discussion of media change as linked to time shows there is a phase of new media followed by a consumer commodity phase followed by an archaeology phase (14). Yet in the case of the arcade the archaeology is occurring simultaneously to the new media phase as both arcade cabinet technologies and microcomputing technologies emerged in a similar era yet with different outputs and possibilities. The unique qualities of each platform will be traced through these remakes and clones as a way of understanding the resultant software practices that were inherent in the development of both ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro games.
British Gaming Platforms
<7> In his discussions about game preservation, James Newman acknowledges the various challenges presented as to how games should or can be preserved. One such issue raised by Newman is the number and diversity of ported games. Games such as Donkey Kong have been re-produced multiple times, on various platforms, under the same name, yet with a slight change in features each time (Newman, 7). Although originating within an arcade cabinet, with the related stories of Shigeru Miyamoto’s cabinet design skills leading to game design success, Donkey Kong was also released on various other Nintendo platforms. Each of these platforms takes on its own set of affordances, “the perceived and actual properties of the thing” (Norman, 9) in terms of materiality and also limitations on hardware and software capabilities. Therefore, in discussing the arcade game port, clone, or re-make, we also have to understand the specifics of the platform to understand how these histories emerged and subsequently developed. As Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost note, “platforms are layered – from hardware through operating system and into other software layers – and they relate to modular components, such as optional controllers and cards” (3). The role of microcomputing platforms in Britain, away from more obvious gaming platforms such as the Atari VCS, and later on Nintendo’s consoles originating in Japan, meant that for many these games are not always known about and at the time were easier to create due to a lack of focus on more localised systems.
<8> In the early 1980s in the UK two opposing microcomputers were manufactured, that of the ZX Spectrum and that of the BBC Micro, both released in 1982. Whereas the ZX Spectrum followed a line of other successful machines by Sinclair Research Ltd, such as the ZX80 and ZX81, the BBC Micro was released as part of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Computer Literacy Project. The ZX Spectrum was released as a low cost microcomputer at a price of £99. Clive Sinclair, the founder of Sinclair Radionics and subsequently Sinclair Research Ltd, who developed the Spectrum, was a well-known entrepreneur in Britain who had manufactured watches, calculators, televisions and radios before moving into microcomputing. In contrast, Acorn Computers developed the BBC Micro out of a need for a microcomputer to be at the forefront of a nationwide Computer Literacy Project involving television and radio shows as well as correspondence courses set up to teach people to program in BBC BASIC. Roughly four times more expensive than the ZX Spectrum at a cost of £399 for Model B version, the BBC Micro was seen as a much greater investment for consumers. The low cost of the ZX Spectrum saw the machine thrive and people started to produce more and more games for the system. However, so too did users of the BBC Micro. Although the BBC Micro was more commonly found in schools and associated with formal education programmes, many home users took to programming games for the machine or buying them via the wide range of developers and distributors that had started to create content for it.
<9> In retrospect the ZX Spectrum was seen as the more dominant gaming machine in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s. The television drama Micro Men aired as a one-off programme in 2009 portrayed some of the rise in microcomputing in Britain at the time, especially in terms of Chris Curry (one of the creators of the BBC Micro computer) and Clive Sinclair. One classic scene in Micro Men features the actor playing the role of Chris Curry walking into a WHSmith store that sold a variety of computer games during the early 1980s [3]. One of the store clerks is explaining how to use a ZX Spectrum to a potential customer at which point she asks if there are games for it with the store assistant replying that are many games for the platform. At this point Chris Curry pipes up, “Do you have any games for the BBC Micro?” to which the assistant replies with an air of distance, ‘”Er…Yeah…somewhere we do”. This discussion is followed by the actor finding a small section of BBC Micro games on a shelf next to what is depicted to be rows of ZX Spectrum games in the store. Although the BBC Micro was not seen primarily as a games machine for some audiences, many people did write games for the platform, and many of the magazines focusing on the BBC Micro encouraged game creation as a form of learning how to program either in the version of BASIC available on the machine, or in machine code. These games may not have ended up on the shelves of highstreet stores, but they were created by those eager to learn more about the platforms and how to program on them. Therefore, the push for nationwide computer literacy in Britain, along with what is so often termed “bedroom coding” by those with access to the machines, saw clones or re-makes of popular arcade games spring up on these platforms. Although not licensed by the original companies themselves, these equivalents start to draw our attention to what is retained when the rules of the arcade enter a different frame of reference or a different play space on the home micro.
<10> As Montfort and Bogost note in their book Racing the Beam, the Atari VCS focused on arcade ports as a way of bringing those games played by people in the arcade into the home: “Pac-Man [in particular] involved adapting an extremely prominent arcade title whose gameplay, graphics, sounds and even iconography and packaging were universally understood and already based on graphical display and collisions” (Montfort and Bogost, 66). In many ways these ports allowed for an increased fan base as well as a follow on merchandising tool as, “Seen in this way, the licensed arcade game was not very different from a book or movie, which could also supply video or computer game with valuable recognition and a ready market of fans” (Montfort and Bogost, 82).
<11> What is now so often termed to be “DIY culture” (Gauntlett, 13) was rife within the 1980s home computing scene. Not only was writing code from scratch emphasised through general computer literacy, but code was freely available via a variety of outputs for users to copy, manipulate, and use to create their own modifications of games. Lessons in creating games often meant that previous game genres or titles were referenced as a way in to spark potential programmers’ interest, and building upon the arcade culture that had already emerged seemed for many, like one of the best ways forward. Melanie Swalwell discusses the microcomputer scene in New Zealand in a similar context, with active learning through the typing and tracing of code being an integral part into the user’s participation and engagement with the gaming scene at that time, something that she terms to be the “will to mod” (9). Her accounts of users entry in the world of programming again links to the copying of code in some cases and the experiences of “learning by doing” (Swalwell, 4) that was actively encouraged within the wider contexts of microcomputer creation and consumption at this time.
<12> One such way of engaging with creating game content in Britain was via one of many platform specific magazines that users could purchase at the time. A section on programming within the first issue of Acorn User magazine notes,
“Whether or not you find games enjoyable, programming a micro to play them is one of the fastest and most rewarding ways of learning how BASIC works. Moreover, since the BBC computer is still in its infancy, there isn’t much software available off the shelf – all the more reason to get down to writing your own programs and dumping them on tape!” (Acorn User Magazine, July/August 1982, 20)
Thomas Lean discusses magazine use at this time in terms of mediating not only the computer itself but also its use (121). Microcomputing magazines contained
reviews as well as lines of code to be typed into specific platforms by users to create their own programs. Therefore, by the archives of these magazines
that can now be found scanned and placed online, in past users’ homes, or in museums all help to trace the types of games available in the 1980s, including
arcade remakes and clones. As Graeme Kirkpatrick notes in his discussions of UK gaming magazines in the 1980s, “by studying them we can gain perspective on
gaming culture in its nascent phase; its period of formation” (unpaginated). The presence of examples of code in magazines in particular also showed how
learning to program games was at the heart of some of the computer literacies presented to users at the end. By using examples from known arcade games
found outside of the microcomputing scene, the user was given an immediate reference to strive towards as copies of these games started to appear on their
television or monitor screens. Focusing on the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum means that the main sources for examining arcade re-makes and clones at this
time are The Micro User magazine, which ran from 1982 to 1991, and Crash, which was published from 1984 to 1991. Although there were
other magazines linked to the BBC Micro such as Acorn User, as well as other magazines linked to the ZX Spectrum such as Your Sinclair,
the magazines Crash and The Micro User were chosen due to their availability through online archives and home collections as well as
their perceived popularity at the time. After searching through other magazines from this time both Crash and The Micro User seemed to
contain more information about arcade clones including both reviews and programming examples, therefore further analysis of such games and responses to
them are draw from these two series in later discussions.
Coding and Copying
<13> “Software has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination – a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs” (Manovich,”Software Takes Command”, 2
Writing about copying in the frame of Software Studies, Parikka notes, “What happens in copying is first the identification or framing of the object to be copied, followed by the reproduction of a similar object whose mode of existence is predicated upon its being distributed” (“Copy”, 76).
However, this form of copying was inherent in the game design itself, and not just the code. Moving away from the circuitry (and software) of the arcade cabinet, programmers had to utilize the systems available to them in order to reproduce both graphics and gameplay. Therefore, although the final outcome is something we can recognize in terms of the “topoi” (“Dismantling the Fairy Engine”, 28) of progression, a recurrent cultural vessel of a related output, the systems and user approach to these differed for each platform.
<14> Beyond the commercial aspect of licensed ports, the arcade game re-make or clone allowed for a sense of gaming community amongst home computer users for those wanting to learn how to program and develop games further. We can understand these coded practices as sites for shared expression amongst players and developers alike. As Geoff Cox notes, “Like speech, program code is active in the world and has a lived body, indeed is intimately connected to a social body” (100). Once again we can see how the social contexts of gaming and creation at this time helped to drive forward various game titles. One such way of building this community was via the shared language of imagery and gameplay styles found in arcade game titles.
<15> At the time, the intertextual references of the gameplay and the graphics were in many ways explicitly obvious in order to lure players to these games. Players could read the deliberate “codes” (Kristeva, 36) of other game outputs to understand the type of experience they were likely to get. Similarly from a programmer’s perspective, they already had access to arcade games for reference during this time, and therefore, some games emerged as a natural progression of these ideas, or a way of trying out formulas there were already seen to work. Jason Austin, a game developer of numerous titles from the 1980s to the present day, comments on a few of the games that were inspired by arcade game titles at the time. He starts the conversation with his background into accessing and playing games stating,
“As a youth I grew up living on the south coast, and the majority of my spare time was spent in the many arcades. Back then it was the golden era for them, and it felt like they were getting fantastic new machines on a weekly basis. I still see this as a major contributor to my love of video games” (private communication).
<16> During the 1980s Austin worked on titles for the ZX Spectrum such as Pi-Balled (Automata, 1984) and Pi-in'ere (Automata, 1984), both of which were based on previous arcade titles. When asked about his motivations for creating some of his first games, Austin continues,
“So when I started making the game that became Pi-Balled, it seemed natural to base it on one of the many arcade games I'd been playing. It was only my second game and I was not particularly confident in my abilities. So using an existing arcade game as a template meant that the design work had already been done for me. I remember at the time that I would have liked to do a version of Donkey Kong (one of my favourite games of that period). But with the hardware of the Spectrum and my limited coding skills a game of that complexity seemed out of my reach. I also thought about Frogger, a much simpler game. But there were quite a few other clones of that game being released on home computers at the time, so Q*bert seemed a good compromise.” (private communication)
<17> As can be seen in Figure 1, the game’s layout is similar in design to the game Q*bert. Although the characters used are noticeably different, it is hard not to recognise the iconic triangular grid layout of Q*bert and the character’s ability to change the colour tiles on moving between them as well as some of the obstacles they may face. These similarities are emphasised by Austin in his discussions about copying parts of the game, where he notes,
“As for how close the two games were. I tried to copy the logic and gameplay as closely as I could. The level layout and enemy movement was very similar. I was always intending on selling the game to Automata, and they already had a popular game character with the Pi-Man. So we added him into the game as a character. Our player character was also kept very similar to the original. Although we did spell his name slightly different and called him Burt” (Austin, private communication).
Figure 1. Screenshot from Pi-Balled.
These deliberate design and character naming decisions ran throughout a variety of other Spectrum and BBC Micro titles at the time, with Frogger, and PacMan standing out as two of the most dominant titles in the arcade game remakes scene. What follows is a tracing of these titles across the multiple instances they existed as. It is not possible to trace every title, but there are Wikipedia and fan lists on numerous websites created for that purpose. Instead this article now turns to the framing, advertising and commentary on these games in the magazine press at that time as a way of seeing how they were marketed, and received.
Froggy and Snapper
<18> Upon opening the first pages of the July and August 1984 editions of The Micro User magazine, the reader is confronted by adverts for A+F Software based in Manchester in the UK. The placing of adverts before the contents pages of the magazine was common practice and allowed readers to see the new technologies or pieces of software on offer from various companies each month. The A+F Software adverts are mainly for gaming titles, from Tower of Alos, “an excellent adventure game which has the feature of saving your character if you want to” to Lunar Lander and Pharaoh’s Tomb, “the interactive adventure game for the BEEB. Pick up the gold pieces, fight the spider and be scared penniless by the mummy”. In amongst the listing is also the game of Frogger, advertised as “also written in machine code this is a frustrating exercise in crossing the road, fording a river and trying for extra points by picking up the lady frog. Beware the snake and don’t forget the crocodile!” Costing £8 in 1984, this game allowed a modified game of Frogger to become accessible to BBC Micro owning households across the UK.
<19> Arriving on the scene in 1981, the original arcade game of Frogger was distributed by Sega/Gremlin. However, various clones have since emerged, some of which have seen the name of the game change whilst keeping with a reference to the original title. Aware of copyright breaches, and an expanding market of similar games, companies and individuals would name their games after similar instances of the original. These obvious references to previous versions helped the player to understand what they were purchasing and/or playing, and also helped programmers retain their own identity as linked to the games they remixed and remade.
<20> In the second issue of Crash magazine, from March 1984, Matthew Uffindell reviews the Spectrum clone Froggy, suggested as “the most engaging Frogger for the Spectrum” by D.J.L Software. Uffindell ends his short review of only a 100 words or so with, “This game is a very good copy of the arcade original and is very well produced. When I first saw it I thought the character block movement would spoil the game, but I was proved wrong. It is very addictive and enjoyable to play. This must be the best ‘Frogger’ around and I would recommend it to anyone.” Along with a critique of how the game matches up to the arcade original, the reviewer also adds that Froggy can be played with a Kempston joystick or cursor keys, thus highlighting the changes in platform specific control systems that go with the genre of arcade clones. Players are not going to get the same playability or material constructs as the arcade machine can offer, but the translating of controls to other more commonly used systems on the Spectrum platform means that players are translating known commands and inputs that they were used to experiencing with other Spectrum games. This translation is noted in the review, with Uffindell being concerned about the change in control mechanics with the movement of the main frog character, yet as a whole these downsides are overlooked in the otherwise glowing review, presumably as such minor details are to be expected in a clone rather than a direct port of the game. As with any creation, and as noted by developer Austin in his comments above, the programmer would have to work within the system constraints of the Spectrum or other microcomputer at the time. Working within the limitations of the machine meant that some details of the game had to be modified or compromised on in creating games of a similar nature to those in the arcades. Dealing with memory allocations, different processors and display outputs meant that games differed as to how they were made, and what they could offer. Some of these choices were deliberate as to not be sued by the original publishers, and other decisions were based on the technical competencies of both programmer and machine.
<21> Not to be outdone by the many Spectrum Frogger clones on the market, the BBC Micro also had its fair share of Frogger clones developed within a similar time frame in the early 1980s. Acornsoft, the software publishing arm of Acorn Computers, were known for distributing a wide range of arcade game clones, including the title Hopper, written by Neil Raine and released by Acornsoft in 1983. In contrast to the original arcade version, Hopper had green dividing sections instead of purple ones and didn’t contain as many rows of traffic or logs with only four obstacles in each section as opposed to five. Apart from some of the graphical changes, the game remained much like the original in gameplay and parts of the graphics included such as the frog and swimming turtles both of which are similar in style to the original game.
<22> Hopper didn’t receive as much attention as the Acornsoft release of Snapper in 1982. Snapper was written by Jonathan Griffiths and released as one of Acornsoft’s launch titles. Although the game has a different title, the outside packaging for Snapper depicts to any other player that had access to the game before, the screen of Pac-Man. A circular yellow protagonist with the iconic cut away mouth appears on the bottom of a blue outlined maze dotted with pills and pills whilst ghosts roam the gamespace. Removing the title of “Snapper” from the image would lead the player to believe they were in fact buying a home version of Pac-Man for the BBC Micro, and they were not the only ones. A later threat from Namco that they would sue Acornsoft for the release meant that later versions of the title had modified graphics with the main Pac-Man character being changed into something resembling a grapefruit with legs and the ghosts being remade into monsters. As can be seen in Figures 2 and 3, the original version of Snapper was changed quite significantly in terms of character design in order for the game to continue to be sold.
Figure 2. Screenshot from the first version of Snapper
Figure 3. Screenshot from the modified version of Snapper
<23> However, in terms of copying, the original (unmodified) game was cloned only by reference to Pac-Man’s graphics. The actual gameplay of the Snapper title was marginally different, and presumably recognizable enough to those that were used to playing the arcade game. The ghosts in Snapper form different patterns of travel compared to the original arcade release, and the speed of the Snapper character is also different, and not slowed down in the consumption of the pills. Here, not only are the platforms's qualities noted in its production, but so too are the player’s space of the game. Instead of creating a quick-to-play title that revolved around the inputting of money into the arcade machine, this variation of the game was slightly easier in the initial levels, allowing for a more prolonged period of play. The space of the player’s environment was no longer the arcade, but the home, where the monetary value of the game was already given up in the purchasing of the title and not the subsequent plays. The ease of play in order to get through more and more levels was also rewarded to the player by an in-joke and reference to the platform itself. As noted in Jane Jackson’s review of the game in the December 1983 issue of The Micro User, “If you can make it to 15,000 points you earn another Snapper, and if you can get through 12 screenfuls you may get a glimpse of the ultimate prize - the Acorn” (52). The inclusion of the Acorn allowed players to realize the platform specifics of the title. Acorn Computers developed the BBC Micro and this built-in reward helped to further tie this version of the game back to the platform it was released on. Similarly the inclusion of the acorn gave players an additional goal to strive for as word spread of the Acorn graphic.
<24> The success of Snapper was not only due to the publisher, but the qualities that the game retained from the original arcade. Attempts to re-create Pac-Man on the BBC Micro had been tried before, such as Program Power’s Munchyman title also released in 1983. Here the game graphics were noticeably different, with yellow maze walls, doubled up paths in places and an indistinguishable protagonist, yet the connections were undeniable, both through the references in the name and the basic mechanics of the game. The success of this game was not as widespread as Snapper , not only due to the inconsistency in cloning the graphics, but also because the style of gameplay didn’t match the original title. As much as players knew they were playing cloned or converted games, many of them wanted something resembling the original experience as much as possible. This is similarly highlighted in Issue 3 of Crash magazine where reviewers Chris Passey and Matthew Uffindell devote half a page of the magazine to reviews of numerous Pac-Man type games on the market. The reviewers note in their introduction to the section, “Since its introduction Pacman has probably been the most enduring of the arcade games. For Spectrum software companies it has also been the most imitated, with just about every producer having a go” (70). Game titles ranging from Gnasher (R&R Software Ltd, 1983) to Gobble A Ghost (CDS Microsystems, 1982) are reviewed with the original Pac-Man game as the baseline with terms such as “classic copy” or “another standard version” used to sum up the similarities between each remade clone.
<25> It was these noticeable codes present in other games, such as the iconic maze layout in Pac-Man or the roads and rivers in Frogger that allowed players, writers and programmers to convey what the style and output of these games were via this shared language of common sign systems. The underlying algorithms (Manovich “The Language of New Media”, 222) of the game mechanics are followed as much as the new systems allow, and are re-interpreted by those that play through what emerges. Even without relying on direct clones, other games commonly used arcade game mechanics, including Doctor Who: The First Adventure released in 1983 by BBC Software for the BBC Micro computer. As the opening pages of the manual outline, “Your Adventure is in four episodes. The first three are real-time video/arcade style games, while the final episode is more of the brain teaser”. The first episode in the game titled “The Labyrinth of Death” is a clear nod towards Pac-Man. Although the player controls a buggy, rather than a Pac-Man character, the aim is to collect pieces (much like collecting the Power Pills and bonus fruits) whilst avoiding the enemies. Even with this basic mechanic in mind, what happens in the actual gameplay is far different from a standard game of Pac-Man. The controls are not as easy to navigate and the fast paced nature of the game that increases as more pieces are collected mean that moving through the maze takes more skill than the Pac-Man arcade game. The reference to arcade culture remains throughout but the ideas become reworked in a game that requires a different type of a learning in order to overcome the patterns presented and for the player to win the level. The second level “the Prison” is more of an immediate descendant of Frogger. On playing the game it is hard to not to see the immediate references to Frogger both in terms of the game’s design and the mechanics of gameplay. The simplistic up down left right controls on the keyboard, although different from an arcade controller, also help to emulate the game, and as a standalone this section of the Adventures would easily fit into the genre of one of the many Frogger clones on the market at the time. Finally, the level of “The Terrordactyls” [sic] emulated a game of Space Invaders, with the “ship firing missiles to bring down an entire flock that must be defeated.” At a time when gaming on different home computing platforms was still being explored and was starting to grow, companies stuck to patterns of game mechanics that were not only recognisable but achievable on the platforms they were working with. They also deliberately referenced games that were known to be successful in an attempt to lure new players with these tried and tested formulas of game design.
<26> As much as the Doctor Who game didn’t market itself on being an arcade clone, the themes, goals, and rewards running throughout each of the examples show how the structure of arcade games was present in so much of what people were playing in the home computing environment. Once again, magazines supported this type of game creation, often citing well-known arcade games as reference points for further hybrid games that started to be presented for potential readers to program. In the September 1983 issue of The Micro User, one of the advertised games to learn to program was advertised as “Galactic Invaders.” The article states, “As its name suggests Galactic Invaders is a cross between two well known arcade games. What the name doesn’t reveal however is the amount of pleasure to be had from this hybrid” (53). Although the article stops there without going into detail about the mechanics of the game (blaming lack of space within that particular issue) the reader is directed to further pages later on in the magazine where the code for creating Galactic Invaders is distributed over two pages. Here, it is up to the reader to become a programmer in order to see how the game plays, how much of a hybrid between the two games exists, and how this combination plays out. After typing in 91 lines of BBC BASIC, the user/player is confronted with a welcome screen announcing, “This is a mixture of two well known arcade games. The idea is to destroy as many of the invaders as you can before your single proton base is obliterated.” In terms of the gameplay Galactic Invaders, as shown in Figure 4, presents itself as a hybrid between Space Invaders and Galaxian. Moving a ship at the bottom of the screen, the ability to fire and the moving alien figures all link to mechanics and iconic characters found in both of the other original arcade games. Again, this helps place the game within a frame of reference for the magazine programmer, as well as start to give them the foundations of creating their own new games based on what they may have learned.
Figure 4. Screenshot from Galactic Invaders
<27> Combining game mechanics and graphics can similarly be found in games that were released officially within the microcomputing scene at the time as programmers started to tinker with, modify, and experiment with new hybrid games further. This type of experimentation was seemingly common and eventually led to new games being created through the combining of known mechanics. The arcade started to shift into new territory and games were now becoming influenced by other micro specific titles on the market. This is something Austin also notes in discussing his follow up to the game Pi-Balled outlined above,
“During the same year I released Pi-in'ere, the follow up to Pi-Balled, again through Automata. While this game was not a direct copy of any arcade game it was certainly still inspired by the arcade games I was playing at the time. I was getting more confident with my programming abilities, so Pi-in'ere was a more complex game and had some elements of my own design. It was loosely based on the 1982 Namco arcade game Dig-Dug, and a Universal game called Mr. Do from the same year. While it took gameplay from both arcade games I was now also incorporating ideas from popular home computer games of the time that I was also playing. Games like Manic Miner and titles from Ultimate Play the Game” (private communication).
The arcade in this instance became remixed again, as it continued to be present in some elements of the game design, but also evolved into new genres and new ideas as the developers themselves became more confident with the platforms available to them. Now games were expanding beyond the arcade clone and taking on other ideas from the 1980s British gaming culture that was emerging more and more at this time, allowing for the development of more unique titles for players to access and explore.
Conclusions
<28> Not all games in the British home computer scene were based on arcade clones. However, it is clear to see the role they often played in not only encouraging game creation, but also allowing players to access re-makes of these well known titles when the arcades themselves were not always accessible. Many of these games came to an end in the mid-1980s as the original developers and publishers became wise to the many clones available and attempted to stop production with threats of action. As Austin notes of this period,
“By now [mid-1980s] the arcade companies were starting to realise people were copying their games and were actively halting the release of unofficial versions. They started producing official versions of their own. Because of this, my next few games were original titles.” (private communication)
These official ports also kept the elements of the arcade alive in players’ homes via repurposed versions for commercial gain as well as player nostalgia. The developers themselves also had to work with video footage and sometimes the original cabinets in order to make these conversions as authentic as possible as noted by Austin in his discussions of the conversion of Activision’s 1988 Sega game Altered Beast that he worked on, “We were supplied with video footage and access to the arcade machine. And the task was to try and copy the game as closely as possible on the Spectrum and Amstrad.” (private communication).
<29> This direct copying was part of the method used for creating licensed arcade ports, in much the same way that clones in the 1980s started to take shape. Watching video footage emphasises the importance of graphics, but also elements of gameplay, knowing full well that the porting of the arcade cabinet experience was not possible to other platforms as the materiality of the experience could not be fully replicated. Therefore, direct references to the games were an important part of ports, but once again, the games were created with compromises dependant on the platform’s limitations. Whereas some games ended up in lawsuits such as the K.C. Munchkin game for the Odyssey2 — the first defendant in a “software look and feel” copyright case instigated by Atari — other titles were not targeted [4]. The sheer amount of titles possible due to programmers being able to take control of the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro systems in the UK meant that not every game was traceable, and these computer games could also be converted and re-sold more easily than games released on cartridges by other companies.
<30> For the home programmers of the 1980s the arcades provided a starting point for game creation. Similarly these same arcade games acted as a reference point for players unable to always access the machines and wanting to extend the experience into their own homes on the emerging machines making that possible at the time. Cloning games benefited both those learning to make games, and those wanting to play them. Tracing these histories acts as an alternative to the often dominant histories of American and Japanese perspectives on computer and video games in the early 1980s, as so often seen in academic discourse. Whereas the Videogame Crash of 1983 within the USA is often cited in literature of this time, the British game industry was seemingly unaffected and continued to grow because of this experimentation and national drive towards computer literacy in its multiple forms. As much as arcade games live on in the various ports, merchandise and iconography of both a retro past and the nostalgia continued by those living and playing throughout that era, so too do the arcade game clones that were created through the various fans documenting them online and providing access to emulators in order to play them. It is by recognising the nuances and availability of particular platforms, the importance of software and the need to tell alternative histories of these events that we can start to piece together an even larger history of videogames in the 1980s via one of the many starting points — the arcade.
Notes
[1] This image can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/.
[2] More information about the Eurogamer Expo and Margate’s GEEK festivals can be found at the following websites: http://www.egxlondon.net/; http://www.geek2013.co.uk/.
[3] WHSmiths is a British newsagent chain that is still currently found on many highstreets. It generally sells magazines, newspapers, books and stationary, but also sold (digital and physical) games for many years.
[4] This case is outlined on the Historical Software Collection of the Internet Archive Software Collection available here: https://archive.org/.
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