This catalogue was an actual physical book, full of generic ideas that came out of regular brainstorming sessions, where the whole coin-op team would camp down someplace away from the office, and discuss new proposals for upcoming games that they thought might work.ĭave recalls a place an hour away from Atari’s Sunnyvale offices in Santa Cruz County called Pajero Dunes as being a particularly favourite location for these away-day sessions. Programmers could either come up with their own scope for a game, and literally pitch it to the management of Atari’s Coin Operated Division for approval or pick an idea from an already-approved catalogue of ideas. After the success of Missile Command, and its rise to cult status amongst the playing public and internally at Atari, what was going to be next? Deciding on what to work on would be largely his own decision, and at Atari, there were two ways of going about choosing an idea for a game: Probably more from his own sense of drive and desire to succeed, Dave found himself under pressure to produce another hit game. That game was none other than the illustrious Missile Command, a huge hit for Atari, eventually selling over 14,000 upright units. It was named after Theurer (rather perversely), as he was the only designer up to that point to have his first game released – something normally unheard of, as most programmers would stumble at their first attempt. So much so that Atari’s arcade division had an unwritten rule known as Theurer’s Law, which stated that “No designer gets his/her first game published”. Now highly respected internally at the company, he had very quickly been catapulted to Superstar Programmer status. Its creator, Dave Theurer had just finished up Missile Command, having previously worked on Atari’s Four Player Soccer game. This week, I wanted to take a more detailed look at how the game was made. Nothing like it had been seen before, and arguably, nothing has come close since.Īs Atari’s first full colour vector game, Tempest not only broke new technical ground, reinforcing Atari’s position at the top of the arcade development scene, but also threw something completely new at the playing public. More than any other classic arcade game, Tempest hit the arcade scene like a juggernaut. It’s a brave man who tries to criticize Atari’s seminal groundbreaking game Tempest.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |