By invitation · 1980 — 1996

Nobody had ever seen this before.

An appreciation society for the years when a screen doing anything at all was astonishing. Four machines, sixteen years, and a few thousand people who got whole worlds out of hardware that had no business running them.

What the society keeps Members sign in

Defender of the Crown running on the COMMODORE 64 — DEFENDER OF THE CROWN

Cinemaware · 1987 · COMMODORE 64

APPLE ][

1980 — 1989 · 1,481 games

Six colours, and somebody drew a castle anyway.

The hi-res screen was 280 by 192 and it could show six colours, two of which changed if you put them next to each other. There was no sound chip — one bit, flipped by the processor, and everything you heard was somebody counting cycles. A game was one or two people for a year, in assembly, and it shipped on a floppy with a photocopied map in the box.

]

6502 · 1.023 MHz
48K
280×192 · SIX COLOURS
ONE-BIT SPEAKER

Mystery House on the APPLE ][ — MYSTERY HOUSE

On-Line Systems · 1980

The first adventure with pictures. Every room a line drawing.

Apple Panic on the APPLE ][ — APPLE PANIC

Brøderbund · 1981

Dig a hole. Wait. Drop something into it. That is the entire game.

Snack Attack on the APPLE ][ — SNACK ATTACK

Datamost · 1981

A maze game from the year everybody made one, and one of the few worth loading.

Castle Wolfenstein on the APPLE ][ — CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN

Muse · 1981

Guards that shouted at you in German, through a speaker with one bit.

Choplifter on the APPLE ][ — CHOPLIFTER

Brøderbund · 1982

A rescue game in which you can land on the people you came for.

Aztec on the APPLE ][ — AZTEC

Datamost · 1982

A tomb explored sideways, with a machete, a pistol and dynamite.

Miner 2049er on the APPLE ][ — MINER 2049ER

Big Five · 1982

Every square of every floor had to be walked over. That was the whole idea.

Lode Runner on the APPLE ][ — LODE RUNNER

Brøderbund · 1983

150 levels, and an editor in the box so you could build the 151st.

Karateka on the APPLE ][ — KARATEKA

Brøderbund · 1984

Boot the disk upside down and the whole game runs upside down.

The Bard's Tale on the APPLE ][ — THE BARD'S TALE

Electronic Arts · 1985

A dungeon under a frozen town, mapped on graph paper because nothing else would.

Ultima IV on the APPLE ][ — ULTIMA IV

Origin Systems · 1985

The first one you could not win by killing anything at all.

Airheart on the APPLE ][ — AIRHEART

Brøderbund · 1986

Dan Gorlin again, in a dithered pastel nobody else got out of six colours.

Prince of Persia on the APPLE ][ — PRINCE OF PERSIA

Brøderbund · 1989

Mechner filmed his brother running in a car park and traced every frame.

The title screen was a game's whole face here. There was no box on a shop shelf to look at and no advertising anybody would ever see, so the first thing the disk drew had to do all of it at once — and somebody sat down and drew each one a pixel at a time, in six colours, two of which would not sit beside each other.

COMMODORE 64

1983 — 1993 · 11,938 games

The one that got into the house.

Cheaper than the machines it beat and sold in a department store, so it ended up in bedrooms rather than studies — and it arrived with hardware nothing else had at the price: sprites the chip moved for you, a scrolling register, and the SID, a real three-voice synthesiser with filters, which is why people still cover music written for it. Games came on tape, took four minutes to load, and were written by teenagers as often as by companies.

READY.

6510 · 0.985 MHz
64K
VIC-II SPRITES
SID 6581 · 16 COLOURS

Blue Max on the COMMODORE 64 — BLUE MAX

Synapse Software · 1983

Isometric, diagonal, and scrolling in a direction the hardware was not built for.

M.U.L.E. on the COMMODORE 64 — M.U.L.E.

Electronic Arts · 1983

Four players economically ruining each other on one keyboard. Still unbeaten at it.

Raid Over Moscow on the COMMODORE 64 — RAID OVER MOSCOW

Access Software · 1984

Denounced in three parliaments, which did its sales no harm whatsoever.

Paradroid on the COMMODORE 64 — PARADROID

Hewson · 1985

You do not shoot the robots. You take them over, one circuit puzzle at a time.

Ghosts 'n Goblins on the COMMODORE 64 — GHOSTS 'N GOBLINS

Elite · 1986

Finish it and it tells you the first run was a dream, then makes you do it again.

World Games on the COMMODORE 64 — WORLD GAMES

Epyx · 1986

Eight events, eight countries, and a joystick that did not survive the caber.

California Games on the COMMODORE 64 — CALIFORNIA GAMES

Epyx · 1987

Epyx stopped pretending it was the Olympics and let you do a half-pipe instead.

Defender of the Crown on the COMMODORE 64 — DEFENDER OF THE CROWN

Cinemaware · 1987

It looked like a painting, which on this machine nobody thought was available.

Almost every C64 disk that survived is a CRACKED one, so the first thing most of these images shows is not the game at all — it is the calling card of whoever broke the copy protection, signed it and passed it on. A whole second culture grew up inside the software, and it is the reason any of it still exists.

MS-DOS

1989 — 1996 · 7,666 games

320 by 200, and all 256 colours at once.

Mode 13h gave you a quarter of a megabyte of screen and a palette you chose yourself, and a Sound Blaster gave the room something better than a beep. What actually moved these games was the postage: publishers put episode one in the wild for nothing and let people copy it, and a game could be everywhere in a week without a shop ever stocking it.

C:\>

VGA MODE 13H
320×200 · 256 COLOURS
SOUND BLASTER
SHAREWARE

SimCity on the MS-DOS — SIMCITY

Maxis · 1989

A game with no way to win, which publishers kept calling the problem with it.

The Secret of Monkey Island on the MS-DOS — THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND

LucasArts · 1990

You could not die, and it was funnier for it.

Commander Keen on the MS-DOS — COMMANDER KEEN

Apogee · 1990

Smooth scrolling on hardware everybody agreed could not do smooth scrolling.

Lemmings on the MS-DOS — LEMMINGS

Psygnosis · 1991

You control nobody. You only change what is in front of them.

Wolfenstein 3D on the MS-DOS — WOLFENSTEIN 3D

Apogee · 1992

Episode one cost nothing, which is exactly how it got everywhere.

Alone in the Dark on the MS-DOS — ALONE IN THE DARK

Interplay · 1992

Polygon people walking through painted rooms, and it was frightening.

DOOM on the MS-DOS — DOOM

id Software · 1993

Uploaded to a university FTP server that fell over under the weight of it.

Day of the Tentacle on the MS-DOS — DAY OF THE TENTACLE

LucasArts · 1993

Three centuries at once, and a puzzle you solve in one to change another.

Master of Orion on the MS-DOS — MASTER OF ORION

MicroProse · 1993

Turn-based, and it quietly took the entire night.

Descent on the MS-DOS — DESCENT

Interplay · 1995

Six degrees of freedom, and a generation discovering it got motion sick.

Warcraft II on the MS-DOS — WARCRAFT II

Blizzard · 1995

Two players over a modem, which meant one household phone line.

Duke Nukem 3D on the MS-DOS — DUKE NUKEM 3D

GT Interactive · 1996

Rooms stacked above rooms, which the engine before it could not draw.

AND WHAT THEY CAME IN.

The box front for Sid Meier's Civilization — SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION

MicroProse · 1991

The box front for Dune II — DUNE II

Virgin · 1992

The box front for Star Control II — STAR CONTROL II

Accolade · 1992

The box front for Sam & Max Hit the Road — SAM & MAX HIT THE ROAD

LucasArts · 1993

The box front for Simon the Sorcerer — SIMON THE SORCERER

Adventure Soft · 1993

The box front for Star Wars: TIE Fighter — STAR WARS: TIE FIGHTER

LucasArts · 1994

The box front for X-COM: UFO Defense — X-COM: UFO DEFENSE

MicroProse · 1994

The box front for The Elder Scrolls: Arena — THE ELDER SCROLLS: ARENA

Bethesda · 1994

Seven years in which the screen never changed size and everything else did — flat to isometric to polygonal to a room stacked above another room, all of it inside the same 320 by 200 window.

THE ARCADE

1980 — 1996 · 2,157 cabinets

Hardware built for exactly one game.

There was no general-purpose machine. Each cabinet was a board designed around a single idea and thrown away when the idea was finished — a beam that drew lines instead of pixels, two joysticks because one could not say move and shoot at once, a set of bicycle handlebars bolted to the front. You had one coin and about ninety seconds to justify it.

INSERT COIN

PURPOSE-BUILT BOARDS
VECTOR AND RASTER
ONE COIN
NO CONTINUES

The Defender arcade marquee — DEFENDER

Williams · 1980

Five buttons and a stick. Nobody could play it and everybody fed it.

The Berzerk arcade marquee — BERZERK

Stern · 1980

It talked. In 1980 a machine shouting at you across a room was new.

The Centipede arcade marquee — CENTIPEDE

Atari · 1980

Dona Bailey co-designed it, and the trackball made it feel like nothing else.

The Missile Command arcade marquee — MISSILE COMMAND

Atari · 1980

You cannot win. You only choose which city to lose.

The Joust arcade marquee — JOUST

Williams · 1982

Two players, one screen, and the standing question of whether you were friends.

The Robotron: 2084 arcade marquee — ROBOTRON: 2084

Williams · 1982

Two joysticks, because one could not say move and shoot at the same time.

The Dig Dug arcade marquee — DIG DUG

Namco · 1982

Inflate them until they burst. The music only plays while you are walking.

The Sinistar arcade marquee — SINISTAR

Williams · 1982

“I hunger.” It came for you, and it was faster than you were.

The Q*bert arcade marquee — Q*BERT

Mylstar · 1983

Swearing, rendered entirely as punctuation.

The Marble Madness arcade marquee — MARBLE MADNESS

Atari Games · 1984

Six levels against a clock, and most people never saw the last one.

The Paperboy arcade marquee — PAPERBOY

Atari Games · 1984

The controller was a set of handlebars.

The Rampage arcade marquee — RAMPAGE

Bally Midway · 1986

Three players, one city, and you are the monsters.

The Mortal Kombat arcade marquee — MORTAL KOMBAT

Midway · 1992

Digitised actors, and a code parents first heard about on the news.

The Metal Slug arcade marquee — METAL SLUG

Nazca · 1996

Drawn by hand, frame by frame, in the year everything else went 3D.

The marquee is the part you could see from the door. It is the only piece of an arcade game designed to be read across a room over other people's heads, which is why it is lit, why it is three feet wide, and why you can still name every one of these forty years later.

MEMBERSHIP

By invitation, and it stays small.

There is no sign-up form, no waiting list and nothing to buy. Membership comes from somebody already here, one person at a time, because a room this specific stops being worth sitting in the moment it stops being small.

Members bring their own disks. Nothing is distributed from here — the society publishes names, years, authors and pictures, and what you play is what you already own. That has been the arrangement since the first day and it is not going to change.

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