Hello its blogging time again and it's video game history time again! And today, we're talking about Something a little different because were not talking about games but rather the software used to make them.
Today, there are a wide variaty of video game creation systems that can allow anyone with the knowhow to make their own games: Construct, Clickteam, Buildbox, Game Editor, GameSalad, GDevelop Stencyl, Gamemaker, the list goes on.
But things weren't always like this, back in the early days of home computers if you wanted to write a game, you'd have to either write it in BASIC or assembly language yourself. No editors for graphics, No editors for sound, and it could really only be coded with text.
But one peice of software managed to change all of that, it was a program that not only let you make games, but do so in a more interactive way and give you all the tools you needed to make a game. That software was Pinball Construction Set.
Then while attending the PhD program at UC Berkeley, he buys an Apple II home computer late in 1978 and started programming games on it. His first game for the Apple II was Penny Arcade, a version of Pong that had 4 board variations with difficulty ajustments and gravity settings.
Budge mannaged to trade Penny Arcade to Apple thmselves for a printer, and while writing unliscenced conversions of arcade games at California Pacific, He joined Apple in 1981 as a part-time graphics engineer. There, Budge grew in interest in pinball thanks to the enthuseasm of Steve Wozniak, and created Raster Blaster for the Apple II in 1981.
It was the first commercial true home computer pinball simulations, derived from Budge’s experience with the 1980 Williams table Firepower. Seeing potential in the game, He then left California Pacific to found BudgeCo. to market the Raster Blaster, which becomes a huge success.
However by 1982, he was tired of clones of games to be found in the arcades, He did not want to write another game, but began experimenting with game and graphical tools he had written for Raster Blaster. As part of the development process he purchased and disassembled a 1976 Gottlieb Target Alpha pinball machine, so his new project could accurately depict its components.
He studied the machine for hours and hours trying to capture every mechanic. Budge still didnt enjoy playing video games and pinball, and described having to play pinball for months during development as quote: "sheer torture".
The most unquie thing about the game was that it had a GUI Interface. At the time, it was ambitios to have a GUI interface for the Apple II given its limited memory and graphics capabilities. Althoug Budge did not work on the Apple Lisa project during his job at Apple employee, he was aware of it and the Graphic User Interface research at Xerox PARC, and gave Pinball Construction Set a Lisa-like user interface. He originally published and distributed the game via his publishing company BudgeCo in late 1982, but the game did not sell well, as BudgeCo did not have a large enough distribution network.
It seemed like Pinball Costruction Set was doomed to become a flop, but all hope was not lost. As Budge' program caught the attention of a recently formed software publisher, Electronic Arts or more widely known today as EA.
Now today, that would be a bad thing, considering EA's track record. However by that point they were still in their infancy and had yet to have major commercial success. EA was founded in 1982 out of a simple prediction. Back in 1975, Standford MBA student William “Trip” Hawkins used a computer model to figure out when he could form a company to make computer games.
Like Budge, Hawkins also grew his fasination with computers in his teen years. Growing up, Hawkins loved 2 things: Tabletop stratagy games and Sports, and combined them both often early in his career. Not only did he graduate with honors from Harvard, he also did it in a field that he created himself for the school: Strategy In Applied Game Theory. He created a table-top football strategy game in 1973 that ends up sold aroundthe country, and created a computer simulation of the 1974 Super Bowl, with the program predicting a Miami win of 23-6. When the game was actually played in Houston, Miami won 24-7.
In 1975, using information such as Intel’s invention of the first microprocessor, and the forming of the first computer retail store in the US, Dick and Lois Heiser’s The Computer Store, Hawkings created a computer model which concludes that he could feasibly start a home computer games company by 1982.
So in the meantime, Hawkins got his MBA from Stanford, focusing on finance, marketing, and organizational control. He then joined Apple in 1978 as Employee #68, after seeing the debut of the Apple II at the first West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977. There he worked as Manager of Market Planning, to convince the business community of the virtues of the Apple II and subsequent GUI-driven Lisa computer as business tools. He even got early demonstrations of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program designed by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for Personal Software.
Hawkins leaves Apple in 1982 to form Amazin’ Software, right on schedule. however he quickly thought the name didn't sound good and Late in the year, theyall got together for a meeting to change the name of the company, after the first choice of “SoftArt” is nixed by Software Arts head Dan Bricklin. Down to the finalists “Electronic Artists” and “Electronic Arts“, the rules are that everyone must agree, and if you go to bed you forfeit your vote, finally landing on Electronic Arts.
When forming the company, Hawkins wanted to do things differently than most computer game companies at the time. He had studied other forms of entertainment media like movies, music, and books and wanted to apply those same kind of characteristics to computer game publishing. So the developers were treated as artists, and games were sold directly to retailers. Also EA was one of the first computer game compaines to sell their games in cardboard boxes, record albulm sytle boxes known as Folios. At the time, retail computer games were mostly made by hobbyists who would write a game to a cassette tape or floppy disk, package it along with a photocopied manual in a ziplock bag, and was hung up on a bulletin board at a local computer store. Realizing this, Hawkins wanted packaging that was A). inexpensive to manufacture and B). was unique enough to stand out. And since a record album sold for less the $10 at the time, it just made sense.
Their first game was Hard Hat Mack, a Donkey Kong type platforming game on which you play a construction worker who must complete specific objectives in a construction site while avoiding wandering vandals and OSHA representatives. Another title they released was One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird, a basketball game which was also one of the first games in which you could play as celebrities in this case, Julius Erving and Larry Bird, two popular basketball players at the time.
Recommended to Hawkins through Steve Wozniak, Budge joined Electronic Arts and Pinball Construction Set was released through EA in 1983 as one of the initial offerings by the company. It was also ported to the Commodore 64, Atari 8bit line, IBM PC, and even the Machintosh. A Coleco Adam version combined with Hard Hat Mack under the title The Best of Electronic Arts was completed but never released.
Now its worth noting that Pinball Construction Set wasnt the first construction set game, as Brouderbund had released a similar game around the same time calle The Arcade Machine, which allowed people to make their own Galaxian type games. However that game was no where near as user freindly and as polished as Pinball Construction Set.
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As for the game itself its pretty simple. the screen is divide into 2 sections: the main table on the left, and the part box on the right. By using the joystick you can drag and drop bumpers, flippers, spinners, and other parts. In adition to that, you can also edit the table itself with the hammer scisors and arrow icon, paint in details with the paintbrush icon, play the table with the flipper and ball icon, zoom in to edit pixel by pixel with the magnafying glass icon, alter the pysics with the world icon, set the score values and target sounds with the AND gate icon, and load, save and make play disks with the disk icon.
The games design was a revelation, as now people could make their own computer pinball games and save them to bootable disks that they could share with their friends. The game soon became a smash big hit, By November 1989, the game had sold over 250,000 copies. EA also followed up with simmilar programs like Music Construction Set, Adventure Construction Set, Racing Destruction Set.
Budge was sent out on a press tour and signs copies of the game for fans at computer store appearances. He rewrote the program for the Sega Genesis in 1993, as Virtual Pinball and later joins Hawkins at 3DO in 1993, as a distinguished engineer.
But the games true legacy is the concepts it pioneered as a GUI based game creation sysem that helped game development move out of the complex world of high level coding to simple easy to use and understand interfaces that made game design accessable to everyone. that wraps it up for my entry today, as always, Thanks for reading! see you next time!
