23
Micronauts
In 1973, engineers Charles Muench and Terry Hughey formed a company called Intelligent Systems Corporation (ISC) in Norcross, Georgia. Muench previously founded a company called Integrated Systems that manufactured remote alarm and control equipment for the electric utility industry, and Hughey had served as his director of R&D. Muench sold the profitable company to Esterline Corporation in early 1972 and departed a year and a half later. Now he was back in business with the intent of building a color terminal for the time-sharing market.1
In February 1976, ISC introduced the Intercolor 8001, an intelligent terminal kit driven by an Intel 8080 processor with 4K of RAM and an 80 × 25 full-color display that cost $1395.2 In December 1976, IS began selling a $1,295 add-on for the terminal called the Compucolor 8001 with an additional 8K of RAM, Microsoft BASIC, and an 8-track tape reader to turn the terminal into a full-fledged computer.3 While expensive, the Compucolor 8001 was the first microcomputer kit with an integrated monitor and keyboard capable of outputting graphics in full color. One of the major selling points was that it could play games such as Star Trek, Lunar Lander, Hangman, and Pong.4
In October 1976, Muench bought Hughey out of ISC because his partner wanted to pursue the high-end graphics market, while he wanted to continue in the low-end microcomputer market.5 He designed a new fully assembled computer released in late 1978 as the Compucolor II that integrated a floppy disk drive in lieu of the 8-track tape drive in the 8001 because the company discovered the tape wore out quickly.6 By using a smaller 13-inch monitor and ditching the terminal functions, Muench was able to bring the cost down compared to the 8001, but it still cost $1,495 for a system with 8K of RAM, $1,795 for 16K of RAM, and $2,395 for the maximum of 32K of RAM. Due largely to its cost, the Compucolor II never caught on and was discontinued in 1980 so ISC could refocus on the high-end terminal market.7
The Compucolor 8001 was probably the first computer advertised with a significant emphasis on its game-playing capabilities. In June 1977, two more computers debuted with the support of ads that emphasized games. The first was the Noval 760 developed by the engineers at Gremlin Industries but marketed by a separate subsidiary called Noval Inc. led by Gremlin VP of Engineering Jerry Hansen because Gremlin president Frank Fogelman was not fully behind the product.8 Built around an 8080 processor, the computer shipped with 16K of RAM, a 12-inch monitor that could be upgraded to full color, a tape drive, a printer, and significant expansion capabilities. It also shipped with several flawless conversions of Gremlin arcade games like Blockade and the Seawolf derivative Depth Charge. The complete package was contained within a wooden desk, which raised the price to $2,995 and guaranteed it would not be successful.9
The other computer that began advertising that June, the Apple II, fared better than the Compucolor or Noval products even though sales remained modest over the first year. Nevertheless, as the cheapest fully assembled computer on the market capable of bitmapped color graphics, it supported a small game developer ecosystem, as did its less graphically capable but better selling competitors, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET. While games for microcomputers did not threaten video game consoles as the primary outlet for electronic entertainment, the companies established between 1977 and 1979 laid the groundwork for a thriving computer game ecosystem that would flower at the start of the 1980s.
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The earliest games for the new wave of fully assembled computers that arrived in 1977 were released by the computer manufacturers themselves. At Commodore, Leonard Tramiel created several games as he debugged the PET hardware.10 The first games for the system, available for $11.00 each, included ports of the classic BASIC programs Lunar Lander, Wumpus, Kingdom, and a Star Trek variant called Spacetrek; card games Black Jack and Draw Poker; and a ball-and-paddle game called Target Pong in which the player places bumpers around a playfield to guide a ball to a target.11 The TRS-80 shipped with a game cassette featuring blackjack and backgammon programs.12 The next year, Tandy released a cassette called Games Pack I featuring Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Hamurabi, a version of Lunar Lander called Space Taxi, and Star Pilot, a target shooting game inspired by the Death Star assault in the movie Star Wars.
Both the PET and the TRS-80 displays were character based, so the graphics in these early games were practically non-existent. In Space Pilot, for example, the sides of the trench and the enemy ships are rendered with a combination of dashes, brackets, and asterisks. The Apple II, by contrast, could generate bitmaps and shipped with Breakout on a cassette tape as befit Wozniak’s initial goal of creating a computer that could play the game. A user reference manual released in early 1978 contained type-in listings for several more programs, including Pong and Star Trek.13
Perhaps the first computer game offered for sale not released by a hardware company was MicroChess. Its author, Peter Jennings, was a British-born Canadian who became so enamored with electronics he started building his own simple computers when he was 11 years old. In junior high school, he learned how to program in FORTRAN by reading a book and performed his first calculations at the University of Waterloo for a science fair project. Jennings planned to become a physicist, but after he completed his master’s degree in 1971, he learned that jobs were becoming scarce in the field as the U.S. government cut back in the aftermath of the Moon landing. Jennings decided to earn an MBA instead.14
After business school, Jennings worked for Gulf Oil for a few years, but he left to join a time-sharing company called Comshare in order to have greater access to a computer. When the first microcomputer kits appeared, Jennings was intrigued, but they were too expensive for him. That changed in April 1976 when he learned about the KIM-1 from MOS Technology, which he subsequently bought. Back in high school, he had become interested in chess and developed a primitive system that could execute several standard openings and play a few moves.15 Now with a more capable computer, Jennings programmed a complete chess AI largely based on the classic chess book My System by Aron Nimzovich.16
Figuring at the very least he had an interesting novelty product on his hands someone could use to show off his computer, Jennings decided to sell MicroChess. He began advertising the game for the KIM-1 in computer magazines in November 1976 and formed a company called Micro-Ware Limited in April 1977.17 By summer 1978, Jennings had ported MicroChess to many of the popular computer systems of the day, including the S-100 bus standard, the TRS-80, and the PET. At this point, Jennings was introduced to a man named Dan Fylstra.
After graduating from MIT with an electrical engineering degree in 1975, Fylstra worked for a company called Intermetrics, where he met a regular contributor to Popular Electronics named Carl Helmers who introduced him to the emerging microcomputer market. The duo established their own magazine devoted to microcomputer hardware called Byte that debuted its first issue in September 1975 with Helmers as editor and Fylstra as associate editor. Fylstra returned to school to get his MBA and engaged in market research on the microcomputer industry as part of his coursework. Upon graduating in 1977, he established Personal Software.18 Helmers put Jennings in touch with Fylstra, who asked to add MicroChess to his software catalog. Jennings became a partner in Personal Software, and MicroChess became the company’s first major hit. The game sold more than 50,000 units by 1979, mostly of the TRS-80 version that Radio Shack picked up for both its catalog and its stores.19 Other TRS-80 games sold by the company in 1979 included a real-time version of the classic Star Trek game called Time Trek and a version of the arcade game Blockade.
MicroChess soon had competition from a chess program called Sargon developed by the husband and wife team of Dan and Kathleen Spracklen. A math major in college, Dan learned how to program after taking a job with McDonnell Douglas after graduation. Three years later, he took a job with UNIVAC in the San Diego area. An avid chess player in college, Dan toyed with the idea of programming a chess algorithm from time to time but did not seriously consider doing so until he went to an early MITS sales convention in San Diego in 1975. Dan was not interested in assembling his own computer so did not buy one of the kits, but he did start plotting out a chess program on paper in anticipation of fully assembled computers arriving at some point in the future.20
The Spracklens ultimately purchased a Z80-based computer called the WaveMate Jupiter III that was not really a microcomputer but rather an industrial control system that cost several thousand dollars. Kathleen, a programmer in her own right, began playing around with graphics on the system and added visuals to Dan’s chess program. After the husband and wife team completed the crude program, they brought it to the second West Coast Computer Faire in March 1978 to compete in a tournament of chess AI. Their program, dubbed Sargon, won the tournament.21
Later that year, the Spracklens started advertising the program listing for Sargon in Byte at a cost of $15.00. Thanks to the free publicity from winning the tournament, orders began pouring in. In 1979, the book publisher Hayden entered the computer software business and offered a deal to the Spacklens to publish their program as a book. Soon after, Hayden also released it on cassette tape for the TRS-80 and Apple II. Before the end of the year, the Spracklens created an improved version of the program that Hayden published as Sargon II.22
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By the end of 1979, a handful of companies had emerged alongside Personal Software and Hayden Books as a cottage industry developed to provide games for microcomputers. The most prolific of these companies was also the first, a firm based in the Los Angeles area called Softape. The lynchpin of the company was William Smith, who first became interested in computers around 1977 after seeing an article in Popular Electronics about building an S-100 computer and decided to construct one with his friend Dave Mosher. Through the experience, the duo decided there might be a market for protective cases for hobbyist computers and formed a company called International Computer Accessories to market plexiglass cases for IMSAI computers and other popular brands.23
Mosher also owned another business that supplied fish and aquarium supplies to pet stores. Through this job he met a fellow salesman named Gary Koffler, who also happened to be an Apple II enthusiast. Mosher introduced Koffler to Smith, leading the two to collaborate on a program together called Rollin’ on the River. Koffler started trading the game in local Apple II circles, where it attracted the attention of a talented programmer named Bill DePew. Subsequently, Smith, Koffler, and DePew decided to go into business together to sell both hardware and software products for the Apple II and established Softech in 1977. Soon after, the trio discovered a San Diego company already went by that name, so they renamed the firm Softape after the storage medium for their programs.24
Softape’s business plan was to collect the best programs being traded in hobbyist circles or published in magazines as type-in listings into cassette collections called “modules” to simplify the process of locating and acquiring new programs. Customers would pay a $20 membership fee for the ability to order any module they desired at a cost of $2 each. The first module contained three games. Saucer War by DePew places two blocky ships on either side of the screen with an asteroid field between them. Using the paddle controllers, the players can move their ships up and down to line up a shot on the opposing player. Whoever depletes his opponent’s energy first wins. Digital Derby, also by DePew, allowed the player to bet on the results of a horse race.25
The third game in the set was written by outside author Gary Shannon. Shannon first learned how to program when he was fresh out of high school in 1963 from a neighbor who worked for IBM. He subsequently attended a programming school in Los Angeles and did contract work installing IBM computers. Shannon then took a job with California State University Northridge while pursuing a master’s in computer science but dropped out of the program because he felt it lacked real-world relevance. Around the same time, he discovered the Apple II, became addicted to game programming, and took a job with Rainbow Computing in Los Angeles, one of the earliest computer stores. Shannon contributed programs to multiple early companies. For Softape’s first module, he programmed Advanced Dragon Maze, a chase game in which the player must escape a randomly generated maze that slowly fills in on the screen as the player moves through it while avoiding a dragon that pursues him.26 Picturing said dragon is mostly left to the player’s imagination, as it is represented by a red rectangle.
Over time, Softape decided that some of its games were worth standalone releases. These included several games by Shannon such as Jupiter Express, in which the player navigates a ship through an asteroid field, and an adaptation of the board game Othello. They also released multiple games by the company’s most prolific contributor, Bob Bishop. A physics major at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Bishop first became interested in programming when he read through a FORTRAN textbook to pass the time while working a summer job in the school’s science library. Bishop earned his master’s at UCLA and then worked for Xerox and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1975, he saw the ads for the earliest kit computers and decided to buy one. Bishop ended up buying an Apple I in 1976 and created one of the few games developed for it, a Star Trek variant published in the magazine Interface Age in May 1977.27
When the Apple II appeared, Bishop wanted to upgrade, but the computer was out of his price range. He visited Apple and met with both Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula, who agreed to sell him an Apple II at a lower price if he traded in his Apple I. Bishop received his computer in July 1977 and immediately wrote a game called Rocket Pilot, a Lunar Lander variant in which the player has to take off on one side of a mountain and land on the other side.28 Bishop published the game in the January 1978 edition of another magazine called Kilobaud. Bishop followed the program with a third-person target shooting game called Saucer Invasion, a first-person target shooting game called Star Wars, and a game called Space Maze, in which the player must navigate a ship through a maze without crashing into the walls. Softape eventually published all four of these programs alongside several other games by Bishop.29
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Softape was most likely the first dedicated publisher of Apple II software, but the most prolific company in the late 1970s was Programma International. Programma founder David Gordon grew up in Brooklyn until his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 18 years old. After graduating from California State University Los Angeles with a master’s degree in accounting in 1964, he bounced around as an auditor for major entertainment companies like Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. In 1977, he became aware of the burgeoning microcomputer industry and placed orders for both a PET and a TRS-80. He cancelled both when he saw the Apple II and its superior graphics.30
Over the next year, Gordon visited every computer store, attended every user group meeting, and introduced himself to every Apple II enthusiast he could find in his quest to acquire as many Apple II programs as possible, gaining a reputation as one of the most prolific software pirates of his day. In 1978, he befriended a man named Mel Norell who ran a company called Programma Associates that sold software for a Motorola 6800-based microcomputer called the Sphere, a short-lived computer developed in Utah that may have been the first sold with an integrated keyboard and monitor. Gordon had already considered turning his obsession into a business, so he collaborated with Norell to establish Programma International.31
Programma gathered software submissions in all areas from utilities to productivity software, but one of its most successful areas was games. Examples include Laser Turret, in which the player controls a laser in the middle of the screen and uses the paddle controller to rotate it to strike targets that appear from the edges of the screen, and Pirates, an artillery duel style game in which the player must sink an approaching pirate ship by destroying the masts and hitting the hull before the ship destroys the fortress upon which the player’s cannon rests.
More impressive games came from Chris Oberth, an early Apple II user inspired to become a computer programmer after reading Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines in 1974. His first computer experience came on the PLATO system, which he encountered while a student at Wright Junior College and DeVry University in Chicago. He subsequently purchased an Apple II and learned how to program on it by typing in games from magazines like Creative Computing and Interface Age.32 Oberth contributed the games Phasor Zap and 3-D Docking Mission to Programma. Phasor Zap is a shooting game in which the player uses the Apple II’s paddle controller to move a targeting reticule around the screen to shoot enemy ships that converge on the middle of the screen and fire at the player if not destroyed in time. 3-D Docking Mission requires the player to navigate an asteroid field and dock with a space station before he runs out of fuel. While two-dimensional, the game world is displayed in split screen from a top view and a side view simultaneously to provide a three-dimensional effect.
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The first microcomputer games written between 1976 and 1978 were limited in several ways. The PET and the TRS-80 only supported character graphics, limiting games to basic shapes and symbols. The Apple II supported a bitmapped screen, but a lack of hardware sprites meant creating graphics-intensive games that also played at a decent speed was difficult. These problems were compounded by both limited RAM and the limitations of the original Integer BASIC that shipped with the computer, which lacked the ability to do floating point calculations. Most early games stuck with the system’s “low-res” graphics mode, which offered 16 colors, but only at a screen resolution of 40×48. This made for large, blocky pixels and objects rendered as basic geometric shapes. “Hi-res” mode offered a resolution of 140×92 but required at least 12K of RAM. As many early Apple users did not own systems with that much memory, most games released in the 1970s stuck with low-res graphics to maximize their customer base. Both low-res and hi-res games running at any speed were beset by constant flickering.
Due to the limited graphical capabilities of the leading microcomputers, they were not suited to the fast-paced action games dominating the arcade. Instead, many of the earliest successful microcomputer programs revolved around exploration and puzzle solving, taking their lead from a new pen and paper game sweeping through college campuses and computer hobbyist circles called Dungeons & Dragons.