 I'm rim. I'm Scott and we are the hosts of Geeknives. It is a podcast. It's online You can use Google to find this thing But if you enjoy anything that happens in the next hour while we talk about Atari game design Then I encourage you to type that word into Google and you'll find all our biz including a lot of videos of Other panels we've done at PAX's for the last decade plus But we're here today to talk about Atari game design now What do we mean by that or more importantly? Why Atari? Now on one hand the Atari was not the first Console to make it into houses. There was Pong. There were other things before that But Atari was one of the biggest in those early days It was almost the first really big one at least you know in the United States, right? Arguably it might have been the minimum viable console to reach a mass market There were so many Atari's out there It became the first console that a lot of people had and a lot of people were using and you could count on friends Having them there was a user base. You could sell games for it, but Minimum means minimum so the Atari was an extremely limited console And if you're younger than us you might not quite understand how limiting the Atari was compared to even an old Nintendo so uh, you know it came out at a time where you know a personal computer, right? You could buy which very very expensive, right? And sure enough would be more powerful than the Atari 2600 But the price made it prohibitive for like anyone, right? The Atari 2600 was you know the best electronics You could get at a time for a price that you know Someone might be able to buy as like a kid's toy only that didn't that didn't have any other use like a Computer would have yep because while there were productivity like learn basic programs on the Atari 2600 They were not they were not things you would actually want to use But to really drive this home, I'm not encouraging that you pirate software the screenshot is just to illustrate a point this is every Atari 2600 game Every single one including a bunch of things that were never released And I want you to look at those file now those those file sizes because that's a K not an M That is five five hundred and eighty two kilobytes is every set the all the entirety of every Atari game Starting with numbers through the letter E that was ever made in human history I can fit you could you could take an MP a single MP3 All right, or maybe a couple of them or maybe like a few photos Maybe even just one photo from your high-resolution digital camera And that would take up as much storage space as every Atari game Atari 2600 game ever made and released I was I was about to say I could fit these on two floppy disks, maybe three, but that also dates us quite a bit yep so Why are we talking about this really a lot of you are here at PAX because you play games some of you want to make games Many of you probably have very strong opinions about games, but a thing about game design That's pretty universal is that Generally when you're put under limitations when there are constraints on what you can do in a game or what you can do Making a game that's where creativity tends to flourish I mean that you know, it's not a Like a set rule for the entire universe, but in general, you know When you give most people like a task right to create something right, you know, and it can and if you just say it can be Whatever right no rules do whatever you want just a big white sheet of paper They'll people stare at a white sheet of paper and they don't know what the heck to do with it, right? Yeah, hey Scott. Tell me a story about anything Tell me a story about a bear with a knife Okay You just you know, it's like give or see if I gave you a white piece of paper and I just Pre-drew just like a few lines on it Just I you know, there was some start lines there just pre-existing and you're gonna doodle something Well, your your mind is gonna like add on to those lines the same way that like when you look at clouds in the sky Your mind says oh, that's a turtle. Oh, that's a cloud. I guess Lumpy space princess you whatever right so much in that same way if you're making games if you just start with some lines Already drawn it has to fit in this small space of the Atari 2600 You only have this many colors to work with you only have this frame rate to work with You only have this controller to work with right that really can help get your mind going and It help your design process go a lot faster and also push you into areas You would might not have gone given the blank white sheet of paper Yep now of course there are giant triple a games that take five plus years to make and an army of developers and those are great games we're Not saying that every limitation is necessary in all cases and many limitations Actually, you know creativity in some ways. Yeah, and a lot of those triple a games didn't start with a white sheet of paper I mean they don't have techno lot the technological limitations the tarry 2600 games had But a lot of them are just like all right, we're gonna make an FPS like That's their pre-drawn line right is what they've decided before there they get going yep But that's really this is one of the things we want you to think about while we play some of these Atari games Don't worry. We're gonna play a bunch of Atari games later on in this panel But think about limitations think about distilling games down to their essence This is one of the most important skills You can have as a player as a designer as a critic anything in the game world is Understanding what a game is at its core So can you take some cowboys? Problematic themes around what cowboys were really like a side But some cowboys are gonna shoot each other and that amazing box art I cannot stress enough how good the box art was on all the tarry games Like if you want an aesthetic that speaks to me personally it is that aesthetic But well, I think the Atari games because the games themselves were so limited right? I think that they intentionally, you know put a lot of effort into the box art Not just as a way to sell the game right because it might be hard to sell it if people saw the actual screenshots right They were on the back of the box so then the front of the box They might not impress right but also to stoke the imagination of the player, right? You know, it's like if you play Super Breakout and you've only ever seen the game itself It's it's you know, but if you play Super Breakout and you're like thinking about that amazing box art with the with the space people Right the astronauts on it. It's like damn right it can maybe you know It adds to the game even though it's not part of you know the actual software But it also forces you especially as a designer to really think about what is this game about? What is the actual core gameplay core mechanic core feeling you want the players to experience? What is the the bare minimum the thing that you're trying to do and you can start there and Build up from that or in the case of the tarry start there And that's about as far as you can get but the fact that it forces you to interrogate that a lot of games Have trouble where they try to do too many things at once They try to have too many cool mechanics You've all played a game that has a bunch of mechanics and even like role-playing games Look at old advanced Dungeons and Dragons how many rules were in that book that nobody read that nobody touched nobody dealt with those weird systems So war why were they even there? What were they doing? Are they just confusing the game if you can distill a game down because what I've got on the screen? That's not the entire sprite sheet for outlaw, but that is 90% of the sprite sheet for outlaw You sprite is very loosely. Yeah, I mean the Atari. I want to say five Sprites could be moving on-screen in an Atari. I don't know the exact number So distilling a game to his essence is Also useful was more useful back when arcades existed But a thing that was happening in the Atari world that was very interesting is that Previously most people had only ever experienced video games in arcades. These were buildings people would go to To play Consoles that were bespoke There would be a whole console in a giant cabinet like the size of a refrigerator And that console played one game and people would pay money to play that game You have to understand that we are very old But when the Atari came out one of the big selling points was hey You could have those games at home But as we just talked about the Atari 2600 could not do the things that those arcade machines could do in fact Consoles couldn't really do what arcade machines did until well after the n64 era at best It's well, you know all the arcade machines themselves are also advancing, right? But you know you could have an authentic pac-man, right on your home You know device as soon as you had like I don't know maybe a 486 computer I want to say right like a windows 95 kind of you know situation But the Atari was a decade before that So There was a lot the Atari world had a really unique and interesting problem of trying to take a game That was very popular in arcades that millions of people had played they already Liked this game and they wanted to play it at home Can you distill that game down to fit on a very weak console and yet? Maintain that core that the people actually liked and not anger them by giving them something That is different and not as fun and not as good. Can you do it? With pac-man and no ackman was too much I you know, I mean at least you know, it's I guess it might have been possible, right? You know you but what they did make was not good enough. Yep And it comes down to and for Atari 2600 You know it it had some of the aspects. It looks like a pac-man, right? There's a little pac-man there There's ghost. There's a ghost. There's pellets. There's two power pellets like it has all the same verbs and nouns as the original real pac-man, but Arguably and when we play it, you'll see if you're too young to have ever experienced the satari pac-man the MVP The minimum viable pac-man Probably was the one that was in the arcade Having multiple ghosts having like the map be that size those actually were critical to making pac-man fun So having ghost pellet and power pellet and maze without enough ghosts enough power pellets enough Etc enough interesting behavior was not enough that game was unplayable garbage. We're gonna play it today and You'll see I do remember hearing that someone made a better Atari 2600 pac-man at some point But I'd have to Google it to find out Now one thing we're not gonna get into in this talk at least is the programming aspects of the Atari 2600 But I don't want to make a point here This is an interesting space because programming is both an engineering discipline, but also it's a creative discipline and the challenges of Making a game on the Atari are fascinating and interesting challenges You can have a lot of fun trying to make an actual game that would run on an actual Atari 2600 But those are not the kinds of challenges. We want to talk about today We're really focused more on the game design aspects What could the Atari do on the screen and what could and what kinds of games can you make within those limitations? Yeah, the rules of the game right the you know the inputs of the game all these sorts of things right not the You know how they made it work technologically speaking even though I have a computer science degree Never programmed anything for an Atari Just because why would I yep time for that? But to distill that conversation down ideas without execution or nothing We all I have we all everybody you in this room but this virtual room you're you're in a packs you probably have a lot of my cool ideas for games and Someone else at some point probably made your idea because it turns out having a good idea for a game. It's worth Basically nothing I can tell you about my for anything is basically nothing. Yep We've all got great ideas, but execution the programming part to make that Atari game That is incredibly valuable and important important, but we're not focusing on that this panel is about the opposite Execution without ideas. I mean I guess making a clone of Microsoft Excel Like that type of programming That's not interesting the interesting part of game design that we're gonna talk about is the idea itself What is the idea with the constraints of the Atari? And if you're interested in the execution side of Atari, well, I have good news for you The internet has a huge number of resources Go watch interviews with David Crane learn about how he made pitfall work because sometimes execution begets ideas pitfall Basically was made because David Crane I'm paraphrasing a lot here and come up with a way to make a little man run smoothly and jump and do stuff on an Atari and Then the question was what kind of game could I make with this technology and pitball pitfall Arguably the first platformer one of the first games in this like mega genre pitfall appeared from that Technological advancement the ability to make a little dude on a screen run left and right and jump a little bit and put Some stuff on the screen and make it all work but and There's a documentary called what racing the beam that gets into Fantastic detail on the ridiculously clever crap that Atari programmers had to do things like programming game logic into The like cycle of writing images to the screen While those images were not visible like before you get to the point where it would appear on the screen putting game logic There you ever play an old Atari game and you see like the screen goes crazy with a bunch of flashing colors a lot of times That's because the game is using all all of the Atari's processing power To calculate something to figure out the next chess mover generate a map or something and all that noise on the screen is Basically just visual artifacts of the actual logic that is making that thing happen It is ridiculous nonsense that one is way out of scope for this panel to other people way smarter than us You know a lot more about this than us have covered this to a depth that we never would and three we only have an hour with you today So let's play some Atari games I think if we actually play some of these games and talk about the game design what's work what works what doesn't what's good What's bad etc playing games is the best way to understand games as long as you play games and think about them Think about what you enjoy It's the theme we talk about a lot in our panels don't just play games because they're fun Understand what you find fun about them even if you never want to make a game Everything we're talking about in this a panel in this panel applies to you because if you understand What exactly you find fun about games you will have a lot more fun with games So while you're playing an Atari game and this is sort of the framework We're gonna use as we play each one of these games to understand it to interrogate it Think about these things when you're playing a game. What are the main mechanics? What can I do as a player? What is the game doing? These are Atari games. There's a finite number of them We'll be able to discover them pretty quickly just by clicking buttons. Did you know the Atari has one button? We've got one button and a joystick. That's what we got to work with and a couple of player Player two has a button and this switch this switch is on the Atari There are two switches physical switches You go up to the Atari and flick some games like that terrible Ghostbusters game You got to like run over to the Atari and flick the switch at the right moment to do things Yeah, open the trap. Yeah, exactly. No, it's you only do it to catch the marshmallow man on the Atari remake But then for this finite number of mechanics What would it take to make this mechanic better because even if you have a very distilled game You might very rightly think I could make this mechanic more fun more interesting more engaging But think about what would that take what would what is the full extent of what you would have to add to make this Mechanic better and then compare that with a very important question. Does that mechanic need to be better? Just because you can make something better doesn't mean it will make your game better You've got to think about not only what'll it take, but do I need this does this expand my game too much? Usually you'll do better by simplifying rather than adding complexity And then last at all moments actually when you have to remove Yeah on the Atari adding anything will come at a terrifying cost But last even when your game is so distilled even if you've designed the perfect board game You think everything is perfect. This game is perfect. You're gonna ship it. You should still ask yourself Could I remove something without compromising the core of this game? This game is about X could I remove something and the game is still satisfyingly about X The answers to these questions are difficult Asking these questions, especially if you made a game can be terrifying It's very hard to look at something that you made and you love and force yourself to think Could I remove something that I spent tears and blood and hours on? The answer is usually yes, and the more you're able to identify those things and say yes to removing things Generally the better you might do So berserk was a pretty popular arcade game I know there are a lot of ports of it, but this is the Atari 2600 port One thing you got to know about these Atari games It has a million million modes and the only way to know what each one of these modes is is to look in the manual Yeah, these me, you know considering that the games definitely couldn't have tutorials or anything of that sort You know even on the NES and SNES for that matter, right? It was expected that if you're playing a game you had the manual and you read it beforehand Because if you don't the games become sort of incomprehensible and as a result to give you the the viewer You know a good assessment of what these games, you know have going on We sort of need to explain to you some of the information from the manual Or at least some backstory But I remember as a kid like whenever we got a new Atari game or a new NES game even SNES First thing you did is you made my brother we'd fight over who got to read the manual Well because you'd be in the yard you would you wouldn't be downloading anything or having something shipped to your house You download was being stuck in the car trying to get home from Toys R Us You went to a toy store and bought the game you open it in the car and start reading it That's what you know on the ride home, and then you get home, and then you play so anyways So Berserk, you know followed much later a few years later by Robotron, right a very similar game is You know a game where you're a guy in a room and there's bad guys robots in the room And you're trying to kill them all and not get killed and you you beat the level by killing all the robots and then you go to the next room and An Atari game and an arcade game, so there's no winning like nothing We're talking about has a winning condition You just play it got a high score, and I only get score if I kill the robots Now the arcade version you played with the joystick and a button to shoot which is pretty much exactly what the Atari 2600 version had Robotron improved on this formula a thousand fold by having you play with two joysticks one controlling your you know Movement and one I gotta both walk into the wall Yeah, the other one controlling your shootings that way you could for example move right and shoot left You cannot do that in Berserk if you can only move in the one in the one direction at a time So look at this this game is so simple. Look there's robots There's my little dude, and there's electric walls, and there's pretty much nothing else, but already Look at all this behavior we can get from these simple mechanics So one the robots clearly get faster and more powerful like they didn't shoot before they can shoot each other Maybe I can trick them into shooting each other I can definitely trick them into walking into the walls and if things look dicey. I Can just bail Yep, so no if I bail they get harder Yeah, so in a way, this is actually taking advantage of the weakness of the Yeah, so that's that's a problem that one But so it's taking advantage of the weakness is that they don't have the processing power to make good robot AI Right, there's no way they can make smart robots that like literally lost Good job That you know somewhat intelligently hunt you down in a fun and clever way, right? But the robots being unintelligent actually is a is a positive aspect of the gameplay, right? In that you can you know their simple rules that they follow a Makes it sort of possible to even play this game in the first place, right? Because if the robots were smart you would just be dead But also, you know, you can have fun in that you don't have to shoot them all you can Trick them into shooting each other or going into the wall, right? Me to bump into the wall. Yeah, sometimes you don't have to trick them. They just do it on the road What's going on with your smiley face there? So this game has a lot of modes and one of the modes There's one more element that can appear if you stay in a level too long This bouncing smiley face appears and eventually kills you It's depending on the mode it is invulnerable and that is a basically a way to increase challenge If I keep going through the game The robots will get slightly smarter slightly more aggressive. I well, they don't actually get smarter They just get more aggressive like see how they just slowly start walking toward me that other one They'll eventually keep converging on my position. They're not smarter about that as the game goes on They just get faster at doing it and they shoot faster So if I just keep going through the game, they're just gonna get faster and faster and faster and faster and faster But it's an Atari. There's an upper limit to how fast they can be So these other modes will do things like Introduce that smiley face to put me under even more pressure and make the game even more difficult Because the only way without this without the smiley face the game could even become so trivially simple In that yeah, oh That was a close one It's like without the smiley face if you just take your sweet time It's like are you really gonna die if you're really careful and you really concentrate? You know, it's like I don't think so which is a need that common Failing of a lot of these early arcade games is the game will Literally never get more difficult after a certain point and then the game is just how long are you willing to sit here? So so we go way back with dig dug dig dug is one of my favorite arcade games I would play it in the arcade Contemporary to when it was in actual arcades putting real quarters into it Yep, now, I'll admit until this panel I had never played the Atari 2600 dig dug because I had I played it briefly because I had the Atari 7800 at home which had a much better Implementation of dig dug the Atari 7800 was actually comparable to the original Nintendo entertainment system in terms of its power Until the bill was memory management chips and some advanced things appeared in the NES It was comparable to the 7800, but anyway this memory talked about Pac-Man This is a de-make of a very popular Moderately complex game and we're gonna see if dig dug on the Atari Actually is able to capture the essence of dig dug on the arcade The fact that they've got that correct, so right so clearly graphically It's nowhere near dig dug arcade. The resolution is clearly lower. Yep But they've managed to get most of the colors, right? It's you know, puka is red-ish You know the dirt has the different layers of color The figars green. Oh and that music listen to that that sounds like the actual arcade sound That's kind of crazy. Yeah, it's not identical, but it's you know, it's clearly the same song You know the mechanics seem to be the same, right? Oh, I can even do the little like double kite Yeah, he can pop the guys All right, let's drop one of these boulders Well the fruit appear I saw the fruit. I know the fruit's gonna appear Come on. Come on. Let me give me the fruit Nope should have dropped the boulders before killing the guys if you wanted the fruit Let's see let's see if the rules of dig dug are the same on the 2600 as they are if they are then oh crap The bad guys do seem to be a little bit more aggressive and faster Yeah, the bad guys are coming at me faster than what I'm used to yeah And the arcade that you have a little time at least especially in level one or two That was my fault. That was that was I just failed at that Actually, this is while this looks pretty bad I got to say this feels a lot like real dig dug like this actually feels alright So the bad guy didn't get me he died when the rock fell on him, but he thought the fruit appeared Yeah, the fruit was just a green Shape of some kind it didn't like look like a fruit, but this is a in terms of the gameplay This feels 90% like real dig dug it looks weird. Well. Yeah, I think the most impressive thing really is just the frame rate Right, it's like you see it's not lagging or slowing down or anything like it's moving You know the bad guys are moving quick. Yep when I'm horizontal So look at this when I'm directly horizontal with an enemy and I'm moving toward them. They'll blank out Depending on what else is in that same row so that every now and then there's invisible monsters The bad guy intelligently moved away from the falling rock just like real dig dug Actually other than being slightly more aggressive the bad guy logic feels very close to the original dig dug to it's close I think there are some there's some minor Things that I haven't seen like can you pump the through it through a tiny wall? Yes. Oh, yes, you can pump through a tiny wall Can the back and I assume the fire guard can breathe through a tiny a tiny wall I don't know if I can engineer that experience Yeah The flowers when you showing you what your current level is are not appearing on the top So that's that's missing but it's interesting because the things that are missing like the flowers that would show up at the top there Are not core to the game. They are things that could have been removed. They were just nice to have Yeah That was just the thing that would indicate well all the flowers did was tell you what level you're in right? So you didn't it's not you can still play dig dug without those you just won't know what level you're in, right? You'll just know your score and that's it and you're live Yep, the visual artifacting isn't even getting in my way that much I would say this is a minimum viable dig dug dig dug on the Atari 2600 is Pretty much as fun and is doing the same thing for me as the actual dig dug now Of course, I would prefer the actual dig dug because it looks better I mean the actual dig dug does have advantages over this But it's like this is not something you're gonna like be upset about and be like You know, oh, this isn't dig dug. This is just something that looks like dig dug You know try you took my money if you bought this on an Atari 2600 cartridge and you were a dig dug fan You are not complaining. I'm earnestly impressed by this you can play this in your house in 1980 Well, whatever I would say I'll say even had to put the even had to puke us on top of each other And look remember that thing we said on berserk when a game might like a lot of dangers of these old games are very simple games That they never get harder. This game is getting harder. I'm sweating here. Just like I would in real dig dug about this point Yeah, and real dig dug, you know, it's like they start adding more bad guys Look, they added managed to add all these figars and the frame rate is not going down Hey, it's still it's still going at a pretty good clip. The some of the bad guys are blinking, you know But yeah, it's look they got a puka and a figar on top of each other. I Think it might hit a limit Yep, I feel like this there will be a point where this will not get harder enough, but so far. This is feeling pretty good Alright, so pitfall else hit start. So pitfall is Like we said first of all you go left or right. Uh, so as a kid. I always wanted to go left Because left when you die check this out. Oh, no, I died. Ah Now I've skipped the thing that killed me Ah So clever you are. Oh look the logs are rolling away from me. Yep It's pretty much I forget what the optimal I missed it the optimal way to go is but If you're going for the perfect score, but as a kid, I always went left I don't trust that empty space and I was right not to trust it. Yep So yeah pitfall is a game where you walk left or right, you know, you could pick either way So that's actually somewhat interesting in that, you know You can get some variations on gameplay to reduce, you know, because it's the same thing every time. It's not random, right? Yeah, it's literally a hard-coded sequence of screens But it loops around so it actually gives you two different ways to play You know, if you're good enough to get a loop around the whole thing then that doesn't matter so much But most people aren't and so you actually sort of can go left or right and get some more interesting You know, you get more replay value out of that You know, you won't have to go to the same screens every single time. You just go to the same screens at the time. Yep They also give you the downstairs, right the enticing downstairs area So that you get it's like you can go through on the upper level But if you find a ladder you can go through on the lower level and that also gives you more varied gameplay It's like, oh, I can just you know, go down. You know go down. Yep though in here Let's see this you're going the is a brick wall. Yeah Yeah, there's doing all there are brick walls and things in the way you might go down the tunnel for a while and then bump into the brick wall Let me get somewhere I can go down that'll be interesting But it does give you some more variations on you know, where you can go Here we go. What you can do for more excitement. All right. Yeah, we'll go down. Oh, yeah down here Yeah, so you got to worry about scorpions down here instead of logs, you know and holes and that sort of thing But scorpions are kind of nasty. So yep because they're moving it's kind of easy to get hit by him if you're not paying attention It's literally pick your poison. I Don't remember the map but a big part of this game is the map is the same map every time but as a kid I was like charting out. What's where? Oh, it was a dead end Yep Can't get through there. Well all the way back Yep, and a died and now the problem for going left God damn it. Oh god damn it. I think I'm dead time to start over. Let's go right go right go right this time So you can also see that going right or left since the logs always spawn on the right side of the screen, right? I'm having trouble with the lodge. Yeah playing the left or right direction gives you a different challenge entirely Right in terms of you know, if you're going if you're playing a going going left run Yeah, you just you can just keep running left and you get behind the logs oops I'm bad at this. I was never good at this game. I Think you can stop I messed it up. I think you can stand right on their eyes You can stand on the eyeball of the alligator and won't yeah, you won't fall in to his mouth Granted the pro move is to get across in one go because that countdown is ticking you only got 20 minutes And I'm so bad at this I haven't even gotten to any treasure to show you but the whole point of this game Have the highest score after 20 minutes and the only way to make your score go up because look bounce off of logs My score is going down the only way to make it go up is to find treasure Yep, everything else either kills you right or makes your score go down right if it doesn't kill you So logs don't kill you. They just make you lose points Falling doesn't kill you, but you do lose points. Yeah, but alligators kill you falling in water or any a hole that the Can kill you Gorpians obviously kill you I'm not sure if you fall in that black hole. Will you go to the bottom? No, you'll just die. That's a tar pit You'll just you'll just dies a tar pit. Okay So what's this quote the game the core game loop is real simple explore the map Find treasure and the fact that it's time-limited is actually very interesting because the game becomes learn the map and the game also Becomes optimize your path through the map learn how to get through these obstacles quickly I can do it the slow cautious way or I can do it the fast way The game gives you if you do it the slow cautious way Even if you manage to never get hit by any log or any bad guy ever You probably won't be going fast enough to get all the treasures in the whole map before time runs out and talk about early E-sports or early not speed runs necessarily this game is not a speed run It is possible to get a perfect run how many how much how long it takes to get all the treasure Well, there's a perfect score You can get in this game of get every treasure in the whole map without at any point losing points or die But you can you can also see who can do that the fastest Yep, I'm pretty sure the world record is set and there's no way to make it better I'm maybe I haven't checked. I'm not an yeah I'm not an expert. So the other thing is going on in pitfall is you know, the simple Atari can't do too much So they've only made a few different things, right? They have scorpion treasure dude hole alligator water. Yeah, our pit Fire and snake are basically the same. There's just something you jump fire and snake are the same, right? So but though with those simple elements by combining a ladder, right up brick wall brick wall We just it's an it's it's not it's not that few elements But with just a very small number of elements each screen Combines those elements in different ways, right? Oh a treasure. That was a trap. There it is Yep Combines those elements in different ways to keep things interesting, right? It's like yeah We got a scorpion some water that doesn't go away and a log and a rope now We got water that does go away and a log got a time this right Every screen can be unique Combining this palette of obstacles Yeah, and you know you learn once you learn how to deal with one ops, you know like once you learn how to swing On the rope properly. It's like okay, I just jumped right into that mouth You did you know how to swing on the rope congrats, you know, you know But now swing on a rope when there's a snake on the other now swing on a rope when there's alligators underneath now I'm gonna rope when the hole opens and closes. Oh if the hole closes with a good time I could get off the rope quicker and I won't fall, you know because I'm not crossing anything dangerous Oh, but if I get off the rope quicker here, there's an alligator I don't want to get off. Yep, or eventually I learned the map and I learned that this is the part where you Want to go underground because it's faster Yep Yeah, you know it manages to stay interesting With very very few pieces to play with and the controls right all you have is a joystick and a button Yep, the button jump. That's it. That's all you that's all you need You don't need anything else right because anything you interact with is by jumping or either jumping over an obstacle And you grab the rope automatically you do have to drop off the rope by hitting down You choose when you want to drop off you press down to get off the rope and you can get off the rope at any time Right so think about just the ability to get off the rope at any time is in itself sort of an interesting mechanic like yeah It's like okay. You got one button you have a lot of options there, right? You could possibly like drop off the rope and land on the alligator's eye if you needed to on a particular screen, right? Oh timing is really good You know so the core gameplay loop explore the map don't die find treasure like it's pretty straightforward There is an interesting and unique pat like a palette of all these different challenges this game is Extremely elegant and has I think Maximized it's Coraloo. It's treasure nice treasure wasn't as good as the diamond ring Nobody even the treasures look different right and that's that could be exciting and more fun, too It's like you grab. Oh look at that right He was about to fall on the pit as it was opening, but he was able to grab the rope on the backswing Right, you know, you there isn't just one right, you know, there isn't just one way to swing on the rope There isn't just one way to you know, jump over a hole with that one jumping button and the rope right so much variation and different things can happen So yeah, this game I would hesitate to say that there's anything any mechanic that needs to be better This game fully realizes its core vision with a very minimal set I guess you could remove either the snake or the campfire because they are in effect the exact same thing Same thing, however, it does add more interest and you know Excitement, you know visually right if every treasure was the same it would be a little bit more boring It's kind of exciting. It's like you already got the money bag. Well, if you find the diamond ring It's like oh, yeah, look at that right there. How do you did you know it was there? Did you know it was on the next screen because I did not I literally But it's like ooh, right? It's it's a little more fun to find different looking treasures than to find the same one Well case in point two look at the above here like those trees in the background not strictly necessary You could make this game more minimal you can even make this game in black and white But that's all polished just because you're distilling a game down to its essence Doesn't mean you should remove everything that is pure style and doesn't do anything for the actual gameplay itself style Aesthetics, there's a reason video games look good It's also really fun that when you swing on the rope it goes do do do do do do which is which is reminiscent of like You know a Tarzan caricature going. Oh, right? Yeah, it's definitely what they were mimicking with the sound and you with the limited audio capabilities of the Atari 2600 they managed to pull it off to where you recognize it for what it is, right? If you have the appropriate, you know cultural references to go by So yeah, you wouldn't think this game could get any better Oh pitfall 2 So I have never played pitfall 2 in my life. I didn't have it as a kid. Nope So it's also worth noting that both of these pitfalls were games that Much like et were made for the Atari they weren't arcade ports, right? I don't know if I've seen an arcade pitfall machine There may be one but this was definitely first made for Atari 2600. So notable one It's playing this song. It is playing just music that is Interesting that is not something the original pitfall did and two Uh already I see multiple different enemies that are doing different behaviors You can also see oh, look at that. Oh That didn't kill me. Look at this. Yeah. There's some there's some vertical action, right? Oh, shit. Look at that rat. Look at that rat. Oh, it didn't kill me It's just pushing me Yeah, can I jump over it? I can't get past this rat Can you I don't know if I can I don't think you can. I wonder if I need something. There's only one button. So, uh But yeah, they the gradients right add a lot more visual interest And contrast to a lot of the objects in the game, right, especially in the sky And they're also reminiscent of the art, right? You know and they also indicate motion as is the case of that waterfall I'm getting boy in his blob feelings. This is a large map. Look at this Look at all the interesting places. I've encountered already an electric eel, right? Yep, just a thing that blinks black and white, but you can just tell from that little abstract wonder if it kills me Yeah, that's an electric. It's electric eel. It hurts Where does it send you? So It's gonna take me back to the last checkpoint Mm-hmm Oh, that's a checkpoint. Is it yeah, what's that what's that wiggly thing with the leg? That looks like a dog or a hyena or something. I see that frog down there Oh, it's a frog but the thing that's wiggling that could be like a hostage. You need to rescue or I don't know what that is I'm sure the manual would tell me I'm sure it would um, but also, you know You know atari game boxes in general featured a lot of gradients But the activision ones in particular all had this same graphical style with this sort of like stripey rainbow Kind of shape with colors that match the color scheme of the game And you can also see here how they put the rainbow behind the activision at the bottom. That's very fancy looking all right, so uh basically What's interesting here like the something to take away because you can buy do a whole panel just play in this game Can you go left? Nope. You cannot go left pitfall the original pitfall as we just discussed Was kind of an mvp game like it was good enough It was to still do his essence. It was designed well pitfall 2 did more But it does not replace or obviate the success of pitfall 1 Hardly it seems like more creative programming techniques opened up more possibilities on the atari Which is a thing you can look at to they added more mechanics that expanded on the core of the game Without compromising on the game being fun atari atari et added all these extra mechanics I'm real bad at this, but those extra mechanics Came at the expense of the core game loop This game all this extra stuff did not come at the expense of the core game loop They found clever technological ways to do more around that core game loop Yeah, it's like hey, we'll add more levels, right? It's three or four levels deep, right? They added the swimming more animations Uh, they added more enemies more different treasures Right, it's just it's the same thing, right? It's not they didn't mess it up. It's still that same pitfall game Uh, it's all fun for the same reasons. You're doing the same things But they just made it more exciting with more stuff going on so you get bored You know after a lot it takes longer to get bored Yep So, you know when you played a a Metroidvania like symphony of the night or portrait of ruin Or even a Metroid game and all you thought was you know what that core loop that gameplay Just give me more of that forever Here we go. This is just pitfall too. Oh, you like pitfall. Here's more pitfall. We added more stuff Yeah, too many games these days. I think don't learn that lesson, right? It's like I you know, you made a game That's so good You don't need to go and like make something new or different or change what you were about people liked what you were Just make more of what you were right now. That's not to say we should never make anything new Um, but I think that there are a lot of cases where sometimes people are not making anything new at all Right, they carry on with the same boring thing forever Uh, they're not expanding the way pitfall 2 expands it on pitfall 1 while staying the same They're literally just releasing pitfall 1 pitfall 1 pitfall 1. That's no good, right? But releasing pitfall 1 and then coming out with pitfall 2 that looks nothing like pitfall 1 That's also not good, right? This is exactly what you want to do when you make a sequel or an expansion, right? Don't change what you are about right that core thing that you are Embrace whatever that is just more of it Right. Yep. What did players like about your game? Yeah game one if game one is chocolate chip chocolate chip cookie, right game two Can't be oatmeal cookie, right? It could be it could be chocolate chip cookie with nuts. It could be bigger chocolate chip cookie It could be bigger chocolate chip cookie with nuts But it shouldn't be you know plain old sugar cookie. Is this the first game that has checkpoints? I don't know, but it's definitely an older game that does have checkpoints I presume if you die, you're gonna go back to that checkpoint. I just presume I am as well Also, this map is looking bigger and bigger and bigger at the deeper I go Yep, look how deep it goes Are you gonna die from falling down? I'm gonna find out No, I died of falling on a bat Oh my points, I just got a bunch of points and now they're gone Look at that. Yep checkpoint worked. You know what I appreciate though notice Pitfall 1 had lives lives were something that a lot of games had Especially arcade games because that's how you're right out of lives got to continue pay a quarter And you and you would buy lives with your with your money. Yep, this game. No lives I'm losing points, but I could just keep exploring the checkpoints just at the deeper I go the more checkpoints even though I suck at this and I keep dying Who cares? I can just keep playing. I'm not forced to always start over That's also how gauntlet worked right in gauntlet and you would have life Which should be your points, right? And you know money and to get more life And then when you got hit you would lose like and you're also constantly losing a lot of All right, so many of you have probably played rampage at least rampage has been released in various forms in a lot of places but uh Play rampage on the Atari 2600 This is another game where It's an arcade game. So anyone who would play this has a lot of expectations about what this game is Yeah, you've already played the arcade version. You already understand, you know the mechanics, right? So if you haven't played the arcade version, then a lot of what's going on here Right might not make too much sense You know, you might not understand that like that blinking thing that was just a rectangle that you punched at the start That was supposed to be like a sign. Yeah, it's like eat it. Eat it joes or whatever And I hit it at the wrong times. It was electrified. So check this out. This is actually Getting the core loops. I'm destroying this building and look I can attack the building across from me I can hit forward. I can hit down I can really mess this all the same attacks in the arcade are available at home. Yep Visually, you know, you're not seeing the things that are like partially damaged, right? It's literally just making rectangles go away um But so far all the elements of the arcade version are here in a diminished form uh Yep, the controls at least uh, I I can't oh here goes the building. Yeah But uh, it feels pretty tight. It actually feels very responsive and satisfying and I'm kind of having fun Oh, let me jump up. Oh It's doing everything I expect a rampage game to do so far Yeah, it's not as there's not as much stuff on this is only level one Um, but you know the original rampage did have more things happening on the screen I think I can get those helicopters, which was a big part of rampage Yeah, take that now. Can I eat that dude? Yes, yep, you can eat the dude to get a health back. That's good Yes, it's like they went down the checklist of every single thing in the arcade rampage They put them all in here and just they're a lot simpler looking especially the graphics are vastly vastly inferior to the original arcade game It's definitely taking some imagination. Like we can tell these are buildings, but there's not a lot going on in terms of what I'm destroying Yeah, all right. So this is spider-man for the Atari 2600. I had this game as a kid. I played it a lot So I'll just start so I never was clear if those people are villains or not But check this out. I'm a little spider-man. I can throw a web And I can swing around if you're making a spider-man game You better let me throw web and swing around if I can't do that the hell kind of game is it? That is pretty great. Uh, so yeah, this is actually the very first uh video game Uh to feature spider-man and also the first marvel comics video games So there were a lot of marvel games in the arcade. They all came after this one This is literally the first marvel game and the first spider-man game ever It was actually made by parker brothers. It wasn't made by like Atari or You know some other activision or anyone like that, right? um So yeah, they were definitely treating it as like, you know parker brothers who made board games, right? You know, they were definitely, you know treating it as like a uh, oof, you know, that's a brutal fall Right, they're approaching it from that angle and not from the video game angle Uh, and also they didn't have any game to model it on, right? Yeah, they had them They were just saying all right. What does spider-man do right? Well, he webs around, right? So that's the co-web around and hit people But basically I also get points check out these bombs. They start black They turn pink when they're about to blow up and if I touch them I can disarm them. That's clear. Look. That's very low res. That's clearly the green goblin up there All right, let me go get that green goblin now. I don't think I can fight the green goblin I think what I have to do is get to the top and disarm the bomb he's put on top of this building I guess those little bombs are just to hurt me as spider-man. Yeah, those are bombs. The green goblin is throwing at you Uh, I'm bad at this or the hobgoblin through the pumpkin bombs and the green goblin. Yeah, hobgoblin was pumping pumpkin bombs Oh, look if I get a person I don't even know if hobgoblin the character existed in the comic books when this came out Maybe they did There's no timer in this game, but see that red thing that's how much web juice I got so I gotta be economical with my web juice That's accurate to the comics where spider-man's web shooters were you know mechanical things that he made Um, you know, but control-wise It looks kind of great, especially for an Atari thing like the way spider-man swings. Yep. It feels good It's difficult like this is hard, but it's not all right. Let's get past you Oh god, I'm so bad at this green goblin screw you Yes, I disarmed that I assume is a bomb Yeah, spider-man is trying to touch the checkerboard thingy And the game just escalates in difficulty from there Yeah, this is one of those games where the goal is the core gameplay loop is very simple and very arcade-like It is get better at the core gameplay loop Yeah, I mean even Donkey Kong you had, you know, four different a few different levels, right? It wasn't just the same, you know, Donkey Kong thing over and over, right? You go through four different things at least Oh, if it gets way harder later, look at that Yeah, look, he's coming low No, I'm gonna have trouble getting past him Timing Okay Hey, you should have gone straight up. No, this is a solid distillation Like I would encourage you to play this game to see how good these controls feel considering how Outerly limited they are Yeah, and going with our theme of you know to make your game, you know figure out the one fun thing Like this is literally it. This is you know, this is not an example of a good complete game But this is a great example of like, hey, they had the one thing, right do that one thing That's fun, right and get that thing worked out Uh, you shouldn't release your game at that point like this game did But they found right the good the fun thing swing it around on a web and they they made that part perfect They got it just right And that's like a perfect foundation Right your proof of concept your prototype for saying yes, there is a fun game here that involves swinging on the web We've we've perfected the swinging on the web No, then you need to just build more game around it than what is available here So what was the point of this whole hour? I love to use this slide I think I've used this in at least 20 or 30 panels over the years I even had to make a widescreen version of it, but uh We went in a lot of directions. We played a bunch of Atari games part of this was scott Just making fun of me for failing at certain Atari games, but uh number one Designed simply like a lot of these Atari games a lot of early games Are designed on paper first if you can't fit the at the core of what you want your game to be On a few pieces of paper You're probably starting too complex. You're starting at too high a level. You're starting too big Your core has got to fit on a piece of paper or you're probably about to make a big mistake Right. Well, also, you know, if you're just programming even on a modern system where you can develop things more rapidly than you could in the The past right it still takes a long time You know, if you're doing something on paper, you can make it test it, you know, sort of try it out a little bit You know to some extent quickly and figure out if it's good or bad You know without having to wait, you know, it's spend a few days programming and then you find out it was a bad idea Right. Yeah, if you uh on paper if you lay out your core mechanics and realize that they don't line up that well You'll save yourself three or four years of building a prototype that then fails when you show it off at an indie showcase somewhere And again those constraints it forces you to really really just understand and internalize What is my game about? Really focus on that core essence of your game. What's going on here in this uh diagram? Might be making some delicious poison. It's some some delicious essence of poison This is a stock image. I purpose of distillation All right. Well, uh, you know But think about any large successful popular game or any game you like Can you describe what this game is about in no more than one sentence? With no more than one complex piece of punctuation like a semi-colon And if you're gonna make your first game Don't immediately like like there are times and places to use real big tools Just write code like become a computer scientist But there are a lot of tools out there you can use to make games That will serve these purposes if you're making your first game if you're making a simple game If you're trying to try this space out use Whatever tool is easiest for you to use if you're a programmer Unity might be the easiest tool if you're not a programmer or you're a dilaton programmer game maker Uh Literally the nintendo switch game builder garage that just came out like use something simple twine It literally doesn't matter if your idea is good And you use a very simple tool even a tool that is arguably more of a toy than a tool You'll be that mechanic that thing that's fun will shine through And if you discover, you know this with the simple thing that you whipped up very quickly Right is actually fun. Well now you know that it's worth spending the time to go work on it fully You know and make a real thing and not just a little sample thing Yeah And that's really the the the core of this panel to ceiling this panel down to its essence A lot of you probably want to make games That's just that's how games are people play games. They like games They got opinions about games and then they want to make games If you want to make games and you're not sure where to start just make one fun thing However, you do it just make one make one thing and make it fun If you can do that you've taken the first step It doesn't even had to be a new fun thing. It could be an existing fun thing like jumping on people, right? You know Of course You know, just do a fun thing that games already do that's already fun and just make that You don't have to make something Brett, you know, that's never been done before You look at most of the games that come out and make most of the money are not new They're just old ideas made again. Yep. Make one fun thing and make that one thing fun I hope this was enjoyable Uh that qr code. I uh hope it's been a while since I've used this slide We'll take you to our website or our youtube channel or something, but uh, that'll take you somewhere If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend you check us out We've got like 50 of our previous packs talks and other gaming convention talks on youtube free Uh, we've been doing a podcast for like 15 years. There's about 1500 For some reason you like hearing us talk That's a thing that you can do for many many many hours There are just mp3s of us talking on the internet that are freely downloadable with no ads no nonsense You can just listen to our voice in your ear Dear hearts content. I recommend doing that for zero minutes But you can do it for the number of minutes of your choose and I can't stop you So enjoy the rest of packs online or packs east online or camp packs and uh, we'll see you in the discord