Computers brought a new flexibility to electronic games. Because computers stored data, they made a good platform for lengthy adventure and role-playing games. Players could store their progress and continue the games at a later time. With consoles such as the Atari 2600, players could only start games from the beginning. This situation changed slightly in the mid-1980s, when Nintendo built a battery-backed chip into The Legend of Zelda that allowed players to record their progress.
Computer systems such as the Commodore Amiga and Apple Macintosh brought other advantages to gaming. These machines used mouse controllers, devices that gave players fast and highly precise control. As technology progressed, computer monitors offered higher resolution than television screens, giving computer games a crisper look. This improved resolution made computers ideal for running strategy games such as SimCity and Civilization, which featured highly detailed graphics.
Although some computer-game publishers dropped out of the business, others-such as Broderbund and Sierra On-Line-gained prominence. Electronic Arts, which was founded in 1982, became one of the biggest names in the industry. The company’s success was fueled by aggressively recruiting top game designers away from competitors and by packaging its games in attractive boxes.
In 1984 Electronic Arts paid professional basketball stars Julius Erving and Larry Bird $25,000 each to use their names and likenesses in a game called Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One-on-One. The game was an instant success, leading Electronic Arts to strike up a similar relationship with National Football League (NFL) announcer and former coach John Madden to create a football simulation game for the Apple II computer in 1989.
For many years personal computers (PCs) were plagued with compatibility problems that hampered them as a gaming platform. Because only Apple manufactured Macintosh computers, however, these machines had standardized parts and operating software. Programs that ran on one Macintosh computer could run on any Macintosh that had sufficient processing power. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Compaq, Packard Bell, and several other companies all manufactured different PC machines, seldom using standardized components. As a result, games that ran on one type of PC might not run on PCs made by other manufacturers.
Singaporean entrepreneur Sim Wong Hoo began to solve this problem in 1989 when he introduced a PC sound card called the Sound Blaster. Although other companies previously had released sound devices for PCs, Sim succeeded at establishing Sound Blaster as the standard for PC sound. Future sound cards needed to be “Sound Blaster-compatible,” meaning they needed to use the same software (often called drivers). Having a standardized sound protocol enabled PCs to run games with robust music and voice files that sounded as good or better than the audio in console games.
Popular Computer Games
In 1993 id Software published Doom, one of the most influential computer games of all time. Doom popularized a three-dimensional, first-person perspective camera-allowing players to see the game through the eyes of the character they controlled. The game also popularized online multiplayer gaming (playing with or against other people through LANs or the Internet).
In the early 1990s a drop in the price of CD-ROM technology led to a wave of multimedia games (games that combine audio, video, animation, photographs, or other media). Compact discs (CDs) can store from 650 to 700 megabytes of data, more than 400 times the storage space of standard floppy disks. With this extra storage, designers could add voice files, digitized video of live actors, and other assets to their games. Companies such as Digital Pictures, Access Software, and Viacom published interactive movies, or games that combined digitized footage of real actors and virtual sets.
In 1993 Broderbund published a game called Myst for Macintosh computers, and Virgin Interactive Entertainment published a game called The 7th Guest for the PC. In both games the player explores a rich virtual world, trying to solve puzzles. Millions of copies of these games were sold, popularizing multimedia technology and attracting large new audiences to computer gaming.
In 1995 Microsoft launched Windows 95, an operating system that further simplified the use of PCs as a gaming platform. With built-in driver support for sound cards, graphics cards, joysticks, and other controllers, Windows 95 removed most of the compatibility issues that had long plagued computer gaming.
The PC game market declined in the early 2000s as video-game consoles became more powerful, incorporating high-end graphics, hard drives, and Internet features that were formerly exclusive to home computers. Some popular console games continued to be simultaneously released for the PC, but others were designed solely for the console market.
