Historical past is instructed by the winners, the saying goes, and that’s definitely been true with English-language protection of the online game trade. Need protection of the NES and PlayStation? That’s simple to search out. Need protection of the Zemmix and Dendy? Have been you even conscious they existed?
Lewis Packwood’s e book Curious Video Sport Machines was written to fill in a few of these gaps. Structured round sport consoles and {hardware} that by no means received a lot consideration within the West the primary time round, the e book is an exhaustively researched take a look at a world that has largely been unexplored — both in English, or in any respect.
In an effort to highlight many game-related books and documentaries, todaysviralmedia is working an electronic mail interview sequence with the individuals behind them. We beforehand related with Julian Rignall about his not-quite-an-autobiography The Video games of a Lifetime and Paul Vogel about his Housemarque documentary The Identify of the Sport, and under we’ve got Packwood discussing how and why he went digging into essentially the most curious of sport machines.
todaysviralmedia: I like this e book as a result of I believe when most individuals consider obscure sport consoles, they go to one thing like Pippin, however you present there was an entire completely different world on the market. The place did that concept come from?
Lewis Packwood: All of it started again in 2014, after I found the Avatar Machine, created by the artist Marc Owens. It was such a wild concept: he’d created a polygon-style go well with with VR goggles, which have been hooked up to a digital camera on a pole protruding of the again of the go well with, so this contraption allow you to view your self from a third-person perspective, as for those who have been in a online game. I wrote an article about it, and shortly after that I got here throughout a discussion board dialogue a couple of distinctive, open-source Yugoslavian laptop known as the Galaksija. I wrote about that, too, and over time I’ve stored an keen eye out for tales about uncommon consoles and computer systems, just like the Casio Crazy, a Japanese unique console that prints stickers. It often astounds me simply what number of extraordinary sport machines are on the market, machines that hardly anybody has heard of.
The catalyst for writing the e book was an interview with Chris Crawford a number of years again in 2021. I used to be speaking to him for a function about Steadiness of Energy, the good Chilly Warfare techniques sport he made in 1985, a number of years earlier than he based GDC. Apropos of nothing, he confirmed me some footage of a customized machine he’d made again within the Seventies out of a KIM-1 package laptop, and I used to be fascinated. He known as it Kimtanktics, and it was one of many first ever laptop wargames: a real-time, two-player tank battle that you simply managed with a calculator-style controller together with a giant paper map. The machine itself was housed in an enormous picket cupboard, and Chris had solely ever proven it off at early sport conventions, which means just some hundred individuals have ever performed it (with a blanket hung between the gamers in order that they couldn’t peek at one another’s maps). It felt like such an essential piece of gaming historical past, however I additionally knew it was such a distinct segment factor that it will be troublesome to influence any editor to fee an article on it. However I used to be fascinated, and I used to be sure different individuals could be, too. That’s after I determined to jot down the e book, with the concept of revisiting a number of of the weird machines I’d found over time and actually digging into the tales behind them.
In the event you had to decide on one, what would you say is essentially the most curious sport machine featured within the e book, and why? (Aspect observe: Any likelihood you’ve got a photograph of this?)
It’s so troublesome to decide on, however one of the shocking machines was the Daewoo Zemmix. I came upon about it by means of a console collector, nevertheless it’s a machine that only a few individuals find out about, because it was by no means offered outdoors South Korea. Daewoo was an enormous Korean conglomerate that was in all probability most well-known for manufacturing vehicles, however again within the Eighties it developed a line of computer systems primarily based on the MSX normal, which was in style for some time in locations like Japan, the Netherlands and South America. Daewoo then expanded into MSX-based consoles, starting with the Zemmix in 1985, adopted by the Zemmix V, the Zemmix Tremendous V and the Zemmix Turbo. And they’re beautiful machines. The Zemmix V particularly seems phenomenal, like a triangular rocket ship. It got here in a spread of colors, too, and the asymmetrically colored model is especially stunning.
These machines have been so in style in Korea that there was even a mini console model of the Zemmix V launched a number of years again in the identical vein because the NES Mini, however nearly nobody outdoors the nation has heard of them. It simply goes to indicate that the historical past of video video games is far more difficult and attention-grabbing than the narratives we’re usually instructed, and it various enormously in response to which nation you lived in. That is one thing that I’ve tried to get throughout within the e book, exploring, for instance, how the video video games crash of 1983 wasn’t felt within the UK, the place everybody was enthusiastic about microcomputers just like the ZX Spectrum and the ill-fated Enterprise 64, whereas Brazil was devoted to the Sega Grasp System (which was launched in quite a lot of distinctive kinds within the nation, just like the Grasp System Lady) and Russia was dedicated to the Dendy, a bootleg model of the Nintendo Famicom that even had its personal TV present and journal.
When researching the e book, what have been a number of the greatest hurdles you needed to bounce by means of to trace down particulars on these machines?
The difficulty with writing a e book about uncommon and strange online game machines is that it’s usually very arduous to search out info on them: even basic items like after they have been launched. I spent a very long time selecting by means of dusty texts and boards and making an attempt to trace down the individuals concerned with these machines, and I received fortunate on a number of events: like interviewing Laury Scott, who ran the plant that produced the Radofin 1292 Superior Programmable Video System. Many early consoles and computer systems have been primarily based round both the Zilog Z80 or MOS 6502 chips (the Atari VCS used a variant of the latter, for instance), however Radofin’s console used the now long-forgotten Signetics 2650 chip — and this chip was additionally utilized in a number of different not often talked about consoles, just like the Interton VC 4000, which was made by a German listening to support firm. It was fantastic to discover the historical past of these unusual outdated Signetics 2650 consoles, however so little has been written about them that the analysis was significantly troublesome. Even the German Computerspielemuseum had solely a few journal articles regarding the VC 4000, though they ended up proving very helpful.
One one who I spent ages making an attempt to trace down was Rick Dyer, the creator of Dragon’s Lair. He was additionally behind a few machines featured within the e book: the hologram arcade cupboard Time Traveler and the now extraordinarily uncommon RDI Halcyon, a 1985 LaserDisc-based console with voice recognition, of which solely a handful of prototypes stay. Sadly I wasn’t capable of pay money for him (for those who’re studying this Rick, I’d love to speak), however I used to be nonetheless capable of inform the story of those machines by means of different sources. That wasn’t the case for a few different machines, and there have been two chapters I needed to drop as a result of I simply couldn’t dig up sufficient reliable info. However I’m hoping to revisit these in a follow-up e book someplace down the road if extra info involves mild — and there are so many extra curious online game machines on the market to find. I’ve an enormous spreadsheet of uncommon and strange machines that I’d like to function within the subsequent e book, so that is simply the tip of the iceberg!