The Namco Chronicles, part 3...

Much earlier in this series I mentioned that Sega and Namco had been trading punches through most of their tenure in the arcade. Like an ongoing rap battle between two heavyweights (that didn’t end in gunfire) there was no definitive victor. Of course the fans would be happy to see the action as the years went on. Sega would be credited for better racing games but Namco would counter with longevity. In the space shooter arena Galaga had stomped the best work from Sega. That was of course until Sega reconsidered their approach. The studio released Space Harrier in 1985. The game had a similar graphics approach to Buck Rogers: The Planet of Zoom but instead of piloting a ship the player was controlling a futuristic soldier and his rocket powered gun. The character could run along the ground or fly into the air while shooting down alien life forms. It was a bold new idea for the genre and completely shook up audiences. Space Invaders and Asteroids had taught them that there was only one way to go alien hunting. All of a sudden players could become a super soldier and take on gigantic monsters single handedly.

Namco countered with Burning Force in 1989. The title had the same basic gameplay as Space Harrier, except in the Namco version players could get “power-ups” to increase their firepower. Players also rode atop a rocket bike that would be transformed in latter levels into a mini spaceship. The game wasn’t as well received in the US as it had been abroad but Namco was still demonstrating that they could match Sega beat-for-beat. When it came to space adventures Namco seemed to hold a slight advantage.

Both studios realized that gaming could be limited only by the imagination of the designers. They began experimenting with genres and to make things more interesting began taking audiences to alien worlds. Of course for the sake of action they had to be extremely hostile planets. This was the case in the 1986 game Quartet by Sega. It was a rare 4-player title that could be played on a single free standing cabinet. In it audiences had to fight their way from the surface of an alien planet into the core of a base. The opponents in the game were highly-evolved robots of different shapes and sizes. The players were equipped with high tech weapons and rocket backpacks to move through the stages.

Namco had released a game called Baraduke in 1986. It was better known as Alien Sector in the US and closely mirrored Sega’s game. Of course this was all coincidence because development on both titles took place at about the same time. In the single-player game audiences took on the role of a space soldier named Masuyo "Kissy" Toby. She had to infiltrate an alien complex and destroy the monsters trying to invade a nearby planet. Instead of robots she had to fight biological creatures that look like mutated bats and slugs. She also had use of a rocket backpack and advanced weaponry. While neither title became enormous blockbusters they still developed a following, the Namco game more so than the Sega title.

Gamers in Japan and the US became enamored with alien planets being the backdrop to different genres. From adventure to racing, action and even role playing games there was something unique about having humans and aliens interact in a title. Sega developed a unique game set on an alien world but that had the look and feel of classic RPG. It was a mix of fantasy and science fiction that went over well with audiences. Phantasy Star debuted for the Sega Master system in 1987. I remember very vividly playing through the title at my friend’s house. My family had an NES and his had the Master System. We would split our time playing the best of both consoles. In the early versions of Phantasy Star there was a lot more swords and sorcery but as the series continued it began to have a science fiction tilt to it. Aliens replaced monsters in dungeons and laser weapons replaced swords and arrows.

Sega would expand the scope of Phantasy Star over the years and refine the look of the character classes and their abilities. Like many genres there were some growing pains. First Sega had to wean audiences off of sprite based graphics and get them to accept the polygon models. Then they added action RPG elements to make it more appealing to mainstream gamers than the old turn-based combat system. The canon of the game was explored throughout the series adding all sorts of character classes and monsters in the process. It turned out that what looked like magic in earlier games was simply technology that had advanced to the point of being controlled by conscious thought. The publisher would keep the franchise going in one format or another for over two decades. They had most recently debuted Phantasy Star Online 2 for the PC in 2013. It looked stunning compared to the version I remember as a kid.

Namco had also spent several years exploring different space adventures. In 2006 the studio released a space quest called Bounty Hounds for the PSP. The portable game was very much in the vein of Phantasy Star Online, except it emphasized the combat portions even more. It was like a science fiction version of the popular Capcom fantasy game Monster Hunter. The characters visiting the various alien planets were more like mercenaries or bounty hunters instead of soldiers. This lent them a bit more leeway for the carnage audiences could inflict onto their opponents.

In 2012 and 2013 Namco looked at turning the game into an MMO. The Taiwanese developers XPEC created both the portable and PC games. They had experience with the MMO format, and more important, with Chinese trends which was important because China and Korea were booming economies that loved MMO experiences. Over the generations audiences enjoyed the idea of leaving the Earth behind and starring in an adventure on the furthest reaches of the galaxy. John Carter, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were early pulp heroes that set the foundation for the Star Trek and Star Wars universes. Science fiction film and television helped inspire a generation of game designers. A string of science fiction shooters from the west, including Halo, Gears of War and Mass Effect have only emphasized that understanding. Namco and Sega had pioneered the earliest off-planet adventures. They constantly provided inspiration for the young gamers and future designers, developers, artists and animators that had grown up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Taking the battle to the homeworld of an alien planet was fun however there was a certain level of cool associated with piloting a spaceship. There was a transitional period between spite based and polygon based engines for the space shooter just as there had been for the racing genre. Would you care to guess who was leading the charge? We’ll look at a few games that set the bar in the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 5...

Namco and Sega were locked in perpetual battle for the hearts of gamers. Every title that one company released often had an answer from the rival. Sometimes the answer was better and sometimes it wasn't. Sega never had Namco's Pac-Man level of success with any of their maze games but when it came to racing games they showed that they could catch up to and beat Pole Position. It was not the only genre where the studios would compete. For science fiction shooters Sega raised the bar in 1985 with Space Harrier. It introduced audiences to a world in which they could fly up, down and across the screen and shoot at alien lifeforms and giant robots over a quickly scrolling battlefield. The technology that Sega used was not really all that new, it simply built on sprite scaling engines that they had used in Turbo, Hang-On and OutRun. Those racing games taught developers great concepts and applications that would work in other genres.

Prior to Space Harrier most space shooters were single screen affairs, often from an overhead perspective. The 1979 Atari game Asteroids was among the most influential and earliest examples of a space shooter. The vector based graphics rendered amazingly sharp details and the game engine added some realistic physics on top of that. Unfortunately all of the early vector-based games were in black and white with hollow shapes making up the characters or ships. Namco showed the West how they could improve upon the genre, they released the full color space shooter Galaxian the same year as Asteroids. Then they added a scrolling background in 1983 with the hit Xevious. Sega redefined the space shooter with Space Harrier but Namco was barely getting started, in 1988 they released Burning Force. The game featured similar mechanics and even the graphic techniques used in Space Harrier. Burning Force differed in that as the character progressed they went from flying atop a rocket bike to being encapsulated into a small space ship. The game also allowed players to earn weapon upgrades, which was something that they had been used to seeing in the earlier overhead scrolling shooters from the company and other Japanese studios.

Namco had shown that they could probably top anything that Sega had came up with even as a smaller company. It did not matter how imaginative or outlandish an idea was, they were the ones that could improve upon it while adding a unique twist. Where the the two studios really began to eclipse the competitors was in 3D technology. Plenty of studios did amazing sprite based games but few were willing to put in the investment required to shift operations into 3D. The hardware was new and the software yet to be written. The gambles not only with a production budget but with an entire company were at stake. Both Sega and Namco began the '90s with a dramatic shift from the old ways of development. The gameplay elements that they pioneered would be copied by the industry over the next two decades.

Game fans had gotten a taste for computer generated graphics thanks to the film TRON. Released in 1982 the movie revolved around stolen code from the fictional game titled Space Paranoids. The graphics in Space Paranoids were way ahead of their time but audiences knew that someday the arcades would meet that level of technology. Growing up I had no idea that it would take over a decade to get there. The early polygonal games were not quite at the level that TRON promised, however they showed more than enough potential.

In 1993 Namco released Cyber Sled. The game revolved around futuristic tank combat. The tanks were set in arenas with free standing pylons and walls. They provided cover from the machine gun view and missiles that all of the tanks could fire. All of the stages were timed so the more aggressive and tactical player was usually the victor. It was essentially an updated version of the Atari 2600 classic Combat. Players piloted the tanks via a dial joystick yoke, like an actual tank driver. The polygons were bright and colorful and the animation and music very uptempo. The three-dimensional graphics were seamless. The tank and character designs simply oozed style. They were heavily influenced by science fiction animé and looked unlike anything seen in Western cartoons or films. In typical game fashion they each had their own strengths and weaknesses, from light and fast to heavy and powerful. The machines, like many early polygonal games, cost a bit more than the average arcade unit. Only the larger arcades could afford it and many of the early 3D titles.

Science fiction design went over very well with the early polygon hits. Sega released a robotic combat game in 1995 titled Cyber Troopers Virtual-On. That same year Namco released Cyber Commando, a spiritual successor to Cyber Sled. In just a few short years of working with 3D technology the quality of their polygonal engines had grown exponentially. Everything moved faster and responded much more fluidly than the early polygon titles. Visually each generation of 3D game was more gorgeous than the prior. Virtual-On and Cyber Troopers featured new lighting techniques and particle effects that were impossible to reproduce in 2D games. The environments and machines of war that each game featured were very convincing. Gamers could get a greater sense of simulation from these sit down cabinets than ever before. The models in each game gave off a strong sense of weight and mass.

Once the various genres started moving into 3D it was tough to go back. There were no equivalents to Virtual-On or Cyber Sled in 2D. Granted, some genres seemed to have better gameplay in 2D but both Sega and Namco would begin luring players away from those games as well. Even classic light gun shooters were made amazing thanks to polygon technology. Sega released Virtua Cop in 1994, and Namco responded with Time Crisis in 1995. Audiences on both sides of the Pacific began to notice the quality of each game had was only getting better. They also began to notice that Namco seemed to revel in taking shots at their bigger rival. The next blog will look at the game that created one of the longest running rivalries in the arcade. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!