They Create Worlds

TCW Podcast Episode 261 - StarFox   Before Star Fox, there was a developer in Britain building copy protection tools, a dinner party that opened the right door, and a Game Boy prototype game that could do something it was never supposed to do. Jez San's Argonaut Software caught Nintendo's attention at CES and was invited to Japan. The meeting led to a two million dollar deal to build a custom chip...

TCW Podcast Episode 260 - Vivendi Electric Boogaloo   How does a Canadian liquor company end up owning Universal Studios and, eventually, help create Activision Blizzard? Seagram chased diversification as liquor sales softened, tried to take over Conoco, and instead wound up with a 25% stake in DuPont that generated most of its earnings. Edgar Bronfman Jr. sold that stake to buy MCA from Matsushit...

TCW Podcast Episode 259 - A Cendant to Vivendi   CUC International looked like a company that never missed. Quarter after quarter, just barely beating estimates, right up until the moment Henry Silverman got access to their books and found out why. When a new customer signed up, CUC booked a full year of revenue immediately, even though billing was monthly. If that customer left before the year wa...

TCW Podcast Episode 258 - The Shenanigans of CUC Software   Walter Forbes built CUC International from Comp-U-Card, a phone-in discount shopping club that cut out the middleman with a small markup and annual fee, not unlike a proto-Amazon Prime. As computer networks like CompuServe, Prodigy, and GEnie rose, CUC pivoted online and Forbes set his sights on the games business, joining the Sierra On-L...

TCW Podcast Episode 257 - Nine Atari Games   The Atari VCS launched with nine games to entice consumers into the new gaming medium, and Combat set the trend of packing multiple "games" into a single cartridge. Featuring a wide array of game modes, Combat holds its own even today and served as the console's official tie-in title. Atari's partnership with Sears, however, rebranded all but one of the...

TCW Podcast Episode 256 - Cinemaware   Bob Jacob launched Cinemaware to fuse movies and video games on Amiga, hiring journalist Kellyn Beeck to design Defender of the Crown's medieval themes. Programmer John Cutter led in-house development after massive outside studio delays, tapping coder R.J. Michael for an intense programming marathon to barely hit deadline and make Defender the Amiga's killer...

TCW Podcast Episode 255 - The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind   After Arena and Daggerfall's triumphs, Julian LeFay's Battlespire spinoff marked his last hand in the Elder Scrolls universe. Amid conflicts while working on other projects, LeFay left. Ted Peterson had already departed after Daggerfall. This left Bethesda Softworks with none of the original creators for the next Elder Scrolls. Development s...

TCW Podcast Episode 254 - The Elder Scrolls: Arena & Daggerfall   Bethesda Softworks, founded in 1985 by Christopher Weaver with sports titles like Gridiron and Wayne Gretzky Hockey along with licenses like The Terminator, pivoted to RPGs. Demo scene legend Julian LeFay hired Vijay Lakshman as designer and buffer to management so LeFay could focus on games. Together they birthed The Elder Scro...

TCW Podcast Episode 253 - Masanobu Endō   Masanobu Endō is one of Japan's most important game designers, yet remains relatively unknown in the West. Starting from an uncertain role at Namco, he first made his mark by turning Dig Dug play notes into an official strategy booklet, then shifted into programming work where he learned from Namco's maze games, including Pac-Man. Assigned as a programmer...

TCW Podcast Episode 252 - A Guitar Hero   The rise and fall of the Guitar Hero franchise and the rhythm game craze of the mid to late 2000s. Red Octane got its start making Dance Dance Revolution pads, but a partnership with Harmonix Music Systems, a studio building technology that let people interact with music without learning an instrument, led to the creation of Guitar Hero. Major retailers re...

TCW Podcast Episode 251 - Virgin Games   As a companion piece to our Mastertronic episode, we look at the rise and fall of Virgin Games. Beginning with Richard Branson’s mail-order record business and the success of Virgin Records, the company expanded into games under executive Nick Alexander, whose interest in the industry led to the creation of a Virgin gaming subsidiary. Early successes includ...

TCW Podcast Episode 250 - Mastertronic   From budget software publisher to the gateway for SEGA’s entry into Europe, we look at the rise and fall of Mastertronic. Initially shunned by high street retailers, the company found success supplying discount games to chains like Woolworths while importing and reselling titles from other publishers for the European market. A failed attempt to bring budget...

TCW Podcast Episode 249 - New World Computing   We look at the rise and fall of New World Computing through the career of Jon Van Caneghem. Coming from the era of the lone programmer as the industry shifted toward larger development houses, Jon built Might and Magic into one of the most influential RPG franchises of its time. We trace the evolution of the series from its early focus on quest drive...

TCW Podcast Episode 248 - An Act of Control   We look at Japan’s Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business and its impact on the arcade industry in Japan. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, video games became increasingly popular in Japan, drawing public concern over how much time and money players were spending in game centers. With little cultural context for games as entertainment, m...

TCW Podcast Episode 247 - The History of Commodore Pt 4 The final chapter of our Commodore series covers the company’s chaotic decline. After early success with the Amiga line, internal conflict grew under President Tom Rattigan, who wanted to focus on the low end with the Amiga 500 while Irving Gould pushed for high end systems like the Amiga 2000. Missed deadlines and a failed boardroom challeng...

TCW Podcast Episode 246 - The History of Commodore Pt 3 After Jack Tramiel left Commodore and founded Tramel Technology, the company pressed on with mixed results. Systems like the SX 64, the C900, the Plus/4, the C16, and the C116 failed to gain traction, which led to the development of the C128. It improved on the C64 in many ways, but because so many games relied on C64 quirks, Commodore includ...

TCW Podcast Episode 245 - The History of Commodore Pt 2   Commodore’s shift from calculators to computers began with the PET, which found success in Europe as a business machine. After seeing the ZX80 in Britain, Jack Tramiel pushed for an affordable home computer, leading to the VIC-20. Guided by marketing manager Michael S. Tomczyk, Commodore promoted the VIC-20 as “the friendly computer” with W...

TCW Podcast Episode 244 - The History of Commodore Pt 1   We kick off our look at Commodore with the story of its founder, Jack Tramiel. A Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the United States, Tramiel began repairing lamps and typewriters before founding a typewriter import business in Toronto. His early success was nearly undone by the Atlantic Acceptance financial scandal, which forced him into...

TCW Podcast Episode 243 - RCA Studio II   The RCA Studio II emerged from the company’s faltering computer division and the vision of engineer Joseph Weisbecker, who had long dreamed of personal computing after reading "Giant Brains or Machines That Think". He developed FRED at home, a TTL-based hobby computer. A later iteration using the COSMAC microprocessor inspired his daughter Joyce, who went...

TCW Podcast Episode 242- Fumito Ueda   Fumito Ueda entered game design through art rather than a love of traditional play. Influenced by titles like Flashback and Another World, he sought to tell stories with minimal interfaces and expansive environments rich in mood. After early work on D and Enemy Zero, Sony gave him a trial period that led to ICO, a game shaped by surreal landscapes inspired by...

TCW Podcast Episode 241 - The First 10 Years of European Consoles   The first decade of European consoles began with imports of the Magnavox Odyssey, but soon local experiments took shape. In Spain, the Overkal may have been tied to a possible attempt to bring the Odyssey into the country, though no hard evidence survives, and it is generally treated as a local product. Across Europe, companies li...

TCW Podcast Episode 240 - Nintendo: Playing with Mii & Wii   From DS touch-and-stylus play to living-room motion, we trace Nintendo's road to Wii. Nintendogs and Brain Age broadened the audience to parents and grandparents. After cold receptions at Microsoft and Sony, inventor Tom Quinn's Gyration motion tech found a home at Nintendo, and internal prototypes were so fun they became Wii Sports,...

TCW Podcast Episode 239 - Nintendo: Wii Were Struggling   Nintendo’s struggle for cultural relevance in the lead-up to the Wii was marked by the N64’s poor fit for Japanese homes and the GameCube’s failure to outsell even the fledgling Xbox globally. Internally, a power struggle unfolded as Hiroshi Yamauchi prepared to retire. Former Sharp executive Atsushi Asada was brought in and became Executiv...

TCW Podcast Episode 238 - Quake   We dive into the development of Quake, the ambitious and turbulent follow-up to Doom from ID Software. John Carmack set out to build a groundbreaking engine featuring full 3D rendering, dynamic lighting, and client-server multiplayer. This pushed the technical boundaries in a pre-GPU world. To achieve this, he brought in legendary programmer Michael Abrash from Mi...

TCW Podcast Episode 237 - Jordan Mechner and Price of  Persia   We continue our look at Jordan Mechner with the development of Prince of Persia. Its cinematic inspirations include Castles of Dr. Creep, the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the 1938 Robin Hood. To animate the prince, Mechner filmed his brother performing stunts, then manually painted key frames, painting his brother white and...