How Video Games Changed the World Page #6

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pretty much had its ancestry

in the likes of Tetris.

Even as the Russians were chalking

up their first big hit with Tetris,

meanwhile on our side

of the Iron Curtain,

Hollywood was starting to get

seriously involved in the games industry.

Games were being created by the

people who brought you Star Wars.

You know, Star Wars.

What was interesting straightaway

about the LucasArts studio

was it was under the umbrella of

Lucasfilm, George Lucas's company,

so it was the first connection

between film and games.

LucasArts started and it had

a mandate

to stay small and not lose any money

and to be the best, I think,

were the three slogans they had.

And also, don't use Star Wars.

George wanted this new company

to stand on its own legs.

Early LucasArts efforts were

action games which,

while technically cutting-edge,

didn't have much impact.

What these games were missing

was a coherent story,

something you'd think Hollywood

would excel at.

The first attempts at computerised

interactive fiction

such as Zork, here, consisted of

nothing but text on a screen -

a kind of playable novella

you navigated through

by typing in instructions like

"go north" and "get lamp".

This spectrum adaptation

of The Hobbit added crude

graphics to the sea of text -

not quite Peter Jackson.

It wasn't until LucasArts turned

the genre into a point

and click cartoon that interactive

storytelling came of age.

When anyone asks me

what my favourite video game is,

it's not your Grand Theft Autos or

Call Of Dutys, it's Monkey Island.

The Secret Of Monkey Island

was a brilliantly realised

comic adventure

overflowing with

character and charm.

What I loved about the Monkey Island

series was the fact that they

were a bit romantic at times,

the main character, the protagonist,

was a guy was a guy by the name of

Guybrush Threepwood,

a wannabe pirate who just really

didn't have it in him.

He didn't have the guts, he didn't

have the nous to become this

famous pirate

that he'd always wanted to be.

We had Elaine Marley,

the love interest.

She was funny,

the script was excellent.

The main antagonist, the main baddie,

was a ghost pirate by the name of

LeChuck.

I love that character so much,

I've actually got a tattoo

on my leg of the man himself.

Not only is it a beautifully

programmed game

and wonderful looking - really

lovely visuals, really distinctive,

but at the same time

it also had a very strong character

sense of humour about it.

You know, a tone, basically, in the

way that a good movie has a tone.

So few games are genuinely funny

and this game was not only funny

in its writing,

It used its mechanics to set up

a lot of the comedy.

There's a sword fight in Monkey

Island that you have to win

but the way you win it is not by

being better with a sword

but by having

the funnier comebacks.

They are basically insult

sword fights.

The character you're fighting

against will insult you in some way

and then you've got

various choices of what's

the funniest retort,

what's the funniest comeback.

As you win the argument, as you win

the fight of witty rejoinders,

the fight would go in the same

direction.

I mean, we were certainly influenced

on Monkey Island by The Simpsons

but also, I think,

Monty Python in a way.

What the Holy Grail was doing to

the Arthurian legend

we were hoping to do to pirates.

Fittingly, for a game forged

from many different influences,

some believe Monkey Island turned

out to be quite influential itself,

pointing out

similarities between the game

and the vastly entertaining

Pirates Of The Caribbean movies.

Both the game and the film feature

a reluctant swashbuckler

who attempts to rescue his

wisecracking love interest

from a motley crew of zombie pirates

with a scary undead leader.

There are even individual moments

that seem vaguely familiar.

For instance, here, Guybrush

Threepwood solves a problem by using

a coffin as a boat, a bit like Jack

Sparrow did in Dead Man's Chest.

Sorry, mate.

Mind if we make a little side trip?

I didn't think so.

All of which, I'm sure,

is a total coincidence.

It's hard for me

to watch those movies

and not see little glimpses of

Monkey Island in them,

but Monkey Island was based on the

Pirates Of The Caribbean ride.

That was my whole

influence for that game,

so it's kind of a full circle thing.

Monkey Island earns a place

on our list for bringing

cinematic storytelling techniques

to interactive fiction

and its spirit lives on in advanced

contemporary games

like the grim murder mystery,

LA Noire,

and this year's flawed

but interesting Beyond Two Souls.

They're impressive,

but a bit po-faced.

Nothing since has had

the humour of Monkey Island.

All this stuff about spinning yarns

was all well and good

but when would games learn to

focus on the really important things

like teaching children how to

maim and kill?

The answer, fortunately, was soon.

Bang!

The early '90s were

brimming with firsts -

the first President Bush was

gleefully waging the first Gulf War.

The first McDonald's

opened in Russia!

And something called

the World Wide Web

became publicly accessible

for the first time.

Popular youth culture, meanwhile,

was entranced by slackerdom

and the grunge scene,

as detailed on gaudy

entertainment shows like The Word.

But there was also

a new wave of cultural icons,

hailing from Japan, whose

specialist subject on Mastermind

would've been kicking

the sh*t out of each other.

Street Fighter II looks incredible.

It's the game that made gaming cool.

Arcades had to draft in

more machines

just to accommodate

for the demand for it,

you know, it was just such a...

such a huge, huge phenomenon.

Street Fighter II is a prime example

of why games are good, cos

you've got a friend and you say,

"Let's just have a reasonable

game of Street Fighter."

"Yeah, sure, let's have a game

of Street Fighter." And you end up

screaming at them, "I'm going to

kill you! I'm going to kill you!"

But it was great,

cos it was competitive and it was

so unlike anything that I'd ever

played before, to be honest,

cos it's just two characters

punching each other in the face.

It was definitely competitive,

especially when you play

with bad winners.

I called them bad winners,

because, while they're

knocking you the hell out,

they're just like,

"Yeah! Bam! Take that!"

And you just... You're just

getting totally trashed up!

You lose!

There have always been

head-to-head games -

Pong was a head-to-head game -

but they tended to be

simple test of reflexes,

until Street Fighter II came along.

This too was a test of reflexes,

but also, crucially,

a test of memory,

agility and strategy.

Now, unless you know what's

going on, it looks fairly mindless,

but it's actually far more

complex than it appears.

I think the key thing

about Street Fighter II was that

it popularised the idea of

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