Golden: Development of Seven Cities of Gold

After M.U.L.E. Bunten wants to do a computer port of Avalon Hill’s classic board game Civilization, but he is unable to drum up enough enthusiasm with his Ozark colleagues, and they eventually decide on a new-world exploration concept titled The Seven Cities of Gold, with the thrust of the game being three-pronged: the bravery of explorers who set off into uncharted waters to discover a huge new world, the dangers of dealing with a native culture and overcoming the language barrier, and the morality of conquering a populace through force. Seven Cities of Gold also borrows from Bunten’s alarm at getting lost in the woods while backpacking one day. Dan and his brother Bill start off the project with their favourite aspect of the game creation process: absorbing as much info as they can from books,  in this case about the New World explorers and the tools and techniques they utilized, like shipbuilding and sea-going navigation.

Click the button to play The Seven Cities of Gold on the golden Commodore 64

Taking the role of an intrepid explorer out to write his name in the history books, the player can take many paths to glory…they can peacefully explore the new world and trade their way to success, or take a cue from the real conquistadors and subdue the native population and seize their treasures by the sword. Seven Cities of Gold is another astounding production for Ozark Softscape in graphics, play-value, historical context, and countless other areas. While there is a strategy to exploring around the new world while maintaining food stocks for your expedition, the action sequences of dealing with native villages and cities pays tribute to the more arcade-inclined. Just compressing all the data points of all the various terrain squares of the humongous New World (102,400 map points, each with 25 possible attributes, such as plains, rivers and swamps) and creating data handlers to load this info seamlessly on clunky Atari and Commodore disk drives is an amazing achievement for Bunten and Ozark. Released in 1984, Seven Cities of Gold goes on to sell 150,000 copies, 5x as many as M.U.L.E. and becoming Bunten’s best-selling game. It is also his first solo-player program. During a press conference, Hawkins coins the term “edutainment” to describe the Seven Cities of Gold computer game to the media. Almost a decade later, in 1993, Electronic Arts would release a complete remake of the game featuring high-res graphics, titled Seven Cities of Gold: The Commemorative Edition.

Heart and Soul: Exploring the Heart of Africa Computer Game

The original Seven Cities is followed by computer game Heart of Africa in 1985. This is Bunten’s first adventure game and last solo player effort. And with its GUI system, it could also be called the first graphic adventure game with point-and-click control, coming two years before Lucasfilm’s computer adventure game Maniac Mansion. It sees release only on the C64 platform but ultimately sells almost as many units as Seven Cities of Gold.

Click the button to play Heart of Africa on the good old Commodore 64

Bunten leaves Electronic Arts after doing two more games for them: Robot Rascals (1986) is a hybrid computer/card game that requires four humans around the computer to play. With this game, Bunten is trying to replicate the competitive feeling of M.U.L.E. while eschewing the financial calculations present in that effort that might have alienated some gamers. Players in Robot Rascals issue commands to their choice of one of 10 on-screen robots with a joystick, in a scavenger hunt to find the items on the cards they draw from an “Item” deck. An additional “Luck” deck deals out bonuses or penalties that help flatten out the impacts of both luck and skill while playing.

Click the button to play Robot Rascals on the good old Commodore 64

The other game for EA is Modem Wars (1988), the first fully online game produced by a major manufacturer. Bunten’s ultimate departure from Electronic Arts is partly due to a rift over the fact that Hawkins refuses to port M.U.L.E for Nintendo under the guise that his company doesn’t make cartridge games. Mindscape ends up porting a version of M.U.L.E. for Nintendo in 1990. Bunten signs a deal with Microprose and is uncertain what his next game will be. He is torn between adapting two board games, one the port of Civilization, the other Milton Bradley’s Axis and Allies. Fellow Microprosian Sid Meier convinces Bunten to do a WWII game, which becomes Command H.Q., Bunten’s second-best selling game, while Meier tackles Civilization. Command HQ is followed by Global Conquest, the first four-player online game, in 1992.

Heart of Africa title screen, C64

In 1992 Bunten transitions to female, or as she puts it, has a “pronoun” change, becoming Danielle Bunten Berry. She is then involved in an attempt by Sega to move the M.U.L.E. concept to their 16-bit Genesis game console, but Son of M.U.L.E. is aborted after Berry refuses to add weapons to the MULEs as per Sega’s request. A planned porting of the original game to the Genesis also falls through, and Ozark Softscape is shuttered soon after.

Bunten Berry then spends a year in Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s think tank Interval, in a project to develop games designed especially for girls. Her last gig is designing Internet games for Mpath Interactive, where her work there culminates in WarSport in 1997, a free online action strategy game.

Online Champion: Dani Bunten Berry

If you could pick out one driving obsession in Berry’s career, it would be using multiplayer games as a device to bring people closer together through a computer conduit. Berry designs more multiplayer games than anyone else in the industry at the time. By the mid-90’s the gaming industry as a whole has finally caught up with Berry’s multiplayer vision, with the option to play online becoming a standard feature in games. Online gaming loses its greatest champion on July 3, 1998, when Danielle Bunten Berry dies of lung cancer. 26 years after her 4-player masterpiece was released, an Internet multiplayer version of M.U.L.E. sanctioned by the remaining Bunten family is released. Called Planet M.U.L.E., it is produced by Blue Systems and developed by Turborilla.

Pinball Wizard: The Balls of Bill Budge

In 1970 a curious Bill Budge attends a newly created computer math class at his high school. Using time on an archaic IBM 1401 provided by a local business, Budge writes out his assembler code on sheets which are transferred to punch cards and receives the printed output. Starting with mathematical functions, he moves into Fortran programming and his first finished game is a version of Tic-Tac-Toe. He has discovered his calling. Attending the PhD program at UC Berkeley, he buys an Apple II home computer late in 1978 and starts programming game on it.

Inspired by PONG, he writes a version of the game called Penny Arcade. Watching the phosphor ball move back and forth in his darkened apartment, on an 80 dollar b&w TV set, it’s a kind of epiphany to the young Budge. He continues on to write proficient translations of current vector graphics arcade hits like Lunar Lander, Asteroids and Space Wars. He trades Penny Arcade to Apple Computers for a printer, and in 1981 lands a part-time position at the company as a graphics engineer.

He sells his first commercial game, Lunar Lander knock-off Tranquility Base through Stoneware Microcomputer Products, AND he is also a programmer at California Pacific Computer Company, one of a star stable of up-and-coming game creators, which also includes Ultima author Lord British/Richard Garriott. There, Budge creates game compilations such as Trilogy of Games and Space Album; both collections of his arcade-inspired works. An aficionado of the stop-motion FX creations of Ray Harryhausen (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts), as well as Disney films, Budge uses the Apple II to create his own animated style. Even while treading the well-worn ground of video arcade game knock-offs, Budge’s output startles with its touches of fluid animation, especially in the confines of the Apple II.

Making Pinball Construction Set

Click the button to Raster Blaster on the Apple II

Although Budge was not previously a pinball fan, Wozniak and the other engineers at Apple are, and their enthusiasm rubs off. During his spare time at Apple he codes Raster Blaster for the Apple II in 1981. It is the first commercial home computer pinball simulation, derived from Budge’s experience with an earlier arcade version. He leaves California Pacific to found BudgeCo. to market the Raster Blaster, which becomes a huge success. He is tired of simply aping the types of games to be found in the arcades, so taking the bitmap graphics editing tools he has created to make Raster Blaster, Budge incorporates them into Pinball Construction Set, and the GUI (graphical user interface) used to place the pieces becomes the first ever incorporated into a computer game. The GUI is inspired by the XeroxPARC Alto, the first computer to use one as its operating system. Budge strives for accuracy in the pieces the users of Pinball Construction Set can move around with the pointing hand icon; during the early stages of development he purchases an old Target Alpha pinball game by Gottlieb and takes it apart, analyzing each component so that their analogs in the game look like reasonably accurate representations.

Click the button to play Pinball Construction Set on the good old Commodore 64

Recommended to Trip Hawkins through his friend Steve Wozniak, Budge joins Electronic Arts  and Pinball Construction Set becomes a big hit as one of the initial offerings by the young games company in 1983, and Budge is sent out on a press tour and signs copies of the game for fans at computer store appearances. He re-writes the program for the Sega Genesis in 1993, under the moniker Virtual Pinball. He later joins Hawkins at 3DO in 1993, as a distinguished engineer.

Click the button to play Pinball Construction Set Sequel Virtual Pinball on Sega Genesis

Electronic Arts: Juggernaut

Such are just a few of the many games, talented designers and programmers in the early years of Electronic Arts. A list of the other games produced during this period reads like a top 100 made for the early computer platforms, including titles like ArcticFox, The Bard’s Tale series, Earth Orbit Station, John Madden Football, Marble Madness, P.H.M. Pegasus, Racing Destruction Set, Realm of Impossibility, SkyFox, Strike Fleet, and Wasteland…to name a few. A move into creative software with the Deluxe series of products like Deluxe Paint, introduced for the Commodore Amiga computer in 1985, further solidifies EA as a software giant. By 1986 Electronic Arts is the biggest consumer software company in the U.S.,  posting sales in excess of $27 million that year, over 84% more than what it had in sales the previous year.

Click the button to play the The Bard’s Tale on the Apple IIgs

EA founder Trip Hawkins begins developing the 3DO gaming hardware project inside EA, and in December of 1990 steps down as CEO and leaves the company he founded to guide this new hardware licensing venture. Mail Order Monsters co-creator Paul Reiche III, co-founding development house Toys for Bob with Fred Ford in 1989, scores with the first two Star Control games for Accolade: Star Control in 1990 and Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters in 1992.  The company is uninvolved with the disastrous 3rd entry, Star Control 3, developed by Legend Entertainment and released in 1996. Toys for Bob also rides the wave of CD-ROM technology in 1994 with FMV extravaganza The Horde, and lands a critical success with Pandemonium!, for most major systems of the era, in 1996.  2005 sees the development house purchased by Activision, and in 2011 Reiche III and Ford meld their love of real toys and video games with stunning success with the first of the Skylanders games. Fellow programmer Robert Leyland is along for the ride, working on both Star Control and Skylanders. Electronic Arts makes a series of acquisitions of other prominent development houses over the intervening years; here is a brief list of some of them and highlights of their releases:

Origin Systems in 1992, disbanded in 2004 (Ultima series: 1981-1999, Wing Commander series: 1990-1997)

Westwood Studios in 1998, disbanded in 2003 (BattleTech series: 1988-1990, Dune series: 1992-2001, Eye of the Beholder I & II: 1990-1991, The Legend of Kyrandia series: 1992-1994, Command & Conquer series: 1995-2002)

Maxis in 1997 (SimCity series: 1989-2013, The Sims series: 2000-2012, Spore: 2008)

Jane’s Combat Simulations brand in 1995, disbanded in 2000 (Advanced Tactical Fighters: 1995, AH-64D Longbow: 1996, 688i Hunter/Killer: 1997, F-15: 1998, Fleet Command: 1999)

Bullfrog Productions, Ltd. in 1995, disbanded in 2004 (Populous series: 1989-1998, Powermonger: 1990, Syndicate series: 1993-1996, Magic Carpet and Magic Carpet 2: 1994-1995, Theme Park: 1994, Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2: 1997-1999, Theme Hospital: 1997, Sim Theme Park: 1999, SimCoaster: 2001)

Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment aka DICE in 2006 (Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies: 1992, Pinball Illusions: 1995, Battlefield series: 2002-2014, Mirror’s Edge: 2008)

Bioware Corp.  in 2007 (Baldur’s Gate series:1998-2016, Mass Effect series: 2007-2021, Dragon Age series: 2009-2014)

Mythic Entertainment in 2009, disbanded 2014 (Dark Age of Camelot: 2001, WarHammer Online series: 2008-2013)

And so it goes. We remove our baseball caps and salute those development teams that created some great computer games, and were thusly digested in the belly of the beast. Via these myriad acquisitions, Electronic Arts has ended up as one of the largest game companies around; it’s come a long way from Trip Hawkins’ noble dream of being an incubator for “Software Artists”.