A WOPR of a Computer

Joshua, the renegade program that Lightman unwittingly unleashes during his hacking forays into NORAD, resides inside the movie’s equivalent of the SIOP that Lasker and Parkes had researched early in script development, the computer that runs WWIII simulations endlessly, looking for a way to win the “game”. Badham thinks that SIOP is the world’s most boring acronym, and thus dubs the computer the WOPR, or War Operation Planned Response. Not only does the resemblance to Burger King’s flagship hamburger tickle the director, he also likes the bravado of the sound in the first syllable, in that the U.S. military would WHOP! the opposition if push came to shove. The look of WOPR is created by the film’s production designer, Geoffrey Kirkland. Hailing from the U.K., Kirkland bases the look of the WOPR from early mainframe designs dating back to the 40’s and 50’s, as well as from various military furniture designs. It is built of plywood, meaning Gen. Berenger could actually throw it a fair distance. Various blinking lights give it a nice cinematic look, and there’s even an LED equalizer display appropriated from some stereo equipment. A prototype flat panel LCD display designed by Lowell Nobel is installed into the WOPR prop to display the countdown timer, with Fink squeezed into the back of the cabinet typing characters onto the screen with an Apple II computer as Badham directs him.

Direct Hit

After receiving the honour of being the closing selection at the Cannes Film Festival, WarGames is released to theatres on June 3, 1983. It ranks 3rd in cash intake on its opening weekend, behind Psycho II and the blockbuster Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. John Badham has the honour of competing with himself, as his helicopter movie Blue Thunder is also released around the same time. WarGames proves to have legs and goes on to rake in nearly 80 million in its initial theatrical run, a nice investment on the 12 million it cost to make, and pegging it squarely at #5 for domestic box office gross for 1983. Trading Places, Flashdance and Terms of Endearment round up the top five, along with Jedi. The film also nabs three Oscar nominations at the 1984 Academy Awards: Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound, although it doesn’t take any of the statues home. The company that makes the special super-bright screen material to project the computer graphics on is, however, honoured for their technical achievement.

WarGames also has a strong and lasting impact on computer hacker culture. The release of the movie lights up the imagination of many a computer enthusiast, causing them to run out and buy a computer modem, in order to engage in the wider world of online bulletin board systems(BBS) springing up around the world. It also both defines the idea of a computer hacker in the minds of the public, and indeed influences a darker side of the computer world to flourish, such as the infamous phone phreaking hackers known as the Legion of Doom. Lasker and Parkes would later parlay their knowledge of computer hacking to make the similarly themed Sneakers, released in 1992.

War Games

Despite its success, several companies actually pass on a license for making a video game based on WarGames, afraid that a game based on the annihilation of the planet by nuclear war might be a hard sell. Sensing a big hit, Coleco pays one million dollars to UA/MGM for the license for their ColecoVision and Adam systems, undaunted by the subject matter. One of the lead designers of the game is Joe Angiolillo, having experience in crafting military board games. Thusly, WarGames the video game goes a strategic route and attempts to stay away from sensationalizing nuclear armageddon, with the game playing like a slightly more sedate, but more involved, version of arcade game Missile Command. Coleco’s game has the player switching from among six screens splitting up regions of the continental United States, similar to those seen up on the big boards in the War Room in the film. A graphic artist at Coleco strives to ensure as much accuracy, as limitations of memory resources allow, in the geographic features of the United States and the placement of various military assets. Armchair generals destroy incoming enemy units with ABM missiles, fighter aircraft, subs and a powerful satellite-based weapons system that floats in and out of sectors on an undulating orbit.

The point of the game is to keep the damage to your military and cities to a minimum, holding out for a predetermined amount of time until a ceasefire is reached. As you take damage, your DEFCON status slowly degrades towards level 1. If it remains this way for 60 seconds, a U.S. counter-attack will be launched, the world destroyed, and the game ended. Just the programming of all these graphics and the involved gameplay takes over four months, based on the 117 pages of specifications worked out over numerous story conferences by the designers, covering all aspects of how the game is played and reacts to play. Released in May of 1984, Coleco’s WarGames is backed by heavy promotion and a TV ad campaign. The game debuts on Billboard‘s video game sales chart at #6, rocketing up to #2 soon after. In less than 10 weeks, WarGames moves past 100,000 units, at a retail price of around $30. It is later released for the Atari 400/800 home computer line, and the Commodore 64.

Set up as a video game publishing arm in the late 90’s, MGM Interactive starts rummaging around their mother Corp’s IP library and dusts off WarGames for a video game adaptation. WarGames: Defcon 1 takes place 20 years after the events of the film, pitting NORAD against WOPR, who apparently has decided that the only winning move IS to play, and is attempting to destroy humanity, again. Available for both the original PlayStation console and PCs, the PS version is a tactical vehicular shooter, while the PC version is an RTS. Both games contain the same content and missions, however. The PS version also features a two-player co-operative mode, allowing partners to play through all the missions together.