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Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games
Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games takes you inside the video arcade game industry during the classic decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Warren Davis, the creator of the groundbreaking Q*bert, worked as a member of the creative teams who developed some of the most popular video games of all time, including Joust 2, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Revolution X.
In a witty and entertaining narrative, Davis shares insightful stories that offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to work as a designer and programmer at the most influential and dominant video arcade game manufacturers of the era, including Gottlieb, Williams/Bally/Midway, and Premiere.
Likewise, the talented artists, designers, creators, and programmers Davis has collaborated with over the years reads like a who’s who of video gaming Eugene Jarvis, Tim Skelly, Ed Boon, Jeff Lee, Dave Thiel, John Newcomer, George Petro, Jack Haegar, and Dennis Nordman, among many others.
The impact Davis has had on the video arcade game industry is deep and varied. At Williams, Davis created and maintained the revolutionary digitizing system that allowed actors and other photo-realistic imagery to be utilized in such games as Mortal Kombat, T2, and NBA Jam. When Davis worked on the fabled Us vs. Them, it was the first time a video game integrated a live action story with arcade-style graphics.
On the one-of-a-kind Exterminator, Davis developed a brand new video game hardware system, and created a unique joystick that sensed both omni-directional movement and rotation, a first at that time. For Revolution X, he created a display system that simulated a pseudo-3D environment on 2D hardware, as well as a tool for artists that facilitated the building of virtual worlds and the seamless integration of the artist’s work into game code.
Whether you’re looking for insights into the Golden Age of Arcades, would like to learn how Davis first discovered his design and programming skills as a teenager working with a 1960s computer called a Monrobot XI, or want to get the inside scoop on what it was like to film the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Aerosmith for Revolution X, Davis’s memoir provides a backstage tour of the arcade and video game industry during its most definitive and influential period.
In a witty and entertaining narrative, Davis shares insightful stories that offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to work as a designer and programmer at the most influential and dominant video arcade game manufacturers of the era, including Gottlieb, Williams/Bally/Midway, and Premiere.
Likewise, the talented artists, designers, creators, and programmers Davis has collaborated with over the years reads like a who’s who of video gaming Eugene Jarvis, Tim Skelly, Ed Boon, Jeff Lee, Dave Thiel, John Newcomer, George Petro, Jack Haegar, and Dennis Nordman, among many others.
The impact Davis has had on the video arcade game industry is deep and varied. At Williams, Davis created and maintained the revolutionary digitizing system that allowed actors and other photo-realistic imagery to be utilized in such games as Mortal Kombat, T2, and NBA Jam. When Davis worked on the fabled Us vs. Them, it was the first time a video game integrated a live action story with arcade-style graphics.
On the one-of-a-kind Exterminator, Davis developed a brand new video game hardware system, and created a unique joystick that sensed both omni-directional movement and rotation, a first at that time. For Revolution X, he created a display system that simulated a pseudo-3D environment on 2D hardware, as well as a tool for artists that facilitated the building of virtual worlds and the seamless integration of the artist’s work into game code.
Whether you’re looking for insights into the Golden Age of Arcades, would like to learn how Davis first discovered his design and programming skills as a teenager working with a 1960s computer called a Monrobot XI, or want to get the inside scoop on what it was like to film the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Aerosmith for Revolution X, Davis’s memoir provides a backstage tour of the arcade and video game industry during its most definitive and influential period.
279 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 11, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 13, 2022
I liked this biography a lot. I have read, I think, most of the classic game programmers’ books and Warren Davis fine narrative makes this book well worth a read. Some aspects of it makes it a notch better than some of the other similar books since it discusses some of the technicalities involved in making games without GPUs, gigabytes of memory and powerful CPUs.
I am a nerd; I really love geeky details and I was intrigued by the following paragraph “I won’t get into the details of the process. Believe me, I’d love to (this is what a geeky computer nerd loves doing), but the explanation would take up its own chapter.”. Warren discussed how he investigated algorithms to recreate the illusion of driving and there is plenty of this small gold nuggets sprinkled around the book. I would love the see a 2nd edition of this book that really explore how it was to be a game developer, before Internet and Stack-overflow, which tools, editors and debuggers was used and even more details around the research and development and all the other “hard-core” stuff I would love to read about.
I am a nerd; I really love geeky details and I was intrigued by the following paragraph “I won’t get into the details of the process. Believe me, I’d love to (this is what a geeky computer nerd loves doing), but the explanation would take up its own chapter.”. Warren discussed how he investigated algorithms to recreate the illusion of driving and there is plenty of this small gold nuggets sprinkled around the book. I would love the see a 2nd edition of this book that really explore how it was to be a game developer, before Internet and Stack-overflow, which tools, editors and debuggers was used and even more details around the research and development and all the other “hard-core” stuff I would love to read about.
Displaying 1 of 1 review