Down the memory lane
81.5 billion dollars. That’s what the gaming industry makes up of the world economy of 77,868 billion dollars (as of 2014). It all started in the 1950s when academic computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations as part of their research or just for fun. These games were played on room-size computers and moves were made by means of punch cards! Video games weren’t a thing of the public until the 1970s and 1980s, when video arcade games and gaming consoles using joysticks, buttons, and other controllers were introduced. As it’s called, ‘the golden age of arcade video games’ was from 1978 to 1982. Video games started dominating the entertainment industry and video arcades with large, graphics-decorated coin-operated machines were common at malls. Albeit many classical games became obsolete with the rapid development of video game technology, some of them stood the test of time and many are under constant development even to this moment. Those are what are commonly called retro games. What better than Pac-Man and Super Mario to tell their tale? This article takes you through the legacy of two of the most widely known and played retro games.
“I’m like a Pac-Man when I’m at a party, I eat everything and run away from anyone coming close to me.”
The super hit maze arcade game developed by Namco in 1980 has an interesting genesis. Its creators wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, as most video games during that time period were ‘war games’ or simple sports titles. Several sources claim that the inspiration for the game was taken from a pizza with a slice removed. The in-game characters were made to be cute and colourful and to appeal to younger players. The game is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time; its title character was the first original gaming mascot, the game established the maze chase game genre, it demonstrated the potential of characters in video games, it increased the appeal of video games with female audiences, and it was gaming’s first broad licensing success. The Pac-Man video game franchise remains one of the highest-grossing and best-selling game series of all time, generating over $14 billion in revenue (as of 2016) and 43 million in sales combined.
“It’s a-me, Mario!” — Mario in Super Mario 64
What if I tell you that arguably the most popular game character in the world is a byproduct of legal inability? The creators of the game originally intended to create a video game that used the characters Popeye, Bluto and Olive Oyl. At the time, however, they were unable to acquire a license to use the characters, so they ended up making an unnamed character, Donkey Kong, and Lady. That unnamed character would go on to become the protagonist of over 200 video games since his creation. The mushroom kingdom featuring the warp pipes, the toads, the koopas, the goombas, the carnivorous plants and many others is a familiar world to a lot of us. Mario is the only other video game character with Pac-Man to become the most recognizable worldwide.
Apart from contributions to the #Pixelspaced world, retro games have had immense influence in fields ranging from music to mathematics. Just to name one; within the mathematical research field of dynamical systems, a new kind of renormalization called “pac-man renormalization” was introduced by Dzmitry Dudko, Mikhail Lyubich, and Nikita Selinger. The name was inspired by the visual similarity of the pac-man figure to their main object of study. This theory, announced in 2017 with further advanced in 2018 made significant advances in the study of the famous Mandelbrot set.
Something with contributions of this magnitude cannot go unacknowledged. Dhanak 2k19 pays tribute to the games that defined an era and revolutionized video games and their appeal.
