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[narrator] It's 11:59 p.m.

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December 9th, 1993.

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In one minute,

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a PC game will be uploaded to a newly
popular platform called the internet.

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[man] There were
hundreds of people on the server

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and they were dying to get this game.

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[computer bleeps]

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[narrator] The game was Doom. 

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[man] Everyone was initiating
the file transfer at the same time,

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so the server just crashed.

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It was the game that everybody
had been waiting for, evidently.

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[man] It's a dark and scary
broken military base

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that's been invaded by demons from hell.

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There's a dark environment,

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a light is strobing,

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demons are coming at you,

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and you just see silhouettes and fireballs
coming toward you.

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[explosions]

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We wanted to scare the crap out of you.

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And nobody had ever seen
anything like it before.

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[narrator] This is John Romero...

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game designer turned legend...

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[chainsaw buzzes]

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...for freaking out
a generation of gamers.

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[Romero] We wanted to make
something dark and scary

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{\an8}and so we released one of the most violent
video games that's ever been made.

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[narrator] He had opened the door
to a new era of gaming...

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-[groaning]
-[gunshots]

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...where players could enter,

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explore,

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and play against each other.

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And it came at a pivotal moment

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when both computers and consoles
were about to enter a new dimension.

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Romero's machine of choice...

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was the PC.

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It started in 1989

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when Romero began making games
for a subscription service

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called Gamer's Edge.

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[Romero] Every month you would get a disc

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for whatever computer
that you were subscribing for

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and on that disc would be
a bunch of random stuff.

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Whether you like it or not,
you're getting it,

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and hopefully there'll be a game
or something fun on it.

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Twenty-two-year-old Romero paired up
with another young hotshot programmer

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named John Carmack to make games that were
actually worth it for the subscriber.

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I asked him,
"What is it that you want to do

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on this game, since we're going to make it
together? What are you interested in?"

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He said, "I'm interested in graphics

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and, like, the architecture of the games."

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And I said, "Okay,
I'll do the game designs and the levels

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and programming
and stuff that you don't like."

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[narrator] Romero had a partner in crime.

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Now they needed the perfect lair
for their team to code in.

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Gamer's Edge was at
a fluorescent light company,

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which to me is non-creative light.

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I prefer darkness.

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[heavy metal music playing]

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But I got a room at the office 

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and we made our environment
that we wanted to work in.

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It was a dark cave.

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We had a window
that we could let some sunlight in,

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but we hated that too.

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We had a Nintendo in the corner

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that was just playing Life Force, Zelda,
Mario 3 on loop.

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We had our own giant refrigerator in there
packed full of drinks.

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And I had a kick-ass '80s boombox

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and each person got a whole day to play
anything that they wanted.

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It was mostly metal.

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[heavy metal music playing]

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We spent tons of time there.
It was funny, because...

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we were starting to code
on our spare time after the normal hours.

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I mean, this is what we want to do.

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Nobody's telling us not to do it.
This is great.

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[narrator] Out of that metal-induced mania

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came the foundation
for something truly groundbreaking:

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smooth side-scrolling on the PC.

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[Romero] On the Nintendo,
side-scrolling was extremely smooth

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and the PC really couldn't do that

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because, at the time, the PC graphics
just weren't that advanced.

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{\an8}There were some side-scrolling games
that were like Mario clones

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that moved the screen in chunks,

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but the chunking doesn't feel real.
It takes you out of it.

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That's as good as it got back then.

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If we can figure out how
we can get it smooth horizontally,

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that's huge.

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If we can make a Mario-type thing,
like... that's unbelievable.

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So this one night,

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Carmack decided
that he was going to try to do it.

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[narrator] That night, he'd take a trip...

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[distorted voice]
...through the mushroom kingdom.

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Nah, not that mushroom kingdom.

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This one.

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I came in the next day at ten o'clock.

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They put a little demo on my desk 

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called Dangerous Dave
in Copyright Infringement.

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Dangerous Dave is a game
that I had made the month before.

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So I was like, "Hmm,

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they must have been
doing something last night."

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So I put it in the computer and ran it.

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The screen starts up with
Super Mario Brothers 3

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with Dangerous Dave on the screen.

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And he runs across the screen
and the whole screen smoothly scrolls.

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I could not believe that

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this was on a PC.

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I could not believe
that he got it working.

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No one has done this.

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This is the first time this has happened
on a PC.

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[narrator] In a single night, Carmack
figured out something no one else had

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and it opened up a whole new world
of possibilities.

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[Romero] It was validating the PC
as an actual game-playing machine.

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And I was like,
"This technology is big, it's huge.

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We need to start a company
and make our own game."

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[narrator] Romero saw that the PC

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could compete with
the gaming consoles of the time.

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But even in the world of Nintendo,

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there was still a limit to how deep
a player could go.

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Up to that point,

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Nintendo titles played out
in two dimensions.

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Run left, run right, jump up, jump down.

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So far, they hadn't figured out
how to place the player inside the game

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from the first-person perspective
with 3D polygonal graphics.

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Meanwhile, over in the UK,

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a brash high school dropout
named Dylan Cuthbert

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was spinning his wheels on the idea.

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[Cuthbert] I left school when I was 17.

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{\an8}I applied for a job
at a company called Argonaut Software.

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{\an8}At the time, it was
a very leading-edge 3D games company.

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[narrator] Argonaut was trying
to make a name for themselves

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among the gaming giants,

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and they were counting on 3D
to make it happen.

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[Cuthbert] Immediately I was thrown into
making a game for Game Boy,

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{\an8}a 3D game, sort of fly everywhere,
shooting kind of game.

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[narrator] Making a 3D game
for the Game Boy was unheard of,

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but that wasn't
the only problem facing the team.

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Nintendo fiercely guarded
their trade secrets.

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So if you wanted to legally develop games
on any of Nintendo's systems,

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you needed a permission slip,

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which Argonaut didn't have.

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But they went forward
with the project anyway,

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just to see if it could be done.

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[Cuthbert] And we had
no official dev kits, no official license,

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nothing at all. We just had a Game Boy.

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We just kind of ripped everything apart
and just attached wires,

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and basically hacked in the connections
on the chip to come out

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so we could actually give it
different data.

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[narrator] Dylan figured out how to code
a wireframe-based space demo

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that ran in 3D.

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That's how we knocked up the initial
3D sort of demo on the Game Boy,

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um, very unofficially.
So we kind of got away with it.

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[narrator] Or so they thought.

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[ominous music playing]

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Six months into that project,
it got seen by someone from Nintendo.

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[narrator]
Hacking Nintendo could mean trouble,

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pretty deep legal trouble.

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But, more than anything,
Nintendo seemed curious.

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[Cuthbert] Suddenly my boss says,

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"The people who made the Game Boy
don't believe that...

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that 3D can run on the Game Boy.

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So, in two weeks you're flying to Japan."

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I think I was 18.

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I didn't have a passport,
so I had to go and quickly get a passport.

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And, really, without thinking about it,
I just got on the plane with my boss.

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The next morning, we went to Nintendo

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and we're sitting there
in this big white room.

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And suddenly about 30 Nintendo staff

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just come in from the other side.

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And they're all wearing Nintendo jackets.

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And we're kind of there like this
with our t-shirts and jeans.

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And they all sit down,

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basically a whole bunch of,
like, luminaries...

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[chuckles]
...on the other side of the table.

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And there's me,
an 18-year-old kid, basically,

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showing them
what I'd done on the Game Boy.

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And they said, "Oh, this is amazing.
Okay, we're going to sign this game up."

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[narrator] So, instead of a lawsuit,
Argonaut got a contract

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to officially make their game.

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But that wasn't all.

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Nintendo star designer Shigeru Miyamoto
had another secret project up his sleeve:

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their next generation gaming console.

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[Cuthbert] Miyamoto brought over this,
like, pre-release Super Nintendo.

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And, like, with no--
I mean, I hadn't signed an NDA.

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There's no security or anything.

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And he said, "Well,
this is where we're trying to do 3D.

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Is this something
that Argonaut could help us with?"

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[narrator] It was too late to change the
hardware for the Super Nintendo console,

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so Dylan fell back on what he knew best,

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hacking,

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and proposed putting a chip
that could handle 3D

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inside the cartridges.

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Miyamoto's eyes kind of lit up,

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and that kind of began
the super effects chip.

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[narrator] The super effects chip
allowed Miyamoto

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to envision a whole new perspective.

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He had already mastered 2D games
like Mario and Zelda.

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Now, he'd pair up with Dylan
to create a 3D experience,

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bringing players inside
the world of the game.

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But, back in the US,

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Romero and team were already
full steam ahead on 3D.

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They say that all work and no play
makes Johnny a dull boy…

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[narrator] Cracking the Nintendo code
on the PC was just the beginning

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for Romero and his team.

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{\an8}We're already way past that.

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[narrator]
It empowered them to quit their jobs

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and form their own company, Id Software.

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And by 1992,

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they had taken their newfound
smooth-moving side-scrolling tech

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and turned it inside out...

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{\an8}[newscaster] It's three-dimensional.
It's texture mapped.

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{\an8}It's Wolfenstein,

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{\an8}one of the hottest-selling computer games
in the world.

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{\an8}[narrator] ...creating a hit game
and popularizing a new perspective: 

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{\an8}the first-person shooter.

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{\an8}We just decided that we wanted
to make something more serious

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in 3D, and not do
the side-scrolling stuff anymore.

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So Wolfenstein 3D came out
on May 5th of 1992,

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to instant massive success.

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People loved blowing away Nazis

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as you're trying to shoot your way
out of the castle.

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{\an8}It was a 3D game
going at 70 frames a second,

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{\an8}in full color with real digital sound
for the first time.

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CPUs were just fast enough
to make Wolfenstein run fast.

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And so,
we were just on the edge of technology.

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[narrator] In just a few short years,
Romero and his team

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built a successful company
and transformed the personal computer

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into an immersive
and action-packed gaming platform.

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These were the building blocks
for their ultimate masterpiece.

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Basically, with every game that we made,
we were just trying to

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do something new and different
and better with each game. 

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And that's it. That's all we cared about.

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So we were starting to think about
what our next game would be,

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and we wanted to improve the technology

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and make the game even more
immersive and more exciting.

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00:13:17,463 --> 00:13:20,257
So the bullet-point list
that we came up with 

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that was going to go in the game
was just, like, super ambitious. 

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We wanted diminished lighting...

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[narrator] For creepiness.

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-[Romero] ...high speed...
-[narrator] For realistic movement.

238
00:13:31,227 --> 00:13:33,604
[Romero] ...most importantly,
multi-player functionality.

239
00:13:33,687 --> 00:13:35,689
[narrator]
For playing with all your friends.

240
00:13:35,773 --> 00:13:37,817
We need to have the ultimate ultimate,

241
00:13:38,234 --> 00:13:42,279
which is let people play each other
on a network or over the modem.

242
00:13:43,155 --> 00:13:45,574
-[dial-up tone]
-[narrator] Hold on for a second.

243
00:13:45,658 --> 00:13:47,159
Hear that?

244
00:13:47,243 --> 00:13:50,204
If you're Romero's target demographic
in the '90s,

245
00:13:50,287 --> 00:13:55,000
that's the sweet sound of a computer
connecting to the internet.

246
00:13:55,835 --> 00:13:59,505
Back then, you'd hook your computer
to the telephone landline,

247
00:14:00,089 --> 00:14:01,507
dial up your modem...

248
00:14:01,674 --> 00:14:02,967
[keypad tones beeping]

249
00:14:03,551 --> 00:14:04,385
...and wait...

250
00:14:04,468 --> 00:14:05,469
[dial-up tone]

251
00:14:05,553 --> 00:14:06,846
and wait...

252
00:14:07,805 --> 00:14:09,306
and wait.

253
00:14:09,390 --> 00:14:10,933
[computer voice] Welcome.

254
00:14:11,016 --> 00:14:13,185
[narrator]
And if someone had to make a call,

255
00:14:13,686 --> 00:14:14,728
you were booted.

256
00:14:14,812 --> 00:14:17,773
-[computer voice] Goodbye.
-[boy] Mom, get off the phone!

257
00:14:18,190 --> 00:14:21,193
[narrator] It was all new,
and people were still figuring it out.

258
00:14:21,277 --> 00:14:23,153
Once you've learned how
to get online yourselves,

259
00:14:23,237 --> 00:14:25,239
you'll start seeing web pages everywhere.

260
00:14:25,322 --> 00:14:28,200
Can we do something fun?
Maybe play a game?

261
00:14:28,284 --> 00:14:31,078
Let's go to the Yahooligans home page
and find a game!

262
00:14:32,288 --> 00:14:35,624
[Romero] There were games
that were multiplayer on modems

263
00:14:35,708 --> 00:14:39,545
but they weren't games that were
high-speed that were networked.

264
00:14:39,628 --> 00:14:42,298
[narrator] At the time,
computers could connect online

265
00:14:42,381 --> 00:14:45,426
and mostly just play slow,
simple games like...

266
00:14:46,093 --> 00:14:47,136
War,

267
00:14:48,596 --> 00:14:49,722
Golf,

268
00:14:49,805 --> 00:14:52,349
strategy games that played out in turns.

269
00:14:52,933 --> 00:14:54,310
[Romero] That was the limitation. 

270
00:14:54,393 --> 00:14:56,270
And I was thinking about
how cool it would be

271
00:14:56,979 --> 00:14:58,147
to finally play an action game

272
00:14:58,230 --> 00:15:00,399
with somebody that's on
a completely different computer,

273
00:15:00,482 --> 00:15:02,943
running around
and shooting each other online.

274
00:15:03,569 --> 00:15:08,115
Carmack got to work on figuring out
simultaneous remote gameplay.

275
00:15:08,198 --> 00:15:11,285
And Tom Cruise came up with
their game title.

276
00:15:11,368 --> 00:15:13,621
[Romero] There's a movie called
The Color of Money. 

277
00:15:13,704 --> 00:15:18,876
And Tom Cruise is in a pool hall
and he's about to play against some guy

278
00:15:18,959 --> 00:15:20,628
and he brought his own cue stick.

279
00:15:21,545 --> 00:15:23,756
So, the guy comes up and he's like...

280
00:15:23,839 --> 00:15:25,132
What you got in there?

281
00:15:25,883 --> 00:15:27,718
[Romero] And Tom Cruise looks down,
he goes...

282
00:15:28,969 --> 00:15:29,887
Doom.

283
00:15:31,722 --> 00:15:34,600
[laughs] And it was like,
wow, what a great name.

284
00:15:34,683 --> 00:15:36,310
Come on, boy. Let's play.

285
00:15:36,393 --> 00:15:37,978
Yeah, let's play.

286
00:15:38,479 --> 00:15:40,856
[narrator] And with absolutely nothing
programmed yet,

287
00:15:40,940 --> 00:15:43,192
Romero got to work on the press release.

288
00:15:44,068 --> 00:15:45,986
[Romero] We put a press release out

289
00:15:46,070 --> 00:15:48,572
just saying how awesome
this game is gonna be,

290
00:15:48,656 --> 00:15:51,283
which is crazy, because nobody does that.

291
00:15:51,367 --> 00:15:53,619
You put a press release out
when you release something.

292
00:15:53,702 --> 00:15:56,622
So it was nuts to even say that
before you create it.

293
00:15:56,705 --> 00:15:58,457
We didn't care.
That's what we were like then.

294
00:15:58,874 --> 00:16:00,334
Even worse, the press release said

295
00:16:00,417 --> 00:16:04,797
this game will be the loss of productivity
around the world when it comes out. 

296
00:16:04,880 --> 00:16:06,590
[narrator] With that, the team at Id

297
00:16:06,674 --> 00:16:11,220
inadvertently gave themselves
a hard deadline and a lot of hype.

298
00:16:11,303 --> 00:16:14,223
And then we had to work like hell
that year to make it.

299
00:16:14,306 --> 00:16:17,643
[narrator] Romero was confident
their idea would have mass appeal.

300
00:16:18,936 --> 00:16:20,479
But for Dylan in Japan,

301
00:16:20,562 --> 00:16:24,066
Nintendo's attempt to get into 3D
was all under seal.

302
00:16:24,608 --> 00:16:25,776
Behind closed doors,

303
00:16:25,859 --> 00:16:28,654
he was preparing to show
that the super effects chip

304
00:16:28,737 --> 00:16:30,280
was up to the task.

305
00:16:30,698 --> 00:16:35,202
[Cuthbert] We showed them a demo,
where you kind of fly around in all 3D.

306
00:16:35,786 --> 00:16:39,206
It had, like, sort of missile trails.
It was actually quite a nice little demo.

307
00:16:39,748 --> 00:16:41,750
[narrator] But not everybody thought so.

308
00:16:42,584 --> 00:16:46,380
[Cuthbert] Miyamoto couldn't really get
his head around the fly everywhere thing.

309
00:16:46,463 --> 00:16:49,299
He didn't like the fact that the player
has to really think about

310
00:16:49,383 --> 00:16:51,969
not just here, but like all around.

311
00:16:53,053 --> 00:16:54,847
So Miyamoto said, 

312
00:16:54,930 --> 00:16:56,890
"Go back for Christmas,
you know, everybody,

313
00:16:56,974 --> 00:17:00,102
and then come back in the New Year,
and we'll carry on development,

314
00:17:00,185 --> 00:17:03,355
and I'll see what I can think up
to kind of help this."

315
00:17:10,154 --> 00:17:12,990
So we got back from our Christmas break

316
00:17:13,615 --> 00:17:15,868
and Miyamoto came to us and he said,

317
00:17:15,951 --> 00:17:18,704
"I had a great idea over the New Year."

318
00:17:20,956 --> 00:17:26,003
Every year, the Japanese go
for a sort of pilgrimage to shrines.

319
00:17:26,670 --> 00:17:27,963
They call it Hatsumode.

320
00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:32,760
Miyamoto went to the Fushimi Inari shrine

321
00:17:32,843 --> 00:17:34,970
very near where Nintendo was at that time.

322
00:17:35,054 --> 00:17:40,059
And it has these thousands
of vermilion-colored gates

323
00:17:49,193 --> 00:17:52,571
Miyamoto said, "I was moving through
the gates and I thought, 

324
00:17:52,654 --> 00:17:55,657
wouldn't it be great if we just
were flying through these gates,

325
00:17:56,158 --> 00:17:58,285
enjoying that thrill
of going through things

326
00:17:58,368 --> 00:18:00,245
rather than just shooting things
all the time."

327
00:18:02,206 --> 00:18:05,751
And so we went, "Oh, okay, that is
actually a pretty interesting concept."

328
00:18:07,294 --> 00:18:10,380
[narrator] Miyamoto had discovered
a fix for his problem.

329
00:18:11,215 --> 00:18:13,717
By allowing the gamer
to fly through gates,

330
00:18:13,801 --> 00:18:15,177
he could control the action.

331
00:18:15,260 --> 00:18:18,388
so the player would not have
to worry about what was behind them.

332
00:18:18,931 --> 00:18:23,018
It was the foundation of what would become
an iconic Nintendo game.

333
00:18:23,602 --> 00:18:26,980
[Cuthbert] Something interesting is
the Fushimi Inari shrine itself

334
00:18:27,064 --> 00:18:28,857
the word inari means "fox."

335
00:18:29,608 --> 00:18:33,237
And so that's basically where
Star Fox was born.

336
00:18:33,946 --> 00:18:37,491
It all really originated
from that walk that he had.

337
00:18:41,954 --> 00:18:44,706
[narrator] But it would take
more than a walk at the shrine

338
00:18:44,790 --> 00:18:47,501
for these groundbreaking visuals
to take off.

339
00:18:47,584 --> 00:18:51,171
So Dylan called in his wingman,
Giles Goddard.

340
00:18:51,255 --> 00:18:53,924
{\an8}I'm Giles Goddard.
I was a programmer on Star Fox.

341
00:18:54,508 --> 00:18:57,469
{\an8}Giles is one of the first people I met
when I joined Argonaut Software. 

342
00:18:57,553 --> 00:19:00,806
His personality is very... dry.

343
00:19:00,889 --> 00:19:02,391
Dylan is extremely driven.

344
00:19:02,474 --> 00:19:03,976
-Very droll.
-Stubborn.

345
00:19:04,059 --> 00:19:06,395
Very... different.

346
00:19:06,478 --> 00:19:07,354
Argued a lot.

347
00:19:07,437 --> 00:19:08,272
[laughs]

348
00:19:08,355 --> 00:19:12,067
[narrator] And this dynamic duo
was ready to take Kyoto by storm.

349
00:19:16,738 --> 00:19:19,992
[Goddard] Twenty years ago,
Japan was a very different place.

350
00:19:20,075 --> 00:19:23,912
There were very few foreign tourists,
very few foreigners at all.

351
00:19:24,538 --> 00:19:27,875
It was scary, but it was fun
because we were 18,

352
00:19:28,292 --> 00:19:32,337
and we'd just been on a first-class flight
from London,

353
00:19:32,796 --> 00:19:34,173
all expenses paid.

354
00:19:35,174 --> 00:19:37,634
So we just thought we were rock stars.

355
00:19:38,886 --> 00:19:42,055
[narrator]
Two blokes in Kyoto, all expenses paid.

356
00:19:42,139 --> 00:19:43,056
What could go wrong?

357
00:19:43,140 --> 00:19:45,017
Pretty cool.
Look at the sign, it's still broken.

358
00:19:45,851 --> 00:19:47,186
[Cuthbert]
There was a bar called Backgammon.

359
00:19:47,269 --> 00:19:50,939
Grungy and gritty and dirty,
you know, just a lot of fun.

360
00:19:52,232 --> 00:19:55,319
Do you remember the days when, if you saw
a foreigner come at you, you'd wave?

361
00:19:55,402 --> 00:19:56,820
[Cuthbert] About 25 years ago?

362
00:19:56,904 --> 00:20:00,240
We had little white dictionaries
that we'd always had in our back pockets.

363
00:20:00,908 --> 00:20:02,826
[Cuthbert] We'd take them
with us around bars

364
00:20:02,910 --> 00:20:05,245
and use those to try and talk to people. 

365
00:20:07,664 --> 00:20:09,374
-And also with plenty of drinking...
-Cheers!

366
00:20:09,458 --> 00:20:11,210
-Chin-chin.
-Bottoms up.

367
00:20:11,293 --> 00:20:13,921
...our Japanese gets
smoother and smoother.

368
00:20:14,004 --> 00:20:16,423
[speaking Japanese]

369
00:20:16,506 --> 00:20:17,591
At least, we think it does.

370
00:20:18,425 --> 00:20:21,011
[narrator] And when Dylan and Giles
did squeeze in work,

371
00:20:21,803 --> 00:20:25,432
they found
they were truly outsiders in the office.

372
00:20:26,683 --> 00:20:29,353
[Goddard] They'd never had anybody
outside of Nintendo

373
00:20:29,436 --> 00:20:30,479
working in the building.

374
00:20:31,021 --> 00:20:33,315
They actually made
a separate office for us,

375
00:20:33,398 --> 00:20:36,652
in one room, on our own,
basically segregated out.

376
00:20:36,735 --> 00:20:38,403
[Cuthbert]
And the only place in the office

377
00:20:38,487 --> 00:20:42,950
where they allowed Miyamoto to smoke
was in the area where we were. [laughs]

378
00:20:44,576 --> 00:20:46,912
He'd light up behind us
and he's, like, smoking away.

379
00:20:47,663 --> 00:20:50,916
And we're, like, programming away,
and we're like, "Oh, he's back again.

380
00:20:50,999 --> 00:20:52,376
Oh, no." [laughs]

381
00:20:52,459 --> 00:20:55,963
So we'd be trying to implement
something quite interesting, 

382
00:20:56,046 --> 00:20:59,883
and then, he just starts talking
about trees or something.

383
00:20:59,967 --> 00:21:01,969
Just something completely out there.

384
00:21:05,013 --> 00:21:06,890
But we realized after a while 

385
00:21:06,974 --> 00:21:11,103
that that's actually the reason why
he's so much a creative genius

386
00:21:11,186 --> 00:21:13,188
is because his brain
is kind of thinking about

387
00:21:13,272 --> 00:21:15,607
all these different things
at the same time.

388
00:21:15,691 --> 00:21:19,945
[narrator] And one of the tasks with
Star Fox that Miyamoto was so focused on

389
00:21:20,028 --> 00:21:22,281
was the perspective of the camera.

390
00:21:24,324 --> 00:21:27,244
In a 2D game, the camera moves are simple.

391
00:21:27,869 --> 00:21:30,539
The screen syncs its movement
with the character.

392
00:21:30,622 --> 00:21:32,666
Left, right, and so on.

393
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:35,877
But things get a little more complicated
in 3D.

394
00:21:37,379 --> 00:21:39,256
[Goddard]
That was the biggest feature of 3D,

395
00:21:39,339 --> 00:21:40,799
the ability to move the camera. 

396
00:21:41,341 --> 00:21:44,386
And it was Miyamoto's main job
to figure out the camera.

397
00:21:45,637 --> 00:21:47,389
If the camera’s right behind the Arwing,

398
00:21:47,472 --> 00:21:49,224
it would feel like you weren't turning,

399
00:21:49,308 --> 00:21:52,352
but if it was fixed it would feel like
it's going all over the place.

400
00:21:54,521 --> 00:21:58,066
You've got to have a lag between
the camera and the ship movement,

401
00:21:58,150 --> 00:21:59,943
otherwise
it feels like you're not turning.

402
00:22:01,236 --> 00:22:03,363
But you can't do too much of that.

403
00:22:03,447 --> 00:22:06,533
Otherwise the player feels like
things are moving too much,

404
00:22:06,616 --> 00:22:08,410
and they feel disorientated.

405
00:22:10,287 --> 00:22:14,166
It's a balance game
between looking cool and playability.

406
00:22:19,421 --> 00:22:22,174
[narrator]
So programming on Star Fox was happening.

407
00:22:22,257 --> 00:22:24,926
Ships were flying.
Lasers were lasering.

408
00:22:25,010 --> 00:22:29,431
It was all coming together.
And then the art department got involved.

409
00:22:31,350 --> 00:22:34,436
[Cuthbert] For a long time on the project,
it really was just like an old school

410
00:22:34,519 --> 00:22:38,065
Star Wars-style, kind of,
a little bit more hardcore.

411
00:22:39,066 --> 00:22:40,942
No... people.

412
00:22:41,485 --> 00:22:44,988
But Nintendo was known for its cute,
family-friendly characters

413
00:22:45,739 --> 00:22:48,492
and that sacred shrine
that Miyamoto loved so much

414
00:22:49,076 --> 00:22:51,536
was dedicated to… a fox.

415
00:22:53,830 --> 00:22:56,249
[Cuthbert] Suddenly the artists
at Nintendo started coming up with

416
00:22:56,333 --> 00:22:58,668
all these cute little character designs,

417
00:22:58,752 --> 00:23:01,213
fluffy sort of animals
and things like that.

418
00:23:01,296 --> 00:23:03,548
To be honest,
I thought they were quite lame.

419
00:23:04,549 --> 00:23:06,176
[laughs]

420
00:23:07,719 --> 00:23:09,763
[Cuthbert] It felt a bit odd
because they're animals, 

421
00:23:09,846 --> 00:23:12,140
and we're like,
"Why are animals flying spacecraft?

422
00:23:12,224 --> 00:23:13,725
I don't know what's going on here."

423
00:23:14,226 --> 00:23:18,021
But one thing that
Miyamoto really instilled in us all

424
00:23:18,105 --> 00:23:20,774
is that we take a step back,
kind of look at it and go,

425
00:23:20,857 --> 00:23:23,235
"Okay, no,
this needs to be made more fun."

426
00:23:23,860 --> 00:23:26,863
He approaches things from,
not just the player point of view,

427
00:23:26,947 --> 00:23:30,200
but also from how
he can design the experience.

428
00:23:30,700 --> 00:23:33,161
And I think that was a pretty good lesson
for all of us.

429
00:23:40,293 --> 00:23:41,711
{\an8}It did slowly grow on us. 

430
00:23:44,548 --> 00:23:47,926
{\an8}And we didn't realize how much
everything came together at the end, 

431
00:23:49,886 --> 00:23:53,181
and it just became this,
like, really full-on experience. 

432
00:23:56,101 --> 00:23:59,771
{\an8}[narrator] The camera movement,
the cute animals, the gates.

433
00:24:00,397 --> 00:24:03,942
Combined, they created
the trademark Nintendo experience,

434
00:24:04,025 --> 00:24:05,360
{\an8}but in 3D.

435
00:24:06,736 --> 00:24:09,072
{\an8}Fox McCloud could chat with his sidekicks

436
00:24:09,156 --> 00:24:12,409
Peppy Hare, Falco Lombardi,
and Slippy Toad

437
00:24:12,492 --> 00:24:16,455
to present mission objectives
and to make the game more engaging. 

438
00:24:16,538 --> 00:24:18,331
[Cuthbert] One of the unique things
about Star Fox

439
00:24:18,415 --> 00:24:21,084
was that it was on a console
because, up until that point,

440
00:24:21,168 --> 00:24:23,837
there hadn't really been
any 3D games on consoles.

441
00:24:26,548 --> 00:24:30,886
[announcer] The first and only game
powered by the Super FX microchip.

442
00:24:30,969 --> 00:24:34,014
[narrator] The combination of Dylan
and Giles' coding wizardry

443
00:24:34,097 --> 00:24:37,142
and Nintendo's design magic worked.

444
00:24:37,225 --> 00:24:39,603
The game would go onto sell
over four million copies

445
00:24:39,686 --> 00:24:42,939
{\an8}and blast Nintendo into the 3D realm.

446
00:24:43,023 --> 00:24:45,859
{\an8}[announcer] Only for the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System.

447
00:24:51,031 --> 00:24:54,701
[narrator] But pretty soon,
3D wouldn't be enough.

448
00:24:55,577 --> 00:24:58,830
{\an8}Back in the US,
another group of young rule breakers

449
00:24:58,914 --> 00:25:04,711
{\an8}would take the first-person perspective
and push it even further. 

450
00:25:05,962 --> 00:25:07,797
[Romero] After putting out
the press release,

451
00:25:07,881 --> 00:25:10,425
we knew that Doom was
gonna be a pretty big game 

452
00:25:10,926 --> 00:25:15,514
because we had people calling the office
to ask when is the game going to come out?

453
00:25:16,223 --> 00:25:17,307
[man 1] Yo, where's Doom?

454
00:25:18,016 --> 00:25:20,560
-[woman] Is Doom out?
-[man 2] What's Doom all about?

455
00:25:20,644 --> 00:25:23,772
And so, like, people were so excited,
like, it was crazy.

456
00:25:24,189 --> 00:25:26,191
[narrator]
Romero's press release promised gamers

457
00:25:26,274 --> 00:25:29,444
they'd be "knee-deep in the dead"
before the end of the year.

458
00:25:29,861 --> 00:25:32,155
Now, all they had to do was...

459
00:25:33,532 --> 00:25:34,866
make the game.

460
00:25:34,950 --> 00:25:38,203
The team that made Doom was pretty small.

461
00:25:38,286 --> 00:25:39,663
It was just five people,

462
00:25:40,914 --> 00:25:42,332
so it was a lot of work.

463
00:25:42,874 --> 00:25:44,042
Like, what is Doom?

464
00:25:44,125 --> 00:25:47,379
And the first major idea was that

465
00:25:47,462 --> 00:25:51,466
we would be fighting
a demon invasion, uh, somewhere.

466
00:25:52,133 --> 00:25:57,013
These are some sketches
of what levels could possibly look like. 

467
00:25:57,722 --> 00:25:59,975
How 'bout we have walls
with blood dripping down them, 

468
00:26:00,058 --> 00:26:03,770
or maybe there's some
organic walls in hell, you know, 

469
00:26:03,853 --> 00:26:05,981
maybe that's what
the engine could render. 

470
00:26:06,481 --> 00:26:07,816
This here...

471
00:26:07,899 --> 00:26:09,568
this is one of my favorite pages.

472
00:26:09,651 --> 00:26:12,195
It has some original ideas for demons.

473
00:26:13,780 --> 00:26:15,699
Highly original ideas.

474
00:26:15,782 --> 00:26:17,117
Some of them are pretty funny.

475
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:19,786
It's like, what's going on... here?

476
00:26:19,869 --> 00:26:20,745
[laughs]

477
00:26:20,829 --> 00:26:24,416
You know, if they actually
looked this way in Doom, uh...

478
00:26:24,499 --> 00:26:26,626
history would've been
a little bit different. [laughs]

479
00:26:28,044 --> 00:26:29,838
We eventually decided that

480
00:26:30,297 --> 00:26:33,842
you'd be space marine in the future
on a military base

481
00:26:33,925 --> 00:26:36,052
and this is like a research thing
gone bad,

482
00:26:36,136 --> 00:26:37,220
and here come the demons. 

483
00:26:37,637 --> 00:26:41,725
[narrator] But the story was
just a backdrop for cyberdemons,

484
00:26:41,808 --> 00:26:43,727
exploding chunks of flesh

485
00:26:44,144 --> 00:26:46,313
and the insane weapons.

486
00:26:47,397 --> 00:26:49,608
We wanted to have conventional weapons

487
00:26:49,691 --> 00:26:51,735
that the players could totally get into.

488
00:26:51,818 --> 00:26:55,155
Like shotguns, chainsaws. 

489
00:26:55,905 --> 00:26:57,574
Why wouldn't you want to chainsaw a demon?

490
00:26:57,657 --> 00:27:00,910
And just like a fist,
just punching demons in the face,

491
00:27:01,453 --> 00:27:03,997
but then we could add a couple
of spacey-type weapons

492
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:05,206
to kind of spice it up.

493
00:27:05,290 --> 00:27:07,709
So that's where we came up with
the plasma gun,

494
00:27:07,792 --> 00:27:10,295
and we really liked the idea of
shooting rockets at demons.

495
00:27:11,838 --> 00:27:13,632
That was just nuts.

496
00:27:13,715 --> 00:27:16,426
[narrator] And then there was the BFG.

497
00:27:16,926 --> 00:27:19,804
The B is for big, the G is for gun.

498
00:27:20,430 --> 00:27:21,681
You can fill in the rest.

499
00:27:22,474 --> 00:27:24,726
And then the BFG was the ultimate weapon.

500
00:27:24,809 --> 00:27:28,647
If you can get a hold of that
and enough cells to power it,

501
00:27:28,730 --> 00:27:30,315
you can destroy everything.

502
00:27:31,358 --> 00:27:32,859
[narrator] In the fall of '93,

503
00:27:32,942 --> 00:27:35,403
Romero and the team
were approaching their launch.

504
00:27:35,487 --> 00:27:37,322
And Carmack finally figured out 

505
00:27:37,405 --> 00:27:40,116
how to let players battle each other
over the network

506
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:41,576
in multiplayer mode.

507
00:27:41,660 --> 00:27:44,746
When Carmack got the game working
between two computers,

508
00:27:44,829 --> 00:27:47,374
where he's shooting one computer
and the other guys getting hit,

509
00:27:47,457 --> 00:27:50,043
it was like, "Oh, there it is!
It's happening!"

510
00:27:50,502 --> 00:27:52,671
[narrator] That’s right. Strategy in Doom

511
00:27:52,754 --> 00:27:55,173
would completely change
in multi-player mode.

512
00:27:56,216 --> 00:27:57,967
Instead of battling demons,

513
00:27:58,051 --> 00:28:01,012
you could battle your friends.

514
00:28:01,096 --> 00:28:03,223
When there's another player in the game,

515
00:28:03,306 --> 00:28:05,517
it's totally different
than playing monsters.

516
00:28:06,601 --> 00:28:08,978
People play so differently than the AI.

517
00:28:09,479 --> 00:28:11,272
They're luring you. 

518
00:28:11,356 --> 00:28:12,482
They're hiding. 

519
00:28:12,565 --> 00:28:16,444
And that is a real challenge,
you know, playing somebody else. 

520
00:28:17,987 --> 00:28:20,115
After seeing the characters
shooting each other,

521
00:28:20,198 --> 00:28:22,367
I was thinking, "What would we call this?"

522
00:28:22,992 --> 00:28:24,786
It's like a cage match kind of thing.

523
00:28:24,869 --> 00:28:27,872
Except you're killing
the other person over and over.

524
00:28:29,290 --> 00:28:30,875
It's like a death match.

525
00:28:30,959 --> 00:28:32,127
"Deathmatch is great.

526
00:28:32,210 --> 00:28:33,461
That sounds cool.

527
00:28:33,545 --> 00:28:35,046
I think I'll name it that."

528
00:28:35,130 --> 00:28:37,674
[narrator]
Romero knew the game was going to be cool.

529
00:28:38,091 --> 00:28:40,760
But he still wanted to make sure
everyone got hooked.

530
00:28:40,844 --> 00:28:44,472
So he and his team decided
to give players a free sample.

531
00:28:44,556 --> 00:28:49,769
Shareware in games was to take a game
and split it into three parts, 

532
00:28:49,853 --> 00:28:53,440
and the first one is fully free,
as a downloadable file,

533
00:28:53,523 --> 00:28:55,108
but if you wanted more,

534
00:28:55,191 --> 00:28:58,611
then you would order the other
two parts of the game on diskettes.

535
00:28:59,404 --> 00:29:02,490
It was a pretty revolutionary
marketing idea at the time,

536
00:29:02,574 --> 00:29:03,908
and it worked really well.

537
00:29:04,534 --> 00:29:07,829
We knew that at the end of the day that
we would be able to make money because,

538
00:29:07,912 --> 00:29:10,582
number one, we believed
it was the best game in the world

539
00:29:10,665 --> 00:29:12,459
and because it was so good,

540
00:29:12,542 --> 00:29:14,836
we believed people
would want to buy the rest of it.

541
00:29:14,919 --> 00:29:17,297
You know, that they would want
to get all three episodes

542
00:29:17,380 --> 00:29:21,426
because playing those first nine levels
is gonna get old at some point.

543
00:29:21,509 --> 00:29:23,219
You're going to want
the rest of the story.

544
00:29:24,137 --> 00:29:26,931
So finally, when the game
was about to be released,

545
00:29:27,015 --> 00:29:30,435
the server was packed full of people
who can't wait to download the game. 

546
00:29:30,518 --> 00:29:33,146
And I'm like, "Oh, my God, yes!"

547
00:29:34,063 --> 00:29:37,817
[narrator] That's how kids
in computer labs around the country

548
00:29:37,901 --> 00:29:42,614
found themselves at midnight
on December 10th, 1993,

549
00:29:43,156 --> 00:29:47,744
ready to download
the first chapter of Doom.

550
00:29:50,205 --> 00:29:52,624
Everyone was initiating
the file transfer at the same time. 

551
00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:55,043
So the server just crashed.

552
00:29:57,837 --> 00:30:01,800
And then they brought the server back up,
all those people reconnected.

553
00:30:01,883 --> 00:30:03,843
They did it again
and the whole thing crashed.

554
00:30:03,927 --> 00:30:04,969
But then,

555
00:30:05,553 --> 00:30:08,932
people started to copy it
onto other servers all around the world,

556
00:30:09,015 --> 00:30:12,393
sharing with each other,
and then everybody started playing.

557
00:30:14,354 --> 00:30:18,233
{\an8}[narrator] Online multiplayer games
would become a pretty big deal.

558
00:30:18,316 --> 00:30:22,111
{\an8}Deathmatch and online game play
changed everything.

559
00:30:22,195 --> 00:30:24,072
-[man] Oh, what?
-[man 2] Ah!

560
00:30:24,155 --> 00:30:27,116
[narrator] Players could connect
over a network and interact,

561
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,537
-Look at the death.
-...immersing themselves in a new world...

562
00:30:30,620 --> 00:30:32,580
-[man] Boom!
-...but with each other.

563
00:30:32,664 --> 00:30:36,543
[Romero] For the first time,
you can play in a high-speed 3D world

564
00:30:36,626 --> 00:30:38,586
where you're blowing your friends apart.

565
00:30:38,670 --> 00:30:40,505
-God damn it!
-[laughs]

566
00:30:40,588 --> 00:30:43,633
It's really fun to play
against each other in Deathmatch,

567
00:30:43,716 --> 00:30:46,845
and it influenced everybody
in wanting to make games.

568
00:30:46,928 --> 00:30:52,350
[narrator] And then the guys at Id
handed players the keys to their kingdom.

569
00:30:52,433 --> 00:30:56,271
We fully opened the game.
Then we gave out the information

570
00:30:56,354 --> 00:30:58,231
on the way that levels were created.

571
00:30:58,773 --> 00:31:00,984
[narrator] Doom was opened up to modding.

572
00:31:01,067 --> 00:31:04,779
Tech-savvy players could now replace
the existing characters,

573
00:31:04,863 --> 00:31:07,532
sound effects, textures, you name it,

574
00:31:07,615 --> 00:31:09,409
{\an8}with their own creations.

575
00:31:09,826 --> 00:31:12,287
[Romero] People starting to make
new graphics, new weapons 

576
00:31:12,704 --> 00:31:14,122
and new sounds for stuff.

577
00:31:15,665 --> 00:31:18,585
And it was basically everything
that you see in the game can be changed.

578
00:31:19,460 --> 00:31:22,881
But we didn't allow anyone to modify Doom
if they didn't buy it.

579
00:31:22,964 --> 00:31:23,882
[laughs]

580
00:31:23,965 --> 00:31:25,633
So if you have
the shareware version of Doom

581
00:31:25,717 --> 00:31:27,719
you can't run levels or mods or anything.

582
00:31:28,553 --> 00:31:33,266
So that was actually
kind of a way of forcing people to buy it.

583
00:31:34,350 --> 00:31:37,562
But also, players want to be creative.

584
00:31:37,979 --> 00:31:41,900
It's a lot easier to modify
than to try and make a whole new thing. 

585
00:31:41,983 --> 00:31:43,610
So, letting people mod a game

586
00:31:43,693 --> 00:31:46,738
kind of gives them a taste
of what it's like to make a game.

587
00:31:46,821 --> 00:31:49,240
And now the game,
you know, fits them better.

588
00:31:49,324 --> 00:31:53,494
Doom was put in the hands of players,
and they made it their own.

589
00:31:53,578 --> 00:31:55,747
The game lives on forever.

590
00:31:57,498 --> 00:31:58,791
[man 1] Oh, what?

591
00:31:58,875 --> 00:32:00,251
[man 2] Oh, no!

592
00:32:00,335 --> 00:32:02,670
[narrator] In a way, Romero's story

593
00:32:02,754 --> 00:32:05,673
is the story
of the entire video game industry.

594
00:32:07,759 --> 00:32:12,972
Each new game was built upon
the foundation crafted by the game before.

595
00:32:13,056 --> 00:32:16,851
And because of that, it can be hard
to remember the humble beginnings

596
00:32:16,935 --> 00:32:20,939
of what would become this billion-dollar
entertainment juggernaut.

597
00:32:21,856 --> 00:32:24,025
But there's one man who remembers.

598
00:32:24,108 --> 00:32:25,526
-[laughing]
-This man,

599
00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:29,322
the so-called godfather of video games,
Nolan Bushnell.

600
00:32:30,114 --> 00:32:33,534
In my mind, there is a huge payoff 

601
00:32:34,452 --> 00:32:35,536
{\an8}for being...

602
00:32:36,162 --> 00:32:37,997
{\an8}indisputably number one 

603
00:32:38,831 --> 00:32:39,832
in whatever you do.

604
00:32:40,792 --> 00:32:47,173
It was 1964 when Bushnell stumbled upon
an idea that would spark a new industry.

605
00:32:47,256 --> 00:32:50,259
I was in college,
and one of my fraternity brothers

606
00:32:51,010 --> 00:32:52,345
said, "Hey.

607
00:32:53,554 --> 00:32:56,099
Meet me at the engineering building
at midnight 

608
00:32:56,182 --> 00:32:57,725
and I'm going to blow your socks off."

609
00:32:58,977 --> 00:33:00,186
I said, "Huh?" You know.

610
00:33:01,854 --> 00:33:04,691
Always willing to have my socks blown off,
I showed up.

611
00:33:05,942 --> 00:33:10,196
And he had jammed the lock
on the computer center,

612
00:33:12,490 --> 00:33:14,158
and we went in

613
00:33:15,618 --> 00:33:18,454
and, for the rest of that evening,
played Spacewar!.

614
00:33:20,456 --> 00:33:21,874
And I was mesmerized.

615
00:33:22,542 --> 00:33:25,962
[narrator] Spacewar! was unlike
anything Bushnell had seen before.

616
00:33:26,045 --> 00:33:30,299
It had been invented two years earlier
by a bunch of kids at MIT

617
00:33:30,383 --> 00:33:33,553
who were part
of the tech model railroad club. 

618
00:33:33,636 --> 00:33:35,471
They were the original hackers.

619
00:33:35,888 --> 00:33:38,057
In fact, they coined the term.

620
00:33:38,766 --> 00:33:41,686
And, just for fun,
ended up transforming a computer 

621
00:33:41,769 --> 00:33:43,521
into an entirely new contraption:

622
00:33:44,397 --> 00:33:45,481
the video game.

623
00:33:46,649 --> 00:33:50,194
[Bushnell] You'd fly around
and you could shoot a missile.

624
00:33:50,278 --> 00:33:52,488
And you could push a button and thrust.

625
00:33:52,572 --> 00:33:56,159
In order to slow down,
you had to reverse thrust

626
00:33:56,242 --> 00:33:57,744
in the opposite direction,

627
00:33:57,827 --> 00:34:00,747
totally followed Newton's first law.

628
00:34:01,247 --> 00:34:02,999
And it was really fun.

629
00:34:03,082 --> 00:34:06,586
[narrator] Spacewar! was
an underground hit on any college campus

630
00:34:06,669 --> 00:34:08,796
with a computer that could run it.

631
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,676
And I knew that if I could put a coin slot
on that screen that it would make money.

632
00:34:16,137 --> 00:34:20,725
[narrator] Bushnell saw that video games
were for more than just computer nerds.

633
00:34:21,225 --> 00:34:22,977
They were for everyone.

634
00:34:23,061 --> 00:34:27,523
And so he founded a company
called Atari. And...

635
00:34:27,607 --> 00:34:29,192
We were off to the races.

636
00:34:30,193 --> 00:34:32,820
He was the first in a long line
of visionaries.

637
00:34:33,571 --> 00:34:36,032
Visionaries who changed the way we play...

638
00:34:36,741 --> 00:34:39,285
[Amano in Japanese]
We wanted to create an entirely new world.

639
00:34:39,368 --> 00:34:41,496
There's really no end
once you get started.

640
00:34:42,205 --> 00:34:44,207
[narrator in English]
...who dared to fail greatly...

641
00:34:44,290 --> 00:34:46,417
[Warshaw]
I did my best. I tried to do what I could.

642
00:34:46,501 --> 00:34:49,712
I needed a mountain to climb,
and I felt like I climbed the mountain.

643
00:34:49,796 --> 00:34:51,923
...who fought for their place to exist...

644
00:34:52,006 --> 00:34:55,259
Anyone of color
often has to justify themselves.

645
00:34:55,343 --> 00:34:58,179
Video games remove
all those physical differences.

646
00:34:58,262 --> 00:35:01,015
...who were compelled by imagination...

647
00:35:01,099 --> 00:35:05,770
I was so driven to do this,
and I kept thinking, "Why?"

648
00:35:06,521 --> 00:35:08,523
...and wouldn't take no for an answer.

649
00:35:08,606 --> 00:35:09,440
[laughs]

650
00:35:09,524 --> 00:35:12,944
What we did back then
was ahead of its time,

651
00:35:13,402 --> 00:35:15,029
but the time is now.

652
00:35:15,113 --> 00:35:15,947
[Mario] Here we go!

653
00:35:31,129 --> 00:35:33,047
[narrator] It was a monumental era,

654
00:35:33,131 --> 00:35:36,592
one that defined video games
as a place to get lost,

655
00:35:36,676 --> 00:35:38,845
a place to become someone different, 

656
00:35:38,928 --> 00:35:40,805
and go to faraway lands. 

657
00:35:40,888 --> 00:35:42,723
But, most importantly,

658
00:35:42,807 --> 00:35:46,644
{\an8}it defined that any player
could be a game creator.

659
00:35:46,727 --> 00:35:49,605
{\an8}So now that technology
can fully blur the line

660
00:35:49,689 --> 00:35:51,607
between fantasy and reality,

661
00:35:51,691 --> 00:35:55,194
the question is... where will we go next?