Compendium: The Age of 3D Donkey Kong Country

Colm O Sullivan — Wed, 07 May 2014 12:50:08 +0000

The team at Rare had already established themselves as marque video game developers by the mid 90’s. Previous titles like Battletoads, Knight Lore and Sabre Wulf had earned the company’s founders Tim and Chris Stamper critical acclaim. Not happy to rest on their laurels when Nintendo bought up a majority share in the company in 1994. The brothers saw it as a chance to take on one of Nintendo’s characters and innovate on the medium. The character of their choice was Donkey Kong a Nintendo IP that had remained on the self for nearly ten years at that point. The team at Rare wanted to take Donkey Kong in a new direction not just gameplay wise but also innovate on how the character looked.

“Tim and Chris Stamper founded Ultimate Play the Game in 1985; the company would later be re-established under the new name Rare Ltd., producing many memorable games along the way”

Prior to Nintendo’s buyout of the company Rare had been on a development marathon producing over 50 games in a five year period most of them for the NES console. An astronomical development rate by today’s standards but it helped Rare make enough profits to invest in some computer graphics hardware that would benefit the company going forward. The Silicon Graphics workstations that they purchased allowed them to create advanced 3D models and push the bounds of what was possible for video game graphics at the time. After the buyout they were tasked by Nintendo to use the new technology to create a 3D CGI game that game would become Donkey Kong Country. Due to the limitations of the 16-bit era of console gaming there was no way Rare could make a true real-time rendering 3D game so like others at the time, pre-rending the assets was the way to go. Myst was one of the first games to pioneer this method of creating a pseudo 3D game with pre-rendered graphics. The process for Donkey Kong Country involved modelling and animating the main characters and enemies on their graphics workstations. Then they would save of a series of image stills and turn them into 2D animated sprites that had the appearance and lighting of 3D models. The Finnish developers Bloodhouse had used a similar technique for their 1993 game Stardust. The limitations of the hardware also made it difficult when implementing some of the games other graphical elements. The games 3D backgrounds also taxed the SNES consoles limited memory so the team had to carefully arrange backgrounds that repeated elements but trying to make them appear as natural as they could. These techniques helped the game stand apart from most of its competitors and rivals when the game went on the market in November of 1994.

“It was the work by Rare on Donkey Kong Country and the team at Cyan Inc. with their Myst that helped push forward the era of 3D gaming.”

Nintendo’s 16-bit SNES console was always under pressure from its main rivals Sega who boasted 32-bits and a CD-ROM drive with their SegaCD console. Nintendo needed a title that would show off their consoles hardware potential and compete with their high memory rivals. The launch of Donkey Kong Country helped them do just that with the game becoming an instant hit with the gaming community. The game would go on to reach over 9 million in sales and pick up a host of video game awards along the way. It helped Rare gain international status and cement the relationship between them a Nintendo that would carry on for the next number of years. The Donkey Kong franchise now given a new lease of life would continue to see regular video game releases over the following decades with an iconic look that is still influenced by Rare’s original character designs.

The post Compendium: The Age of 3D Donkey Kong Country appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

Compendium: Metroid

Colm O Sullivan — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:06:01 +0000

In the mid 80’s Nintendo reigned supreme over the video game industry, with their NES console the must have device for any gamer. The popularity of the NES was in no small part due to Shigeru Miyamoto and his best-selling titles like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. In February of 1986 Nintendo released a new peripheral for the Famicom (Japanese NES) console, it would allow for the use of proprietary floppy disks. ‘Disk Cards’ as they were known would offer more data storage than the typical cartridges used at the time. Game Designers at Nintendo were tasked with creating new games for the system as exclusive titles, with the hope that like the NES a popular game would result in high unit sales. The job fell to in house studio Nintendo R&D 1 in conjuncture with Intelligent Systems, the development would be headed up by Gunpei Yokoi. Yokoi like Miyamoto was one of the leading game designers at Nintendo, however whereas his colleague opted for more family friendly themes and narratives. Yokoi wanted to create a game with a more adult nature, evoking a sense of dread and isolation.

“The Famicom Disk System was on the very cutting edge of console technology at the time, which did lead to many technical hitches like disk faults and damaged belt drives”

The development for Metroid was heavily influenced by Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien. The design team wanted to emulate the same atmosphere of confinement and anxiety. The gameplay was one of the first in the side-scrolling genre to allow the player to move both right and left with a more open ended structure to the levels. Whereas previously players would be guided down a linear path and reach a definitive end point, Metroid would have an open map that the player could explore. Although certain areas would be locked until the player found a particular power up, often forcing the player to retrace their steps. Due to the large nature of the levels and potential hours of gameplay, the developers wanted to offer a way for the player to complete the game in multiple sittings. The new Famicom Disk System with its increased memory capabilities allowed for game saves, a player could now save their progress and pick up where they left of when they returned to the game. The games soundtrack echoed the theme of the game, with the unusual composition far removed from the typical jingles used in games at the time. Hirokazu Tanaka wanted to blur the lines between music and sound effects, were the score would make the player feel as if they are encountering a “living organism”. The game was finally released on the 6^th of August 1986 exclusively for the Disk System.

“The gameplay mechanics featured the side-scrolling of Super Mario Bros. with the free roaming exploration of The Legend of Zelda.”

Although in retrospect the game has become a cult series at the time it a commercial flop. This in part was due to the game been exclusive to the Disk System which was only sold in the Japanese market. However a ported version for the NES released in Europe and North America a year later reversed the fortunes for the Metroid franchise. Due to the limitations of the cartridge based NES console, level passwords were used instead of save games. All in all Metroid has sold 2.73 million copies worldwide and has become a cult icon in the video game industry. One of the main reason for the Metroid series becoming so popular was the narrative twist featured in the games ending. Another unique aspect of Metroid was the multiple endings that would alter depend on how fast the player completed the game. If the player was fast enough they received an ending cut scene that revealed the main protagonist of Samus Aran to be a women. No indication is given of the character’s gender during the game with even the games manual and promotional material referring to Samus as a ‘he’. A female protagonist was ground-breaking for a male dominated industry, although games like Baraduke and Mach Rider had featured female characters prior to Metroid. Samus was the character that struck a chord with gamers, receiving multiple follow up titles over the years. The Metroid series like Mario and Zelda has become key title in Nintendo catalogue of first party games.