No COVID! and I understand that they would have regress their tech to about the level of the NES or at the most the SNES. How would you think these people would succeed and change video game history.
What if a couple video game developers and video game historians were transported to the year 1970 and came together to make a video game company?
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ISOT
Inspired by 1636: The Viennese Waltz and it's prequel 1636: The Barbie Consortium. This is a what if about a group of young video game history nerds and their games and consoles, video game programmers, and computer engineers together to getting isoted back in time in the year of 1970 at the same place. And We see the this group coming together taking advantage of the situation and come together to create their own video game company and use their knowledge (and steal ideas) to become a respected and powerful video game company. In this what if the characters would struggle as they try ways to go pass the 70s tech limitations and battle it out with Atari and soon Nintendo. This story idea basically underdog story were we see characters struggle but ultimately succeeded with their goals in becoming the richest and most powerful video game company. They would use their knowledge to make sure to avoid the mistakes of other video game companies like Atari and Nintendo did with decisions like lack protection against people flooding market with bad video games like what happen with Atari. Also no COVID-19 ! and I understand that they would have regress their tech to about the level of the NES or at the most the SNES. How would you think these people would succeed and change video game history.
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Honestly 99% of their success would depend on funding.
Startups are rough, no matter how perfect your product is.
Another hazard would be assumptions.
I've seen a few similar ideas where the author copies some hit game or book, but the original was successful due to a lot of external factors that they didn't consider.
For example, a parody might not be nearly as funny if it comes out before the thing it's mimicking.
On the other hand, one really easy innovation that could help: achievements.
It's simple to add a list to a game, and it really draws some people in to play a game over and over.
Startups are rough, no matter how perfect your product is.
Another hazard would be assumptions.
I've seen a few similar ideas where the author copies some hit game or book, but the original was successful due to a lot of external factors that they didn't consider.
For example, a parody might not be nearly as funny if it comes out before the thing it's mimicking.
On the other hand, one really easy innovation that could help: achievements.
It's simple to add a list to a game, and it really draws some people in to play a game over and over.
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Getting involved with Infrastructure, Processor architecture, rechargeable batteries, Infrafred data transfer, lots of things that could have been developed earlier, where they probably have a fairly in depth notion of the processes involved.
If you aren't too concerned about size, and you know where to mine the best stuff, you can build really powerful chips much earlier. The chip industry has been locked into a planned obsolescence/iterative improvement cycle for decades. They had the tech much earlier to produce much more powerful processors and chips but didn't release them for mass production due to various factors and kept the steady improvements crawling out the pipe instead.
Having someone with industry experience and the knowledge of chip manufacturing processes would allow for insane levels of processing power decades earlier.
Also decades of improvements in programming languages. Assuming any of them can actually compile a language from what they know.
Kind of hard to write in C, if it hasn't been invented yet. Of course they could Recruit Dennis from Bell two years before he releases it... and add a few improvements before it comes out.
Materials science could also use a hand up, the formulations for plastics and rubbers commonly used in the 70's weren't very good. They don't age well, and are frequently more UV sensitive than modern plastics.
Lan Hubs for consoles. Multiplayer via WiFi.
VGA and SVGA on standard Tube televisions. Start the graphics card boom. Make VGA the minimum onboard video output for a standard PC kit. Supply Apple with full color hardware for their first kit "pre assembled computer" in 1976.
Better Sound!!!
So many avenues to explore to jump start the tech revolution.
As for games, stay ahead of the curve, publish at the start of the trends, and hire the up and comers.
If you aren't too concerned about size, and you know where to mine the best stuff, you can build really powerful chips much earlier. The chip industry has been locked into a planned obsolescence/iterative improvement cycle for decades. They had the tech much earlier to produce much more powerful processors and chips but didn't release them for mass production due to various factors and kept the steady improvements crawling out the pipe instead.
Having someone with industry experience and the knowledge of chip manufacturing processes would allow for insane levels of processing power decades earlier.
Also decades of improvements in programming languages. Assuming any of them can actually compile a language from what they know.
Kind of hard to write in C, if it hasn't been invented yet. Of course they could Recruit Dennis from Bell two years before he releases it... and add a few improvements before it comes out.
Materials science could also use a hand up, the formulations for plastics and rubbers commonly used in the 70's weren't very good. They don't age well, and are frequently more UV sensitive than modern plastics.
Lan Hubs for consoles. Multiplayer via WiFi.
VGA and SVGA on standard Tube televisions. Start the graphics card boom. Make VGA the minimum onboard video output for a standard PC kit. Supply Apple with full color hardware for their first kit "pre assembled computer" in 1976.
Better Sound!!!
So many avenues to explore to jump start the tech revolution.
As for games, stay ahead of the curve, publish at the start of the trends, and hire the up and comers.
I have to agree with Mr. Quiet. The amount of improvements that could be made in the broader field of programming and computer hardware is huge. Sure, they could probably churn out a few incredibly innovative games that would earn some cash, but they could be hailed as industry leading geniuses in the broader computer science fields.
Who do you think they'd rather be - John Carmack, or Bill Gates? Even without having strong programming skills, just the knowledge of where the future would probably go will make them incredible visionaries. Just the idea of a GUI, discrete graphics, the internet- those are worth billions of dollars with a decent entrepreneur, and someone with a history of accurately predicting those trends will never lack for eager investors and business partners.
In terms of gaming specifically, even foreknowledge doesn't actually guarantee success. it's fundamentally a hit driven business, and there's a lot more that goes into that then just the features you put in the games. They might get a reputation as a very innovative studio that releases lots of great ideas, but it'd be no where near what they could do just working on computing as a whole.
Who do you think they'd rather be - John Carmack, or Bill Gates? Even without having strong programming skills, just the knowledge of where the future would probably go will make them incredible visionaries. Just the idea of a GUI, discrete graphics, the internet- those are worth billions of dollars with a decent entrepreneur, and someone with a history of accurately predicting those trends will never lack for eager investors and business partners.
In terms of gaming specifically, even foreknowledge doesn't actually guarantee success. it's fundamentally a hit driven business, and there's a lot more that goes into that then just the features you put in the games. They might get a reputation as a very innovative studio that releases lots of great ideas, but it'd be no where near what they could do just working on computing as a whole.
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Do they even have any technical knowledge to make the game they actually want instead of making the one they had to be satisfied with? You know, console tech limitation?
Would they stay together even in hard times and wouldn't ever backstab each other?
There were too many people here, and not every human can pick long-term benefit over the short-term one, especially if they were certain that they could leverage it. Imagine someone thinking 'I could have done this and that if I have the money to fund it that year! Those guys dared to veto my plans! I know that my plan was better than theirs, they were just too blind to see it!'
And then the angry one would make a plan to sell off important information with the mindset of 'better ask for forgiveness than permission'. Then the one they thought of as non-essential information actually wasn't, and there will be schism and unforgivable grudge that festers.
I wouldn't be too optimistic it wouldn't change the genre from 'slice-of-life focusing on game uplift' to 'feuding time traveler trying to maximize their future knowledge benefit by eliminating competitors.'
Yeah. even something good could flop if people don't know how to market it. Something awful bad could explode when it was thrown out of the manufacturing line at the perfect time. Earthbound was not popular at all even if it was way better than Final Fantasy in my opinion.
Someone who came from our time wouldn't be satisfied with the simplistic story and gameplays of retro games. They would try to make their game something so groundbreaking and had to delete and excise a lot of things to fit into old tech and to fit the budget. there will be a constant compromise on quality.
And then one day they would wake up and find their motivation had long become impure, they were not a game company their past self would respect. They were just EA reskinned, churning low-quality games and spread sufferings through micro-transactions.
Well, enough pessimism. I want to see someone made use of Doom game engine to make the Brutal Doom years early, and see how everybody and their mothers go up in arms to see it as banned as Mortal Kombat.
"But it's a game about killing demons! Surely your church endorse demon-killing? How about I gave you a free demo so that your church-goers could play it every sunday after the mass? No?'
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Augmentation of Human Intellect project in 1968 got the idea for a GUI and user editable Hypertext from Vannevar Bush's 1945 article on the Memex. Xerox PARC manufactured several thousand Alto's complete with GUI and Desktop Metaphor in 1973.
Discrete Graphics also dates back to the 70's. While the first PC unit is in the 80's they were not infrequently seen in Arcade Machines.
As for the Internet, that's not really a sufficiently new idea fro what can be done with early 70s tech. ARPAnet is up and running by 1970, and so the contracts that lead to TCP/IP by 1974 were issued in 1968.
Basically none of these are worth anything like that much themselves since the ideas already exist and are being published in academia and the main thing stopping them is hardware.
You could invent Usenet early, but that didn't make Truscott and Ellis rich. Likewise the Worldwide Web.
For the OP's question, you might be able to squeeze Pokemon Green or Blue onto an Atari 400/800 cartridge, though 32kB cartridges were rare and expensive especially when you include the ability to save games. But you are working with 1.7 Megahertz, and 8kB of memory. And that limits any cartridge game of the mid to late 70s to roughly what can be crammed into the smallest cartridge size for the Original Gameboy [4.7 Mhz, 8kB Memory +8kB video Memory].
Better speed or memory is entirely limited by the chipfabs and a small group of ISOTees idn't going to speed those up noticably.
Note Floppy disks don't become commercially available until 1972 (8 Inch Memorex has 175 kB capacity.), same year as the Magnavox Odessey (The first games console.)
They might be better cloning simpler modern boardgames (Settlers of Catan is my first thought) and card games (RED7 for example might compete well against the 1971 release of Uno, Apples to Apples would be a bit more expensive but is pretty timeless in its design) or Roleplaying Games (DnD is 1974, so a Savage Worlds or MiniSix clone could sweep the first RPG market share), since those require raising less capital than trying to write games for machines that don't yet exist in 1970 and enable the creation of more modern gameworlds than computers can support.
I found this fascinating article showing just what even some of the early hardware could actually do if you had the design of a better game, and the ideas from more advanced programming languages:
arstechnica.com
I also read blog entries on it by the author. In summary, retro city rampage is similar to the first 2d grand-theft auto games, offering similar gameplay where your character can roam freely on a 2d city map, stealing cars and committing various crimes. This is far more advanced gameplay than mario. And the author did it partly by porting macros to assembly language to mimic functions in C, and many many advanced tricks, some of which were likely rarely or never used by programmers in the era of the NES.
So, while I don't know how far a 'couple' developers from our time could push things - it would depend heavily on their skillset - but presumably they would remember to buy stock in Apple and Compaq and Microsoft - but this shows that pushing things was somewhat possible.
Now, I don't know about skipping silicon straight to 7nm. I suspect that wouldn't be possible unless the time travelers were allowed to bring back racks full of hard drives with the proprietary information needed. Even that probably wouldn't be enough, knowing how still means you need to earlier generations to bootstrap to the equipment that can do 7nm. Obviously EUV lithography machines use chips made by earlier generations of lithography.
Retro City Rampage creator makes a real, playable NES port
ROM City Rampage shows just how much the old Nintendo hardware could do.
arstechnica.com
So, while I don't know how far a 'couple' developers from our time could push things - it would depend heavily on their skillset - but presumably they would remember to buy stock in Apple and Compaq and Microsoft - but this shows that pushing things was somewhat possible.
Now, I don't know about skipping silicon straight to 7nm. I suspect that wouldn't be possible unless the time travelers were allowed to bring back racks full of hard drives with the proprietary information needed. Even that probably wouldn't be enough, knowing how still means you need to earlier generations to bootstrap to the equipment that can do 7nm. Obviously EUV lithography machines use chips made by earlier generations of lithography.
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I'm either blind or this hasn't been mentioned yet, but visual novels could be huge: videocassettes release in 1971 and could handle the memory side of things for the graphics, while a separate cartridge could handle the decision tree if it couldn't also be encoded there. Heavily story based games weren't really a thing yet, so getting the idea out there that a game could tell an interactive story would be a huge boon for the mass appeal of video games, I feel. They also have the benefit of not using many computational resources aside from memory/storage and a good display, which are both large asks in the early 70's of course, but not, I feel, nearly so much as a fast processor.
I don't think this was tried until laser disk. The reason was that in order to have an interactive "movie" style game you needed to move that vcr tape many feet depending on the choice. It would be too slow.
The other problem with that genre of game was bad replayability.
Using high quality tape to store a computer program if that is what you meant (just use the capacity but make a fully interactive game) was done but it had severe problems.
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anyways this looks like a new idea of ISOT. im pretty sure they will need to be more people, just make the entire building of that game company filled with its staff suddenly got ISOT to 1970s thus this is where the thing shall happen. if they all had the knowledge in their own timeline the whole gaming industry will change forever. in the year 2000s 3d game would already had better graphics and more complex as hell.
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There may be some options on that front.
Capacitance Electronic Disc - Wikipedia
