THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES PART 7 - July 1999
| We've seen all kinds of landmarks in the history of
games so far (the first space game, the first shooting game, the first racing game), but
this month we're looking at a first that did more to define the state of today's
modern videogaming than all of those put together. Yep, it's the first-ever sequel. Sea Wolf II came out in 1978, two years after the original. (Which would obviously never happen today - some fool from the marketing department would have been fired for missing out on the lucrative potential of Sea Wolf 77.) And just like today's sequels, the periscope-shooting submarine game was basically the exact same game as its predecessor with a few cosmetic improvements. Still, at least one of the cosmetic tweaks in Sea Wolf's case was a ground-breaker in its own right - though there's some argument over the fact, Sea Wolf II is generally thought to have been the first coin-op to use genuine colour (ie not just sticking some bits of red and yellow cellophane over a black-and-white screen). Colour was the breakthrough that started to lure people other than pasty computer geeks into arcades to see what all the fuss was about (and ruin it for all the pasty computer geeks at the same time), and as such Sea Wolf II probably represents the very first "modern" video game. Next month: Tomb Raider. |
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