PC Games

And game developers faced a bewildering array of possible development platforms, all competing without a clear leader: the Apple II, the IBM PC, the Timex-Sinclair, the Atari 400/800, the Tandy/Radio Shack TSR-80, and more. Developing a game for one personal computer usually meant not being able to develop it for another.

A Taster

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but is meant to give you an idea of what kind of gaming experience we're talking about. Let's look at some classics from these early days:

• Lemonade - one of the first simulations, it put the player in charge of... yes, a lemonade stand. Not exactly gripping by today's standards, but you had to guess how much to spend on supplies for each day and adjust your prices to make the most of demand. A rainy day could drive your little business into the ground. Graphics? Why would you want that?

• The Zork series of adventures from Infocom - an unforgettable, wry, and elegantly-written set of text escapades, played entirely without graphics and evolved from Adventure, an even more simple text adventure with mainframe computer origins. The King's Quest series followed shortly after, improving upon the graphics if not the writing.

• Rogue started as a Unix server software test, but kept growing and gaining sophistication until it made it to the personal computer in 1984. It was the original dungeon crawl, and all the graphics were done in ASCII text, but it was addictively fun because of the enormous variety of monsters, treasure, and randomly-generated levels. You can trace Diablo's popularity right back to this simple game.

If these games interest you - or even games of much more recent pedigree - check out the admirable collection of living video game history over at the Home of the Underdogs.

Distribution for these games would make a modern gamer laugh. Some gaming magazines included long listings of code for gamers to type in to their computers so they could run games written by contributors, and one company even built a hardware device that would scan barcode-like images from magazines to speed up the code entry process.

PC Games Today

There's no doubt that things have come a long way. Dedicated videocards took the graphic load off processors and 3D cards made realistic rendering possible. DirectX consolidated a thousand different video standards, giving programmers more time to concentrate on the game instead of worrying about how to blit pixels on different kinds of videocards. Games now can feature cinematic music and audio effects, supported by hardware. And the platform shootout has been won by the computer architecture we now know as the PC - drop the IBM, toss in a little Microsoft monopoly, and ignore the generic nature of the term, thank you very much.

The PC Niche

Now PCs are the haven for games that require high graphical detail and complicated user interfaces - games like real-time strategy and role-playing games, where the player has to manage multiple units or complicated inventories. Many gamers also prefer using the precise combination of keyboard and mouse to control their first-person shooter games, rather than the more sloppy console joystick.

Thanks to the ubiquity of large hard drives, PC games can generally be longer and deeper than console games. They have space limitations - every disk in a game box costs money - but thanks to compression and an installation process, they don't have to fit it all in executable form on the game disk like console games do. And thanks to the hard drive, PC games can be patched, for better or worse.

Unlike console games publishers, PC game publishers don't pay a hefty royalty fee for each game they sell - they don't have to shell out for the rights to stamp "Xbox approved" or "PS2 approved" on their boxes. This helps them keep their costs and prices low.

PCs also can take advantage of the latest and greatest hardware innovations and display them on a much higher resolution screen than the average TV. Console manufacturers are starting to cut into this advantage with custom hardware and HDTV, but at the moment, the PC's customizability makes it a tough contender.

However, the PC's very flexibility created one of the strongest compulsions for the creation of the video game consoles - the nemesis of PC gamers everywhere. The PC is a constantly shifting target. A game developer can't assume the buyer's PC will have 2 GB of RAM or be able to support an advanced set of 3D graphics commands. He has no control over what kind of software has or hasn't been installed on the PC. He can only print a very general list of hardware recommendations on the box and hope that his software doesn't cause the PC to burst into flames on contact. He can rely on his testers to a certain extent, but it's not a problem that lets you sleep soundly at night. And to make matters worse, because the game development process often takes about two years, he has to guess at what the average PC will look like... in 24 months. If he's overaggressive, the game won't run on many PCs; if he's not aggressive enough, the game won't take advantage of the power of the average PC.

PC is OK

The PC occupies a unique space in the lineup of gaming platforms. It defeated other contenders for the personal computer gaming crown, and now it faces another group, the game consoles. But due to its unique characteristics, it looks like it's here to stay.