Pixel Perfect

Zorgon's Revenge... another hero saving a princess, but this guy appears to be wearing a flat cap and pullover!

I’ve been at this a long time.  Gaming, I mean.  Ignoring the drab ASCII based games of the ZX80, my first memorable immersion in the sea of gaming came in December 1983 when I opened up the long, rectangular box and saw the beautiful cobalt blue stylings of the Oric-1 packaging illuminating my face like a box of Terry’s All Gold with a halogen lamp retrofitted for added effect.  While it never really had the catalogue of games that the Spectrum could boast to (I believe there were around 450 made in total), the quality of the graphics and sound of the Oric-1 meant that the games themselves were able to have an element of precision that wasn’t being offered by other machines of the same era, at least not to the same degree.  The typical Space Invader type games such as “The Ultra” or “Xenon 1″, or the Froggeresque “Hopper” didn’t exactly require much in the way of eagle eyed precision but others such as “Zorgon’s Revenge” (follow up to the aforementioned Xenon 1) absolutely depended on making your move at exactly the right point or the effort would be wasted.  In the pteranodon and spider level, jumping up to catch the moving zipline at any point other than the exact pixel would mean certain death and if you were lucky enough to catch it as it came towards you, you were left with the same impending doom if you attempted to jump from the zipline to the platform on the other end at any point other than that one precise pixel.  This, as you can imagine, made Zorgon’s Revenge one of the more difficult games on the Oric-1 and that’s before even reaching the horrendous Quadnog level.

Click to enlarge to show paths

Moving on to what may be perceived as the “next gen” in home computers, the fantastic “Pinball Dreams” was unleashed to the Amiga community in 1992 by Digital Illusions.  This not only included some pretty damn realistic physics, and tables that would put Bally themselves to shame, but the precision involved to send the ball up the required ramps and traps to achieve the goals of the table were made even more difficult by that same pixel precision. Of the four tables on offer within the game, it was always “Nightmare” that stole my time away… the 1930s horror movie cackle, the creaking doors, the Theremin style soundtrack… and those bloody ramps.  The ramp on the far right of the table was a loop that extended right around the back of the table, with a repeating multiplier that would send the score skyrocketing but right next to this immensely profitable ramp was another ramp which would just send the ball back down the track to the right flipper, which meant having to manipulate the ball once again to gain control with the left flipper.  The difference between hitting the “scupper” ramp and the “beneficial” ramp was one pixel.  If, like me, you relied on the “bitmapping” on the resting flippers to determine when you hit the ball… then your eye knew exactly which point to hit that left flipper but, as invariably happened, one pixel too early would send the ball up the return ramp to the other flipper.

Delphine Software’s Flashback was another 1992 Amiga game that relied heavily on precise movements, albeit to a slightly lesser degree than Zorgon’s Revenge and Pinball Dreams.  Its rotoscoped animation was one of the earliest games to feature such fluidity in motion and, with it, came a high degree of precision when it came to traversing chasms or jumping to a higher ledge.  A pixel or two out of place and your character would fall to the level below and you’d be left with no option but to drag yourself kicking and screaming through the lower level to reach that same ledge… only to forget which pixel you’d previously used as your jump-off point.  It may not have come down to one precise pixel, but it was pretty damn close.

With the advent of the 3D rendered first person vantage point, game progression has become less about precision and more about forging ahead and taking down as many enemies as possible en route.  That’s not to say that gaming has become simplistic through development, but the need for that eagle eye seems to have been negated in favour of a more free flowing gaming experience.  While I certainly enjoy traipsing around in the first person, solving puzzles, blowing heads off and picking up health boosts and other assorted trinkets on the way… I do also long for another game where the difference between progression and stagnancy rests on the ability to hit a button at a specific point on the screen.

This is the exact point in Fruity Loops that prevented Victor from progressing beyond the next obstacle

It is, perhaps, why I enjoy playing Trials HD as much as I do or… more specifically… why I enjoy spending so much time developing custom tracks.  In terms of overall complexity, they’re probably not THAT much more difficult than any custom track out there but they DO rely very much on that pixel precision of games gone by.  Adjusting the position of the rider at exactly the right moment will send the bike over any given ramp at the required velocity and angle to safety, but the tiniest slip either way… leaning back on the seat too far or leaning too much into the handlebars… would send the rider careering into whatever obstacle was carefully placed in JUST the right area to completely destroy any chance of moving forward.  Pixel precision at its best.  Watching our very own Victor play through my “Fruity Loops” custom track for 30 minutes without progressing beyond the second obstacle certainly reinforced just how difficult some of my tracks are, and I certainly felt more guilty than I’d ever expected.

The draw of these pixel-dependent games is still very much ingrained with me and I’ve been known to lift my iPod Touch for another few rounds of Pinball Dreams, just to infuriate myself trying to hit that flipper at exactly the right moment.  In between attempts at the big money “Midnight” phase on the Nightmare table I can still, hypocritically, immerse myself in all manner of 3D rendered first person games and that’s probably where you’ll find me…
forgetting altogether about pixel precision.

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