(If you're seeing this post mirrored on Facebook or LinkedIn, the video link works properly and the graphics look better on the original site at www.interactive-entertainment.net.)
Gametrailers has just released a World of Warcraft retrospective that traces WoW's roots back to Utopia, the game I designed and programmed for the Intellivision back in 1981 that was published in 1982.
I have to admit that when I created Utopia I had no idea people would still be talking about it almost 30 years later!
Here's the video, which already has about 240K hits between the high-def and standard-def versions:
The WoW retrospective article is here.
One of my favorite reminders of how games can surprise us in the marketplace comes from Utopia. At a time when coin-op arcade games like Pac Man and Donkey Kong dominated the best-seller charts, Mattel had approved the game as a way to balance its line. With all the Intellivision sports and action titles, it would offer a change of pace... but no one expected it to be a major seller.
I was at the 1982 CES Show in Las Vegas, where the game debuted. We were not allowed to talk to the press in those days because game designers' names were a closely held corporate secret in Mattel's world of industrial espionage. Each time we went to CES we had no idea how any of the demos had gone for journalists and buyers -- it might be days after we returned home before official feedback from Sales and Marketing would come in.
But this time was different. My wife called me the morning after the show opened and said, "You won't believe this, but Utopia is on the front page of the business section of the LA Times!"
Within a year Utopia had been voted into a Video Game Hall of Fame. Sometimes the best way to get noticed is to NOT follow the same trends that everyone else is following. The game is still available as part of the Intellivision compilations at Intellivision Lives.
Why the wait between completing the game in 1981 and the May, 1982 ship date? In the early 1980's it took six months to take a completed game, turn it into computer ROM chips, test those chips, manufacture the cartridges and ship them from Taiwan to Los Angeles!
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Copyright (c) 2008, Don Daglow.
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