AdviceToolbox
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It all began with chunky pixels, text adventures,
and monochrome 3D cityscapesA brief history of
8-bit virtual cities
Urban
Perspectives
Despite the limitations of
then-available tech, the 8-bit
era provided us with most
of the perspectives that we
still see in games today.
First-person and third-person
3D, bird’s-eye views, side-
scrolling 2D backgrounds,
and more besides, were all
employed to serve different
gameplay, narrative, and
atmospheric needs. Getting
game cities right has, after
all, always involved getting
the framing correct – thus
hiding omissions and
unavoidable gaps.
- mainly by exploring distinct, seminal locations
from some of the most important (though not
necessarily famous) games.
THE EARLIEST ATTEMPTS
It was during the 8-bit years that the first
game cities came to life. Spanning the long era
between the late 1970s and early 1990s, and
appearing on a multitude of platforms including
arcade machines, the NES, Apple II, Commodore
64, and ZX Spectrum, these cities constructed
their illusions with minuscule amounts of
memory, low resolutions, paltry colour palettes,
and painfully slow CPUs.
The most visually impressive 8-bit cities were
commonly seen in side-scrolling beat-’em-ups.
These games made up for their lack of depth
with often stunning visuals, frantic action, and
colourful depictions of dilapidated metropolitan
downtowns. Essentially consisting of a series
of 2D backgrounds and a variety of thugs to
pulverise, these ideologically charged depictions
of urbanism matched the demonisation of inner
cities that was rampant in the early eighties.
Renegade, its sequel Target: Renegade, River
City Ransom, Final Fight, and Double Dragon
were all characteristic examples of the genre,
all featuring cities built around violence and
social malaise.
Though not as anti-urban in their bias,
offerings such as Atari’s Rampage and 1988’s
The Muncher (based on an advert for the British
sweet brand, Chewits) cast players as giant
monsters tasked with smashing up single-screen
cities. It was only in Epyx’s largely forgotten
The Movie Monster Game, released in 1986,AUTHOR
KONSTANTINOS DIMOPOULOS
Konstantinos Dimopoulos is a game urbanist and designer, combining a PhD
in urban planning with video games. He is the author of the forthcoming Virtual
Cities atlas, designs game cities, and consults on their creation. game-cities.com30 / wfmag.cc
ities have long been filled with
storytelling potential. Classical
tragedies, contemporary TV
dramas, crime thrillers, science
fiction, horror, and fantasy
stories have all used urban settings. One of
the most famous works of early cinema, Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis, was all about its urbanism.
Unsurprisingly, cities also form a major part of
video gaming’s history.
Inevitably, the earliest game cities were
simple ones, but gaming quickly evolved
to allow for a unique and fascinating take
on urbanism. The medium’s interactivity added
unprecedented depth to its cities; for the
first time, players could explore and directly
experience these imaginary places.
This article is the first in a short series that will
briefly summarise the history of interactive citiesC
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The tough inner-city streets
of Target: Renegade, as
rendered on a ZX Spectrum.