Warren Davis - Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games

and Other Classic Video Arcade Games

by WARREN DAVIS

Foreword by ED BOON

Afterword by JOHN NEWCOMER

Copyright 2021 by Warren Davis

All rights reserved.

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Santa Monica Press LLC

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This book is intended to provide general information. The publisher, author, distributor, and copyright owner are not engaged in rendering professional advice or services. The publisher, author, distributor, and copyright owner are not liable or responsible to any person or group with respect to any loss, illness, or injury caused or alleged to be caused by the information found in this book.

ISBN-13 978-1-59580-105-0

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Names: Davis, Warren B., 1956-, author. | Boon, Ed, foreword author. | Newcomer, John, afterword author.

Title: Creating Q*bert and other classic video arcade games / by Warren Davis; foreword by Ed Boon; afterword by John Newcomer.

Description: Solana Beach, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2021.

Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-59580-105-0 (paperback) | 978-1-59580-785-4 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH Davis, Warren B., 1956- | Video game designers--Biography. | Computer programmers--Biography. | Video games--Design--History. | Electronic games--Design--History. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts | GAMES AND ACTIVITIES / Video & Mobile | COMPUTERS / Programming / Games | COMPUTERS / Design, Graphics & Media / Video & Animation

Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .D38 2021 | DDC 794.8/092--dc23

Cover and interior design and production by Future Studio

Dedicated to Ron Waxman and Howie Rubin

by Ed Boon

Co-creator of Mortal Kombat and NetherRealm Studios creative director

Like many teenagers in the 80s, I was drawn into the world of video games. I not only loved playing them, but was obsessed with how they were made. That obsession drew me into computer programming and eventually I found myself working at Williams Electronics in October of 1986. Even though I was hired to program pinball machines, they put me in a dark section of the video game department referred to as the Dead Zone. This is where I met Warren Davis, whose cubicle was directly across from my office. Warren already had a number of games under his belt, including the classic game Q*bert. I soon learned Warren was one of a number of industry veterans I was working with, many of whom created some of my favorite games like Defender, Robotron, and Joust.

At Williams Electronics, Warren was working on multiple projects, including Joust 2, Lotto Fun (a video lottery game), and software tools to help artists work more efficiently. After learning who he was, I remember nagging Warren for details about how Q*bert was created but he was usually too busy to dive deep into that story. You can imagine how excited I was to read this book!

Today I think of Warren as both a celebrated and unsung hero at the same time. While he is certainly known as The Q*bert Guy, I feel his work at Williams/Midway made an even bigger impact on the game industry. Its just that fewer people know this.

During my three years in the pinball group, Warren was part of a small team building Williams next generation of video arcade hardware and software. By the time I joined the video game department, they had built a development foundation upon which future classic arcade games like NARC, Smash TV, Terminator 2, NBA Jam, and Mortal Kombat would be created.

What gave Williams/Midway games a competitive edge was their digitized graphics, which were created by converting video of real-world objects to game graphics. The result was a photo-realistic look that no other game company could touch. However, the process of digitizing game graphics was very time consuming for video artists. Warren wrote groundbreaking software tools that automated that digitizing process, animated our sprites, compressed our images, managed our color palettes, and probably more than I can remember. These utilities sped up our workflow exponentially. I cant overstate the impact Warren had on the development of Mortal Kombat and so many other Williams/Midway games.

As you might imagine, someone who created Q*bert and helped build the foundation for the Williams/Midway games probably has a lot of fascinating stories to tell. This book is a great collection of those stories. There is a genuine honesty here that covers not only the successes, but also the disappointments, disagreements, and flat-out arguments involved in making so many classic games. I loved reading not only how Q*bert was created, but also Warrens perspective on cancelled projects, office politics, as well as his departure and return to Williams/Midway.

Im writing this as one of many game makers who were not only inspired by Warrens games, but also benefitted immensely from the software tools he created. I had a great time reading this book, and particularly enjoyed Warrens (almost perfect) recollection of the early days in the Williams Dead Zone offices. Warren remembered who occupied every workspace! Except two, admitting but I have no recollection of who were in the other two. For the record, I was one of the forgotten two. But hey, its been 35 years!

Throughout my career, many people have asked me: How do you become a video game creator? My answer to that question has changed gradually over the years. At the moment, its I havent the faintest idea.

The industry is so radically different from when I entered it way back in the prehistoric time of January 1982. Now there are so many areas of specialization: game designers, engine designers, engine programmers, effects programmers, scripters, A.I. programmers, U.I. programmers, U.I. designers, level designers, character animators, background animators, producers, asset managers, testers. Not to mention lighting designers, sound designers, voice and motion capture actors, and a whole slew of other types of people who all play a part in the creation of a video game.

When I started, if you wanted to create a game, you were one of three things: a programmer, an artist, or a sound designer. No one was just a game designeryou had to have at least one other useful skill. Sure, there were other important tasks, hardware design most critically. But as far as the creative team went, that was it. For myself, having no knowledge of sound design whatsoever, only a minimal ability as an artist, and a degree in computer engineering, my choices were limited. I did some hardware design work after college, but my love of computers always revolved around programming. To me, programming a computer was a means of artistic expression. Peoples responses to a computer program mimic their responses to art. It can inspire anger or frustration when it misbehaves. It can make you smile if the programs creator has added a little levity into it. And theres a satisfaction to be had when it does exactly what you wanted it to do.