1 00:00:07,633 --> 00:00:09,760 [narrator] It's 11:59 p.m. 2 00:00:10,344 --> 00:00:13,430 December 9th, 1993. 3 00:00:14,806 --> 00:00:15,807 In one minute, 4 00:00:16,308 --> 00:00:22,856 a PC game will be uploaded to a newly popular platform called the internet. 5 00:00:22,940 --> 00:00:24,983 [man] There were hundreds of people on the server 6 00:00:25,670 --> 00:00:27,361 and they were dying to get this game. 7 00:00:27,444 --> 00:00:28,403 [computer bleeps] 8 00:00:32,199 --> 00:00:34,117 [narrator] The game was Doom. 9 00:00:34,201 --> 00:00:36,912 [man] Everyone was initiating the file transfer at the same time, 10 00:00:36,995 --> 00:00:38,455 so the server just crashed. 11 00:00:39,122 --> 00:00:42,840 It was the game that everybody had been waiting for, evidently. 12 00:01:28,547 --> 00:01:31,300 [man] It's a dark and scary broken military base 13 00:01:31,383 --> 00:01:33,468 that's been invaded by demons from hell. 14 00:01:35,762 --> 00:01:37,472 There's a dark environment, 15 00:01:37,556 --> 00:01:39,141 a light is strobing, 16 00:01:39,224 --> 00:01:40,767 demons are coming at you, 17 00:01:41,810 --> 00:01:44,313 and you just see silhouettes and fireballs coming toward you. 18 00:01:44,396 --> 00:01:46,148 [explosions] 19 00:01:46,231 --> 00:01:48,358 We wanted to scare the crap out of you. 20 00:01:49,609 --> 00:01:51,945 And nobody had ever seen anything like it before. 21 00:01:52,446 --> 00:01:54,281 [narrator] This is John Romero... 22 00:01:57,409 --> 00:01:59,828 game designer turned legend... 23 00:01:59,911 --> 00:02:01,380 [chainsaw buzzes] 24 00:02:01,496 --> 00:02:04,458 ...for freaking out a generation of gamers. 25 00:02:05,500 --> 00:02:07,544 [Romero] We wanted to make something dark and scary 26 00:02:07,627 --> 00:02:11,600 and so we released one of the most violent video games that's ever been made. 27 00:02:11,506 --> 00:02:14,635 [narrator] He had opened the door to a new era of gaming... 28 00:02:14,718 --> 00:02:16,530 -[groaning] -[gunshots] 29 00:02:16,136 --> 00:02:17,596 ...where players could enter, 30 00:02:18,305 --> 00:02:19,181 explore, 31 00:02:19,890 --> 00:02:21,767 and play against each other. 32 00:02:22,267 --> 00:02:24,227 And it came at a pivotal moment 33 00:02:24,936 --> 00:02:30,150 when both computers and consoles were about to enter a new dimension. 34 00:02:30,650 --> 00:02:32,653 Romero's machine of choice... 35 00:02:34,821 --> 00:02:35,906 was the PC. 36 00:02:37,949 --> 00:02:40,369 It started in 1989 37 00:02:40,452 --> 00:02:43,580 when Romero began making games for a subscription service 38 00:02:43,663 --> 00:02:45,374 called Gamer's Edge. 39 00:02:46,416 --> 00:02:48,293 [Romero] Every month you would get a disc 40 00:02:48,377 --> 00:02:51,421 for whatever computer that you were subscribing for 41 00:02:52,130 --> 00:02:55,800 and on that disc would be a bunch of random stuff. 42 00:02:55,759 --> 00:02:57,594 Whether you like it or not, you're getting it, 43 00:02:57,677 --> 00:03:00,347 and hopefully there'll be a game or something fun on it. 44 00:03:00,847 --> 00:03:04,684 Twenty-two-year-old Romero paired up with another young hotshot programmer 45 00:03:04,768 --> 00:03:09,564 named John Carmack to make games that were actually worth it for the subscriber. 46 00:03:09,648 --> 00:03:12,234 I asked him, "What is it that you want to do 47 00:03:12,317 --> 00:03:15,404 on this game, since we're going to make it together? What are you interested in?" 48 00:03:16,154 --> 00:03:18,573 He said, "I'm interested in graphics 49 00:03:18,657 --> 00:03:20,826 and, like, the architecture of the games." 50 00:03:21,827 --> 00:03:25,330 And I said, "Okay, I'll do the game designs and the levels 51 00:03:25,414 --> 00:03:27,457 and programming and stuff that you don't like." 52 00:03:27,874 --> 00:03:30,850 [narrator] Romero had a partner in crime. 53 00:03:30,585 --> 00:03:34,673 Now they needed the perfect lair for their team to code in. 54 00:03:34,756 --> 00:03:37,134 Gamer's Edge was at a fluorescent light company, 55 00:03:39,100 --> 00:03:40,929 which to me is non-creative light. 56 00:03:41,596 --> 00:03:42,889 I prefer darkness. 57 00:03:42,973 --> 00:03:44,933 [heavy metal music playing] 58 00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:46,893 But I got a room at the office 59 00:03:46,977 --> 00:03:50,272 and we made our environment that we wanted to work in. 60 00:03:51,106 --> 00:03:52,315 It was a dark cave. 61 00:03:52,399 --> 00:03:54,901 We had a window that we could let some sunlight in, 62 00:03:54,985 --> 00:03:56,278 but we hated that too. 63 00:03:56,862 --> 00:03:58,321 We had a Nintendo in the corner 64 00:03:58,405 --> 00:04:02,242 that was just playing Life Force, Zelda, Mario 3 on loop. 65 00:04:02,325 --> 00:04:05,787 We had our own giant refrigerator in there packed full of drinks. 66 00:04:06,872 --> 00:04:09,833 And I had a kick-ass '80s boombox 67 00:04:09,916 --> 00:04:13,440 and each person got a whole day to play anything that they wanted. 68 00:04:14,296 --> 00:04:15,297 It was mostly metal. 69 00:04:15,380 --> 00:04:17,757 [heavy metal music playing] 70 00:04:17,841 --> 00:04:20,385 We spent tons of time there. It was funny, because... 71 00:04:20,469 --> 00:04:24,970 we were starting to code on our spare time after the normal hours. 72 00:04:24,681 --> 00:04:26,570 I mean, this is what we want to do. 73 00:04:26,141 --> 00:04:28,310 Nobody's telling us not to do it. This is great. 74 00:04:28,393 --> 00:04:31,620 [narrator] Out of that metal-induced mania 75 00:04:31,146 --> 00:04:34,240 came the foundation for something truly groundbreaking: 76 00:04:34,524 --> 00:04:37,944 smooth side-scrolling on the PC. 77 00:04:38,280 --> 00:04:41,698 [Romero] On the Nintendo, side-scrolling was extremely smooth 78 00:04:42,741 --> 00:04:44,951 and the PC really couldn't do that 79 00:04:45,350 --> 00:04:49,456 because, at the time, the PC graphics just weren't that advanced. 80 00:04:50,457 --> 00:04:53,418 There were some side-scrolling games that were like Mario clones 81 00:04:53,502 --> 00:04:56,400 that moved the screen in chunks, 82 00:04:56,755 --> 00:05:00,133 but the chunking doesn't feel real. It takes you out of it. 83 00:05:00,926 --> 00:05:02,928 That's as good as it got back then. 84 00:05:04,221 --> 00:05:07,140 If we can figure out how we can get it smooth horizontally, 85 00:05:07,224 --> 00:05:08,558 that's huge. 86 00:05:08,642 --> 00:05:12,312 If we can make a Mario-type thing, like... that's unbelievable. 87 00:05:13,939 --> 00:05:15,315 So this one night, 88 00:05:15,398 --> 00:05:17,984 Carmack decided that he was going to try to do it. 89 00:05:18,985 --> 00:05:21,290 [narrator] That night, he'd take a trip... 90 00:05:22,614 --> 00:05:27,494 [distorted voice] ...through the mushroom kingdom. 91 00:05:29,329 --> 00:05:31,810 Nah, not that mushroom kingdom. 92 00:05:32,332 --> 00:05:33,166 This one. 93 00:05:34,334 --> 00:05:36,586 I came in the next day at ten o'clock. 94 00:05:37,170 --> 00:05:38,672 They put a little demo on my desk 95 00:05:38,755 --> 00:05:41,174 called Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement. 96 00:05:41,258 --> 00:05:44,302 Dangerous Dave is a game that I had made the month before. 97 00:05:44,386 --> 00:05:45,929 So I was like, "Hmm, 98 00:05:46,120 --> 00:05:47,931 they must have been doing something last night." 99 00:05:48,140 --> 00:05:50,851 So I put it in the computer and ran it. 100 00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:54,688 The screen starts up with Super Mario Brothers 3 101 00:05:54,771 --> 00:05:56,147 with Dangerous Dave on the screen. 102 00:05:57,732 --> 00:06:00,819 And he runs across the screen and the whole screen smoothly scrolls. 103 00:06:00,902 --> 00:06:02,821 I could not believe that 104 00:06:02,904 --> 00:06:04,406 this was on a PC. 105 00:06:05,532 --> 00:06:07,993 I could not believe that he got it working. 106 00:06:09,244 --> 00:06:10,495 No one has done this. 107 00:06:10,579 --> 00:06:13,582 This is the first time this has happened on a PC. 108 00:06:14,820 --> 00:06:18,420 [narrator] In a single night, Carmack figured out something no one else had 109 00:06:18,503 --> 00:06:21,715 and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. 110 00:06:22,716 --> 00:06:27,470 [Romero] It was validating the PC as an actual game-playing machine. 111 00:06:28,888 --> 00:06:33,590 And I was like, "This technology is big, it's huge. 112 00:06:33,143 --> 00:06:34,894 We need to start a company and make our own game." 113 00:06:35,437 --> 00:06:37,480 [narrator] Romero saw that the PC 114 00:06:37,564 --> 00:06:40,734 could compete with the gaming consoles of the time. 115 00:06:41,526 --> 00:06:43,862 But even in the world of Nintendo, 116 00:06:43,945 --> 00:06:47,574 there was still a limit to how deep a player could go. 117 00:06:50,577 --> 00:06:51,745 Up to that point, 118 00:06:51,828 --> 00:06:54,831 Nintendo titles played out in two dimensions. 119 00:06:55,248 --> 00:06:59,294 Run left, run right, jump up, jump down. 120 00:07:00,450 --> 00:07:04,257 So far, they hadn't figured out how to place the player inside the game 121 00:07:04,341 --> 00:07:09,120 from the first-person perspective with 3D polygonal graphics. 122 00:07:10,263 --> 00:07:12,182 Meanwhile, over in the UK, 123 00:07:12,265 --> 00:07:15,185 a brash high school dropout named Dylan Cuthbert 124 00:07:15,268 --> 00:07:17,562 was spinning his wheels on the idea. 125 00:07:18,730 --> 00:07:21,240 [Cuthbert] I left school when I was 17. 126 00:07:22,108 --> 00:07:25,904 I applied for a job at a company called Argonaut Software. 127 00:07:26,112 --> 00:07:29,320 At the time, it was a very leading-edge 3D games company. 128 00:07:29,115 --> 00:07:32,770 [narrator] Argonaut was trying to make a name for themselves 129 00:07:32,160 --> 00:07:33,912 among the gaming giants, 130 00:07:33,995 --> 00:07:36,915 and they were counting on 3D to make it happen. 131 00:07:37,624 --> 00:07:40,752 [Cuthbert] Immediately I was thrown into making a game for Game Boy, 132 00:07:41,252 --> 00:07:44,255 a 3D game, sort of fly everywhere, shooting kind of game. 133 00:07:45,298 --> 00:07:48,635 [narrator] Making a 3D game for the Game Boy was unheard of, 134 00:07:48,718 --> 00:07:51,680 but that wasn't the only problem facing the team. 135 00:07:53,980 --> 00:07:56,590 Nintendo fiercely guarded their trade secrets. 136 00:07:56,476 --> 00:08:00,563 So if you wanted to legally develop games on any of Nintendo's systems, 137 00:08:01,220 --> 00:08:02,774 you needed a permission slip, 138 00:08:02,857 --> 00:08:04,984 which Argonaut didn't have. 139 00:08:05,568 --> 00:08:07,821 But they went forward with the project anyway, 140 00:08:07,904 --> 00:08:09,948 just to see if it could be done. 141 00:08:10,448 --> 00:08:13,340 [Cuthbert] And we had no official dev kits, no official license, 142 00:08:13,118 --> 00:08:15,453 nothing at all. We just had a Game Boy. 143 00:08:15,537 --> 00:08:18,623 We just kind of ripped everything apart and just attached wires, 144 00:08:18,707 --> 00:08:22,919 and basically hacked in the connections on the chip to come out 145 00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:25,171 so we could actually give it different data. 146 00:08:26,423 --> 00:08:30,719 [narrator] Dylan figured out how to code a wireframe-based space demo 147 00:08:30,802 --> 00:08:32,721 that ran in 3D. 148 00:08:33,221 --> 00:08:36,850 That's how we knocked up the initial 3D sort of demo on the Game Boy, 149 00:08:36,933 --> 00:08:40,687 um, very unofficially. So we kind of got away with it. 150 00:08:40,770 --> 00:08:42,772 [narrator] Or so they thought. 151 00:08:43,398 --> 00:08:45,984 [ominous music playing] 152 00:08:48,945 --> 00:08:52,574 Six months into that project, it got seen by someone from Nintendo. 153 00:08:58,538 --> 00:09:01,820 [narrator] Hacking Nintendo could mean trouble, 154 00:09:01,166 --> 00:09:03,793 pretty deep legal trouble. 155 00:09:03,877 --> 00:09:07,505 But, more than anything, Nintendo seemed curious. 156 00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:09,466 [Cuthbert] Suddenly my boss says, 157 00:09:09,549 --> 00:09:11,760 "The people who made the Game Boy don't believe that... 158 00:09:11,843 --> 00:09:13,386 that 3D can run on the Game Boy. 159 00:09:14,345 --> 00:09:16,431 So, in two weeks you're flying to Japan." 160 00:09:19,809 --> 00:09:21,102 I think I was 18. 161 00:09:21,644 --> 00:09:25,440 I didn't have a passport, so I had to go and quickly get a passport. 162 00:09:25,523 --> 00:09:28,985 And, really, without thinking about it, I just got on the plane with my boss. 163 00:09:32,614 --> 00:09:34,991 The next morning, we went to Nintendo 164 00:09:35,740 --> 00:09:38,770 and we're sitting there in this big white room. 165 00:09:40,371 --> 00:09:43,833 And suddenly about 30 Nintendo staff 166 00:09:43,917 --> 00:09:45,960 just come in from the other side. 167 00:09:46,544 --> 00:09:48,379 And they're all wearing Nintendo jackets. 168 00:09:48,463 --> 00:09:51,341 And we're kind of there like this with our t-shirts and jeans. 169 00:09:53,218 --> 00:09:54,930 And they all sit down, 170 00:09:54,177 --> 00:09:56,471 basically a whole bunch of, like, luminaries... 171 00:09:56,554 --> 00:09:58,640 [chuckles] ...on the other side of the table. 172 00:09:59,349 --> 00:10:02,936 And there's me, an 18-year-old kid, basically, 173 00:10:03,190 --> 00:10:05,188 showing them what I'd done on the Game Boy. 174 00:10:06,439 --> 00:10:09,901 And they said, "Oh, this is amazing. Okay, we're going to sign this game up." 175 00:10:10,568 --> 00:10:14,572 [narrator] So, instead of a lawsuit, Argonaut got a contract 176 00:10:14,656 --> 00:10:16,533 to officially make their game. 177 00:10:17,242 --> 00:10:18,535 But that wasn't all. 178 00:10:18,618 --> 00:10:23,790 Nintendo star designer Shigeru Miyamoto had another secret project up his sleeve: 179 00:10:23,873 --> 00:10:25,917 their next generation gaming console. 180 00:10:27,850 --> 00:10:30,922 [Cuthbert] Miyamoto brought over this, like, pre-release Super Nintendo. 181 00:10:31,500 --> 00:10:33,508 And, like, with no-- I mean, I hadn't signed an NDA. 182 00:10:33,591 --> 00:10:35,927 There's no security or anything. 183 00:10:36,511 --> 00:10:38,721 And he said, "Well, this is where we're trying to do 3D. 184 00:10:39,222 --> 00:10:41,224 Is this something that Argonaut could help us with?" 185 00:10:43,170 --> 00:10:47,105 [narrator] It was too late to change the hardware for the Super Nintendo console, 186 00:10:47,188 --> 00:10:49,566 so Dylan fell back on what he knew best, 187 00:10:50,660 --> 00:10:51,192 hacking, 188 00:10:51,276 --> 00:10:54,487 and proposed putting a chip that could handle 3D 189 00:10:54,571 --> 00:10:56,781 inside the cartridges. 190 00:10:57,490 --> 00:10:59,750 Miyamoto's eyes kind of lit up, 191 00:10:59,159 --> 00:11:01,703 and that kind of began the super effects chip. 192 00:11:02,495 --> 00:11:04,789 [narrator] The super effects chip allowed Miyamoto 193 00:11:04,873 --> 00:11:06,875 to envision a whole new perspective. 194 00:11:07,917 --> 00:11:11,546 He had already mastered 2D games like Mario and Zelda. 195 00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:16,217 Now, he'd pair up with Dylan to create a 3D experience, 196 00:11:16,301 --> 00:11:19,429 bringing players inside the world of the game. 197 00:11:20,847 --> 00:11:23,990 But, back in the US, 198 00:11:23,766 --> 00:11:28,210 Romero and team were already full steam ahead on 3D. 199 00:11:29,220 --> 00:11:33,260 They say that all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy… 200 00:11:34,903 --> 00:11:38,573 [narrator] Cracking the Nintendo code on the PC was just the beginning 201 00:11:38,656 --> 00:11:39,949 for Romero and his team. 202 00:11:40,330 --> 00:11:41,326 We're already way past that. 203 00:11:41,409 --> 00:11:43,286 [narrator] It empowered them to quit their jobs 204 00:11:43,369 --> 00:11:46,497 and form their own company, Id Software. 205 00:11:46,998 --> 00:11:48,708 And by 1992, 206 00:11:49,334 --> 00:11:53,296 they had taken their newfound smooth-moving side-scrolling tech 207 00:11:53,379 --> 00:11:55,715 and turned it inside out... 208 00:11:55,798 --> 00:11:58,426 [newscaster] It's three-dimensional. It's texture mapped. 209 00:11:58,509 --> 00:12:00,178 It's Wolfenstein, 210 00:12:00,261 --> 00:12:02,597 one of the hottest-selling computer games in the world. 211 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:07,393 [narrator] ...creating a hit game and popularizing a new perspective: 212 00:12:08,144 --> 00:12:10,146 the first-person shooter. 213 00:12:10,229 --> 00:12:14,233 We just decided that we wanted to make something more serious 214 00:12:14,317 --> 00:12:18,279 in 3D, and not do the side-scrolling stuff anymore. 215 00:12:18,363 --> 00:12:22,575 So Wolfenstein 3D came out on May 5th of 1992, 216 00:12:22,659 --> 00:12:24,661 to instant massive success. 217 00:12:24,744 --> 00:12:26,663 People loved blowing away Nazis 218 00:12:26,746 --> 00:12:29,540 as you're trying to shoot your way out of the castle. 219 00:12:30,375 --> 00:12:34,870 It was a 3D game going at 70 frames a second, 220 00:12:34,170 --> 00:12:37,799 in full color with real digital sound for the first time. 221 00:12:38,758 --> 00:12:42,720 CPUs were just fast enough to make Wolfenstein run fast. 222 00:12:42,804 --> 00:12:45,223 And so, we were just on the edge of technology. 223 00:12:45,306 --> 00:12:48,685 [narrator] In just a few short years, Romero and his team 224 00:12:48,768 --> 00:12:52,230 built a successful company and transformed the personal computer 225 00:12:52,313 --> 00:12:55,650 into an immersive and action-packed gaming platform. 226 00:12:56,670 --> 00:12:59,821 These were the building blocks for their ultimate masterpiece. 227 00:12:59,904 --> 00:13:03,241 Basically, with every game that we made, we were just trying to 228 00:13:03,324 --> 00:13:06,350 do something new and different and better with each game. 229 00:13:06,119 --> 00:13:08,246 And that's it. That's all we cared about. 230 00:13:08,329 --> 00:13:11,332 So we were starting to think about what our next game would be, 231 00:13:11,916 --> 00:13:14,210 and we wanted to improve the technology 232 00:13:14,293 --> 00:13:16,462 and make the game even more immersive and more exciting. 233 00:13:17,463 --> 00:13:20,258 So the bullet-point list that we came up with 234 00:13:20,341 --> 00:13:23,928 that was going to go in the game was just, like, super ambitious. 235 00:13:24,846 --> 00:13:26,597 We wanted diminished lighting... 236 00:13:26,681 --> 00:13:28,141 [narrator] For creepiness. 237 00:13:28,808 --> 00:13:31,144 -[Romero] ...high speed... -[narrator] For realistic movement. 238 00:13:31,227 --> 00:13:33,604 [Romero] ...most importantly, multi-player functionality. 239 00:13:33,688 --> 00:13:35,690 [narrator] For playing with all your friends. 240 00:13:35,773 --> 00:13:37,817 We need to have the ultimate ultimate, 241 00:13:38,234 --> 00:13:42,280 which is let people play each other on a network or over the modem. 242 00:13:43,156 --> 00:13:45,575 -[dial-up tone] -[narrator] Hold on for a second. 243 00:13:45,658 --> 00:13:47,160 Hear that? 244 00:13:47,243 --> 00:13:50,204 If you're Romero's target demographic in the '90s, 245 00:13:50,288 --> 00:13:55,100 that's the sweet sound of a computer connecting to the internet. 246 00:13:55,835 --> 00:13:59,505 Back then, you'd hook your computer to the telephone landline, 247 00:14:00,890 --> 00:14:01,507 dial up your modem... 248 00:14:01,674 --> 00:14:02,967 [keypad tones beeping] 249 00:14:03,551 --> 00:14:04,385 ...and wait... 250 00:14:04,469 --> 00:14:05,470 [dial-up tone] 251 00:14:05,553 --> 00:14:06,846 and wait... 252 00:14:07,805 --> 00:14:09,307 and wait. 253 00:14:09,390 --> 00:14:10,933 [computer voice] Welcome. 254 00:14:11,170 --> 00:14:13,186 [narrator] And if someone had to make a call, 255 00:14:13,686 --> 00:14:14,729 you were booted. 256 00:14:14,812 --> 00:14:17,774 -[computer voice] Goodbye. -[boy] Mom, get off the phone! 257 00:14:18,191 --> 00:14:21,194 [narrator] It was all new, and people were still figuring it out. 258 00:14:21,277 --> 00:14:23,154 Once you've learned how to get online yourselves, 259 00:14:23,237 --> 00:14:25,239 you'll start seeing web pages everywhere. 260 00:14:25,323 --> 00:14:28,201 Can we do something fun? Maybe play a game? 261 00:14:28,284 --> 00:14:31,790 Let's go to the Yahooligans home page and find a game! 262 00:14:32,288 --> 00:14:35,625 [Romero] There were games that were multiplayer on modems 263 00:14:35,708 --> 00:14:39,545 but they weren't games that were high-speed that were networked. 264 00:14:39,629 --> 00:14:42,298 [narrator] At the time, computers could connect online 265 00:14:42,381 --> 00:14:45,426 and mostly just play slow, simple games like... 266 00:14:46,940 --> 00:14:47,136 War, 267 00:14:48,596 --> 00:14:49,722 Golf, 268 00:14:49,806 --> 00:14:52,350 strategy games that played out in turns. 269 00:14:52,934 --> 00:14:54,310 [Romero] That was the limitation. 270 00:14:54,393 --> 00:14:56,270 And I was thinking about how cool it would be 271 00:14:56,979 --> 00:14:58,147 to finally play an action game 272 00:14:58,231 --> 00:15:00,399 with somebody that's on a completely different computer, 273 00:15:00,483 --> 00:15:02,944 running around and shooting each other online. 274 00:15:03,569 --> 00:15:08,116 Carmack got to work on figuring out simultaneous remote gameplay. 275 00:15:08,199 --> 00:15:11,285 And Tom Cruise came up with their game title. 276 00:15:11,369 --> 00:15:13,621 [Romero] There's a movie called The Color of Money. 277 00:15:13,704 --> 00:15:18,876 And Tom Cruise is in a pool hall and he's about to play against some guy 278 00:15:18,960 --> 00:15:20,628 and he brought his own cue stick. 279 00:15:21,546 --> 00:15:23,756 So, the guy comes up and he's like... 280 00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:25,133 What you got in there? 281 00:15:25,883 --> 00:15:27,718 [Romero] And Tom Cruise looks down, he goes... 282 00:15:28,970 --> 00:15:29,887 Doom. 283 00:15:31,722 --> 00:15:34,600 [laughs] And it was like, wow, what a great name. 284 00:15:34,684 --> 00:15:36,310 Come on, boy. Let's play. 285 00:15:36,394 --> 00:15:37,979 Yeah, let's play. 286 00:15:38,479 --> 00:15:40,857 [narrator] And with absolutely nothing programmed yet, 287 00:15:40,940 --> 00:15:43,192 Romero got to work on the press release. 288 00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:45,987 [Romero] We put a press release out 289 00:15:46,700 --> 00:15:48,573 just saying how awesome this game is gonna be, 290 00:15:48,656 --> 00:15:51,284 which is crazy, because nobody does that. 291 00:15:51,367 --> 00:15:53,619 You put a press release out when you release something. 292 00:15:53,703 --> 00:15:56,622 So it was nuts to even say that before you create it. 293 00:15:56,706 --> 00:15:58,457 We didn't care. That's what we were like then. 294 00:15:58,875 --> 00:16:00,334 Even worse, the press release said 295 00:16:00,418 --> 00:16:04,797 this game will be the loss of productivity around the world when it comes out. 296 00:16:04,881 --> 00:16:06,591 [narrator] With that, the team at Id 297 00:16:06,674 --> 00:16:11,220 inadvertently gave themselves a hard deadline and a lot of hype. 298 00:16:11,304 --> 00:16:14,223 And then we had to work like hell that year to make it. 299 00:16:14,307 --> 00:16:17,643 [narrator] Romero was confident their idea would have mass appeal. 300 00:16:18,936 --> 00:16:20,479 But for Dylan in Japan, 301 00:16:20,563 --> 00:16:24,660 Nintendo's attempt to get into 3D was all under seal. 302 00:16:24,609 --> 00:16:25,776 Behind closed doors, 303 00:16:25,860 --> 00:16:28,654 he was preparing to show  that the super effects chip 304 00:16:28,738 --> 00:16:30,281 was up to the task. 305 00:16:30,698 --> 00:16:35,203 [Cuthbert] We showed them a demo, where you kind of fly around in all 3D. 306 00:16:35,786 --> 00:16:39,207 It had, like, sort of missile trails. It was actually quite a nice little demo. 307 00:16:39,749 --> 00:16:41,751 [narrator] But not everybody thought so. 308 00:16:42,585 --> 00:16:46,380 [Cuthbert] Miyamoto couldn't really get his head around the fly everywhere thing. 309 00:16:46,464 --> 00:16:49,300 He didn't like the fact that the player has to really think about 310 00:16:49,383 --> 00:16:51,969 not just here, but like all around. 311 00:16:53,540 --> 00:16:54,847 So Miyamoto said, 312 00:16:54,931 --> 00:16:56,891 "Go back for Christmas, you know, everybody, 313 00:16:56,974 --> 00:17:00,102 and then come back in the New Year, and we'll carry on development, 314 00:17:00,186 --> 00:17:03,356 and I'll see what I can think up to kind of help this." 315 00:17:10,154 --> 00:17:12,990 So we got back from our Christmas break 316 00:17:13,616 --> 00:17:15,868 and Miyamoto came to us and he said, 317 00:17:15,952 --> 00:17:18,704 "I had a great idea over the New Year." 318 00:17:20,957 --> 00:17:26,300 Every year, the Japanese go for a sort of pilgrimage to shrines. 319 00:17:26,671 --> 00:17:27,964 They call it Hatsumode. 320 00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:32,760 Miyamoto went to the Fushimi Inari shrine 321 00:17:32,843 --> 00:17:34,971 very near where Nintendo was at that time. 322 00:17:35,540 --> 00:17:40,590 And it has these thousands of vermilion-colored gates 323 00:17:49,193 --> 00:17:52,572 Miyamoto said, "I was moving through the gates and I thought, 324 00:17:52,655 --> 00:17:55,658 wouldn't it be great if we just were flying through these gates, 325 00:17:56,158 --> 00:17:58,286 enjoying that thrill of going through things 326 00:17:58,369 --> 00:18:00,246 rather than just shooting things all the time." 327 00:18:02,206 --> 00:18:05,751 And so we went, "Oh, okay, that is actually a pretty interesting concept." 328 00:18:07,295 --> 00:18:10,381 [narrator] Miyamoto had discovered a fix for his problem. 329 00:18:11,215 --> 00:18:13,718 By allowing the gamer to fly through gates, 330 00:18:13,801 --> 00:18:15,177 he could control the action. 331 00:18:15,261 --> 00:18:18,389 so the player would not have to worry about what was behind them. 332 00:18:18,931 --> 00:18:23,190 It was the foundation of what would become an iconic Nintendo game. 333 00:18:23,602 --> 00:18:26,981 [Cuthbert] Something interesting is the Fushimi Inari shrine itself 334 00:18:27,640 --> 00:18:28,858 the word inari means "fox." 335 00:18:29,609 --> 00:18:33,237 And so that's basically where Star Fox was born. 336 00:18:33,946 --> 00:18:37,491 It all really originated from that walk that he had. 337 00:18:41,954 --> 00:18:44,707 [narrator] But it would take more than a walk at the shrine 338 00:18:44,790 --> 00:18:47,501 for these groundbreaking visuals to take off. 339 00:18:47,585 --> 00:18:51,172 So Dylan called in his wingman, Giles Goddard. 340 00:18:51,255 --> 00:18:53,924 I'm Giles Goddard. I was a programmer on Star Fox. 341 00:18:54,508 --> 00:18:57,470 Giles is one of the first people I met when I joined Argonaut Software. 342 00:18:57,553 --> 00:19:00,806 His personality is very... dry. 343 00:19:00,890 --> 00:19:02,391 Dylan is extremely driven. 344 00:19:02,475 --> 00:19:03,976 -Very droll. -Stubborn. 345 00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:06,395 Very... different. 346 00:19:06,479 --> 00:19:07,355 Argued a lot. 347 00:19:07,438 --> 00:19:08,272 [laughs] 348 00:19:08,356 --> 00:19:12,680 [narrator] And this dynamic duo was ready to take Kyoto by storm. 349 00:19:16,739 --> 00:19:19,992 [Goddard] Twenty years ago, Japan was a very different place. 350 00:19:20,760 --> 00:19:23,913 There were very few foreign tourists, very few foreigners at all. 351 00:19:24,538 --> 00:19:27,875 It was scary, but it was fun because we were 18, 352 00:19:28,292 --> 00:19:32,338 and we'd just been on a first-class flight from London, 353 00:19:32,797 --> 00:19:34,173 all expenses paid. 354 00:19:35,174 --> 00:19:37,635 So we just thought we were rock stars. 355 00:19:38,886 --> 00:19:42,560 [narrator] Two blokes in Kyoto, all expenses paid. 356 00:19:42,139 --> 00:19:43,570 What could go wrong? 357 00:19:43,140 --> 00:19:45,170 Pretty cool. Look at the sign, it's still broken. 358 00:19:45,851 --> 00:19:47,186 [Cuthbert] There was a bar called Backgammon. 359 00:19:47,269 --> 00:19:50,940 Grungy and gritty and dirty, you know, just a lot of fun. 360 00:19:52,233 --> 00:19:55,319 Do you remember the days when, if you saw a foreigner come at you, you'd wave? 361 00:19:55,403 --> 00:19:56,821 [Cuthbert] About 25 years ago? 362 00:19:56,904 --> 00:20:00,241 We had little white dictionaries that we'd always had in our back pockets. 363 00:20:00,908 --> 00:20:02,827 [Cuthbert] We'd take them with us around bars 364 00:20:02,910 --> 00:20:05,246 and use those to try and talk to people. 365 00:20:07,665 --> 00:20:09,375 -And also with plenty of drinking... -Cheers! 366 00:20:09,458 --> 00:20:11,210 -Chin-chin. -Bottoms up. 367 00:20:11,293 --> 00:20:13,921 ...our Japanese gets smoother and smoother. 368 00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:16,424 [speaking Japanese] 369 00:20:16,507 --> 00:20:17,591 At least, we think it does. 370 00:20:18,426 --> 00:20:21,110 [narrator] And when Dylan and Giles did squeeze in work, 371 00:20:21,804 --> 00:20:25,433 they found they were truly outsiders in the office. 372 00:20:26,684 --> 00:20:29,353 [Goddard] They'd never had anybody outside of Nintendo 373 00:20:29,437 --> 00:20:30,479 working in the building. 374 00:20:31,210 --> 00:20:33,315 They actually made a separate office for us, 375 00:20:33,399 --> 00:20:36,652 in one room, on our own, basically segregated out. 376 00:20:36,736 --> 00:20:38,404 [Cuthbert] And the only place in the office 377 00:20:38,487 --> 00:20:42,950 where they allowed Miyamoto to smoke was in the area where we were. [laughs] 378 00:20:44,577 --> 00:20:46,912 He'd light up behind us and he's, like, smoking away. 379 00:20:47,663 --> 00:20:50,916 And we're, like, programming away, and we're like, "Oh, he's back again. 380 00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:52,376 Oh, no." [laughs] 381 00:20:52,460 --> 00:20:55,963 So we'd be trying to implement something quite interesting, 382 00:20:56,460 --> 00:20:59,884 and then, he just starts talking about trees or something. 383 00:20:59,967 --> 00:21:01,969 Just something completely out there. 384 00:21:05,140 --> 00:21:06,891 But we realized after a while 385 00:21:06,974 --> 00:21:11,103 that that's actually the reason why he's so much a creative genius 386 00:21:11,187 --> 00:21:13,189 is because his brain is kind of thinking about 387 00:21:13,272 --> 00:21:15,608 all these different things at the same time. 388 00:21:15,691 --> 00:21:19,945 [narrator] And one of the tasks with Star Fox that Miyamoto was so focused on 389 00:21:20,290 --> 00:21:22,281 was the perspective of the camera. 390 00:21:24,325 --> 00:21:27,244 In a 2D game, the camera moves are simple. 391 00:21:27,870 --> 00:21:30,539 The screen syncs its movement with the character. 392 00:21:30,623 --> 00:21:32,666 Left, right, and so on. 393 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:35,878 But things get a little more complicated in 3D. 394 00:21:37,379 --> 00:21:39,256 [Goddard] That was the biggest feature of 3D, 395 00:21:39,340 --> 00:21:40,799 the ability to move the camera. 396 00:21:41,342 --> 00:21:44,386 And it was Miyamoto's main job to figure out the camera. 397 00:21:45,638 --> 00:21:47,389 If the camera’s right behind the Arwing, 398 00:21:47,473 --> 00:21:49,225 it would feel like you weren't turning, 399 00:21:49,308 --> 00:21:52,353 but if it was fixed it would feel like it's going all over the place. 400 00:21:54,522 --> 00:21:58,670 You've got to have a lag between the camera and the ship movement, 401 00:21:58,150 --> 00:21:59,944 otherwise it feels like you're not turning. 402 00:22:01,237 --> 00:22:03,364 But you can't do too much of that. 403 00:22:03,447 --> 00:22:06,534 Otherwise the player feels like things are moving too much, 404 00:22:06,617 --> 00:22:08,410 and they feel disorientated. 405 00:22:10,287 --> 00:22:14,166 It's a balance game  between looking cool and playability. 406 00:22:19,421 --> 00:22:22,174 [narrator] So programming on Star Fox was happening. 407 00:22:22,258 --> 00:22:24,927 Ships were flying. Lasers were lasering. 408 00:22:25,100 --> 00:22:29,431 It was all coming together. And then the art department got involved. 409 00:22:31,350 --> 00:22:34,436 [Cuthbert] For a long time on the project, it really was just like an old school 410 00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:38,650 Star Wars-style, kind of, a little bit more hardcore. 411 00:22:39,660 --> 00:22:40,943 No... people. 412 00:22:41,485 --> 00:22:44,989 But Nintendo was known for its cute, family-friendly characters 413 00:22:45,739 --> 00:22:48,492 and that sacred shrine that Miyamoto loved so much 414 00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:51,537 was dedicated to… a fox. 415 00:22:53,831 --> 00:22:56,250 [Cuthbert] Suddenly the artists at Nintendo started coming up with 416 00:22:56,333 --> 00:22:58,669 all these cute little character designs, 417 00:22:58,752 --> 00:23:01,213 fluffy sort of animals and things like that. 418 00:23:01,297 --> 00:23:03,549 To be honest, I thought they were quite lame. 419 00:23:04,550 --> 00:23:06,176 [laughs] 420 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:09,763 [Cuthbert] It felt a bit odd because they're animals, 421 00:23:09,847 --> 00:23:12,141 and we're like, "Why are animals flying spacecraft? 422 00:23:12,224 --> 00:23:13,726 I don't know what's going on here." 423 00:23:14,226 --> 00:23:18,220 But one thing that Miyamoto really instilled in us all 424 00:23:18,105 --> 00:23:20,774 is that we take a step back, kind of look at it and go, 425 00:23:20,858 --> 00:23:23,235 "Okay, no, this needs to be made more fun." 426 00:23:23,861 --> 00:23:26,864 He approaches things from, not just the player point of view, 427 00:23:26,947 --> 00:23:30,200 but also from how he can design the experience. 428 00:23:30,701 --> 00:23:33,162 And I think that was a pretty good lesson for all of us. 429 00:23:40,294 --> 00:23:41,712 It did slowly grow on us. 430 00:23:44,548 --> 00:23:47,927 And we didn't realize how much everything came together at the end, 431 00:23:49,887 --> 00:23:53,182 and it just became this, like, really full-on experience. 432 00:23:56,101 --> 00:23:59,772 [narrator] The camera movement, the cute animals, the gates. 433 00:24:00,397 --> 00:24:03,942 Combined, they created the trademark Nintendo experience, 434 00:24:04,260 --> 00:24:05,361 but in 3D. 435 00:24:06,737 --> 00:24:09,730 Fox McCloud could chat with his sidekicks 436 00:24:09,156 --> 00:24:12,409 Peppy Hare, Falco Lombardi, and Slippy Toad 437 00:24:12,493 --> 00:24:16,455 to present mission objectives and to make the game more engaging. 438 00:24:16,538 --> 00:24:18,332 [Cuthbert] One of the unique things about Star Fox 439 00:24:18,415 --> 00:24:21,850 was that it was on a console because, up until that point, 440 00:24:21,168 --> 00:24:23,837 there hadn't really been any 3D games on consoles. 441 00:24:26,548 --> 00:24:30,886 [announcer] The first and only game powered by the Super FX microchip. 442 00:24:30,969 --> 00:24:34,140 [narrator] The combination of Dylan and Giles' coding wizardry 443 00:24:34,980 --> 00:24:37,142 and Nintendo's design magic worked. 444 00:24:37,226 --> 00:24:39,603 The game would go onto sell over four million copies 445 00:24:39,687 --> 00:24:42,940 and blast Nintendo into the 3D realm. 446 00:24:43,230 --> 00:24:45,859 [announcer] Only for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. 447 00:24:51,310 --> 00:24:54,702 [narrator] But pretty soon, 3D wouldn't be enough. 448 00:24:55,577 --> 00:24:58,831 Back in the US, another group of young rule breakers 449 00:24:58,914 --> 00:25:04,712 would take the first-person perspective and push it even further. 450 00:25:05,963 --> 00:25:07,798 [Romero] After putting out the press release, 451 00:25:07,881 --> 00:25:10,426 we knew that Doom was gonna be a pretty big game 452 00:25:10,926 --> 00:25:15,514 because we had people calling the office to ask when is the game going to come out? 453 00:25:16,223 --> 00:25:17,307 [man 1] Yo, where's Doom? 454 00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:20,561 -[woman] Is Doom out? -[man 2] What's Doom all about? 455 00:25:20,644 --> 00:25:23,772 And so, like, people were so excited, like, it was crazy. 456 00:25:24,189 --> 00:25:26,191 [narrator] Romero's press release promised gamers 457 00:25:26,275 --> 00:25:29,445 they'd be "knee-deep in the dead" before the end of the year. 458 00:25:29,862 --> 00:25:32,156 Now, all they had to do was... 459 00:25:33,532 --> 00:25:34,867 make the game. 460 00:25:34,950 --> 00:25:38,203 The team that made Doom was pretty small. 461 00:25:38,287 --> 00:25:39,663 It was just five people, 462 00:25:40,914 --> 00:25:42,332 so it was a lot of work. 463 00:25:42,875 --> 00:25:44,430 Like, what is Doom? 464 00:25:44,126 --> 00:25:47,379 And the first major idea was that 465 00:25:47,463 --> 00:25:51,467 we would be fighting a demon invasion, uh, somewhere. 466 00:25:52,134 --> 00:25:57,140 These are some sketches of what levels could possibly look like. 467 00:25:57,723 --> 00:25:59,975 How 'bout we have walls with blood dripping down them, 468 00:26:00,580 --> 00:26:03,771 or maybe there's some organic walls in hell, you know, 469 00:26:03,854 --> 00:26:05,981 maybe that's what the engine could render. 470 00:26:06,482 --> 00:26:07,816 This here... 471 00:26:07,900 --> 00:26:09,568 this is one of my favorite pages. 472 00:26:09,651 --> 00:26:12,196 It has some original ideas for demons. 473 00:26:13,781 --> 00:26:15,699 Highly original ideas. 474 00:26:15,783 --> 00:26:17,117 Some of them are pretty funny. 475 00:26:17,201 --> 00:26:19,787 It's like, what's going on... here? 476 00:26:19,870 --> 00:26:20,746 [laughs] 477 00:26:20,829 --> 00:26:24,416 You know, if they actually looked this way in Doom, uh... 478 00:26:24,500 --> 00:26:26,627 history would've been a little bit different. [laughs] 479 00:26:28,450 --> 00:26:29,838 We eventually decided that 480 00:26:30,297 --> 00:26:33,842 you'd be space marine in the future on a military base 481 00:26:33,926 --> 00:26:36,530 and this is like a research thing gone bad, 482 00:26:36,136 --> 00:26:37,221 and here come the demons. 483 00:26:37,638 --> 00:26:41,725 [narrator] But the story was just a backdrop for cyberdemons, 484 00:26:41,809 --> 00:26:43,727 exploding chunks of flesh 485 00:26:44,144 --> 00:26:46,313 and the insane weapons. 486 00:26:47,397 --> 00:26:49,608 We wanted to have conventional weapons 487 00:26:49,691 --> 00:26:51,735 that the players could totally get into. 488 00:26:51,819 --> 00:26:55,155 Like shotguns, chainsaws. 489 00:26:55,906 --> 00:26:57,574 Why wouldn't you want to chainsaw a demon? 490 00:26:57,658 --> 00:27:00,911 And just like a fist, just punching demons in the face, 491 00:27:01,453 --> 00:27:03,997 but then we could add a couple of spacey-type weapons 492 00:27:04,810 --> 00:27:05,207 to kind of spice it up. 493 00:27:05,290 --> 00:27:07,709 So that's where we came up with the plasma gun, 494 00:27:07,793 --> 00:27:10,295 and we really liked the idea of shooting rockets at demons. 495 00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:13,632 That was just nuts. 496 00:27:13,715 --> 00:27:16,426 [narrator] And then there was the BFG. 497 00:27:16,927 --> 00:27:19,805 The B is for big, the G is for gun. 498 00:27:20,430 --> 00:27:21,682 You can fill in the rest. 499 00:27:22,474 --> 00:27:24,726 And then the BFG was the ultimate weapon. 500 00:27:24,810 --> 00:27:28,647 If you can get a hold of that and enough cells to power it, 501 00:27:28,730 --> 00:27:30,315 you can destroy everything. 502 00:27:31,358 --> 00:27:32,860 [narrator] In the fall of '93, 503 00:27:32,943 --> 00:27:35,404 Romero and the team were approaching their launch. 504 00:27:35,487 --> 00:27:37,322 And Carmack finally figured out 505 00:27:37,406 --> 00:27:40,117 how to let players battle each other over the network 506 00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:41,577 in multiplayer mode. 507 00:27:41,660 --> 00:27:44,746 When Carmack got the game working between two computers, 508 00:27:44,830 --> 00:27:47,374 where he's shooting one computer and the other guys getting hit, 509 00:27:47,457 --> 00:27:50,430 it was like, "Oh, there it is! It's happening!" 510 00:27:50,502 --> 00:27:52,671 [narrator] That’s right. Strategy in Doom 511 00:27:52,754 --> 00:27:55,173 would completely change in multi-player mode. 512 00:27:56,216 --> 00:27:57,968 Instead of battling demons, 513 00:27:58,510 --> 00:28:01,130 you could battle your friends. 514 00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:03,223 When there's another player in the game, 515 00:28:03,307 --> 00:28:05,517 it's totally different than playing monsters. 516 00:28:06,602 --> 00:28:08,979 People play so differently than the AI. 517 00:28:09,479 --> 00:28:11,273 They're luring you. 518 00:28:11,356 --> 00:28:12,482 They're hiding. 519 00:28:12,566 --> 00:28:16,445 And that is a real challenge,  you know, playing somebody else. 520 00:28:17,988 --> 00:28:20,115 After seeing the characters shooting each other, 521 00:28:20,198 --> 00:28:22,367 I was thinking, "What would we call this?" 522 00:28:22,993 --> 00:28:24,786 It's like a cage match kind of thing. 523 00:28:24,870 --> 00:28:27,873 Except you're killing the other person over and over. 524 00:28:29,291 --> 00:28:30,876 It's like a death match. 525 00:28:30,959 --> 00:28:32,127 "Deathmatch is great. 526 00:28:32,210 --> 00:28:33,462 That sounds cool. 527 00:28:33,545 --> 00:28:35,470 I think I'll name it that." 528 00:28:35,130 --> 00:28:37,674 [narrator] Romero knew the game was going to be cool. 529 00:28:38,910 --> 00:28:40,761 But he still wanted to make sure everyone got hooked. 530 00:28:40,844 --> 00:28:44,473 So he and his team decided to give players a free sample. 531 00:28:44,556 --> 00:28:49,770 Shareware in games was to take a game and split it into three parts, 532 00:28:49,853 --> 00:28:53,440 and the first one is fully free, as a downloadable file, 533 00:28:53,523 --> 00:28:55,108 but if you wanted more, 534 00:28:55,192 --> 00:28:58,612 then you would order the other two parts of the game on diskettes. 535 00:28:59,404 --> 00:29:02,491 It was a pretty revolutionary marketing idea at the time, 536 00:29:02,574 --> 00:29:03,909 and it worked really well. 537 00:29:04,534 --> 00:29:07,829 We knew that at the end of the day that we would be able to make money because, 538 00:29:07,913 --> 00:29:10,582 number one, we believed it was the best game in the world 539 00:29:10,666 --> 00:29:12,459 and because it was so good, 540 00:29:12,542 --> 00:29:14,836 we believed people would want to buy the rest of it. 541 00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:17,297 You know, that they would want to get all three episodes 542 00:29:17,381 --> 00:29:21,426 because playing those first nine levels is gonna get old at some point. 543 00:29:21,510 --> 00:29:23,220 You're going to want the rest of the story. 544 00:29:24,137 --> 00:29:26,932 So finally, when the game was about to be released, 545 00:29:27,150 --> 00:29:30,435 the server was packed full of people who can't wait to download the game. 546 00:29:30,519 --> 00:29:33,146 And I'm like, "Oh, my God, yes!" 547 00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,818 [narrator] That's how kids in computer labs around the country 548 00:29:37,901 --> 00:29:42,614 found themselves at midnight on December 10th, 1993, 549 00:29:43,156 --> 00:29:47,744 ready to download the first chapter of Doom. 550 00:29:50,205 --> 00:29:52,624 Everyone was initiating the file transfer at the same time. 551 00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:55,430 So the server just crashed. 552 00:29:57,838 --> 00:30:01,800 And then they brought the server back up, all those people reconnected. 553 00:30:01,883 --> 00:30:03,844 They did it again and the whole thing crashed. 554 00:30:03,927 --> 00:30:04,970 But then, 555 00:30:05,554 --> 00:30:08,932 people started to copy it onto other servers all around the world, 556 00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,394 sharing with each other, and then everybody started playing. 557 00:30:14,354 --> 00:30:18,233 [narrator] Online multiplayer games would become a pretty big deal. 558 00:30:18,316 --> 00:30:22,112 Deathmatch and online game play changed everything. 559 00:30:22,195 --> 00:30:24,720 -[man] Oh, what? -[man 2] Ah! 560 00:30:24,156 --> 00:30:27,117 [narrator] Players could connect over a network and interact, 561 00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,537 -Look at the death. -...immersing themselves in a new world... 562 00:30:30,620 --> 00:30:32,581 -[man] Boom! -...but with each other. 563 00:30:32,664 --> 00:30:36,543 [Romero] For the first time, you can play in a high-speed 3D world 564 00:30:36,626 --> 00:30:38,587 where you're blowing your friends apart. 565 00:30:38,670 --> 00:30:40,505 -God damn it! -[laughs] 566 00:30:40,589 --> 00:30:43,633 It's really fun to play against each other in Deathmatch, 567 00:30:43,717 --> 00:30:46,845 and it influenced everybody in wanting to make games. 568 00:30:46,928 --> 00:30:52,351 [narrator] And then the guys at Id handed players the keys to their kingdom. 569 00:30:52,434 --> 00:30:56,271 We fully opened the game. Then we gave out the information 570 00:30:56,354 --> 00:30:58,231 on the way that levels were created. 571 00:30:58,774 --> 00:31:00,984 [narrator] Doom was opened up to modding. 572 00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,780 Tech-savvy players could now replace the existing characters, 573 00:31:04,863 --> 00:31:07,532 sound effects, textures, you name it, 574 00:31:07,616 --> 00:31:09,409 with their own creations. 575 00:31:09,826 --> 00:31:12,287 [Romero] People starting to make new graphics, new weapons 576 00:31:12,704 --> 00:31:14,122 and new sounds for stuff. 577 00:31:15,665 --> 00:31:18,585 And it was basically everything that you see in the game can be changed. 578 00:31:19,461 --> 00:31:22,881 But we didn't allow anyone to modify Doom if they didn't buy it. 579 00:31:22,964 --> 00:31:23,882 [laughs] 580 00:31:23,965 --> 00:31:25,634 So if you have the shareware version of Doom 581 00:31:25,717 --> 00:31:27,719 you can't run levels or mods or anything. 582 00:31:28,553 --> 00:31:33,266 So that was actually kind of a way of forcing people to buy it. 583 00:31:34,351 --> 00:31:37,562 But also, players want to be creative. 584 00:31:37,979 --> 00:31:41,900 It's a lot easier to modify than to try and make a whole new thing. 585 00:31:41,983 --> 00:31:43,610 So, letting people mod a game 586 00:31:43,693 --> 00:31:46,738 kind of gives them a taste of what it's like to make a game. 587 00:31:46,822 --> 00:31:49,241 And now the game, you know, fits them better. 588 00:31:49,324 --> 00:31:53,495 Doom was put in the hands of players, and they made it their own. 589 00:31:53,578 --> 00:31:55,747 The game lives on forever. 590 00:31:57,499 --> 00:31:58,792 [man 1] Oh, what? 591 00:31:58,875 --> 00:32:00,252 [man 2] Oh, no! 592 00:32:00,335 --> 00:32:02,671 [narrator] In a way, Romero's story 593 00:32:02,754 --> 00:32:05,674 is the story of the entire video game industry. 594 00:32:07,759 --> 00:32:12,973 Each new game was built upon the foundation crafted by the game before. 595 00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:16,852 And because of that, it can be hard to remember the humble beginnings 596 00:32:16,935 --> 00:32:20,939 of what would become this billion-dollar entertainment juggernaut. 597 00:32:21,857 --> 00:32:24,250 But there's one man who remembers. 598 00:32:24,109 --> 00:32:25,527 -[laughing] -This man, 599 00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:29,322 the so-called godfather of video games, Nolan Bushnell. 600 00:32:30,115 --> 00:32:33,535 In my mind, there is a huge payoff 601 00:32:34,452 --> 00:32:35,537 for being... 602 00:32:36,163 --> 00:32:37,998 indisputably number one 603 00:32:38,832 --> 00:32:39,833 in whatever you do. 604 00:32:40,792 --> 00:32:47,174 It was 1964 when Bushnell stumbled upon an idea that would spark a new industry. 605 00:32:47,257 --> 00:32:50,260 I was in college, and one of my fraternity brothers 606 00:32:51,110 --> 00:32:52,345 said, "Hey. 607 00:32:53,555 --> 00:32:56,990 Meet me at the engineering building at midnight 608 00:32:56,183 --> 00:32:57,726 and I'm going to blow your socks off." 609 00:32:58,977 --> 00:33:00,187 I said, "Huh?" You know. 610 00:33:01,855 --> 00:33:04,691 Always willing to have my socks blown off, I showed up. 611 00:33:05,942 --> 00:33:10,197 And he had jammed the lock on the computer center, 612 00:33:12,490 --> 00:33:14,159 and we went in 613 00:33:15,619 --> 00:33:18,455 and, for the rest of that evening, played Spacewar!. 614 00:33:20,457 --> 00:33:21,875 And I was mesmerized. 615 00:33:22,542 --> 00:33:25,962 [narrator] Spacewar! was unlike anything Bushnell had seen before. 616 00:33:26,460 --> 00:33:30,300 It had been invented two years earlier by a bunch of kids at MIT 617 00:33:30,383 --> 00:33:33,553 who were part of the tech model railroad club. 618 00:33:33,637 --> 00:33:35,472 They were the original hackers. 619 00:33:35,889 --> 00:33:38,580 In fact, they coined the term. 620 00:33:38,767 --> 00:33:41,686 And, just for fun, ended up transforming a computer 621 00:33:41,770 --> 00:33:43,521 into an entirely new contraption: 622 00:33:44,397 --> 00:33:45,482 the video game. 623 00:33:46,650 --> 00:33:50,195 [Bushnell] You'd fly around and you could shoot a missile. 624 00:33:50,278 --> 00:33:52,489 And you could push a button and thrust. 625 00:33:52,572 --> 00:33:56,159 In order to slow down, you had to reverse thrust 626 00:33:56,243 --> 00:33:57,744 in the opposite direction, 627 00:33:57,827 --> 00:34:00,747 totally followed Newton's first law. 628 00:34:01,248 --> 00:34:02,999 And it was really fun. 629 00:34:03,830 --> 00:34:06,586 [narrator] Spacewar! was an underground hit on any college campus 630 00:34:06,670 --> 00:34:08,797 with a computer that could run it. 631 00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,677 And I knew that if I could put a coin slot on that screen that it would make money. 632 00:34:16,137 --> 00:34:20,725 [narrator] Bushnell saw that video games were for more than just computer nerds. 633 00:34:21,226 --> 00:34:22,978 They were for everyone. 634 00:34:23,610 --> 00:34:27,524 And so he founded a company called Atari. And... 635 00:34:27,607 --> 00:34:29,192 We were off to the races. 636 00:34:30,193 --> 00:34:32,821 He was the first in a long line of visionaries. 637 00:34:33,572 --> 00:34:36,320 Visionaries who changed the way we play... 638 00:34:36,741 --> 00:34:39,286 [Amano in Japanese] We wanted to create an entirely new world. 639 00:34:39,369 --> 00:34:41,496 There's really no end once you get started. 640 00:34:42,205 --> 00:34:44,207 [narrator in English] ...who dared to fail greatly... 641 00:34:44,291 --> 00:34:46,418 [Warshaw] I did my best. I tried to do what I could. 642 00:34:46,501 --> 00:34:49,713 I needed a mountain to climb, and I felt like I climbed the mountain. 643 00:34:49,796 --> 00:34:51,923 ...who fought for their place to exist... 644 00:34:52,700 --> 00:34:55,260 Anyone of color often has to justify themselves. 645 00:34:55,343 --> 00:34:58,179 Video games remove all those physical differences. 646 00:34:58,263 --> 00:35:01,160 ...who were compelled by imagination... 647 00:35:01,990 --> 00:35:05,770 I was so driven to do this, and I kept thinking, "Why?" 648 00:35:06,521 --> 00:35:08,523 ...and wouldn't take no for an answer. 649 00:35:08,606 --> 00:35:09,441 [laughs] 650 00:35:09,524 --> 00:35:12,944 What we did back then was ahead of its time, 651 00:35:13,403 --> 00:35:15,300 but the time is now. 652 00:35:15,113 --> 00:35:15,947 [Mario] Here we go! 653 00:35:31,129 --> 00:35:33,480 [narrator] It was a monumental era, 654 00:35:33,131 --> 00:35:36,593 one that defined video games as a place to get lost, 655 00:35:36,676 --> 00:35:38,845 a place to become someone different, 656 00:35:38,928 --> 00:35:40,805 and go to faraway lands. 657 00:35:40,889 --> 00:35:42,724 But, most importantly, 658 00:35:42,807 --> 00:35:46,644 it defined that any player could be a game creator. 659 00:35:46,728 --> 00:35:49,606 So now that technology can fully blur the line 660 00:35:49,689 --> 00:35:51,608 between fantasy and reality, 661 00:35:51,691 --> 00:35:55,195 the question is... where will we go next?