WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The id Software Story Part One 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.680 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.440 Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.000 an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are you. 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.079 It's a Friday. That means it's time for a tech 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.560 Stuff classic episode and we've got a two parter to 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:29.840 go through. So part one is this week. Part two 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.360 will be next Friday. And this is the ID Software story. 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.720 So ID Software very important video game company back in 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.760 the day. And yeah, I did a two parter back 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:42.680 in twenty seventeen. 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:44.280 So this episode. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:51.920 Originally published on April fifth, twenty seventeen. I hope you enjoy. Hello, 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.800 really loved your flashback MP three episode. I'd start with 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:58.680 Vangeli's theme songs, but please do a podcast on the 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.920 creators of Doom ID Software. Well, David, this one goes 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.120 out to you. This is going to be all about 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:09.360 ID and because ID software story stretches back quite a 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:11.800 ways and a lot has happened with it, it's gonna 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:13.920 be a two parter. So here's part one of the 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:18.440 ID Software story. And you guys know me, if I'm 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:20.760 gonna tell you the history, I go back before the 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.880 story begins right. In this case, the story of ID 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:29.280 software really begins with another company called soft Disk. Soft 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:33.680 Disc started off in nineteen eighty one as a publisher 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.280 in Louisiana and it created magazines on disc and you 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.680 would get programs on disc. You would subscribe to a service. 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.360 Every month you'd get a new disc and that would 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.560 have various articles on it as well as programs that 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.880 you could run on your computer. It was actually related 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:54.800 originally to another company called soft Talk, and soft Talk 0:01:55.240 --> 0:02:00.720 was a print magazine company, but soft Talk eventually went 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.440 out of business. Soft Disk continued. It managed to stay afloat. 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.880 So besides publishing a magazine on a disc, they created 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.520 this utility software that you would subscribe to, you know, 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.720 boring useful stuff. Now, those programs were sold through that 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.480 subscription on that monthly basis, so you didn't go to 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:25.040 a store and buy a box with soft Disk's name 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.760 on it. Instead, you would subscribe to this service and 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.920 they would send it to you. As the computer industry grew, 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:35.400 soft Disc did pretty well, but there was a major challenge. 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:39.640 As computers were becoming more sophisticated, that meant software also 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.760 got more complicated or bloated, and that meant that your 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.560 team of developers who had to create new software every 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.640 single month had an increasingly difficult challenge ahead of them. 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.200 Delivering a disc with programs on it on a monthly 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.560 basis was really hard to do as time went on. 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.280 So imagine that your job is to write a new 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:03.760 program every month, only the programs are getting more complicated, 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.840 which means there's also more potential for computer bugs. 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.680 In the code. It was by the early nineties. 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.000 By nineteen ninety at least, it was getting to be 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:18.040 pretty rough now. They were also looking to expand around 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.760 that time, so in August of nineteen ninety, Soft Disc 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:27.079 launched a new bi monthly gaming disc magazine called Gamer's Edge. 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.800 By going bi monthly, you would have more time to 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.520 develop games. Programmers could take a little bit more time 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.920 to design and polish a game before shipping it. However, 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.360 two months is still incredibly short. I mean to tell 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.280 someone today like you've got two months to create a game, 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:46.880 you'd probably see them flip out because a lot of 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:51.000 modern games take months or even years to develop from 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:55.480 the concept to shipping it, So a two month window 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:56.480 is super tight. 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:58.320 The gamers among. 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:02.280 Your really probably hyper aware of that based upon shipping 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.200 dates slipping from now and again. Like whenever you hear 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.520 about a company having to miss a ship date, that's 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.640 usually because the game ended up being more complicated than 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:17.240 they had anticipated at some stage of the development process. Now, 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.279 the head of the Gamer's Edge project was a guy 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:25.320 named John Romero, who was originally from Colorado's Springs and 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.760 had moved to Shreveport, Louisiana to work with Soft Disc. 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:34.479 John Romero's a pretty famous name in gaming, so the 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.320 gamers among you, I'm guessing I've heard of him, but 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.680 everyone else might not know who he is. He's got 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.080 a really long history in the computer game business and 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.799 has been involved in some major successes and big names, 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:53.280 as well as some pretty popularized flops. Romero already had 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.960 a history in computer game design before he took on 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.599 a job over at Soft Disc and became the leader 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.120 at gamers Edge. His very first published game was for 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:06.479 the Apple two and it was called Scout Search. That's 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.600 from the early eighties. He's also the guy behind Cavern 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.960 Crusader if you remember that game. For a while he 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.720 worked at Origin Systems, which was the company behind such 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.960 games as The Wing Commander franchise and the Ultima series, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.800 although he didn't work on those titles. He then went 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.120 on to co found a couple of companies between then 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.799 and working for Soft Disk, and he was still working 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.080 in games. But you know, being a self starter is 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.800 sometimes pretty hard, so eventually he decided to move to Shreveport, 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:39.400 Louisiana in nineteen eighty nine and worked for Soft Disc 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:43.680 because it was a steady gig. Now, Romero brought over 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.480 a guy named Adrian Carmack from Soft Disk's art department 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:53.480 over to Gamer's Edge, and Adrian Carmack was originally from Shreveport, 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.880 so he grew up there and he had taken on 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.960 a job at Soft Disk to make money while he 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:00.599 was searching for a way to a mat a living 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.039 in the fine arts. He was twenty one when Romero asked. 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:05.240 Him to join Gamer's Edge. 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.920 Then he also asked another Carmack, this time John Carmack, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:12.839 no relation to Adrian Carmack. 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:13.640 Now. 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.000 John Carmack was a programmer for Soft Disk who specialized 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:21.800 in the company's monthly Apple two GS publication. Those among 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:23.960 you who remember the Apple two Gs, make sure you 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:26.479 give me a shout out. I'm curious to hear from you. 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:28.560 I never owned an Apple two GS. 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.080 I couldn't. I had an Apple two E and that 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.280 just had to suffice. Well. 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.920 John Carmack came originally from Kansas City, and he had 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.640 a bit of a past, which he has talked about publicly. 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.800 So I'm not really spreading dirty laundry here. But John 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:46.279 Carmack said that when he was a kid, he was 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.960 really interested in how stuff works, which I can easily 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.800 relate to. But Carmack would push and prod around the 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:58.320 edges of what is consideredly legal. You know, maybe maybe 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:00.480 he wanted to see how stuff worked a little bit 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:04.960 beyond what is legally allowed. Sometimes he leapt right over 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:09.360 those limitations. He was really interested in things like computer 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:13.800 hacking and freaking phone freaking. That's where you're hacking the 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.520 telephone system. I did a whole episode of tech stuff 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.440 about phone freaking. You can find that in my archives. 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:26.960 He experimented with stuff like thermite and explosives. Now, while 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.120 a teenager, he took part in what was supposed to 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.800 be an Apple to heist, And I am not making 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.640 this up. John Carmack was part of an elite group 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:41.120 of teenagers who had determined that they wanted to take 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.800 possession of some apple to computers that were residing in 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:51.680 their local school. So his part was mixing up a 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.880 miasma of stuff that included thermite in order to melt 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.040 through the windows of the school without setting off the 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:04.080 alarm system. However, during their robbery attempt, they triggered the 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.600 alarms somehow anyway, and the police showed up and Carmack 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.840 was arrested and after a psychological evaluation, he was sentenced 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.440 to a year in a juvenile home. A lot of 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.800 kids were there for drugs. John Carmack was there for 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.080 the apple too. He described his younger self as being 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.440 an a moral little jerk, and that is a direct 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:31.960 quote by John Carmack himself. He attended a couple of 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:36.120 semesters of college once he got out of juvenile the 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.560 juvenile home. He finished high school went on to college 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.560 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, but he 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.160 didn't complete his studies there. He dropped out when he 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:49.000 found the classes to be boring. He later said that 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.760 he probably would have found the classes to be helpful 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.440 if he had stuck around, but his attitude was what 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:59.360 made it challenging. So he fully admits that as an individual, 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.240 he had not yet matured enough to benefit from a 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:07.480 college education, that it wasn't necessarily the fault of the college. However, 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:10.800 he credits his employment at soft Disk for really opening 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.840 up his realization and helping him mature as a person, 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.719 because he was doing what he loved, which was programming, 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:19.840 and he was making enough money to do it to 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.400 afford a place to live and food to eat, and 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:24.560 that was all that was important to him. So once 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.560 he started doing that, he started to realize, you know, 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.640 kind of how his attitude had gotten in his own way, 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.080 and so he really matured quite a bit while working 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.000 at soft Disk, and that ended up benefiting him more 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:37.640 than a college education. 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:38.120 In the long run. 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.880 Now, along with those two Carmacs, Romero enlisted the help 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.600 of a guy named Lane Roath. Roath had been a 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.680 programmer throughout the nineteen eighties and he had joined soft 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:51.280 Disk in nineteen eighty nine. 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:52.000 He had known. 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:56.360 Romero before they worked at soft Disc. Romero had co 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:00.680 founded a company called Capital Ideas, and both had founded 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.560 a company called Blue Mountain Micro. Eventually, they decided they 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.000 wanted to work together and they wanted to create a 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.199 new company and merge the names of their old organizations 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:14.080 together to create a company called Ideas from the Deep. 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:18.319 This would later serve as the inspiration for ID Software's 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.520 name ID because Ideas from. 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:22.880 The Deep is just too long to say. 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.080 But by the time ID software became an official thing, 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:29.520 Growth was no longer part of the equation. He did 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.840 not go on to join the others when they founded 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:33.760 ID Software. 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:35.199 Now. 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.520 The last piece of the Gamer's Edge puzzle was a 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.240 guy named Tom Hall. Hall had a degree in computer 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.040 science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Hall 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.000 was another programmer and editor over at soft Disk. He 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:53.240 wasn't officially part of the gamers Edge project, so his 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.079 work was mainly done after hours because he had an 0:10:56.120 --> 0:11:00.240 interest in games, but he wasn't officially on the projects 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:02.400 for gamers Edge, so any work he did had to 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.920 be off the books. Gamer's Edge gave the developers a 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.480 chance to try new things, and one of the things 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.760 that John Carmac was really interested in was designing game engines. 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.080 He really wanted to create something that would allow PCs 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.719 to create a smooth scrolling method similar to what you 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:24.760 would find in video game console games. Now, this was 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:29.040 huge because video game consoles are dedicated machines. 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:31.359 That means every. 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.760 Element inside of video game console, everything that you put 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:39.400 in there, is meant to make the games work. At 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:42.160 least in the earlier video game consoles. You could argue 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:46.360 that today they're more media centers than they were before, 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.480 but at that time, video game consoles that's all they did. 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.920 They just made games work. That's what all the horsepower in. 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:54.840 The machine was focused on. 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:59.000 Whereas PC's are general purpose devices and they have to 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.480 be able to do lots of stuff, not just play games. 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:05.800 That means they're not nearly as good at performing video 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.400 game console functions the way a console could back in 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:13.600 these days. Anyway, today it's a different story. PCs are 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:18.080 so powerful and video game consoles are essentially proprietary PCs 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.360 that the differences are much less apparent than they were 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:26.200 back in the day. At that time, video game consoles 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:31.480 had the edge over PCs, and so what CARMAC wanted 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:35.320 to do was find a way to let PCs play 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:40.160 games that were similar in in scale and in play 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:42.560 to video game console games. 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:43.720 So how do you do that? 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.319 How do you make a game engine that can allow 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.000 this to happen. You see, the real problem was that 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.600 a side scrolling game, or really any game where the 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:58.240 image is the backgrounds scrolling across, whether it's up and 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.960 down or left and right or whatever, that means the 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.400 computer has to constantly redraw the screen as you move around, 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.920 so elements that are changing have to be redrawn. You 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:13.320 can't just have a static image there. Older computer games 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.680 usually did have those static environments. You could move a 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.680 character around within an environment, and the character might be 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.920 animated a little bit, but the environment itself would stay 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.200 pretty much exactly the way it is. Think of like 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.000 an old school game like pac Man, where you've got 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.240 the full maze on the screen at one time. The 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:37.600 characters move around, but the screen remains static throughout that level. 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.360 It might change from level to level, but during a 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:43.880 level it stays the same. So what could Karmac do 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.760 to simplify this Well, he realized that if he developed 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.520 a game engine where only the parts of the screen 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:55.320 that change are animated are redrawn, he could cut down 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.080 on the amount of processing power required for a side scroller. 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.080 So if you have a side scroller type game like 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.720 Double Dragon that's a classic, and your characters are walking 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.760 across a background that isn't changing, Like there's a blue 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:12.599 sky in the background, you don't have to redraw the 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.400 blue sky every time the character moves. You just have 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.920 to redraw the stuff that actually does change. So maybe 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:23.040 it's buildings or trees or bushes or something like that. 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:27.280 That saves processing time and made side scrolling on PCs possible. 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.560 This sounds incredibly basic, and by today's standards, it is, 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:36.040 but at the time it was a monumental innovation. It 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:40.280 really got the wheels turning, and he showed it to 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:45.200 his coworker Tom Hall, and Hall was really excited by this. 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.120 He says, this is incredible, and he began immediately to 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.480 start working on a game that could show off this 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.440 side scrolling capability on the PC, and they together decided 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:00.320 that what they would do is build a replica the 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.600 first level for Super Mario Brothers three, and they used 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.600 assets from an existing game that John Romero had created 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:10.840 before he joined Soft Disc. It was a game called 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:16.480 Dangerous Dave. So their original rough version of this was 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:19.120 the first level of Super Mario Brothers three, but using 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.920 the Dangerous Dave character, and it was all done without 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:26.000 the authorization of Soft Disc. Or even John Romero. He 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.080 didn't know about it either, and so it took them 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.960 one night to recreate that first level. They then saved 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:38.040 it to a disc and they titled it Dangerous Dave 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:42.840 in copyright infringement, very tongue in cheek, and they put 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:44.600 the disc on John Romero's desk. 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.200 So John Romero gets to work. 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:49.880 He has this disc sitting there and he puts it 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.760 in this computer and he sees this title screen of 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.520 Dangerous Dave and copyright infringement. He's thinking, what the heck 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:00.640 because he made Dangerous Dave. And he starts the program 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:04.480 and he suddenly sees the side scrolling game on PC 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:10.160 and he goes bonkers. He loves it because it's something 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.080 that had not been achievable in PC games up to 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:18.280 this point. He unofficially authorizes work on a full replica 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:23.520 of Super Mario Brothers III. They recreate the game, They 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.480 do every level exactly the way it is in the 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.720 Super Nintendo system, but on PC they had to do 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.400 all of this work off hours. They couldn't officially do 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:38.000 it as Gamer's Edge employees or soft Disk in the 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:43.520 case of Tom Hall. They did, however, use soft disk computers. 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:46.920 At the end of the week, they would take their 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:51.080 computers home. I'm talking desktops here. These aren't like laptops 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.760 or anything. They would pack them up, they would take 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.040 them home and over the weekend they would work on 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.920 this game, and then on Monday morning they would bring 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.560 the computer back, hook it back and hope nobody noticed. 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.639 After a few weeks, they had built a full PC 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.600 version of the game, and the three of them brought 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.480 this replica of the game to Nintendo and they wanted 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.280 to tell Nintendo, Hey, you can reach a much larger 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.520 audience by releasing your game for PC, and we can 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.040 do it. See, we know the secret to making a 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:28.080 side scrolling game on the personal computer. If you partner 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.359 with us, we can be the solution and we can 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.720 end up opening up your game to an entirely new audience. 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:41.239 And Nintendo said no, thanks, not a big surprise. If 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.639 you know how Nintendo works, everyone would imagine that they 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:48.200 would turn down such an offer. For one thing, Nintendo 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:53.320 relies on titles like Mario to sell Nintendo consoles. If 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.800 they were to offer those games on other platforms, there'd 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.240 be very little incentive to buy a Nintendo entertainment system. 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.680 And they'd be undercutting themselves, so they decided they did 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.119 not want to go in that direction. But other people 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.159 began to take notice of Romero's work and have some 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:13.880 interest in perhaps talking with them, And one of those 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.880 people was a guy named Scott Miller, who had founded 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:22.720 a software developer and publishing company called Apagee Software. I'll 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.280 talk more about what Scott Miller got up to with 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.560 John Romero in just a second, but first let's take 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:30.800 a quick break to thank our sponsor. 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:40.920 All Right, I mentioned. 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.480 Apagee just before the break. They got their start in 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.040 Texas back in nineteen eighty seven. Now, the company relied 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.320 on a pretty interesting business model. They would publish the 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.000 beginning of a game for free that allowed players to 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.040 download the game and try it out, and if they 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.960 wanted to continue the game, they'd have to purchase the 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:04.320 subsequent episodes over the phone, and then the company would 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:06.840 ship the rest of the game a physical copy of 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:11.119 the game to the player. This model became known as shareware. 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:12.760 You could share the first part. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:14.280 Of the game freely with anyone you liked. 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:15.680 After that you had to pay. 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.280 Now, keep in mind, this is before the World Wide 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.359 Web was a thing that really got started back in 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:25.520 nineteen ninety two. This was nineteen eighty seven, so in 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:31.040 those days, you had to call up a server using 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.480 a dial up modem. It might be a bulletin board 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.080 system or something along those lines. It might be something 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:40.920 more like a an online service provider, but that's how 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.239 you would first get connected to the internet, and then 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.560 you could download a file like the shareware version of 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.520 the game, and then you would have to call up 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:54.000 the company, give them your information, order it, and then 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.000 they would ship you the rest of the game via 0:19:56.160 --> 0:20:00.600 snail mail. It was pretty primitive back in the those days. 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:07.080 I don't miss it. Apage was pretty successful with this 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:13.000 approach it. The reason was that they were able to 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:17.800 take advantage of not having a marketing department or a 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:22.199 real sales department or having to worry about securing shelf 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:25.600 space at brick and mortar stores. It cut down a 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.480 lot of costs, so it ended up bringing the overhead 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:31.439 down and they were able to take advantage of that. 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.920 They also originally intended to create sub brands for each 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.600 of the genres of games that the company produced, so 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.920 they would have maybe one for adventure games, one for 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.720 you know, fighting games, one for flight simulators, that kind 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:49.200 of thing. That was the idea. It never really worked 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.920 out that way. Only one sub brand really stood out, 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.360 but it was a doozy because that one was three 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.639 D Realms. Now, three D Realms created games like the 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:03.840 Max Pain franchise and Pray, and probably most famously was 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:07.640 Duke Newcomb three D. I did a whole episode about 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:09.800 Duke nukeomb or at least I talked about a lot 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.399 in our episode on vaporware, so I won't really go 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.120 into it here. Plus it doesn't really tie into ID 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.880 software deeply enough to warrant it. But that's a heck 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.040 of a story anyway. Scott Miller over at Apagee had 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.480 noticed Romero's work on a game called Pyramids of Egypt, 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:30.879 and Miller thought Pyramids of Egypt was the perfect style 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:33.800 of game to sell in this shareware business. He thought, 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.639 this is a way to really get a game that 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:42.680 is a fun and an interesting If Romero can make 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.919 more games like that, I can sell them this way, 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.520 was what he was thinking. But he was also sneaky. 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:50.919 Scott Miller was. 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:54.560 He knew that if he sent correspondence directly to John 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:59.520 Romero over at soft Disk, they might intercept the message. 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:02.520 Because software companies had to fight tooth and nail for 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.520 their talent, it was always possible that some other company 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:09.040 would offer employees more money and more benefits to jump ship. 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:13.280 So in order to get his message to Romero without 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.920 being detected, he sent Romero a series of fan letters, 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:19.880 each with a different name attached, but all of them 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:24.359 having the same contact information the same address enclosed. 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:24.440 In the letter. 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.679 Romero didn't catch on right away. It wasn't until he 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.320 was reading an article about Scott Miller's company that he 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.159 noticed the address in the article was really familiar. And 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:35.960 then he looked at his fan mail and saw that 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.639 the same address was on three different letters from three 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:43.560 supposedly different people. And then Romero got angry. He was 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:47.160 angry because he thought that the letters were genuine fan mail, 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:51.160 so he felt betrayed that this fan mail wasn't really 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:53.440 fan mail, it was someone who wanted something from him. 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:57.240 So he sent an angry letter to Scott Miller. But 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:00.800 he did leave a callback number in that letter, and 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:06.280 Scott Miller called Romero and immediately apologized for the whole 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.720 misunderstanding in his mind, and then made Romero an offer. 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:15.159 He couldn't refuse, so Miller sent a letter that was 0:23:15.240 --> 0:23:18.480 dated on August twenty third, nineteen ninety, which was not 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:23.160 long after Gamer's Edge had launched, and said, I really 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:25.439 did like Pyramids of Egypt. That wasn't a lie. I 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:28.640 enjoyed that game very much. He also described his company. 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:31.600 He described the shareware model, and he pointed out that 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:34.720 his most popular title could pull in anywhere between fifteen 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:38.800 hundred and two thousand dollars in sales every week. So 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:43.080 he proposed to Romero, why don't you make games. We'll 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:47.320 publish the games, and in return, you'll get a substantial percentage. 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:47.600