Laughin' Place: Redefining Disney
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So there's something I'm curious about, and have been meaning to ask for a bit but keep forgetting to. In the aftermath of the attempted bombing at EuroDisney, what measures have been taken to improve and increase security and safety? I mean, even if the bomb was disarmed before anyone could be harmed, if that had gone off hundreds would have died. I imagine Walt must have been horrified to hear about this, and spared no expense to make sure it can never happen again.
At the moment, there's been an increase in guards and police in Aprilia, and to enter the construction site, you must show identification and be searched.
When the park eventually opens, there will be security measures such as a bag check, and the park will close on Sundays for the first few years of its opening, at the height of Italy's wave of terrorism in the Years of Lead (shortened from OTL as the main heads of the neo-fascists are killed in the ATL Bologna Massacre). This is to allow for a thorough search of the park for any more bombs or unintended ways to covertly enter or exit the area.
In America, since the nation doesn't really have any terrorist threats during this time period, Walt mostly is fine with some halfhearted bag checking at the front gates, though after a wave of complaints over waiting to enter the parks these measures will generally wane and be phased out by 1989 in the domestic parks.
A Space Race
Atari World Headquarters, Sunnyvale, CA
April 21, 1979
When Michael Eisner stepped into the room, everyone fell silent. The populace of Atari was still unsure of what to think of their lord and master, who, with the help of outsider Raymond Kassar, had ejected the company's founder and greatest creative mind. But then again, Atari was now facing the greatest growth in profit it had seen since Pong, and compared to the stormy seas of Bushnell's last few years, it was nice to have some stability. It certainly helped that, thanks to an aggressive ad campaign over the holiday season, Kassar had saved the 2600 from oblivion.
The big man himself was visiting to check out the progress on some of the games coming out of the pipeline, namely two. He waltzed down the halls like he owned the place (which he technically did) and entered the first door on the left.
Inside, a trio of young men sat crowded around one desk. They were Ed Logg, Lyle Rains, and Dominic Walsh, and the future of Atari dominance in the arcades rested on their shoulders.
"Whatta we got, boys? I don't have all day, just gimme something brief," said Eisner.
Startled, the three programmers scrambled around. "Mister Eisner! We-we thought you weren't coming until tomorrow!"
"I decided to make my visit a little earlier. Now, show me the goods."
The trio hastily prepared something for their boss, displaying the cutting-edge vector graphics being used in their game, Asteroids. Despite the fact that it was in black-and-white, Eisner seemed impressed.
"Excellent. It'll be a great follow-up to Space Invaders. Keep up the good work."
Eisner turned on his heel and ventured further into the building, checking in on many projects in varying states of completion, until he found what he was looking for.
Warren Robinett was sat at his desk, balancing a keyboard on his lap and typing frantically away, lines of code appearing on the tiny screen of his HP 1611A microprocessor computer.
"Talk to me, Robinett. How's Adventure going?"
Of all the other devs Michael Eisner had seen that day, this guy was practically unphased by his presence. A few keyboard clicks later, and he pulled up a (surprisingly) working prototype. "Planned ahead for this," he smirked, plugging a joystick into his monitor.
Eisner smiled and gladly took the stick. For a little while, he fiddled around with the controls, moving his avatar, a little yellow square, around on the screen. "Not really much to it, is there?"
"Why don't you try going to the edge of the screen?"
Eisner obliged, and as soon as the little yellow guy hit the edge, it shifted over, in a choppy, laggy motion. But after just a short while of moving around on the new screen, the game flickered, and shuddered to a stop.
"Dammit... it keeps doing that," muttered Robinett.
"That was amazing!" exclaimed the CEO. "I've only ever seen games play on one screen before."
"Yeah, it's the first of its kind. I had to come up with some clever workarounds to make everything go right. Clearly I haven't done enough, though."
"Well, keep up the good work. But this... this is a Disney-killer for sure. They're all bragging about how big Black Hole will be, but this... this is the game of the year."
Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, CA
April 29, 1979
"So," said Walt. "What exactly am I looking at here?"
Rolly Crump shifted his weight from one side to the other. "Well, after playing Space Invaders long enough to fly from here to China and back again, I realized that the age of discrete logic in arcade video games is over, and if we want to make better games, we need better hardware."
"You mean, all of these wires and motherboards and chips are for..."
"Black Hole, yes."
The system consisted of three PCBs connected by Centronics ribbon cables. Walt didn't have a clue as to what anything did, but he was always interested in learning more.
"I realize I have the power to override Roy's veto, but you gotta explain to me what's going on here so I know if that's a good idea or not. Maybe then I won't have to override it in the first place. So, why two... what are those, 6502s and then the one 6508?"
"Two words, Walt: money, and power. The MOS Technology 6502 executes one instruction every clock cycle. Compare it to all of its easily available competition, where instructions execute anywhere from every fourth to every twelfth. It's available for $25 for the basic 6502 version, only five bucks more for the 6508, which we're using for the main CPU. Not only that, but we can get both of 'em for half those amounts in surprisingly small bulk purchases, andless shipping and handling, of course. The alternatives, even the Zilog Z80, all ran a lot higher. It's pretty much the best deal we could've gotten."
Walt nodded, arms crossed. "The fact that it's cheap yet powerful should get Roy on board. And I'm already sold. But keep on going."
"The main motherboard features that 6508 which we clocked to 2.38 megahertz, which is about as high as we can get without adding a cooling fan and taking up more space. Sixteen kilobytes of main system RAM keep the program data in place while it's processing, and a 6520 Peripheral Interface Adapter handle player input, four eleven pin controller jacks to connect to the input hardware below the monitor in front of the board, two or four coin sensor jacks mounted in back of the board, and and the two ribbon cable ports to connect to the other boards."
"It seems that book I gave you did a world of good for ya, Rolly," laughed Walt. "I see this weird tape drive... thing. What's that for?"
"That's an Exetron Stringy-Floppy--"
"A what?" asked the older man, sure he'd heard wrong.
"--an Exetron Stringy-Floppy. It holds the program so that it can be loaded in RAM. We chose it because it's faster than a floppy drive, and much cheaper than it or paying a fab for ROM Masks. We crunched the numbers. Twice. More bang for our buck, really."
Walt gestured widely at anothet circuit board. "What's all this?"
"Well, that's is the Video Board. That 6502 over there controls the game's video output."
"...Why didn't you just go for an off-the-shelf video chip?"
"I tested the Intel 8275 and the Motorola 6845, and neither did too well. So, I got creative, took that 6502 and clocked it at 1.34 megahertz. But since I used Ralph Baer's direct pixel addressing method, Magnavox would come a knockin' for some royalties if we actually did that for a game people are putting quarters into. So, uh, Tony and I grabbed your secretary's Apple II--"
"So that's where it went! She went ballistic, threatened a couple people with a ballpoint pen--"
"Yeah, um, did she hurt anyone or--nevermind. But we took the Apple II apart, reverse-engineered it, and came to a conclusion: Steve Wozniak is a genius."
"I fail to see how that helped."
Rolly grinned. "We took his mathematical formula of scanline shifts on 74 series gate logic and AMD 2900 series bit-slices, and turned it ninety degrees to map vertical rather than horizontal scanlines. This means that, theoretically, so long as video RAM and processor speed is not an issue, it can scale without limits. Because the Woz probably wouldn't appreciate us borrowing his color generation method, though, we're using a typical color television, minus the tuner hardware. We've managed to get 32 total colors to work with using the NTSC color wheel, and a resolution of 320x208 pixels."
"That... mostly went over my head, but I'll take it that's pretty good. So what this last board?"
"This is the audio board. That last 6502 is connected to a second source 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter which in turn is connected to two General Instruments AY-3-8900 audio chips, with an audio buffer of 16K of Dynamic RAM, since the refresh cycles wouldn't completely overlap between the two chips."
"That means..." Walt counted on his fingers. "Six channels total?"
"Better than that. It means we can get some digital audio if we play our cards right. The best part is that we've managed this for roughly half the price of an Apple II, or one fourth the price of an Exidy Sorcerer or Trash 80."
"Yeah, I think Roy'll approve, but I'll have to run it by him just in case."
"One last thing, because of the voltage and signal differences, if we want to ship to Europe, Africa, or Australia, we'll need a local partner."
"Good to know."
April 21, 1979
When Michael Eisner stepped into the room, everyone fell silent. The populace of Atari was still unsure of what to think of their lord and master, who, with the help of outsider Raymond Kassar, had ejected the company's founder and greatest creative mind. But then again, Atari was now facing the greatest growth in profit it had seen since Pong, and compared to the stormy seas of Bushnell's last few years, it was nice to have some stability. It certainly helped that, thanks to an aggressive ad campaign over the holiday season, Kassar had saved the 2600 from oblivion.
The big man himself was visiting to check out the progress on some of the games coming out of the pipeline, namely two. He waltzed down the halls like he owned the place (which he technically did) and entered the first door on the left.
Inside, a trio of young men sat crowded around one desk. They were Ed Logg, Lyle Rains, and Dominic Walsh, and the future of Atari dominance in the arcades rested on their shoulders.
"Whatta we got, boys? I don't have all day, just gimme something brief," said Eisner.
Startled, the three programmers scrambled around. "Mister Eisner! We-we thought you weren't coming until tomorrow!"
"I decided to make my visit a little earlier. Now, show me the goods."
The trio hastily prepared something for their boss, displaying the cutting-edge vector graphics being used in their game, Asteroids. Despite the fact that it was in black-and-white, Eisner seemed impressed.
"Excellent. It'll be a great follow-up to Space Invaders. Keep up the good work."
Eisner turned on his heel and ventured further into the building, checking in on many projects in varying states of completion, until he found what he was looking for.
Warren Robinett was sat at his desk, balancing a keyboard on his lap and typing frantically away, lines of code appearing on the tiny screen of his HP 1611A microprocessor computer.
"Talk to me, Robinett. How's Adventure going?"
Of all the other devs Michael Eisner had seen that day, this guy was practically unphased by his presence. A few keyboard clicks later, and he pulled up a (surprisingly) working prototype. "Planned ahead for this," he smirked, plugging a joystick into his monitor.
Eisner smiled and gladly took the stick. For a little while, he fiddled around with the controls, moving his avatar, a little yellow square, around on the screen. "Not really much to it, is there?"
"Why don't you try going to the edge of the screen?"
Eisner obliged, and as soon as the little yellow guy hit the edge, it shifted over, in a choppy, laggy motion. But after just a short while of moving around on the new screen, the game flickered, and shuddered to a stop.
"Dammit... it keeps doing that," muttered Robinett.
"That was amazing!" exclaimed the CEO. "I've only ever seen games play on one screen before."
"Yeah, it's the first of its kind. I had to come up with some clever workarounds to make everything go right. Clearly I haven't done enough, though."
"Well, keep up the good work. But this... this is a Disney-killer for sure. They're all bragging about how big Black Hole will be, but this... this is the game of the year."
--------------------------------
(Note: A big thanks to reader @Kalvan! He provided the vast majority of this segment, I just cleaned up and added to the dialogue a bit.)
Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, CA
April 29, 1979
"So," said Walt. "What exactly am I looking at here?"
Rolly Crump shifted his weight from one side to the other. "Well, after playing Space Invaders long enough to fly from here to China and back again, I realized that the age of discrete logic in arcade video games is over, and if we want to make better games, we need better hardware."
"You mean, all of these wires and motherboards and chips are for..."
"Black Hole, yes."
The system consisted of three PCBs connected by Centronics ribbon cables. Walt didn't have a clue as to what anything did, but he was always interested in learning more.
"I realize I have the power to override Roy's veto, but you gotta explain to me what's going on here so I know if that's a good idea or not. Maybe then I won't have to override it in the first place. So, why two... what are those, 6502s and then the one 6508?"
"Two words, Walt: money, and power. The MOS Technology 6502 executes one instruction every clock cycle. Compare it to all of its easily available competition, where instructions execute anywhere from every fourth to every twelfth. It's available for $25 for the basic 6502 version, only five bucks more for the 6508, which we're using for the main CPU. Not only that, but we can get both of 'em for half those amounts in surprisingly small bulk purchases, andless shipping and handling, of course. The alternatives, even the Zilog Z80, all ran a lot higher. It's pretty much the best deal we could've gotten."
Walt nodded, arms crossed. "The fact that it's cheap yet powerful should get Roy on board. And I'm already sold. But keep on going."
"The main motherboard features that 6508 which we clocked to 2.38 megahertz, which is about as high as we can get without adding a cooling fan and taking up more space. Sixteen kilobytes of main system RAM keep the program data in place while it's processing, and a 6520 Peripheral Interface Adapter handle player input, four eleven pin controller jacks to connect to the input hardware below the monitor in front of the board, two or four coin sensor jacks mounted in back of the board, and and the two ribbon cable ports to connect to the other boards."
"It seems that book I gave you did a world of good for ya, Rolly," laughed Walt. "I see this weird tape drive... thing. What's that for?"
"That's an Exetron Stringy-Floppy--"
"A what?" asked the older man, sure he'd heard wrong.
"--an Exetron Stringy-Floppy. It holds the program so that it can be loaded in RAM. We chose it because it's faster than a floppy drive, and much cheaper than it or paying a fab for ROM Masks. We crunched the numbers. Twice. More bang for our buck, really."
Walt gestured widely at anothet circuit board. "What's all this?"
"Well, that's is the Video Board. That 6502 over there controls the game's video output."
"...Why didn't you just go for an off-the-shelf video chip?"
"I tested the Intel 8275 and the Motorola 6845, and neither did too well. So, I got creative, took that 6502 and clocked it at 1.34 megahertz. But since I used Ralph Baer's direct pixel addressing method, Magnavox would come a knockin' for some royalties if we actually did that for a game people are putting quarters into. So, uh, Tony and I grabbed your secretary's Apple II--"
"So that's where it went! She went ballistic, threatened a couple people with a ballpoint pen--"
"Yeah, um, did she hurt anyone or--nevermind. But we took the Apple II apart, reverse-engineered it, and came to a conclusion: Steve Wozniak is a genius."
"I fail to see how that helped."
Rolly grinned. "We took his mathematical formula of scanline shifts on 74 series gate logic and AMD 2900 series bit-slices, and turned it ninety degrees to map vertical rather than horizontal scanlines. This means that, theoretically, so long as video RAM and processor speed is not an issue, it can scale without limits. Because the Woz probably wouldn't appreciate us borrowing his color generation method, though, we're using a typical color television, minus the tuner hardware. We've managed to get 32 total colors to work with using the NTSC color wheel, and a resolution of 320x208 pixels."
"That... mostly went over my head, but I'll take it that's pretty good. So what this last board?"
"This is the audio board. That last 6502 is connected to a second source 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter which in turn is connected to two General Instruments AY-3-8900 audio chips, with an audio buffer of 16K of Dynamic RAM, since the refresh cycles wouldn't completely overlap between the two chips."
"That means..." Walt counted on his fingers. "Six channels total?"
"Better than that. It means we can get some digital audio if we play our cards right. The best part is that we've managed this for roughly half the price of an Apple II, or one fourth the price of an Exidy Sorcerer or Trash 80."
"Yeah, I think Roy'll approve, but I'll have to run it by him just in case."
"One last thing, because of the voltage and signal differences, if we want to ship to Europe, Africa, or Australia, we'll need a local partner."
"Good to know."
Thanks to you for the techical help.
Seems even with the awful divorce of Bushnell, things are going smoothly so far, seems they will have a nice year.
Yeah, Kassar wasn't a total idiot. But eventually his bad business practices will come back to bite him in the ass.
That's up for Kalvan and I to discuss. These relationships will be only temporary and won't have too much weight on the overall story. And I myself think that they could just build places to set up the cabinets themselves, because Disney's already in Japan (able to reach Oceania) and in Europe, so that may or may not be changed.
Deleted member 100251
Sweet update! I don’t think I realized you were having Black Hole as a game instead of a movie. I liked the movie but I’m interested in it’s TTL counterpart, I’m sure it will be cool too! Can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Mostly, the game will just take the name of OTL's Black Hole. The characters and locations will mostly be original. (The actual movie is butterflied, as Disney has no need for a Star Wars clone if they actually have Star Wars.) Sorry to burst any bubbles.
Play the Game, Change the Game
What's Going on With LucasArts?
(March/April 1979)
Ever since 1977's cultural phenomenon that was Star Wars, everyone has been dying to know what project they're working on next. And while rumors and even a few trailers have been put out into the world, it's right here, right now that the door is being blown open on Raiders of the Lost Ark!(March/April 1979)
The film is set in the 1930s. Hitler is in power with the Nazi Party in Germany, and has sent for his footmen to scour the four corners of the globe for any ancient artifact that might help him in his quest for global domination. The Nazis believe that they have discovered the location of perhaps the greatest Christian relic of them all: the Ark of the Covenant, holding within it the stone tablets God himself carved the Ten Commandments into and unspeakable power.
In their way is archaeologist and adventurer Doctor "Indiana" Jones, known for his good intentions and somewhat wonky moral compass. Armed with his sharp wit, trademark fedora, and trusty bullwhip, Indiana will face down the greatest enemy the world has ever seen.
Co-directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are extremely excited for the new movie (coming to theaters May 20), with Lucas citing it as "[his] favorite movie [he's] made yet." It's sure to be a hit, and will enter the halls of the action-adventure genre clad in the laurels of victory. So, be sure to catch Raiders of the Lost Ark some time this summer!
--------------------------------
"Now that we're wrapping up Raiders, any ideas on a sequel for it? After Star Wars gets one, of course. I was thinking something to do with the Lost Library of Alexandria."
--George Lucas to Steven Spielberg
"I'm flattered that you took some of my suggestions, George."
--Walt Disney to George Lucas, after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time
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Walt Disney's Office, Burbank, CA
May 4, 1979
Walt Disney was back again. Between shooting Hood, working on Black Hole, EuroDisney, and a million new ideas for expansions and new attractions in his existing parks, running an ad campaign for Raiders, and seeing his family from time to time, it was a miracle he was even behind his desk again at all. Had he still been working on his animated movies too... Walt would've never left the studio. Leaving that behind had been the right decision, no matter how much he might miss the medium.
Walt went through the motions. Concept art. Blueprints. Sales figures. Box office returns. Memos. Timetables. After a few hours of that, he was utterly exhausted.
"Walt, you've got a call," announced his secretary.
The man sighed. "Alright, yeah."
"It's a Japanese man, too."
Walt sat forward, and paused for a moment, before picking up the reciever. It was probably just someone from the Oriental Land Company. He'd gotten a few calls from them, worried about increasing yakuza presence in the area near Disneytropolis. Organized crime in Japan was rising as quickly as their economy, but it hadn't done much to harm his park. Yet. "Walt Disney speaking," he said in Japanese.
"Oh, hello! This is Masaya Nakamura, CEO of the Nakamura Manufacturing Company. I must say, your Japanese is very good!"
"Thank you," replied Walt. "I pride myself on that. ...What, may I ask, are you calling about, Mister Nakamura?"
"We were wondering if you would like to come down to Tokyo and check out one of our first video games. Our designers say it's going to be quite the Space Invaders killer. We wanted a partner to distribute it outside of Japan, and since Atari's been working with Taito, we figured that it might be best to go for the American company's biggest rival."
"And you chose us?" asked Walt.
"We did. Now, we completely understand if you'd like to pass on this. Black Hole looks very fun, and you'd probably make a lot of money off of it. However..."
"Yes?"
"If you turn us down, we have two other companies interested in distribution, Midway and Atari. I'd prefer you, but..."
"I get the picture," conceded Walt. "I might be able to make it... how does two weeks after tomorrow sound? I'm booked solid before then."
"That will be fine."
"Thanks, I'll see you there."
"Yes, and I'm certain you will be most impressed with Galaxian."
I’d be very happy to see Temple of Doom wiped away. While I know Crystal Skull gets the most hate, I’ve always personally considered Temple of Doom to be the worst Indiana Jones films.
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