An unlikely video game success story: Action 52

Action 52 (Wikipedia link) was a game designed in the early 90's.

It's main draw was that it was actually 52 games in one cartridge; the developers suggested that the game sell for $199--hey, that's only four dollars per game! What an amazing deal!

The trouble was...it was one of the biggest pieces of crap ever made for any system, ever. Here is Angry Video Game Nerd's hilarious video on it. He goes through all 52 games, plus the sequels (how on Earth were they able to make sequels???)

Here is an interesting tidbit (bolding mine):

For the NES version, Perri raised $20 million from private backers in Europe, South America, and Saudi Arabia. He and Raul Gomila employed three college students (Mario Gonzalez, Javier Perez, and Albert Hernandez) to do the game design, music, graphics, and programming on an Atari ST, with a three-month deadline. Technical work was contracted out to Cronos Engineering, Inc., a Boca Raton company that had done work for IBM.[7] Action 52 has 8 extra game templates, since the distributor had the carts come with 60 games by default, as well as many unused tiles; this has been confirmed in an interview with Gonzalez.

Yes, they raised 20 million dollars, only to produce one of the biggest pieces of crap ever.

Seriously, the games were terrible, bizarre, in some cases literally unplayable, made no sense, etc. The "flagship" game, Cheetahmen, was the most well-developed, but was still monumentally terrible.

So what was the point? How could 20 million dollars have been thrown away so easily on such a terrible product? How could they have even released something so bad?

In my next post, I will discuss an alternate version of Action 52. A version that worked, was very successful, and could have led to its own mini-revolution in video gaming.
 
Action 52 was a "new" concept, in the sense that very little multi-game cartridges had been produced for consoles. Sure, there were mass-produced versions like Nintendo's Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/Power Pad cartridge that came bundled with the NES, but the idea for Action 52 was different.

What if 52 games could be bundled in one cartridge? Amazingly, the developers were able to convince backers to front 20 million dollars for the endeavor.

POD: After the 20 million dollars are pledged.

The developers understood that it was not exactly possible to make 52 "AAA" titles such as Super Mario Bros., Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda, etc. That would cost far too much time and money. By the same token, they realized that they could not just produce a multitude of uninspiring games that were poorly-programmed; the debacle of E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 proved that bad games were bad business. Mothers ignorant of what a good game was might be persuaded into buying Action 52 for Christmas, but the bad press would sink the company no matter how many units were sold.

What to do?

The developers decided on a two-tier strategy: Fifty "smaller" tier-1 games would be made, and two "flagship" tier-2 games, with more development and a bigger budget. The tier-1 games would be divided into genres--puzzle games, shooters, platformers, etc. It was still to be determined which genre(s) the tier-2 games would be--Legend of Zelda-like? Super Mario Bros.? Gradius?

Different teams would work on each genre, but there would be cross-talk between them.

It would be a monumental undertaking, but with the right strategy and a little bit of luck, they might pull it off.



ideas for further posts: licensing of games like Tetris, giving them a piece of profits; advertising.
 
The developers got to work on fleshing out how the games would go.

For the tier-1 games, it was decided that each game should have at least one defining factor; for example, one of the shooter games, ZX Flyer, had a mechanic where one could capture an enemy with a tractor beam and then use that enemy as an ally. One of the puzzle games, Pubble, involved something called a "match 3" mechanic--the puzzle field was a grid of squares; one had to move squares such that three of the same color were adjacent in a line. These squares then disappeared.

It was decided that the final list of tier-1 games would have ten shooters, fifteen platformers, two RPGs (not very big, though), ten puzzle games, three card games, five Zelda-like games, and five "experimental" games involving some interesting ideas that the teams had... Some of the 50 games would be two-player.

As it would turn out, some of these games would be immensely popular with the teams, in often unexpected ways. It was sometimes akin to when Tetris was first invented, with a normally academic atmosphere becoming addicted to the game!


ideas for further posts: 50 dollar price tag; (this is a big one): making your own games. Tier-1: Cheetahmen; Arcane Magic, an RPG where one could make one's own spells. Shooter where you can make your own powerups.
 
After much debate, it was decided which kinds of games the tier-1 games would be. The first would be an elaborate platformer called Cheetahmen. The Cheetahmen were to be the mascots, so to speak, of Action 52 and any subsequent entries in the franchise. It was hoped that, if all went well, there would be spin-off merchandise in the form of toys, TV shows, etc. There was almost no chance that the characters would be as popular as Mario or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that was fine.

Cheetahmen's game mechanics involved the ability to switch between several characters, each with their own abilities. This was similar to the original TMNT game, with the characters having more differences. For example, one character would have a bow and arrow, but different kinds of arrows would be available. Another character would be quick and have the ability to jump high, and the last character would have a heavy attack with a blocking ability.

The second game would be an RPG called Arcane Magic. This would be a top-down RPG ala Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy. One of the most interesting game mechanics that the team loved was the ability to create one's own spells. This was done by the use of the "Arcane Magic" system whereby different jewels that the player could find or buy would have different effects. For example, rubies normally produced fire magic, and diamonds normally produced a healing effect, so a ruby/diamond spell combination would produce a new jewel capable of protecting the user against fire attacks.

What the developers had no way of knowing at the time is that Arcane Magic, with its spell creation system, along with some of the other games that allowed creativity, would form the seeds of something very important in future games...
 
To round out the 52 games, the developers left space for five "experimental" games. These were a set of games that really did not fit in any of the genres. Yet as with games like Arcane Magic, they would later have an outsize influence.

One game was based on the artificial life simulation the Game of Life, developed by John Conway. It involved little squares that turned on and off depending on the on/off state of the adjacent squares. Another game was very similar to SimCity, but very limited; however, it would later prove to be quite popular. A third game was a simple paint program. The fourth experimental game, Money Maker, was a peculiar game that did not really seem to be a game. It was a game where every second, someone earned money selling lemonade; after a certain amount of money was accrued, a person could buy upgrades, such as a lemon orchard, that allowed one to make money faster. A person could also press the A button to make money instantly. It was a stupid game, but inexplicably popular. The fifth experimental game, called Music Maker, let people play around with the music abilities of Action 52.




*Note: You might notice that one of the things I am doing here is having them create entirely new genres, such as the match-3 or incremental game genres (like Cookie Clicker). You can also see my own opinion on incremental games--I kind of like them, even though in many ways, they aren't really games :p

ideas: integration of different games--i.e. use the paint program to create tilesets for the SimCity-type game. Also, the emphasis on more game-creation tools.
 
If anyone is still interested, I can write more. If I don't get any replies, I'll still put up at least a couple more updates.

When I first started thinking about this, I got really intrigued by the idea. Action 52 was, as mentioned in the first posts, a terrible failure and stands as one of the worst games (or collection of games) in video game history. But the idea of it sparking a revolution of sorts is something that I think could have been entirely possible under the right circumstances.

I think what could have really been big is not the idea of 52 games itself, which in any case would have been difficult to pull off, but the sort of experimental nature of what I have been going over in the posts; 52 games is 52 chances to try new stuff. Also, in later posts I will introduce another concept--"making your own game" and also the idea of customization, something which made Arcane Magic (in this timeline) relatively popular.
 
After Action 52 was finished, a large portion of the 20 million dollars raised had been used up. The rest, aside from the actual publishing and distribution of the game, would have to be used on advertising. But it was felt that more advertising revenue was needed--they would have liked to have paid for some TV spots, for example.

Perri and the developers had no more money, but they felt they needed just a little bit more to really get the word out about the game. Perri showed his investors the current product, and many of them were impressed--those who actually played the game had a good time, and it was always interesting to see what kinds of games they enjoyed. In the end, they were able to secure an extra amount of funding, allowing them to produce some more advertising.

But still, Perri was taking an incredible risk. Not many people outside of Nintendo et al. were able to get this amount of money for ONE GAME.

That left the question of pricing. Many of the investors wanted to follow the original "four dollars per game" idea and charge $199. Psychologically, they felt that because the game cost so much to develop and had so much content, it must then have a high price. Yet most of the developers were not really familiar with the video game market per se. It was not like selling cars, houses, or computers.

The game, Perri realized, would have to cost the same as any normal game--fifty dollars, MAYBE sixty. Usually only adults bought the more expensive game systems, and only adults would pay $199 for one game. In order for the game to be successful, "mom and dad" would have to be persuaded to buy it. Without the younger market, he argued, the game would not sell well.

In the end, Perri was again able to persuade the investors to let him sell the game for $55. It was a little bit more expensive than most games, but there was quite a bit of content in Action 52, and it HAD cost a lot to make it.

Action 52 had cost 22 million dollars to produce. At 55 dollars, it would need to sell 400,000 copies just to break even in terms of dollars; however, this ignored the fact that this price was what the game stores would be charging. Because of the cut the game stores needed, to make a profit, at least a MILLION copies would need to be sold. For the game to be an unqualified success, even more would have to be sold.

Nobody really knew how things were going to turn out.

*Note: I am kind of writing this off the top of my head; I am not really familiar with how much power investors have over decisions like these....also, I am not sure how many copies would need to be sold to turn a profit.


ideas: spin-off single-title games (e.g. a standalone match-3 game).
 
Last post, unless someone wants me to keep going.

Instead of making a post about what happens next, I am going to go over a general timeline of what I had in mind about the future of this timeline, what it could have meant, etc.


Action 52 turned out to have been a modest success--it made a good profit. Not an enormous profit, but enough that another one was planned for the Super Nintendo.

In addition, several of the games would go on to have their own standalone versions, such as the match-3 game, Pubble. In particular, Arcane Magic got its own game with a larger scope. Although the Cheetahmen were the "official" mascot of Action 52 et al., it would later turn out that the Arcane Magic series would take their place as the face of the company.

Upon viewing player reactions to Action 52, along with their own observations, the developers of Action 52 realized some things about what made their games so popular: First, there was a surprising response to the upgrading and mix-and-match mechanics in games like Arcane Magic. This indicated that players were very receptive to RPG-like "game building" in other games, but also to new ways to "build" a game itself. The developers correctly ascertained that allowing players to do more of this in not just RPGs, but other games, would enhance their popularity. Therefore, subsequent iterations of games like Pubble would have upgrade options (in addition to the "classic" mode) where one could use bombs, chain different items, etc. This idea was not new, but it was especially prominent in the Action 52 game ecosystem.

This attitude eventually led to another revolutionary idea: The "make-your-own-game" iteration of Action 52. After the even greater success of the Super Nintendo version of Action 52, the developers decided to take another gamble and create a game called "Action X". Billed as the "Game that would redefine games" it allowed players to create their own games in several different genres, such as shooters and platformers. Users could design the art for their own enemies or heroes, or choose from a palette of pre-designed artwork. They could also do things such as modify enemy behavior (to an extent), create their own items, make upgrade trees, and the like. Admittedly, due to the limitations of the system, it was not particularly advanced, but it caught on. This would lead to other successes on later systems such as the Nintendo 64, Playstation, and beyond, to the point where the company was a well-recognized player in the industry.

Let me know what you think of this story. I might try another video game-themed timeline later.
 
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