Blog Traces History of NYC in Video Games

April 23, 2008

Everyone who follows video games knows by now that Liberty City, the setting for the hotly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, is an ultra-realistic depiction of New York.

But the Big Apple has been the setting for many a past video game, according to The Bowery Boys:

The difficult part is actually figuring out, in fact, if a game takes place in New York. For instance, Frogger could take place in New York, if the West Side Highway straddled a Hudson River full of logs and turtles. Pac-Man is certainly a metaphoric representation of the Financial District. If Donkey Kong is an homage to King Kong, wouldn't that mean he's throwing barrels from the Empire State Building?

...In 1984, anxious Atari and Commodore 64 owners got their hands on a more literal tribute to the city -- The Big Apple. In the simple game, a player maneuvers through a traffic free midtown Manhattan... This game looks a bit like a malfunctioning digital watch and was appropriately forgotten.

The Bowery Boys go on to list several old school titles, including Punch Out!!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project.

The first [game] to make a real attempt at a recognizable New York landscape was probably 1989's Manhunter: New York, a clunky and mostly unexciting action game set in the post-apocalyptic future of 2002. However it did manage to depict city landmarks in ways that were at least recognizable, if primitive...

The excellent write-up also names games such as Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, Deus Ex, Max Payne and XIII, while noting True Crime: New York City as a turning point for its realistic depiction of NYC. It's definitely worth a read.

Posted in Games & Culture Games & Environment

Comments

Submitted by mogbert (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 09:15.

Somehow, I doubt that those games will get blamed for half the crimes in NY from now on.

Deus Ex was an awesome game set in NY. Although the crimes against humanity that gould be perpetuated therein were generally on a more cataclysmic scale.

Submitted by Blog Traces History of NYC in Video Games (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 09:18.

[...] wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptEveryone who follows video games knows by now that Liberty City, the setting for the hotly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV, is an ultra-realistic depiction of New York. But the Big Apple has been the setting for many a past video game, according to The Bowery Boys: The difficult part is actually figuring out, in fact, if a game takes place in New York. For instance, Frogger could take place in New York, if the West Side Highway straddled a Hudson River full of logs and turtles. Pac-Man is certainly a metaphoric representation of the Financial District. If Donkey Kong is an homage to King Kong, wouldn’t that mean he’s throwing barrels from the Empire State Building? [...]

Submitted by 300baud (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 09:21.

Ha ha, "action game." Manhunter was a Sierra Online adventure. For god only knows what reason, several times through the course of any Sierra adventure of the time, you would have to negotiate an arcade sequence. If you lose, you die. If you win, you get to continue. The engine was not up to action sequences, the players did not want them, and they did not fit into their games, but by God, they must be in every game!

Submitted by Truthiness Advocate (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 10:08.

Don't forget Crush, Crumble & Chomp, a game I used to play on the Apple II+. In the game, you chose to be a movie monster (Godzilla, The Blog, etc.) and attacked a particular city. I believe you could choose from major cities like D.C., Philly.... and NYC. The best part was that particular buildings were mapped out. So, if you wanted to attack the Empire State Building, you could. You could actually try and take down the White House! It was a simple graphical affair (obviously), with a one-color top-down approach, but yeah, it sees like this type of gameplay would be controversial today.

Submitted by mogbert (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 10:30.

@Truthiness:

Sounds like an early Rampage, which I think was also set in New York... and I think you could eat people as well as destroy cars and sky scrapers.

And I'm not sure I would call "The Blog" a monster... sure it gets out of hand from time to time...

j/k :P

Submitted by kurisu7885 (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 11:38.

@Truthiness Advocate

If a game like that were made today it'd be a "terrorism simulator

Submitted by hellscaper (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 13:37.

Ahh, I love that New York considers itself to be the center of everything, ever.

Submitted by chadachada (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 15:06.

@mogbert

They had like EVERY city in Rampage. That game was so amazing...

Submitted by StealthKnight (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 16:29.

In my opinion, the only thing special about New York is how huge it is with lots of diverse things. Other then that it is nothing special, just an over crowded city.

Submitted by Golden Yak (not verified) on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 23:16.

You should check out the SNES game Urban Strike if you wanna see something that would be branded as a terrorist simulator. The game involves piloting a helicopter around fighting terrorists as they invade American cities. Mission 5 is in New York.

Wanna guess what happened to the twin towers? The terrorists blew a hole in the side of one. Ouch.

Submitted by TheStripe (not verified) on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 11:18.

The digital depiction of NYC will not be complete until they can bring home that hobo-pee-and-garbage smell that permeates the city and outlying area.

Shout box

beemoh: Miyamoto seems to have been awardsed something- he was just trending worldwide on Twitter, and all the tweets were in what looked like Spanish.05/23/2012 - 7:07am

Michael Chandra: Think so yes, since the judge didn't allow them to add ips at will. :P05/23/2012 - 6:23am

Conster: TPB works fine for me (didn't work the day of the verdict). Apparently they switched IP addresses, meaning Brein has to re-sue to have that added to the block-this list?05/22/2012 - 8:16pm

ZippyDSMlee: sigh...was playing anice game of empire at war and then boom crash...hope new oparts come soon ><05/22/2012 - 1:17pm

Andrew Eisen: I still say the particular word or phrase the MPAA uses to describe what it's fighting against is the least of its problems.05/22/2012 - 1:12pm

ZippyDSMlee: MPAA finally admits piracy is not the same as stealing, kinda http://tinyurl.com/chtcf8p05/22/2012 - 11:55am

ddrfr33k: @EZK Bwahahaha! @Michael: Yeah, several news sources have said that google DNS can bypass the TPB roadblocks.05/22/2012 - 11:38am

Michael Chandra: Weird, I can still visit piratebay. Wonder if Google DNS is related to that, or I simply have an exotic ISP?05/22/2012 - 9:03am

Lisa Pham: No harm done, E. Zachary Knight. :)05/22/2012 - 4:50am

Uncharted NES: BSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates- http://slashdot.org/palm/17/12/05/22/0051216_1.shtml05/21/2012 - 11:18pm

E. Zachary Knight: Ah. Missed that. My mind just connected DDR3 with ddrfr33k and ran with it. Oh well.05/21/2012 - 10:12pm

Lisa Pham: He also mentioned the game "Shadows of the damned" which is on PS305/21/2012 - 8:08pm

E. Zachary Knight: ddrf33k, I think Zip is referring to computer hardware.05/21/2012 - 7:33pm

ddrfr33k: @Zip: Excellent game. It's a trip.05/21/2012 - 7:09pm

Lisa Pham: IanC - if you read/looked at the report (PDF and written) then you'd see where they failed and why. Some games have come close to passing and some have passed. The list of games evaluated. http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/content.php/18-RYG-Evaluations05/21/2012 - 5:49pm

Andrew Eisen: Maybe I'll luck out and the Wii version won't have this retail exclusive DLC nonsense.05/21/2012 - 5:12pm

ZippyDSMlee: Bought new guitar...trying to find a nice DDR3/mobo combo under 200$ sicne I need new ram thats 100$....fun times..... picked up shadows of the damned tho!!05/21/2012 - 4:56pm

E. Zachary Knight: Yeah, that's how I feel about retail exclusive DLC too. ;)05/21/2012 - 3:37pm

RedMage: That's what I started to figure too. They seem to have trouble coming up with an effective scare tactic. At one point they referred to it as "online looting" which just sounds stupid.05/21/2012 - 3:34pm

E. Zachary Knight: Of all the sucky suckiness that ever sucked. Lego Batman 2 will suffer from sucky retailer exclusive DLC. Suck! http://tinyurl.com/ckq67vg05/21/2012 - 3:30pm

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