THE EVOLUTION OF SPY VS SPY
Although better known for its movies, Warner Bros was also a major player in the early years of US videogames. It famously bought Atari, Inc in 1976, and then funded the set-up of Lucasfilm Games in 1982. Less well known is that Warner later bought into First Star Software, and during that meeting it picked out Warner characters to base games on, as First Star founder Richard Spitalny remembers. “I was looking for the most interactive characters with strategy elements, and Spy Vs Spy had this built-in interaction,” Richard explains. “Even though you were reading a comic strip, you were vicariously experiencing two spies trying to outsmart each other, and there was a payoff at the end. So it was about the interactivity that was inherent in the property.”
With the licence in place, Richard partnered with coder Mike Riedel. Their initial focus was adapting the comic strip’s traps into videogame form, although they used some artistic licence. “Since the game was inside an embassy there were going to be doors,” Richard points out, “so we added the bucket over the door trick. I asked Mike if a spring could shoot the spies not just across one room but into the next room, and when he said yes we had to use a spring! So the traps were just down to our own imaginations, although they had to be in the of the comic strip.” For each trap they devised, Richard and Mike thought of
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