A Moment With
David L Craddock shares his love of arcade conversions with us
David L Craddock tells us about his new book, Arcade Perfect
In his latest book, Arcade Perfect: How Pac-man, Mortal Kombat, And Other Coin-op Classics Invaded the Living Room, author David L Craddock reports the fascinating stories behind the cuts and compromises that led to impressive arcade games running on puny home consoles. We caught up with the author to find out a little more about his brand-new tome.
Why did you decide to write Arcade Perfect?
As a kid I loved arcade games, but I loved home ports even more. I was fascinated by the differences – ‘Why are the characters smaller? Why are the backgrounds different? Why does the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat have blood, but my SNES version doesn’t?’ – and decided to track down their devs and find out what was involved in bringing arcade games home.
We enjoyed reading about developers devising ingenious tricks and hacks to get games running on underpowered hardware. What’s your favourite example of that kind of technique? My favourite hacks were things us consumers would never think of because we lack a fundamental understanding of how the tech worked, such as [Pac-man porter] Tod Frye switching background ‘lines’ on and off to simulate players eating pellets. Marble Madness, a complex game that was simplified several times just to get it running on arcade hardware, was scaled down even further for
NES, which used ‘almost but not quite’ maths to calculate collision detection.
What challenges do you face writing books like Arcade Perfect? The toughest part about writing Arcade Perfect is finding developers who made a game 20-plus years ago. Some developers, such as Keith Burkhill
(MK1 and MK2 on Game Gear, SF Alpha 3 on GBA) no longer work in the industry, others may not have much of a presence online. It’s a challenge I run into often, given that most of my books deal with older games, and finding people hasn’t gotten any easier.
There’s a common thread in the book of developers working really hard to get an arcade game working on underpowered hardware only for it to be met with negative critical response. Was that part of the draw for you?
Oh, absolutely. Everyone rightfully views Ed Boon and John Tobias as the two figureheads of Mortal Kombat, but the home conversions, vastly outsold those arcade cabinets. Original creators are more well known, so I wanted to go deeper into the proverbial coal mine to see who had to do all the shovelling from veins that had been tapped.
You’ve written a lot about developer crunch. Do you think it’s getting any better?
Unfortunately, crunch – also known as ‘the death march’ – seems ubiquitous with game development, and with nearly all creative endeavours. It’s a double-edged sword. While interviewing for my Stay Awhile And Listen books, Diablo II’S developers confided that without crunch, many core features, such as hiring mercenaries, wouldn’t have been created. I think the key is either moderating work hours – studies have shown that most people do more harm than good after 40-plus hours in a single week anyway – or, better yet, compensating teams for the extra time.
Are you excited by the opportunity to study the ways devs get games running on modern hardware like the Nintendo Switch?
Ports of multiplatform games on lowerend hardware have definitely taken the place of arcade-to-home conversions as one of my favourite areas of interest. Doom (2016) on Switch, for example, shaved off nearly every frill in order to preserve the game’s core attraction: ripping and tearing through demons without so much as a framerate hiccup. That’s what I love: learning how developers zero in on the beating heart of a game, then determine how to transplant that heart to another body.
Arcade Perfect is available now from Amazon in paperback form or on Kindle.