063 · RAID ON BUNGELING BAY
An interplanetary reconnaissance team has discovered that the tiny, but dangerous Bungeling Empire is creating an awesome War Machine. Their plan: to conquer Earth! For more NEStalgia as well as show notes for this episode visit www.NEStalgiacast.com
Show notes
- Originally developed by Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore…) and released on Commodore 64 in 84. Came to NES in Sep 87
- Hudson Soft again for the NES version
- Broderbund published in NA
- GAMEPLAY
- Over time, the factories grow and develop new technologies to use against the player. There are also visible signs of interdependency among the islands, such as supply boats moving between them. In order to win the game, the player must prevent the escalation by bombing all the factories as quickly as possible, keeping them from advancing their technology. If left alone for too long, the factories create enough new weaponry to overwhelm the player.
- WILL WRIGHT on Publishing
- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134754/the_replay_interviews_will_wright.php
- A lot of people had spent years learning the Apple II, but the Commodore 64 seemed more of a level playing field because everyone was starting from scratch on that. So I bought my early Commodore 64 right when it came out and dove into it and learned every bit of it.
- I did my first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, on that, right around the time I moved to California. There were about, I don't know, maybe three game publishers near San Francisco. Brøderbund was one of them. I just drove to each one and showed them this game that I was working on. I really liked the people at Brøderbund, so I ended up working with them.
- WILL WRIGHT on GAMEPLAY
- I came up with the idea of this big scrolling window, and I'd always loved helicopters. So I just basically designed the end game around the technology, around what you could do on the Commodore that you could not do on the Apple.
- While I was making it I had to build other programs to help me build that program. I had to build a program that would realign character sets. Another one would let you scroll around the world and place these little tiles to build these islands and roads and such. I had more fun with that actually than flying the helicopter around, and that's what eventually evolved into SimCity.