First, I deeply apologize for the 79 notifications(!) I have missed since the last time I visited. I got a bit (very) busy with work since late last year and could not really find the time to engage here. If someone had an important question that somehow was not answered since then, don't hesitate to ping me again or ask below. Now, on topic…
Are you good people following the Egret II Mini project over at Taito? They have just announced, this Friday night, the last batch of titles comprising the complete list of 40+10 games included in the machine. ※If you have not paid attention to this story at all, 40+10 and not 50 because 10 of the games are sold separately as an option together with a paddle and trackball accessory which is necessary to play them properly.
Following a small personal disappointment that the Astro City ended up not really being about the generation of games that were actually played on the Astro City (ST-V, Model 2 etc.), I did not expect much from Taito. I pessimistically anticipated we would miss out on the F3 generation line-up, but I was completely wrong! Almost every significant F1 and F3 game is here!
I am sad, but not too surprised, that we are missing on Light Bringer a.k.a. Dungeon Magic, Dead Connection and Land Maker. I am extremely surprised (and disappointed for @Personasama and @exodus) that we are missing out on Cleopatra Fortune. Other than those few left behind, every single game I wanted is included. Rayforce is here. Elevator Action Returns is here. Metal Black and Gun Frontier are here. Then even put the unreleased Dan-Ku-Ga in as the machine's own Star Fox 2! What a bargain. Unless the emulation is crap, this is now the best of those official mini-retro emulation machines in my book.
But the Egret II Mini itself is not the main topic I wish to discuss here. One of the most surprising titles they announced Friday night is a licensed game, LUPIN III / ルパン三世（rupan sansei）and, as their tweet casually mentions, it is the first video game adaptation of the Lupin The 3rd series. In 1980, you are probably right!
So, I don‘t think I even knew this game existed. It’s a cool little maze game stuck right between the releases of Heiankyo Alien and Pac-Man. Probably counts as one of the first pure stealth games, as well, since you can‘t get rid of the obstacles and enemies in any fashion. Each type of enemy has a different pattern, similar to Pac-Man’s differently colored ghosts, although the patterns are much more intuitive here: the patrolmen patrol, the dogs go straight, and the police inspector (which we can assume to be Zenigata) chases you down to prevent camping. There were a couple similar games released on Atari 2600 but nothing as exciting visually or intricate in terms of game design, methinks. Lupin III missed the strategy of Heiankyo Alien and the genius attack/defense balance of Pac-Man to become a legendary arcade game, and it's objectively not as creative as other lesser known outputs from Taito at the time, such as Steel Worker. But it seems like a pretty solid video game for the year 1980 and - dare I say - it was quite likely the best officially licensed video game ever released at that point.
And you know why I am confident it was quite likely the best officially licensed video game ever released at that point? Because, Yo, what the fuck!? What else was even there before this game!?
This question started as a small itch in my brain about seven hours ago and now I have been knee deep in something like 158 Chrome tabs, five open books and ruining my eyes on blurry Game Machine scans trying to figure out the answer to that question. I know there are some very educated people browsing this forum so maybe you can help me. How many video games had officially licensed an IP before this game? I am pretty darn sure this is the first of its kind in Japan, at least for an anime IP. The only officially licensed anything I could find that predated Lupin III are:
- Mattel's
Battlestar Galactica: Space Alert (1978), a very primitive LED game that counts as an electronic game, and possibly counts as a video game depending on your own definition of the medium. - Mattel's
Star Trek: Phaser Strike for the Microvision (1979), one of the very first LCD/LSI systems. - If you go outside of pure entertainement IP and consider sports licenses in the mix, Mattel's sports games for the Intellivision (1979) also used the official licenses from the MLB, NFL and NBA etc. for their US versions. So, yeah, Mattel was on top of this whole licensing
gesheft before everyone else. - Now, for something a bit closer to what I had in mind, it seems the right answer would be John Dunn‘s
Superman (1979) for the Atari 2600. Although the timing makes it likely that the game takes inspiration from Richard Donner’s movie, the promotional art and copyrights indicate this is technically a licensed game of the originalcomics series.
Regarding arcade games, however, nothing seems to predate Lupin III? It seems there was actually a Superman arcade game also in the works at Atari in the late 70s, but it never materialized (they released a pinball machine instead). Somewhat notoriously, the Jaws game from Bushnell could not get the rights to the actual Jaws. You can find other “shrugging lawyer” moments like this around the 1977 to 1980 range. Indy 500 on the Atari 2600 apparently never bothered with licensing the race track's namesake. There was a Rocky boxing game released in Japanese arcades that never took the time to call Silvester Stallone either. Also, tons of games “heavily inspired” by Star Wars and King Kong game, rather famously in some cases heh? But the first official video game releases for both IPs only came out in 1982.
In Japan, I could not find any earlier anime game than this Lupin III, in the arcades or otherwise. There is a Wagaseishun no Arcadia shoot‘em up which is wrongly credited as released in 1980 on the Internet. This does not make sense because, well, the Wagaseishun no Arcadia movie is from 1982, and is rightly dated as such on the game's copyright. The confusion probably comes from the fact this game is a quasi-straight conversion of Sigma’s earlier New York, New York - a relatively popular arcade shoot'em up from 1980 which is let me hose you down now unfortunately not at all about Liza Minnelli flying through space and shooting Aliens with vocal laser beams. Alas.
It‘s not like Taito themselves pursued this licensing idea all that much either. The only other Taito arcade machine released around that time that made use of an existing IP was actually another Matsumoto Reiji’s joint, Chibikko Series Vol.3 Ginga Tetsudō 999 (so, Galaxy Express 999). However, various factors exclude this cabinet from contention. Firstly, it was released way after Lupin III, around the end of the year 1980, according to the different issues of Game Machine released that year. Secondly, it's not really a game per say, and more a sort of electronic kamishibai to occupy kids for about 10-15 minutes while the parents are shopping. I also checked the earlier two installments of the Chibikko series and they used the tales of Momotarō and Songokū respectively, and did not seem based on existing anime adaptations of these two tales.
I also checked the LCD/LSI games of the era. Epoch and Bandai would seem like obvious candidates for early licensed electronic games, but they focussed most of their early outputs on Space Invaders and Galaxian clones. It would seem nobody beat Nintendo to the punch with their Popeye game in 1981. A few weeks after Popeye, Bandai released the first of many Gundam-licensed LSI games. I cannot tell for sure if Gundam was the first anime game of 1981 on LSI because Popy, Bandai and later Epoch started releasing a shitload of LCD games based on anime IPs from 1981. But nothing as early as 1980, in any case.
So there you go. That‘s where I am at, for now: Lupin III is almost certainly the first “anime game” in history, and also quite possibly the very first arcade game based on some external media property. Feel free to correct or complete these impressions! Also, was this a question that needed answering? I… I don’t think so? I never bothered to think about it before, personally. But the copyright date casually dropped by Taito a few hours ago really threw me off.
Also, it seems like a pretty cool game? Like, maybe this game should be a bigger deal, for a bunch of reasons?
It looks and sound great for a 1980 game, for sure. You would have heard it by now if, you poor soul, had left the Replay Burners video running while you were scrolling down this neverending post, but the BGM even uses the famous opening theme of Lupin The 3rd ; you can hear it in the replay above at 9m40s once Lupin has managed to steal all eight money bags. That alone probably makes the game one of the best arcade soundtracks until that point, and it used officially licensed music for once! Taito's page on the Egret II Mini makes a point to mention that you will hear the track in the emulated version, as well.
Speaking of which, I wonder how they will emulate the sound. Such old arcade machines used samples in weirdass dedicated sound chips, not exactly in the way that we imagine traditional sound chips from video games in the 80s. In fact, the ROM in the Replay Burners playthrough above cheats with added sound samples, as noted in the description of the video. I guess whoever emulates this thing for Taito (Zuiki ? M2? Kayac?) has access to a reference PCB in order to check out and record the original sounds.
Which gets me to my last point. I wonder who developped this game at (or for) Taito, back in 1980? GameStaff@Wiki does not go that far back, unfortunately. I don't think @gdri has anything about this specific game in their data, either.
I am pretty sure Nishikado Tomohiro (Space Invaders) is not involved, since we now have a pretty exhaustively documented history of his work at Taito. He was busy with Balloon Bomber around the same time. What gets me is that the animation and sprite artistry of Lupin III are pretty advanced for a 1980‘s game, especially a game running on a Midway 8080 (similar PCB as Space Invaders). The animation is way less jerky than the noodlearms-esque movements of Space Invaders and Steel Worker, for instance. The color arrangement is also pretty top notch. It’s way behind the sheer technical performance of something concurrent like SNK's Sasuke Vs. Commander (running on Z80) for instance, but the artistry of the developers at Taito make it look like it could compete with that new generation of early Z80 and M6502 games that will define the Japanese video game boom of the early 80s.
The Taito game it reminds me the most of is Elevator Action (1983). The animations are somewhat similar (but obviously improved by beefier hardware), the game has a familiar infiltration logic strenghtened by action elements, and Lupin III shares Elevator Action's love for dashing introductions: Lupin gets down the top floor of the building from a grappling hook tied to an helicopter, which is reminiscent of both the agent's entrance in Elevator Action and the first stage's intro in Elevator Action Returns. (All three games are in the Egret II Mini, by the way.)
We barely know the original Elevator Action‘s development team either, but we do know Imamura Yoshio, one of the founders of Zuntata, was its composer. Maybe he would remember if the Elevator Action team had a connection to the Lupin III’s development team. Other people that might know are obviously Nishikado (who seems quite open to discuss the past) and Kamei Michiyuki, another veteran developer already present during the Space Invaders era. All three are still alive in 2021 knocks on wood so my guess is the best way to know would be to ask one of them. I am also really curious who got the idea and the contacts to license the TV series (and why this specific TV series) for the game, in the first place! It was right at the peak of Lupin‘s popularity, just after the second series and the release of the Cagliostro movie. Hopefully, such questions might be answered during the various promotional interviews set between now and the Egret II Mini’s release in March 2022.
Anyway, in case I don't come back so soon or until March 2022 myself, have a good summer everybody.
