Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 136)

Trigger Happy
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successfully reimagined as videogame forms. And the
lure of the Star Wars franchise is such that every
console and computer-game platform since then has
been home to a game based on the film. They have
covered nearly every conceivable genre: platform, 3D
shooting, role-playing—even, lamentably, beat-’emup,
in Masters of Teras Kasi for the PlayStation.
One of the most seminal modern influences, not just
on videogames but on all forms of science fiction, is the
film Blade Runner. This is partly due to aesthetic
considerations—the popular style of futuristic
technoir— but for videogames it has also had, until the
current generation of extremely powerful machines, a
technological payoff. For the vision of neon-soaked
streets at night in a skyscraper-studded, futuristic
Tokyo was particularly amenable to videogames’
limited powers of representation. The nighttime setting
meant the processor had less to draw, could fill large
areas of the scene with black; neon lighting is gaudy
and luminous in a way that computer graphics can
easily imitate; and the absence of vegetation freed the
machine from the very processor-hungry task of
creating a convincing tree with hundreds of leaves and
different shades of green. A game such as G-Police,
one of the most blatant videogame homages to the