This Week in Retro: Smash TV (Patreon)

April 1990: Smash TV mines the past for BIG MONEY and BIG PRIZES

by Diamond Feit

I often contemplate how so many of the standards we accept in video games are purely arbitrary. Arcade machines had dials and trackballs before joysticks became the accepted control method for most games. Nintendo used a cross instead of a joystick on the Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong before incorporating it into the Famicom/NES controller, and every other console has had its own version of the "D-pad" ever since. Halo wasn't the first game to use two analog sticks to control first-person movement in a 3D game, but its success has made that method the default for just about every single video game made in the last 20 years.

Using a joystick to move and a button to fire was a well-established format by 1982, when Robotron: 2084 appeared in arcades with its double-joystick controls: One stick moves, one stick shoots. This setup allowed players to run in one direction and fire in another, and it enabled designers Eugene Jarvis and Larry Demar (already well known thanks to their work on Defender) to threaten players with enemies from all directions at once. Robotron: 2084 was a success, but it did not reshape arcade games to permanently replace the fire button with a second stick. Instead, arcade designers continued to experiment with varying control methods as the decade wore on. And so it was that in April of 1990, the joystick/button method was still the industry standard when Smash TV (with Eugene Jarvis on the dev team) revisited the double-joystick well to great effect. 

From a gameplay standpoint, Smash TV and Robotron: 2084 are extremely similar: Both games throw the player into a room and beset them with enemies on all sides. Yet Robotron: 2084, as was the style at the time, is a never-ending gauntlet of "waves" that the player faces until they lose or decide to walk away from the machine. No power-ups, no evil mastermind behind it all. Just shoot until the game ends. Smash TV gives players a map and lets them choose an exit after clearing a room of foes, putting them on a path towards area-ending bosses and an eventual final level that leads to an ending. The only bonus "items" in Robotron: 2084 are other humans who can be rescued for more points, while in Smash TV players can find new weapons for limited enhanced firepower, while the floor is often littered with score-boosting prizes. It's also a co-op game that supports two players at once; Robotron: 2084 only supports alternating competitive play.

Robotron: 2084 does have a story, which involves saving humanity from artificial intelligence in the distant future as told via the attract mode (guess what year it takes place in). Yet the simple graphics and sound effects of the era don't lend much to that narrative. Smash TV, on the other hand, liberally borrows elements from The Running Man (1987), RoboCop (1987), and American Gladiators (TV, first aired in 1989) to tell a tale of a gaudy game show where contestants bet their lives in order to compete for prizes. Unlike Robotron's sterile black background, Smash TV clearly takes place in a giant TV studio with lights in the rafters, technicians monitoring the action in-between in combat chambers, and an obnoxious host who ogles his hostesses while wishing you luck, adding "you'll need it!!" just to twist the knife. The story, setting, and meaning* of Smash TV is not mere window dressing, it's baked into every element of the game and enhances the experience ten-fold. It's a far more compelling experience than its spiritual sequel Total Carnage (1992), which ditches the TV game show angle for a generic war setting.

*While the films that inspired it are clearly satirical, it is unclear if Smash TV shares that worldview or if it is using the "deadly game show" concept uncritically. See also Eugene Jarvis' previous arcade title NARC (1988), which saw players murdering drug dealers by the thousands only to advise players at the end to "contact your local D.E.A. recruiter."

Smash TV was a huge coin-op success which meant it was ported to almost every platform available, from computers to consoles and even a handheld version on Game Gear. Unfortunately, the distinct double-joystick control scheme that makes Smash TV stand out (to say nothing of its inherent value to the gameplay itself—the player is surrounded constantly) was difficult to replicate on systems that only offered standard controllers. Some ports, such as on the NES, allowed players the option of using two NES D-pads to simulate the arcade experience. This meant that the only way to play two-player was to have four NES controllers and a Four Score adapter. The Super Nintendo controller, with its four face buttons, was a closer match to the original arcade controls, but was still a compromise. Only years later, once dual analog sticks had become the standard for home consoles, did Smash TV at home truly resemble Smash TV in the arcade.

Despite the success of Smash TV, or perhaps due to the failure of Total Carnage, the double-joystick control scheme did not catch on in the 1990s—neither in arcades nor at home. However, once every game console implemented twin analog sticks and the digital distribution market expanded to allow for smaller, cheaper games to be sold directly to consumers, there was a sudden boom of what we now call "twin-stick shooters" very much in the vein of Smash TV (and Robotron: 2084). And with the rise of indie developers, there was and continues to be a second boom of this once-rare genre. As a person who attends multiple indie game shows a year (well, until this year ´;︵;`) I assure you I see multiple variations on this theme at every event in both the 2D and 3D variety.

Thirty years later, Smash TV holds up as an exceptional arcade classic thanks in part to its unusual controls, which have now miraculously become commonplace. It wouldn't be fair to call it "ahead of its time", since Robotron: 2084 already existed eight years earlier, but its use of double joysticks and its (ironic?) celebration of 1980's excess certainly makes it feel like a contemporary video game in every sense. If Midway/Williams Electronics still existed, their Twitter mentions would be nothing but people begging for a Switch port... and I'd be right there along with the masses, palms extended, shouting "I'd buy that for a dollar (during the inevitable sale that undervalues all retro games)!"