Editorials Reviews Previews Essays Worth Playing

Opinions

Opinions 10 March 2016, 15:28

author: Darius Matusiak

New York in video games – how has The City That Never Sleeps changed?

The release of Tom Clancy’s The Division reminded us that – much like in the movie industry – New York has often been the background of video games. What changes can we notice in the visuals over the years, and which games precisely are we talking about?

Table of Contents

New York is often called by its nickname – The Big Apple. The term was first used by a sport journalist, John J. Fitz Gerald, when he was commenting a horse race. The name became widely used, and because of the huge advertising campaign by the NY town hall, “Big Apple” became a synonym to the name “New York”.

New York, with its Statue of Liberty welcoming the immigrants, once was the gateway to the United States. Over the years, it became the American capital of culture and entertainment, leaving the stern Washington to the politicians. The vibrant city is among the most recognizable places on Earth, gathering an immense variety of cultures, nationalities, and religions – it’s a true capital of the world. The districts of New York and it’s key locations are familiar to most of us. For the most part it’s due to Hollywood’s filmmakers – they really like to use the city as a setting. Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens have been featured in a countless number of films and series. People are looking for love, career or fame, they live ordinary lives or try to build greater or smaller gangs and mafias in the city of New York. NY on the silver screen has also witnessed many a cataclysm: destruction of the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Station, or Times Square by enormous monsters, alien invasions, asteroid impacts, earthquakes, epidemics... you name it. As we all know, developers are frequently inspired by films, so before long, New York City was also part of the virtual reality. After fantastical and extraterrestrial lands, New York is probably the third most popular setting for video games; with over 130 titles it leaves other cities like Los Angeles or London far behind. Needles to say, we aren’t going for a journey through a hundred titles – we will just focus on the visual evolution of the city over thirty years, answer which genres use it most often, and recall the most notable games with the metropolis as the background.

 New York City: The Big Apple and the first digital Empire State Building (right-hand side) - 2016-03-10
New York City: The Big Apple and the first digital Empire State Building (right-hand side)

In the beginning there was darkness

Literally! Emptiness and black background was the first impression of New York in video games (or the second, if we count Spider-Man climbing on NYC’s skyscrapers a year earlier). This statement might have been a bit far-fetched, but the fact remains that in 1983 Mario Bros. came out, and the main characters – the famous plumbers, Mario and Luigi – in spite of being invented in Japan, were New Yorkers of Italian origin, born in Brooklyn. Before they settled for good in the land of princesses and gigantic mushrooms, they were saving their city from an invasion of monsters in the municipal sewers of the game that met with lukewarm reactions. We came out from the underground onto the streets of Manhattan only a year later, in an Atari 800 title, called (wait for it) – New York City: The Great Apple. It would suffice to say that we received a game that was very similar to the first Grand Theft Auto in terms of gameplay as early as 1984, with the difference being the antagonist – in this case, it was the city itself. Seeing the street grid from above, we were able to travel by car, metro, or on foot, and visit places like the UN headquarters, the Empire State Building, Grant’s Tomb, and Central Park. The vehicles had a limited amount of fuel, the traffic would hamper our progress, the cars could run us over, and it had its dose of mini-games – a true city-survival, in which we had to make it through seven days of such life. In the same year, jumping on the bandwagon of the movie of the same title, Ghostbusters by Activision came out, with their rather casual interpretation of Manhattan’s center.

A couple of dozen Spider-Man games deserve their own feature. Let’s just say that the adventures of the superhero are tightly bond with NYC, and the city made its first appearance in 1982, when he was climbing skyscrapers in an Atari game. The most visually stunning New York can be witnessed in the latest games of The Amazing Spider-Man series, although the overall ratings of the game are rather mediocre. The open areas of the metropolis have some flagrant graphical simplifications, but hell – not every game gives us the chance of swinging past skyscrapers.

Darius Matusiak

Darius Matusiak

Graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Journalism. He started writing about games in 2013 on his blog on gameplay.pl, from where he quickly moved to the Reviews and Editorials department of Gamepressure. Sometimes he also writes about movies and technology. A gamer since the heyday of Amiga. Always a fan of races, realistic simulators and military shooters, as well as games with an engaging plot or exceptional artistic style. In his free time, he teaches how to fly in modern combat fighter simulators on his own page called Szkola Latania. A huge fan of arranging his workstation in the "minimal desk setup" style, hardware novelties and cats.

more

See/Add Comments