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The Multimedia "Revolution"

As the '90s began, the NES was on the wane, 16-bit systems were on the rise, and basically everyone agrees it was a great time for gaming. PC gamers had a lot of variety of choose from, and for console gamers it was time for Klax. A dark cloud was on the horizon, though, and its name was "multimedia." Games would change, its proponents promised. The amazing capacity and audio fidelity of the CD-ROM would pave the way to a magical golden future, one in which families would huddle around their Multimedia PCs each night to expand their horizons with a full-motion video (FMV) article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then, perhaps, enjoy some tracks from the latest Janet Jackson album … all on their PC!

That was the ideal. The reality of multimedia was not quite as spectacular, life-changing, or life-affirming. While multimedia was supposed to revolutionize human interactions with information, it really just created tons of postage-stamped sized AVIs that propagated around the world on little-used discs that came with peoples' computers.

Rare file photo of a multimedia device being primed for operation.

Console makers, meanwhile, weren't sure what to make of it all. In 1989, the TurboGrafx became the first U.S. console to have a CD-ROM drive, but the developers mostly used it for pumping up the cinematics and music in traditional gaming titles, not offering new "multimedia experiences." This sounds quite sensible and logical now, but went against the conventional wisdom of the time. In stark contrast to this reasonable approach were machines like Philips' ill-fated CD-i, a $1400 monstrosity from 1991 that promised to bring the future of multimedia to the living room. Ironically enough, gaming applications would become ever more prevalent on the pathetically underpowered CD-i as popular interest in the multimedia movement waned. Of course, many of these games were "interactive" full-motion video drek-fests that did nothing to assuage that $1400 sticker shock.

Not to be left behind, Sega burst onto the scene in late 1992 with its CD-ROM add-on unit for the Genesis. Top "multimedia" applications, like Kris Kross: Make My Video, and the innovative and amusing but gameplay-challenged Night Trap didn't have much in the way of staying power. Multimedia on Sega CD died a swift death, as did Digital Pictures, the misbegotten company that spawned Night Trap and its ilk. The cavalcade of pain continued when the 3DO appeared in October 1993, and wasted precious time trying to set itself up as a multimedia system; Panasonic, the system's main supporter, eventually capitulated and cancelled its follow up, M2. As for computers, what multimedia wasn't, the web became: vast stores of information in a variety of formats all working together.

ferricide: The "multimedia revolution" brings back a lot of memories for me. Sitting in my high school's library, realizing that the CD-ROM drives on the brand-new IBM PCs in the lab were more or less useless as an entertainment source; asking a woman hocking 3DOs with Putt-Putt Joins the Parade what games the system had, and being told, indignantly, that it was nothing so base or crude as a Nintendo product. I remember Philips' desperate attempt to interest people in gaming on CD-i with FMV tripe Burn: Cycle (the commercials on Comedy Central were pretty cool), and Panasonic's over-hyped 3DO Tia Carrere vehicle, The Deadalus Encounter. That did a lot for her career! Those weren't the days.

Ben: Multimedia, at least as pitched in the early '90s, was a joke. A not very funny joke, which cursed my beloved (read: $300) Sega CD system with a legacy of general mediocrity. To this day I can't understand why otherwise sensible companies like Sega poured millions of dollars into FMV game development, otherwise neglecting the wonderful potential of the new CD-ROM based systems. But instead of a ginormous Phantasy Star V with CD audio, we got Tomcat Alley, Corpse Killer, and several discs worth of trash from that oh-so-glamorous multimedia startup company, Rocket Science.

Bitter? Not me. No, not me.

Fargo: The problem is that technology outpaced the thinking behind it. This was the era when "Hollywood" first thought it could revolutionize the gaming industry -- "Now interactive devices can show videos. This is OUR turf!" But the fact is that linear media (like movies) and interactive media (like video games) just don't mix. The result was something that didn't live up to either: short movie clips played in sequence depending on some arbitrary interaction thrown in-between. A lot of companies were built on a promise that was just never going to bear fruit.

I'd point out, though, that Hollywood and gaming are getting back together these days, but they're being smarter about it, playing up the strengths of both mediums. They're taking great characters and making great movies AND games out of them (Spider-Man was pretty good.) And, while Enter The Matrix fell short on gameplay, I think it's a sign of the right relationship movies should have with games: integrated creatively from day one, with lots of little extras to bring a movie world to life in an interactive medium.

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