Profile on Midway Games

writer Jonathan Strickland flawless victory. Nice. Yeah, we just said that we were going to do a profile not on a person, but on a company, a company that has ceased to be and is sort of rung up the curtain and joined the choir invisible well, ceased to be as an independent company. Yeah, we're talking about Midway Games, and Midway Games has a special place in my heart because they actually published one of my favorite video games

of all time. Gee, which one would that be? You? Well, I mean you might two are three titles going through your head? Yeah, but considering your quote, no, it is not that one. It's not Moral Kombat. Really, that's probably probably the most famous title that that Midway published, but it is not the title that's my favorite. Okay, which one is your favorite? Spy Hunter? That's mine too? Now you got the you got the Peter Gun theme, and you've got the cool spy car with guns and stuff.

And I mean, I like the old old classic Spy Hunter game. We're we're talking the one that that you look down on top of the car, not the remake where you're in the car. That was kind of fun too, Yeah, but it was the the overhead view and especially the ones that had the cockpit style console, so you were sitting down and you were you know, completely enveloped, and you just had that Peter Gun theme playing and glorious,

glorious low fidelity. So um. But yes, the Midway Games has sadly fallen on hard times to the point where the company is no more than just a name really at this point. Rum But let's let's kind of set the whole story here. So, going way back into the sixties, Midway was a company that was developing and producing equipment for amusement parks and fair grounds. So the name made sense, the Midway. That was the area of a carnival where you would find all the games, right so that that

you know, and rides as well, that's the Midway. So Midway starts off developing various games for amusement parks. And in nineteen sixty nine, uh, they were purchased by another company that became known for producing lots of games and amusements, Bally. Now, for those of you who have listened to our pinball podcast, you may have heard us talk about Bally actually Midway as well, because both companies did produce pinball machines, and so that back then that's pretty much what the coin

operated divisions of these companies were concentrating on producing pinball machines. Well, they didn't have video games at that point. Yes, this credates video games really not. That didn't exist on an oscillator in a lab, right, So eventually video games do start to emerge. People begin to play with this idea, and Midway published a couple but the first one of any real note that they published was in nineteen seventy

eight and it was a Biggie UM. Now, before before this they had made one of their probably one of the earliest and biggest blenders. They turned down the opportunity to publish a certain video game that became synonymous with the early early early days of video games. It was a creation of a Mr Nolan Bushnell. You know what I'm talking about Chuck E Cheese Pong Oh that the

earlier creation, yes Pong So Pong was. They had the opportunity to publish Pong Y they they turned it down, but they did not turn down the opportunity to publish a video game from a Japanese company called Tito called Space Invaders. Bom Bom Bom Bom bom. You this is our sad attempt at recreating the space and I'll improve my fully technique. Maybe we can get Liz to throw in like a a just an electronic beap here and there for this podcast. So Space Invaders comes out in

ninety eight. Now, for those of you younger listeners who never played or saw Space Invaders, or maybe you've only seen it in one of those are acades where they have like the Classic console where it has five or six different games and then Space Invaders is one of them, you may not realize that this was an enormous hit in the video game world. I mean, you can't really

understate how big this was. Yeah, I mean seven years old, and you know, I remember Space Invaders machines being at skating rinks and people used to roller skate in the seventies and pizza part owners. This was before inline skating. Yeah, people still quad skate, but it wasn't you know at that time, that was a big thing to do. And there were you know, any place where you might find a video game, because they really didn't have video or kids.

I never really saw one until the eighties. Yeah, I remember seeing them in bars because that's where my dad would leave me. You go next door to right, Just tell the people on side, look after look after this kid, will you. I'm just kidding. My dad never ever left me in a bar. Mom, that's a different story. But anyway, so no, no, my parents are fantastic. Did they they are? But did they listen to the podcast? I don't know

from them. I'll find out, um So at any rate, the yeah, The Space Invaders was in lots of these different little locations. One of the reasons why it was such a huge hit was introduced a new concept into video games that did not exist at that point. There was no way to win Space Invaders, right, There was no ending. You would just keep playing. You would get a new wave of enemies and you would fight them off, and then you get another wave, and it would keep

going until you were finally lost your last life. What it did have was a high score. Yes, so you could put your initials in and have the high score on that console. And this was a new concept back in so people began to compete with each other to try and get that high score. And it meant that

people are spending more money playing these games. I mean the games really sticky, right, because you would you would establish your score and then you would have to defend it because if someone else beat your score, well, then you'd have to go back and try and beat their score so you could get it again. Um and yeah, that that ended up being a huge hit. Uh. The next three big games that Midway released back in the early early eighties were Defender, where you would shoot aliens

and try to defend your human colony against them. There was Robotron eighty four. So Robotron introduced a new control system and had two joysticks. The left one you would use to move your character with right when you would use to control your guns. Actually there were eight way joysticks. Right you would direct your your laser fire using the right joystick. And this this setup actually served as a model that ended up being used in other games in

the future, including Smash TV and Total Carnage. Yes, um, that'll come into play a little bit later. The third game is probably the most famous video game of all time, arguably the most famous video game of all time. And you could maybe make a case for Pond or Space Invaders, but it would be pac Man. Yes. I don't think any of the others spawned a whole album of music, a dance and a cartoon an Yeah. Yeah, so Pacman was. There's just really no way of saying how big it was.

It was enormous. If you were growing up in the eighties, you knew what pac Man was. Yes, and of course pac Man in it was a licensed from Namco, who stole owns the right right to it. Yeah, But Midway didn't necessarily develop these games. Midway was the American and European carrier the publisher of these games, so that's an

important distinction. Now, Midway has of course developed and published its own games as well, but these early successes are are mainly Midway licensing the titles from other companies and then publishing them under the Midway name. Uh, which still makes it quite a bit of money. Oh yes, yes, yes.

So then in the pinball divisions, of Bally and Midway officially merged becomes Bally Midway Manufacturing Company, and five years later they were published by another Midway was published by another big electronics company, one that also had its name on several pinball machines, Williams Williams Electronics. We talked about them quite a bit in our So, yeah, Bally, Williams, Midway. These names have always been big, and you know, you start to see how they kind of mesh and merge

throughout the years. So in eight that's when Williams Electronics purchases Midway, and in one Williams starts to incorporate its own gaming division with Midways Gaming Division, so they're not just you know, it's not just a subsidiary company. They're actually merging together. The first game that they produce is Total Carnage, which I mentioned earlier. Okay, that's a sequel to Smash TV, which came out under the Williams name.

Total Carnage was the product of both Williams and Midway working together, and there were two developers who worked on Total Carnage who also became famous later on for the Mortal Kombat games. That's Ed Boone and John Tobias noob cibot. That only makes sense if you've played some of the Mortal Kombay games. But yeah, they both worked on Total Carnage Ed Boone actually did a voice for it and

Tobias did some of the art for it. And uh then in that's when Mortal Kombat actually launches, and you could say that this game was also a hit, maybe just slightly. Yeah, another big, big hit, huge controversy on this game because it was very very gory, very violent, lots of blood. I mean, you have a you have a game where after you finished defeating your opponent, you can, if you know the right sequence of joystick and button moves, uh,

finish him with a fatality. And the fatalities although really, when you look back at those early fatalities and really all the fatalities in the Mortal Kombat franchise, they're over the top and to the point where I think of them as silly. The first time you see it, you might be like, Wow, that's cool that guy grabbed the other guy by the head and ripped out his entire spine.

But really, when you watch it, like for the fourth or fifth time, you're like, yeah, that's kind of stupid, but I mean it was cool at the time, and it was and it was a neat idea, and it also made that game very sticky because everyone wanted to learn not just how to play each character, because each character's moves were different and the combinations you had to

use were different. They need to learn each character's fatality, and as the game series goes on, they introduced more fatalities so that each character had more than one um and they had different flavors, not just the fatalities, but things like the bability where you would turn into a little baby, or the friendship where you would, instead of killing your opponent, make them feel better by perhaps presenting

them with some flowers. Um, but they had, you know, or animality or yeah, I guess it had to be animal itty because the other alternative would have been really unfortunate um animality, where you would turn into an animal and then disable your opponent that way. I think Chris just got my joke. I am I'm pretending not to listen, okay, Um so yes. Several sequels follow the Mortal Kombat series. Right around that same time, Midway released one of the

biggest arcade games ever in terms of earnings NBA Jam. No, NBA Jam, I actually enjoyed playing NBA JAM. I don't typically like playing sports games. NBA Jam, of course, being a basketball game, it's a two on two basketball games. I'm not big on sports games in general. I'm not a big sports fan. I'm not particularly good at sports games. But NBA Jam was an arcade ish sports game, and that the the the emphasis was not on accuracy by any means. It was on outlandishness and and fun gameplay,

fun being of course of a subjective term. Okay, if I get what you're saying here, what you're saying is it wasn't necessarily realistic, not at all. It was intended to be amusing. I mean, something that amuses you and keep keeps you going and you're enjoying yourself. But it's not necessarily the physics are necessarily exactly accurate, like, for example, the difference in uh, you know, something like Grand Turismo being a realistic car game, which is not midway, you

know it's not. But I'm saying burnout, burnout exactly where the point is justiculous run into things, and you know, ridiculous in a good way. By the way, so don't don't yell at Both are good games, but they're different because the point is not burnout is not to be hyper realistic, it's to just you know, it's it's a simplified version of the game that's just there for you to have fun with. Right. So NBAHM was sort of like that. Yeah, And and it was a four player game.

Up to four people could play, so one per character often did arcades that I would go to. It was always very, very popular and and that's how these machines earned so much money so quickly because it was usually an expensible one to play, and you had four people playing it once, so you're earning a realm maybe like up to four dollars of play, and everyone's eager to

play it. So Yeah, that one was a huge hit for Midway financially, um, and also served the basis of other sports games that they released later on that had kind of followed kind of a similar philosophy, things like a NHL two on two and NBA Ballers and NFL Blitz, which are more arcades style sports games. Um. The next thing I want to talk about was that Midway in the in the early mid nineties purchased another big big name in gaming. I s Atari Games. Yeah, Atari has

We need to do it. We need to do a podcast on Attariya because if tari has had several lives, Yes, Atari has split and reformed and split and died and been reborn, purchased and stuff. It's actually a very complex thing to talk about. So Midway purchased one of the companies called Atari Games. I think, I think, um, if I'm not mistaken, they're we're talking about the arcade version. Yeah, yeah,

because has Ro Interactive owned the other Atari. In fact, Midway not just didn't just purchase Atari Games, but they renamed it. They eventually renamed it Midway Games West because they wanted to avoid the confusion of the other Atari Games, which was owned by by Hasbro. Uh. And then they produced some games through their like a WrestleMania the arcade game WrestleMania Killer Instinct, which that was huge when I was in college, and that was that was an older

game when I was in college. It wasn't then just come out. But um, well some of these things are timeless. You know, there's still new versions of pac Man being introduced, and yeah, you know, people still love playing it. This is true Rampage World Tour. That was another game. Used to love Rampage. Yeah, this one was one of the sequels, not not the original Rampage. Um. And then the Midway decided to branch out, not just making arcade and console games.

Really they were still focused on arcade games at this time. UM, So they tried something new. They financed and released a film of one of their properties. It was not Pac Man, it was not. It was Mortal Kombat. Yes it was. And Paul W. S Anderson, not Paul wes Anderson, which is confusing enough, was the director. And the film ended up meeting with some success. Yeah, quite a bit. Actually I've never seen it. I know that shocktiondn't see Mortal Kombat.

I was never a fan of the game. I've never enjoyed really the fighting games like Street Fighter and uh, which is not Midway. As a matter of fact, Mortal Kombat was supposed to be the competitor to the Street Fighter. But just as Teken is in a way an answer to Street Fighter would say, um but yeah, I mean I've never been so I wasn't really interested in that. But yeah, I do remember meeting with some success, although I remember people saying that it was sort of a

silly movie. Um, okay, Mortal Kombat was awesome. Uh and it once again helped to cast us for Lambert and a character whose nationality is totally not the same as the actors. Yeah, which was awesome. I mean we're talking about the same actor who was We've got We've got a is Lambert French or Belgian? I can't remember. He's French and um and he was cast, of course as the Scottish Highlander in the Highlander movies, when you had the real Scott being an Egyptian character which going under

a Spanish name that's neither here nor there. Obviously I'm getting off track with Highlander. But yeah, and it's okay. Keep so you're looking up to see if he's French or Belgian. Um So in Mortal Kombat he played Raid in the the Japanese Storm. God, you're not going to enjoy this. He's American. Lambert is wow. Interesting morning, great Neck Long Island, New York, USA. According to IMDb, well, I was just trying to deport him. Um but anyway,

here he is here. He is playing various roles like you, Oh, I see what you're saying. Because his hiscording again. According to IMDb, he uh he was. He left the United States when he was two years old. His dad was a U N diplomat and so he uh he went to school in Switzerland. Switzerland. See now that explains the accent. Yes, yes, that would be the French. And it might be why he's uh, you know, he's so neutral when it comes to being. That must be why they can cast him

as any any nationality at any rate. So he played rate and yeah. The movie met with some success and in fact got to the point where Midway was kind of getting a little confident about their their abilities to enter various forms of entertainment, including the movies. So they made a sequel, Moral Kombat Annihiliation, which did not meet with success. Uh thirty five million dollar box office worldwide, not good. So that was a that was kind of

a flop. They decided to get out of that. There there's been talk of another Mortal Kombat movie, and in fact, you know, if you've been on YouTube in the last year or so, actually the last couple of months, um, you may have seen the the promo kind of uh sort of a test for another Mortal Kombat movie. But in this case, it's it's really it's not even a preview. It's just kind of a a a real to show investors to see if you can get money to actually

film a full feature length movie. So we may eventually see another Mortal Kombat movie, even though Midway itself is not really uh its name is probably not going to be on that anymore. Well, I think we haven't gotten to the very end of this, but I had the feeling that Midway's current owner will be able to do something with that, probably if they wanting there, considering there right their pockets. So Midway becomes a fully independent company. It splits off from w m S, which was the

Williams Williams Electronics. Yeah, Williams Midway Company, So Midway becomes its own company again in um and release is that same year releases Moral Come at Four. So, like the various games have been coming up, Moral Come at Four does not get a huge amount of positive reviews. It was the first one that kind of made it a three D game as opposed to a two D game, and that's when we discovered that people kind of like things to be the way they always were. Funny that

so in John Tobias leaves Midway. Um again, he was one of the two guys who brought the Mortal Kombat series to Midway. Um and he uh, he goes off to found his own studio, studio Gigante or Hunt. I'm gonna get blister mail for that. I'm so sorry. Anyway, his studio creates a Tao fing in a couple of other games, but it does not last. It closes in two thousand five. So sad story for Tobias there, and that his his efforts ultimately fail. In two thousand that's

when they Midway renames Atari Games to to Midway Games West. Um. Two thousand one, they have a lawsuit begins between Midway and Pandemic Studios, which have been developing games for Midway at that point. Um, that was not pretty. And two thousand three, Uh, that's when Midway closes Midway Games West. Yes, and I have information that suggests that, um, the coin operated video game business was sold off in two thousand one, Yeah,

to to have Controls Incorporated. Yeah that yes, so they at that point the arcade business is really pretty much gone. By two thousand one, you don't have that many arcades anymore. You've got a few places like David Busters. You've got a few independent arcades, and you've got some student centers at various universities, but really the days of the old arcade in the in the mall are pretty much over.

Kind of ironic considering the home console bust in the eighties, right that it recovered so significantly that it is essentially replaced going out to them. All home consoles playing game eventually cannibalized the arcade industry, just as they were threatening to do when they first appeared in the early early eighties, late seventies, early eighties. Massive come back there. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting to see that cycle. So two thousand three, Midway closes Midway Games West and opens a

San Diego studio. But don't get too attached to it. Uh So, as they purchased, they start they start purchasing other companies, including one called Surreal Software, which released some games like The Suffering. I've actually played The Suffering, which is a pretty intense game for the Xbox. Um it maybe for other platforms as well, but I played it

on the Xbox. Then in two thousand five they sign a deal with Cartoon Network to create some games based on the adult Swim lineup of programs, and then uh, in late two thousand five, Midway shuts down the Australia studio and the San Diego studio. So yeah, two thousand three they opened the San Diego studio. Two thousand five they close it. Uh. They also in two thousand five by another studio called rat Bag Games, which makes a phenomenal title based on the Dukes of Hazzard movie, which

is about as good as you expect. I heard uh not so positive things from the fans around the rat Bag. Here. Here's a position. Here's a rule of thumb. Rule of thumb is that video games based upon television shows, movies, comic books, and cartoons tend to not be very good. Well, there are notable exceptions. Midway had had released other games related to the movies and TV shows, such as Tron and Discs of Tron, which were awesome. I enjoyed them very much, both of them. Like I said, there are

notable options. There are certain games that are based on these properties, these kind of properties that are amazing. But for every amazing game you get, you get ten E t s or Superman in sixty four. No, frankly, I think there's only one that we should be thankful. So that is particularly awful. So two thousand and eight, we're

jumping ahead a bit here. But Midway. Midway has been suffering, Okay, they've they've not been breaking in the revenue to be able to pay off the loans that the company has taken in order to stay in business. And those loans have started to really accumulate. Um. By two thousand and eight, they start to They shut down a Los Angeles office, they move the operations back to San Diego. They shut down the Austin office, which was developing some pretty cool

games at the time. I remember I had friends in Texas at the time and they were very upset. Um I no longer have those friends. In December of two thousand eight, uh, the holding eight seven interest in the company sells it off. Sumner Redstone. You may be familiar with that name. Yes I am, Yeah, are you Redstone? That's a pretty famous name. If you're if you pay attention to media at all, you're probably familiar with some your Redstone huge many many, many, many many media property

things like CBS. Um So, Redstone sells his controlling interest. He had eight seven percent of the ownership of that company, and he sells it to an investor named Mark Thomas, and he sells it for one hundred thousand dollars. And think about this for a minute. Guys. This is the company that brought Pacman to America and it's essentially being the ownership of this company more or less is being sold for a hundred grand. That that makes a statement. Yeah,

that's how the mighty have fallen, is might be that statement. Now, he didn't have much confidence it was going to improve, and only that, but also we should also point out or I'll point out that, um, well, the company at that point had over two million dollars in debt. Okay, so just Midway alone had two hundred million dollars in debt.

But Sumner Redstone had bigger problems to worry about because the parent company that owned Midway at the time was or the parent company that Sumner worked through in order to own this an ownership. This is really complicated when we get into this. We need we need this working. Um But the parent company was called National Amusements. It had one point six billion with a B dollars in debt.

So Redstone had some big problems to worry about, and so getting this other debt filled property off his hands was probably seen as a quite the boone, so to speak, not the ed boon, but the boon. So he sells it to Mark Thomas. Now and two thousand nine February of two thousand nine, Midway declares bankruptcy. Um. And then later on that year is purchased by Warner Brothers for

a thirty three million dollars. Yes so, and and Warner Brothers closes the the corporate headquarters of Midway, which was located in Chicago. Um, that office closes. Uh. That was kind of like the end of an era because that was really the heart of Midway. Uh. The company really kind of doesn't exist anymore. Has been folded into the Warner Brothers Interactive Division for video games. Right. The people who were developing properties for it are basically doing so

now under Warner Brothers name. And we we should be specific. Warner Brothers only purchased certain intellectual property from Midway. Other parts of Midway were sold off to other companies, and some of them just shut down because no one bought them. Uh. The San Diego one shut down, Newcastle shut down. Um, so it's not it's not that Midway now belongs to Ner Brothers. It's certain properties of Midway belonged to Warner Brothers,

most notably the Mortal Kombat franchise. UM. But like NBA Jam went to a different company, and I don't remember who it was, but I know it was not Warner Brothers, Um e A. I think it went to e A. I think they're producing NBA Jam for the week. So I had no idea. Yeah, I saw that E three. I was trying to remember as like, wait, it was the really big loud booth, which one was that it was e A. So yeah, the the company is pretty

much no more. It what remains of the company. The people who worked for the company are either working for Warner Brothers or some other uh studio, or they're sadly looking for work. Um. It's really kind of a tragic tale because you think about some of the games they released, like the you know, like pac Man, Defenders, Spy Hunter, the Moral Kombat series, NBA Jam. You think about these games and you're like, Wow, this company really made some

blockbuster games. But it just shows that that, you know, the the hard times when they hit the video game industry really hit Midway hard. It did not make the transition to console games fast enough or effectively enough, and I would say the combination of some poorly timed purchases and some less than stellar games really did the men. And plus backing movies like Mortal Kombat Annihilation probably didn't help.

So you told us what your favorite is. Do you have a sleeper favorite one that wasn't a big hit that you really enjoyed. I'd have to look at the entire you know what. I'd have to look at the entire library of Midway games to tell you, and I did not do that, so I can't really well, I you know, there are lists out there, and you know, I'm not sure how authentic they are. I'm pretty sure they're fairly accurate. But I do have a couple because I was I didn't realize that Tron was a Midway game.

Tron's way up there. That was always a great game, but I always enjoyed UM. Actually discovered this one in college, Trog, which was really fun and very cartoony, pack An esque game where you played a caveman. I vaguely remember Trog. Actually, no, you played it a dinosaur running from a caveman. Which is very, very funny game. I underst enjoyed it and Tapper root Beer Tapper, you know, for the different you know, I may not be in the the bar. I had root Beer Tapper for the Apple to E. I really

enjoyed that that. As far as I can tell now, I haven't done any any research on this at all, but I'm pretty sure that that game may have launched the whole time management thing which is so big and casual games with the diner dash and all the other dashes and you know, move stuff over here. You better hurry or you're gonna get you know, your customers are

gonna leave or whatever. That was the first time management game I saw, and I played that in you know high school, actually junior high school, well midway games, we hardly knew ye rest in peace, Uh, your games shall live on. And there are these companies are going to continue, Various companies are going to come to the franchises. There's going to be a new moral combat game coming out

very soon. I actually got to see a demo of that at the three and it was it was just as gloriously violent, over the top ridiculous as all the other Moral combat Once it actually goes back to the philosophy of the original moral combat game. So I think fans will be pleased. And uh, well, that'll wrap this

discussion of Midway Games up. We'll probably do profiles and other companies in the future, and not just video game companies, but other electronics companies sure, um and and computer companies, and so we're gonna wrap this up. If you have any topic suggestions that there's a particular company you would like us to talk about, write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.

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