Multiplayer is considered almost a necessity for most games released today. But long before the world discovered the joys of Counter-Strike or even Combat on the 2600, Atari released the first and only multiplayer vector game, Space Duel. In 1982 it hit arcades across America and quickly developed a small, cult-like following. Today, it may at first glance, appear like a colorful Asteroids clone, but this over simplification wouldn’t do justice to the innovations it introduced, or the pioneer, Owen Rubin, who created it.

Recently, Senior Editor Chris Jensen got a chance to interview the father of multiplayer gaming, and ask him about his experiences during the birth of our multi-billion dollar industry.

Chris Jensen: Take me back to 1976, when you first began working for Atari. I’m curious as to how you landed the job, considering there probably wasn’t a classifieds section seeking videogame developers. How did you hear about the position and what did it take to get hired for making games back then?

Owen Rubin: I was attending UC Berkeley, where a number of the Atari engineers went. They had an interview on campus so I signed up. I had seen a number of games from Atari already, and actually did a PONG like game in a class at UC Berkeley as an optional assignment. Strangely, they interviewed me for a hardware position, but I did not know that. I was then called into an interview at Atari, and again, they asked a LOT of hardware questions. I received a rejection letter, and it said on the letter that I was not a strong enough hardware engineer. When I called and said I was interviewing for a software/firmware position, I was called back, did a few more interviews, and was hired right then. Call it luck. I was one of the first software people they hired.

CJ: So you get a job at Atari, what was the first thing they had you work on?

OR: Damn, I do not recall. I was asked to work on Tank 8 I believe, an 8 player color tank game. I helped on that at first, and then was given a development environment (a Micbug 6800) an ASR-33 teletype, and I started to develop my own game, Cannonball. I developed is ALL by hand (even the assembling of the program) before I knew we had a system to do that.

CJ: How were games pitched back then? Were ideas hatched at upper-management and then allocated to specific programmers, or were you guys allowed to pitch ideas, present a plan and get to work?

OR: Yes! We could pitch ideas, but we also had brain storming sessions and created a book full of ideas as well. If you saw something you liked and it was free, you could work on it (usually.) Major Havoc and Tunnel Hunt were both my ideas. Had the ORIGINAL Tunnel Hunt ever been produced, it would have been a great game, but it was just too expensive.