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Emulators and Fantasy Villains: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #2

by Eugen Pfister, Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele. Additional research and editing by Corinne Hirter

GATE (Bright Software 1991 / Apple IIgs) is a Gauntlet-inspired action game that was developed by the Swiss studio Bright Software for the Apple IIgs in 1991, towards the very end of the platform’s lifespan. In this part two of our case study, we analyse the story, audio-visual aesthetics and game mechanics of the  game as a historical source, its reception and conclude our case study.

This is the second part of our two-part case study on the game GATE. You can find the first part here.

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Wanted: Swiss Atari Games

by Beat Suter

The CH-Ludens research project has compiled a corpus of video games from the period 1980–2000 that were either developed in Switzerland or have a close connection to Switzerland. In addition to many other games, this corpus contains a good two dozen Atari games. The Atari games listed are spread across various platforms that emerged during these years and were used for the development and release of console and computer games.

search for atari games
Figure 1: Searching for Atari games from Switzerland on old floppy disks – GameLab ZHdK. Source: Suter

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Curiosity and Computer Stores: Case Study on GATE (Bright Software 1991) #1

by Eugen Pfister, Aurelia Brandenburg, Adrian Demleitner, Arno Görgen, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele. Additional research and editing by Corinne Hirter

At the end of the 1980s, four young people met in the Basel area and started developing a game called GATE for the Apple IIg in their free time. They came together partly through ice skating, a computer store and an early fascination with computers. The result was an unlikely reinterpretation of Gauntlet for the Apple IIgs, unlikely because the computer was already fourteen years old at the time of programming. The game itself even found a publisher, first in France and then in the USA, but it failed to achieve great success.

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What does it mean for a game to be a source?

by Tobias Winnerling

In June 2025, the CH Ludens team had the pleasure to welcome Tobias Winnerling (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf) for a guest lecture at the University of Bern as part of our yearly workshop. This year’s workshop, organized by the Bern team of CH Ludens, focused on historical source criticism and the problems and possibilities of historical sources such as games, gaming magazines, and oral history interviews, and we started with said guest lecture, titled “Digital Games, Digital Born Sources, Discourses and Dispositifs”, and with this blogpost, we are publishing the written version of the first part of this talk.

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All known Swiss C64 Games

by Beat Suter

The research team CH-Ludens specialises in researching Swiss computer games from the 1980s and 1990s. While searching for Commodore C64 games developed in Switzerland, CH-Ludens discovered several interesting titles. Robox (1986), for example, is a graphic adventure game developed by Laro Schatzer and Marc Pilloud (fig. 1).  Adrian Demleitner, PhD candidate of the HKB researched it in depth and made two interviews with the developers. The German-language game features numerous locations, a good parser and challenging puzzles. It was released in 1986 by the German publisher Markt & Technik and is well documented.

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From Zero to Kilo: Status report on the Bern GameLab

by Aurelia Brandenburg, Addrich Mauch, and Kevin Negele

In April 2024, the Bern Team of CH Ludens announced that we were starting to collect gaming magazines  relevant to our research as part of our GameLab, which in turn is a collaboration between the Bern Academy of the Arts and the University of Bern at the Swiss Center for Game Design Studies. Since then, over a year has passed and much has happened. So much that we want to use this opportunity to reflect on the current status of our collection, the challenges we faced in first starting it, and what we have learned from this process so far. This blog post will go over our first steps in the making of the GameLab, our current magazine and game collections and, finally, our visions for the GameLab.

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Gamekultur als Leerstelle in der Geschichte der Schweizer Jugendkulturen?

von Beat Suter

„A Walk on the Wild Side“ hiess ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der Jugendszenen in der Schweiz, das 1997 vom Stapherhaus Lenzburg herausgegeben wurde. Es war eine umfassende Darstellung der Jugendkulturen der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert, die auch in zwei Ausstellungen in Lenzburg und Bern gezeigt wurde. Jugend wurde von den Autoren als Seismograph der Gesellschaft verstanden, die sich herrschenden Normen und Kultur widersetze sowie Aufbruch und innovative Kraft in sich vereine. Das Handbuch versuchte die Geschichte der Jugendszenen als Längsschnitt darzustellen und möglichst breit alle Szenen und Stile zu erfassen. Die Pluralisierung der Jugendkulturen und die individuelle Autonomie standen dem mutigen Unternehmen zwar etwas im Wege, doch das Handbuch leistete gute Arbeit und schaffte eine spannende beinahe vollständige Darstellung der Jugendphänomene und Gegenkulturen in der Schweiz des 20. Jahrhunderts.

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Swiss Listing Games? More listing games from Switzerland wanted!

by Beat Suter

So far, CH-Ludens has only been able to identify and archive just four listing games that were created in Switzerland. All four oft hem were printed as winners in computer magazines and therefore available as printed source code in archives that preserve computer magazines.

These are the games Jagdszene Chicago (1985) by Christoph Cronimund, Cave Flight (1985) by René Straub, Top Tennis (1985) by Bernhard Dalle and Muri (1987) by Markus Wild and Marius Wey.

Of course, in the early 1980s, there were many more “listed games” in Switzerland than just these four. Unfortunately, they were not published anywhere. In response to their monthly calls for submissions, the computer magazines received many listing games from young programmers. But only the best ones were published. Today, a large number of these listing games are considered irrevocably lost. However, it is possible that young programmers of the time still have old floppy disks with their game prototypes from the listing era at home. The CH-Ludens research group would be very interested in these games. We are researching the entire history of Swiss game design up to the year 2000 and would be happy if you could search your old disks and notes for lost “Listing games”. Or maybe you know of a game or two that has been published somewhere that we haven’t found. Please send your information to gamelab.zurich at zhdk.ch.

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Where we stand: Our scientific mid-term report

by the CH Ludens Team

Anyone who has already worked on a scientific project knows that an interim scientific report has to be written for the funding body halfway through the project. This is probably one of the less popular text genres. You are under time pressure and the number of readers is very limited. In most cases, such interim reports are probably only read by two or three employees of the funding body in order to hopefully be approved. This is actually a shame, because we realized that writing the scientific report together was extremely beneficial for our project. On the one hand, it helped us to realize how much we have already achieved and on the other, it pointed out problems (mostly concerning the communication in between four universities) that we could tackle accordingly.

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Eine Box ist nicht nur eine Box: Game Verpackung im Wandel der Zeit

von Beat Suter

Verpackung für Videogames ist obsolet geworden. Heute werden 90% aller Spiele als Daten gestreamt oder übers Internet heruntergeladen. Nur ein kleiner Teil der Videogames erhält noch eine Verpackung und wird in Elektronikläden in die Regale gestellt. Früher war das ganz anders.

Ein Videogame wollte inszeniert sein, es musste durch seine Verpackung Aufmerksamkeit erringen, denn es war in den Läden in grossen Räumen voller Schachteln in Regale eingereiht. Und die potenziellen Spielerinnen und Spieler mussten sich lustvoll und etwas mühsam durch Stapel oder gut sortierte lange Tischreihen wühlen. Die frühen Verpackungen zeigten nicht das Gameplay eines Spiels, sondern vermittelten eine anregende Idee der Spielwelt, eine Inszenierung, die von den Betrachtern Imagination forderte. Professionelle Grafiker entwarfen Covers mit ausdrucksstarken realistischen Helden und Szenen, die weit über die Pixelwelt des Spiels hinausgingen.

In den 1980er und 1990er Jahren hatte die Normierung solcher Boxen noch keinen so durchschlagenden Erfolg. Es gab unterschiedliche Formen von Verpackungen. Die Händler versuchten Normierungen einzuführen und zum Beispiel übergrosse Verpackungen wie die grosse Kaiser Box (1989) des Schweizer Publishers LINEL nicht in ihr Sortiment aufzunehmen, weil sie nicht in die Regale passten. Doch sobald sich ein solches Spiel woanders gut verkaufte, wurde es dann trotzdem aufgenommen. Ein Standard für Verpackungen setzte sich erst nach 2000 so richtig durch mit der Polybox.

Dieser Text entwirft eine Entwicklungslinie der Game Verpackungen über die Jahrzehnte hinweg mit speziellem Blick auf Schweizer Videogames, die im freien Markt erhältlich waren.

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