Carl Sagan’s birthday would have been today. The astronomer is known for many things, but video games? Not really! But he gave the medium some thought, especially when it came to one of his most famous novels, Contact.
The Library of Congress has a bunch of Sagan’s personal documents, including one where he outlines some ideas for a video game version of Contact.
In Sagan’s mind, as shown in a letter from August 1983, the biggest question was “how to design a home video game which would teach a great deal of astronomy in a context as exciting as most violent video games.”
More than 30 years later, I’m not sure we’ve solved that one just yet, Mr. Sagan. Maybe next year’s No Man’s Sky will get us a step closer?
You can read the whole memo below.
Comments
5 responses to “Here’s Carl Sagan’s Pitch For A Contact Video Game”
Contact was such a phenomenal movie.
The end of the second sentence looks like it was subject to some white-out:
“… exciting as most violent video”
Noting the date of the memo, I’m trying to recall if “violent video games” were even a thing back in ’83. Looks like a strange edit to me.
I was thinking the same thing; what was the most violent video game of 1983? Pac-Man…? :-/
83 had Dragons Lair, Ultima 3, Chuck Norris Super Kicks and Spy Hunter. Not exactly graphical power houses of violence and destruction by todays standards, but still based on violence non the less.
It also saw the release of Tapper in arcades, which could be argued as encouraging alcoholism…
And thus it became Root Beer Tapper