Populous

And on the seventh day Bullfrog, one of Britain’s most high-profile development studios, created the god-game genre. And lo, it was good.

Populous arrived onto the Amiga in 1989 and surprised everyone. Up until that point the Amiga’s software had been pretty much run-of-the-mill, but Bullfrog’s effort eclipsed all of these and went on to be converted to almost every single format at the time, really raising the gameplay and depth standards.

They received an Amiga development kit from Commodore by accident. They were applying for a license to develop business software on Commodore’s new machine and received a games development kit in the mail shortly after.  Keeping quiet, they went to work.

Populous was the fruits of their labour, largely the design work of Peter Molyneux, Bullfrog’s head-honcho and media darling.  He later sold Bullfrog to Electronic Arts and eventually formed a new developer called Lionhead.

Bullfrog’s Other Successes: Powermonger, Dungeon Keeper,Magic Carpet, Syndicate and many more.

Populous defined a new genre, the ‘god-game’ which has since been much emulated. The key to the game was that you did not have any direct control over your people, but you could ‘influence’ their actions in certain ways. For instance if you wished to move your population across the map, you simply placed a hill under their houses and formed some attractively flat land nearby. Et Voila! Your little people would stroll across the landscape and set up camp there.

Of course, all this was not without its pitfalls of course. On the other side of the map was a rival god doing very similar things, with his own set of worshippers making him grow more and more powerful.All you had to do was wipe out his followers until he ran out of power and try and preserve yours from the inevitable retaliatory Acts of God that would come your way. Volcanoes, earthquakes, swamps, floods & knights were just some of the arsenal of acts that you had at your disposal.

Get the idea?

Millions of people did and Populous went on to be converted to thirteen different formats, spawned three sequels and brought Bullfrog plenty of mana of their own…

The isometric viewpoint that Populous used is now familiar but at the time it was a radical departure. Populous 2 used the same view, but made the whole game a lot more customisable, you could choose what type of god you would like to be and what powers you wished to specialise in. With more of a Greek feel in comparison to Populous’ medieval look. In Populous 2 you could also develop and master 35 elemental powers; or summon multiple effects at once for devastating effects.

Here’s a snippet from Electronic Art’s bio on Bullfrog.

“The idea of a “god” game was an unheard-of concept in 1987 and therefore commercially unproven. Unbelievably, Populous was rejected by every major software publisher bar one – Electronic Arts®.

Upon its release Populous created a furore – rave reviews and huge sales followed. This response was amplified when the major awards ceremonies were held and quite simply, Populous swept the board. It has become a genuine classic, and since its release in 1989 has been published on 20 different formats.

Worldwide sales of Populous currently top the 3 million mark. As well as creating a whole new genre, Populous is one of the few European developed programs to have attained commercial success in Japan. In fact a Populous tournament was featured on Japanese TV. “