Editing Area 51 (1995 video game) (section)

== Development ==
[[File:Area51Arcade.jpg|upright|right|thumb|An Area 51 arcade cabinet.]]
In 1994, Atari Games was in desperate need of a hit, having gone years without a single profitable game and losing most of their most talented developers to rival publisher [[Electronic Arts]]. As such, they directed [[Ed Logg]] to create a [[light gun shooter]], which was one of the most popular game genres in arcades at the time.<ref name="RetroPierce">{{cite magazine|last=Drury|first=Paul |date=December 2016 |title=Mark Pierce Q&A |magazine=[[Retro Gamer]] |issue=163|publisher=[[Future Publishing]]|page=49}}</ref> However, Logg also left to join Electronic Arts while the game, ''Bounty Hunter'', was still unfinished.<ref name="RetroPierce"/> At this point executives at Atari Games felt it would be safer to entrust development to an external team, and approached Mesa Logic head Robert Weatherby about his team (Hector Silva, James Mestemaker, Guy Fumagali and James Webb) taking over ''Bounty Hunter''. After playing ''Bounty Hunter'' and finding it underwhelming, Weatherby asked for a few months to come up with and develop a pitch for his own gun game concept, to which Atari agreed.<ref name="RetroMaking">{{cite magazine|last=Drury|first=Paul |date=December 2016 |title=The Making Of: Area 51 |magazine=[[Retro Gamer]] |issue=163|publisher=[[Future Publishing]]|pages=48–53}}</ref>

Weatherby received the inspiration for the ''Area 51'' concept from an article in ''[[Popular Science]]'' called "Searching for the Secrets of [[Groom Lake]]".<ref name="RetroMaking"/>

Originally the data from the game was to be streamed from a CD player using [[Cinepak]] for compression, but since this could only produce a [[letterboxing (filming)|letterboxed]] display, lead programmer Charlie Grisafi opted to instead run the game on a COJAG (a modified [[Atari Jaguar]] used in arcade games) interfaced with a [[hard disk drive]] and using Grisafi's own custom compression software.<ref name="RetroMaking"/> Grisafi recalled: {{blockquote|The amount of rendering required was a huge obstacle. It was originally done by Robert [Weatherby]'s team in Texas but as time went on, the raw horsepower required to do it all became more than they had. I realized that the [[Silicon Graphics]] workstations of all the different teams at Atari in California could be a huge resource for doing this. Atari helped us coordinate getting access to all of the systems in the building after hours when the other teams weren't using their systems, so every night we would take over and turn all the SGI systems at Atari into a large render farm.<ref name="RetroMaking"/>}}

The game uses [[digitization|digitized]] video stored on the on-board hard disk, and [[Gib (video gaming)|gibs]] into which every enemy blows apart when shot, in exactly the same way. While enemies, civilians, and explosions are 2D digitized video sprites, the levels and vehicles are [[Pre-rendering|pre-rendered]] in 3D.

While the STAAR members were rendered with [[motion capture]], the assorted enemies were created with [[stop motion]] animation by [[Sneaky Pete Kleinow]].<ref name="RetroMaking"/><ref name="C+51">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=51&num=6626&album=oui|title=Arcade – Area 51|magazine=[[:fr:Consoles +|Consoles +]]|issue=51|publisher=[[:fr: M.E.R.7|M.E.R.7]]|date=February 1996|pages=146–148|lang=fr}}</ref>