Split-screen divides one television picture into two or four views, so that each player sees the game from where they are. Without it, two players in the same game have to share one view and stay on the same screen together. With it, they can go their own ways: two spies searching different rooms of an embassy, or two drivers on different stretches of the same track. It let two people play at once without taking turns, which is exactly how Spy vs Spy was sold in 1984. Reviewers named the price every time: each player saw less, and with four views the game ran slower.
Fast facts
- On the Commodore 64: First Star’s Spy vs Spy (1984), White Spy at the top and Black Spy at the bottom, and Epyx’s Pitstop II, with one racer in each half (C&VG, May 1985).
- On the Amiga: Gremlin’s Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (1990), which ACE said used the effect “first seen in the age old classic, PitStop II”.
- On the Super NES: Super Mario Kart (1992); Battle Grand Prix’s vertical split was “more distracting than the horizontally split screen of Top Gear” (Nintendo Power, 1993).
- Four players: Street Racer on the Super NES (reviewed January 1995); then the Nintendo 64, with four controller ports, Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 (1997).
- The cost: “it reduces your ability to look ahead”; “With four players plugged in, expect a slower frame rate” (Nintendo Power, 1995 and 1997).
Two spies, two views
Beyond’s British advertisement for Spy vs Spy on the Commodore 64 sold the result rather than the method: “All the action all the time as two people play simultaneously. No waiting for turns as you lay your next trap to try and outwit your opponent.” Computer and Video Games, reporting on First Star Software’s launch in New York, explained how: “Whether you play against the computer or another player, both ‘Spys’ are constantly visible through a split screen.” Its review in September 1985 described the arrangement, which the game called “Simulvision”. “The top half of the screen shows the White Spy and the bottom the Black. Should they move into the same room, both players are shown in one half of the screen”, and “a punch-up often occurs”. Seeing the other player’s half did not make it easy: “you have to be really quick to spot where your enemy has put a trap because you’re concentrating on laying one for him”.
Epyx’s Pitstop II used the same layout for motor racing. C&VG‘s reviewer in May 1985 needed only a comparison: “Pitstop II features a split screen, Spy Vs Spy style. Each part of the screen shows the scrolling track and the other race cars — until you decide to make a pitstop that is. Then the display switches to the pits” where the crew refuel the car. By January 1986 Zzap!64 was explaining the arrangement for Leisure Genius’s Scalextric: “The screen is split into two halves, each half being a screen in its own right which shows the view from one of the cars. Therefore if player two is behind player one then he’ll see player one’s car in front of him.” It named Pitstop II as “the well established” competition. Electronic Arts’ Racing Destruction Set advertised a variation: “split screen racing showing BOTH cars together when neck and neck”.
On the Commodore 64 the phrase had another meaning first. In its first issue, in May 1985, Zzap!64 used “split screen graphics” for Level 9’s Emerald Isle, a picture above the text, which “can be toggled on and off using the commands ‘words’ and ‘pictures’”. The reviewer complained of “the famous Commodore split-screen glitch flickering away in the centre of the screen”.
Sixteen bits: Lotus
Pitstop II was still the name reviewers reached for in 1990. ACE’s review of Gremlin’s Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge on the Amiga said the game “makes use of the horizontal split-screen effect, first seen in the age old classic, PitStop II. So you’ve got simultaneous two-player action, the kind on which the original Pit Stop thrived”. Amiga Format put it more simply: “you won’t drive one at all — you’ll drive two … The two human-controlled cars have half a screen each.” Both raced against a field of computer cars “of exactly the same spec, so winning is down to skill and not horsepower”.
Super NES: the trade-off named
Nintendo Power introduced Super Mario Kart on the Super NES in 1992 by its difference from F-Zero: “unlike F-Zero, Super Mario Kart features a split-screen, 2-Player simultaneous mode”, and in that mode “each competitor must choose a different character”. Over the next three years the magazine’s reviews spelled out what the split cost. On Biker Mice From Mars: “The only drawback to the split-screen view is that it reduces your ability to look ahead.” On Battle Grand Prix: “the vertically split screen is more distracting than the horizontally split screen of Top Gear.” On Ubi Soft’s four-player Street Racer: “The four-player split screen can be hard to follow. Backgrounds can be too busy and muddle the view.” Dirt Trax FX found another use for the second view, offering it “in the one-player game, with the extra screen showing side or rear views”.
Nintendo 64: four controllers
The Nintendo 64 had four controller ports. Shigeru Miyamoto told Edge in 1996 that “for the first time we have a machine with a fast enough CPU to handle four independent screens at speed”, and Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 made the most of it. Nintendo Power’s review of Mario Kart 64 listed Versus and Battle modes for “two to four players” and, among the minuses, that “individual screens in the four-player mode are too small to see details on small televisions”. GoldenEye 007 gained its four-player mode late: Edge’s E3 report in July 1997 noted that the game “now features a fourplayer option”. The review a month later found “a hugely addictive multiplayer option to tempt two, three or four players away from the main game”, with “five scenarios here, ranging from a straightforward deathmatch” to modes drawn from the films; even the game’s mock BBFC card gave it “a ‘4’ certificate for fourplayer action”. Acclaim’s Extreme-G let two players choose “vertical or horizontal split screens” to suit the course, and Nintendo Power said what every four-way split cost: “With four players plugged in, expect a slower frame rate.”
The Couch Co-op entry follows four-player split-screen to Halo and its decline once online play took over.
Sources
- Computer and Video Games issue 38, December 1984, and issue 39, January 1985: Beyond’s advertisement for Spy vs Spy (Commodore 64, £9.95 cassette, £11.95 disk).
- Computer and Video Games issue 39, January 1985, pp. 31–32: First Star Software’s launch of Spy vs Spy (both spies “constantly visible through a split screen”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 43, May 1985: Pitstop II review.
- Computer and Video Games issue 47, September 1985: Spy vs Spy review (“Simulvision”).
- Zzap!64 issue 1, May 1985: Emerald Isle review (split-screen graphics and the “split-screen glitch”).
- Zzap!64 issue 8, December 1985: Ariolasoft advertisement for Racing Destruction Set.
- Zzap!64 issue 9, January 1986: Scalextric review.
- ACE issue 38, November 1990: Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge review.
- Amiga Format issue 17, December 1990: Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge review (Gremlin, £24.99).
- Nintendo Power issue 41, October 1992: Super Mario Kart preview.
- Nintendo Power issue 48, May 1993: Battle Grand Prix review.
- Nintendo Power issue 68, January 1995: Biker Mice From Mars, Street Racer and Dirt Trax FX reviews.
- Edge issue 29, February 1996: Shigeru Miyamoto on the four controller ports, as cited in the Couch Co-op entry.
- Nintendo Power issue 93, February 1997: Mario Kart 64 review.
- Edge issue 47, July 1997: E3 report (GoldenEye 007’s four-player option).
- Edge issue 48, August 1997: GoldenEye 007 review, nine out of ten.
- Nintendo Power issue 101, October 1997: Extreme-G review.