Split-Screen
Sharing the view
Split-screen gives each player their own view of one display. Reviewers traced it from Spy vs Spy and Pitstop II on the C64 through Lotus on the Amiga and Super Mario Kart to the four-way splits of Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye, naming the cost each time: less to see, and slower with four.
Split-screen gives each player a piece of the display and a view of their own, so two people can play at once without sharing a viewpoint. Period magazines trace it through a handful of named games: First Star’s Spy vs Spy and Epyx’s Pitstop II on the Commodore 64 in 1984-85, Gremlin’s Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge on the Amiga in 1990, Super Mario Kart on the Super NES in 1992, and the four-way splits of Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64. The cost was named every time: each player sees less, and with four views the machine draws slower.
Fast facts
- The reference point in 1985: Pitstop II “features a split screen, Spy Vs Spy style” (C&VG, May 1985); Spy vs Spy had both spies “constantly visible through a split screen” (C&VG, January 1985).
- Still the reference in 1990: Lotus “makes use of the horizontal split-screen effect, first seen in the age old classic, PitStop II” (ACE).
- Vertical or horizontal: a 1993 Nintendo Power review found Battle Grand Prix’s vertical split “more distracting than the horizontally split screen of Top Gear”; Extreme-G offered both in 1997.
- Four players: Street Racer on the Super NES (1994) and Mario Kart 64 (1997); “individual screens in the four-player mode are too small to see details on small televisions”.
- The frame-rate cost, stated: “With four players plugged in, expect a slower frame rate” (Nintendo Power on Extreme-G, 1997).
Two spies, two views
When C&VG visited First Star Software’s launch of Spy vs Spy in New York, the point it took away was that “whether you play against the computer or another player, both ‘Spys’ are constantly visible through a split screen”. Beyond’s British advertisement for the Commodore 64 version did not use the phrase at all; it sold “the first ever two player adventure” and “all the action all the time as two people play simultaneously. No waiting for turns”. The screen split was the means; simultaneous play was the pitch.
Five months later the same magazine reviewed Epyx’s Pitstop II and needed only a comparison: “a split screen, Spy Vs Spy style. Each part of the screen shows the scrolling track and the other race cars”. By January 1986 Zzap!64 was explaining the arrangement for Scalextric — “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” — and naming Pitstop II as “the well established” competition. Electronic Arts’ Racing Destruction Set advertised a refinement: “split screen racing showing BOTH cars together when neck and neck”, the two views merging while the cars are close.
The phrase itself was older on the Commodore 64 and meant something else. In 1985 Zzap!64 used “split screen graphics” for Level 9’s adventures, a picture above a text window, and complained of “the famous Commodore split-screen glitch flickering away in the centre of the screen” — the raster seam where the display mode changes. The racing games took the words over.
Sixteen bits: Lotus
Pitstop II was still the name reviewers reached for in 1990. ACE’s review of Gremlin’s Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge opened by saying 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.”
Super NES: the trade-off named
Nintendo Power introduced Super Mario Kart in 1992 by its difference from F-Zero: “unlike F-Zero, Super Mario Kart features a split-screen, 2-Player simultaneous mode”. Over the next three years the magazine’s reviews settled 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 turned the second view to another use, offering it “in the one-player game, with the extra screen showing side or rear views”.
Nintendo 64: four controllers
The Nintendo 64 shipped with four controller ports, and its two defining split-screen games arrived within months of each other. Mario Kart 64’s review listed Versus and Battle modes for “two to four players” and, under the minuses, that the “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 the game “now features a fourplayer option” — and by the August review it was “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” onward; 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” depending on the terrain, and Nintendo Power said what every four-player split cost: “With four players plugged in, expect a slower frame rate.”