Gamers today know Naughty Dog like movie-goers know Spielberg and Scorsese, and there's a reason for that. The minds there continuously make some of the industry's best games, ones that push the boundaries of graphical fidelity and storytelling in particular.In the mid-to-late '90s, the studio was best-known for Crash Bandicoot , but as time has gone on -- and since it joined Sony's first party stable -- Naughty Dog's drive to create the best mascot platformers, like Jak & Daxter, has evolved into some of the most stunningly realistic and engaging story-driven action titles of the current generation in the form of the Uncharted trilogy and The Last of Us.I’ve already written The History of Sony Bend The History of Santa Monica , and The History of Insomniac . But one piece I’ve wanted to write more than any other is The History of Naughty Dog. After (literally) years of trying to tell this story, I was finally given the access necessary for such an endeavor, one that covers three decades of riveting history from Sony's crown jewel developer.This past summer, Naughty Dog invited me to its gorgeous office space at Water Garden in Santa Monica, California, where I spent three full days picking the brains of some of the company's most senior, most tenured employees. From Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra to Amy Hennig and Neil Druckmann – and even the company’s co-founders, Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin – Naughty Dog gave me unprecedented access to nearly 20 people, where I could ask whatever I wanted. And I did.These three days resulted in such an enormous wealth of information that the idea of one long-form piece has turned into five. Indeed, the final product will be bigger than every other history-of I've written combined. This is merely part one.Welcome to the most complete history of Naughty Dog ever written. I hope you enjoy it.(September 27, 2013)

I. Jason and Andy’s Hebrew School Magic

The Apple II. (Courtesy: John Randolph Burrow)

“ For being 12, [my games] were very advanced code-wise, and Jason’s looked great, because he had this artistic inclination.

By 1984, Gavin and Rubin were copying Nintendo's famous arcade game pixel-by-pixel. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

“ It was nice that everybody didn’t know how to program, because if you knew how to do it, you had a leg up on the rest of the world.

Magazines like Byte were an early source of information. (Courtesy: DigiBarn)

“ To hell with that. There are no rules with games. You can just put them out.

In Judaism, you become a man at age 13 in a ceremony known as a Bar Mitzvah, and such a step requires studious preparation at something aptly-named pre-Bar Mitzvah class. It was in one such class that two 12-year-olds – Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin – met. Rubin and Gavin would go on to found one of the most prolific studios in the history of the gaming industry, but their origins are far more unassuming.In Mr. Simon’s class in northern Virginia, a group of like-minded kids sat together, not paying too much attention to the rigors of pre-Bar Mitzvah. “There was this little club,” Gavin explained. “Jason and I and two other guys, we found we liked video games and we had Apple IIs,” the cream-of-the-crop personal computer of the early-‘80s and the very first mass-market computer ever created.“I’d been programming for two years,” Gavin continued, “and Jason had been making little games of his own, too.” Upon examining each other’s crude projects, the two boys almost immediately learned that their individual skillset could fill in the other’s weakness. Their friendship – and subsequent partnership – began in earnest.“For being 12, [my games] were very advanced code-wise, and Jason’s looked great, because he had this artistic inclination. He could draw really well. But his didn’t run very well and mine didn’t look very good. So really quickly, we were like, ‘Hey, we should get together.’” They began working with each other to create projects that were more complete using both of their specialties.“One of the great things about the business, both video games and computers in general at that time, everything was new,” Gavin said. “Few people had them. People didn’t really know anything about them. These days, lots of kids use computers. Knowing how to program or use computers then, there were very few of us.”“You couldn’t get information,” Rubin noted. “If you had a problem, there were no answers.” To find any sort of clarity early in their partnership, the boys often had to go to super-specialized Apple user groups or call accessible industry intelligentsia and hope they could help.“There would be some guy I always called ‘The Gandalf,’” Rubin recounted, talking about the kind of person he’d often encounter at user groups or on the phone, “some guy with a long white beard that was the senior guy. He probably didn’t know that much, but he answered the questions, because there were no online forums. There were books, but there were very few books… Books don’t answer questions like Google does, clearly. How many books could you buy? You couldn’t search for them online.”One major source of information for them was Byte Magazine , but even that was super-niche. Then again, they wouldn’t have it any other way. “It was nice that everybody didn’t know how to program,” Rubin admitted, “because if you knew how to do it, you had a leg up on the rest of the world.”“We could have made another fighting game like that, but no, we actually copied all the characters exactly,” Gavin admitted. “It never occurred to us that you can’t just put out a game that copies characters exactly.” But that didn’t stop them. The boys used 1000 ISO film to record all of the game’s moves, and then began to copy it verbatim using their chops for programming and art. They worked on their unofficial PC port of Punch-Out!! for a year. “It was actually pretty good,” Gavin noted proudly.But then, in 1984, disaster struck. No, Nintendo didn’t send its army of lawyers after Rubin and Gavin (Rubin’s father, ironically, was an IP lawyer and told the boys what they were doing was illegal, though that didn’t put a freeze on their activities). They instead undid themselves with a common error in early personal computing: they accidentally overrode their work. “While trying to make a backup of it, I think I accidentally copied a blank floppy onto the only copy. I can’t remember exactly, but basically, we lost it due to 12-year-old backup habits.” Their hack of Punch-Out!! was gone forever.(Insanely, this wasn’t the only time they lost one of their games well into development. An original golf game they toiled on several years later was also lost when Gavin accidentally overrode the only copy they had.)Out of the ashes of self-defeat came something better, though: their first original game. It was called Math Jam, and it, like so many other Apple II games of the time, was educational. Gavin and Rubin weren’t yet known as Naughty Dog; they instead branded their game as coming from JAM: Jason and Andy’s Magic. Their new company incorporated in 1984. They were 14-years-old.JAM self-published the game, as many early indie Apple devs did, by copying the game onto five-and-a-quarter-inch discs, photocopying basic instructions, and throwing it all in a Ziploc bag. They started selling Math Jam to schools in 1985, until they ran into a pretty major problem for 15-year-olds to overcome.To get Math Jam into more schools, they had to somehow navigate the educational bureaucracy. They were “told to get three or four psychiatrists and 16 teachers to sign off on” Math Jam before they could start selling more copies, Rubin explained.“To hell with that,” he continued. “There are no rules with games. You can just put them out.”