1.
Nintendo Software Technology
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Nintendo Software Technology is an American video game developer located inside of Nintendo of America main headquarters, based in Redmond, Washington. Although the development team is based in North America, there is a traditional Nintendo, co-founders Claude Comair and Scott Tsumura retired in 2006 and 2002, respectively. NST is currently headed by Shigeki Yamashiro, Nintendo made the decision of transplanting several members of their development team in Japan over to America. The list of staff included Shigeki Yamashiro, Masamichi Abe, Katsuhiko Kanno, Nintendo Software Technology Corporation also recruited several veterans from companies like Rockstar, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft to further complete their development talent. The establishment took place in 1998 through a collaboration with the private university DigiPen Institute of Technology, the offices opened with several doctorate level instructors and some recent graduates of the university working with several Nintendo of America designers and producers. Their first game, Bionic Commando, Elite Forces, was released for the Game Boy Color in 1999 and was a sequel of Capcoms Bionic Commando. Over the years, NST has developed games for Nintendo consoles such as the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, Wave Race, Blue Storm. For the Nintendo Wii but several problems landed the project in development hell, a large amount of funding was spent on cut-scenes early in development and so when the project started to fall behind managers didnt want to end it because of the capital already spent. The American developers suggested that the problem was the gameplay however the Japanese managers believed the problems were the environments and this dispute, among others, made the project drag on for a number of years before it was totally abandoned and a large number of staff were made redundant. DigiPens Main Campus was based in the building as theirs until 2010. A group interview with NST about 1080º Avalanche Two-part interview with Shigeki Yamashiro, producer of 1080º Avalanche, and Vivek Melwani, lead game designer and director IGN profile
2.
Nintendo
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Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo is one of the worlds largest video game companies by market capitalization, founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small businesses, such as cab services. The word Nintendo can be translated from Japanese to English as leave luck to heaven. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseballs Seattle Mariners, as of 31 March 2014, Nintendo has cumulative sales of over 670.43 million hardware units and 4.23 billion software units. The company has created and released some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce cards to satisfy demand, in 1949, the company adopted the name Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd. doing business as The Nintendo Playing Card Co. outside Japan. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup. In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U. S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company and he found that the biggest playing card company in the world was using only a small office. Yamauchis realization that the card business had limited potential was a turning point. He then acquired the license to use Disney characters on playing cards to drive sales, in 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Co. Ltd. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using newly injected capital during the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company called Daiya. However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It also set up a hotel chain, a TV network. All of these ventures failed, and after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new Nintendo Games department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester
3.
Shigeru Miyamoto
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Shigeru Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer and producer, currently serving as the co-Representative Director of Nintendo. Miyamoto originally joined Nintendo in 1977, when the company was beginning its foray into video games and his games have been seen on every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines in the late 1970s. Prior to the promotion, he formerly managed Nintendos Entertainment Analysis & Development software division, Miyamoto was born in the Japanese town of Sonobe, a rural town northwest of Kyoto, on November 16,1952. His parents were of modest means, and his father taught the English language, from an early age, Miyamoto began to explore the natural areas around his home. On one of expeditions, Miyamoto came upon a cave. Miyamotos expeditions into the Kyoto countryside inspired his work, particularly The Legend of Zelda. Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts with a degree in industrial design and he also had a love for manga and initially hoped to become a professional manga artist before considering a career in video games. He was influenced by mangas classical kishōtenketsu narrative structure, as well as Western genre television shows, the title that inspired him to enter the video game industry was the 1978 arcade hit Space Invaders. Nintendo, a relatively small Japanese company, had traditionally sold playing cards and other novelties, although it had started to branch out into toys, through a mutual friend, Miyamotos father arranged an interview with Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. After showing some of his toy creations, Miyamoto was hired in 1977 as an apprentice in the planning department, Miyamoto went on to become the companys first artist. He helped create the art for the companys first original coin-operated arcade video game and he first helped the company develop a game with the 1980 release Radar Scope. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game and he tasked Miyamoto with the conversion, about which Miyamoto has said self-deprecatingly said that no one else was available to do the work. Nintendos head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, supervised the project, Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a girl. He meant to mirror the rivalry between comic characters Bluto and Popeye for the woman Olive Oyl, although Nintendo could not gain the rights to a Popeye adaptation, Bluto evolved into an ape, a form Miyamoto claimed was nothing too evil or repulsive. This ape would be the pet of the character, a funny. Miyamoto also named Beauty and the Beast and the 1933 film King Kong as influences, Donkey Kong marked the first time that the formulation of a video games storyline preceded the actual programming, rather than simply being appended as an afterthought. Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project, but lacked the skills to program it himself, instead, he conceived the games concepts. He wanted to make the different sizes, move in different manners
4.
Video game programmer
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A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall under the term of game programmer. A game programmer should not be confused with a game designer, in the early days of video games, a game programmer also took on the job of a designer and artist. This was generally because the abilities of computers were so limited that having specialized personnel for each function was unnecessary. Technology has advanced to such a degree that contemporary games usually boast 3D graphics. Nowadays, the term programmer art has come to imply the kind of bright colors. The desire for adding depth and assets to games necessitated a division of labor. Initially, art production was relegated to full-time artists, next game programming became a separate discipline from game design. Now, only games, such as the puzzle game Bejeweled, are simple enough to require just one full-time programmer. Despite this division, however, most game developers have some say in the design of contemporary games. Each aspect of the game can consume all of one time and, in many cases. Some programmers may specialize in one area of programming. The number of programmers needed for each feature depends somewhat on programmers skills, Game engine programmers create the base engine of the game, including the simulated physics and graphics disciplines. Increasingly, video games use existing game engines, either commercial and they are often customized for a particular game, and these programmers handle these modifications. A games physics programmer is dedicated to developing the physics a game will employ, typically, a game will only simulate a few aspects of real-world physics. For example, a game may need simulated gravity. Since processing cycles are always at a premium, physics programmers may employ shortcuts that are computationally inexpensive, in other cases, unrealistic physics are employed to allow easier gameplay or for dramatic effect. Sometimes, a subset of situations is specified and the physical outcome of such situations are stored in a record of some sort and are never computed at runtime at all
5.
Video game music
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Video game music is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was limited to simple melodies of early sound synthesizer technology. With advances in technology, video game music has now grown to include the same breadth and complexity associated with television and film scores, while simple synthesizer pieces are still common, game music now includes full orchestral pieces and popular music. Music in video games can be heard over a title screen, options menu. Today’s soundtracks can also change depending on a player’s actions or situation, Video game music can be one of two options, original or licensed. In order to create or collect this music, teams of composers, music directors, today, original composition has included the work of film composers Harry Gregson-Williams, Trent Reznor, Hans Zimmer, Josh Mancell, Steve Jablonsky, and Michael Giacchino. The popularity of game music has expanded education and job opportunities, generated awards. At the time video games had emerged as a form of entertainment in the late 1970s, music was stored on physical medium in analog waveforms such as compact cassettes. Such components were expensive and prone to breakage under heavy use making them less ideal for use in an arcade cabinet, though in rare cases. Sound effects for the games were also generated in this fashion, an early example of such an approach to video game music was the opening chiptune in Tomohiro Nishikados Gun Fight. The first game to use a background soundtrack was Tomohiro Nishikados Space Invaders. It had four descending chromatic bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, the first video game to feature continuous, melodic background music was Rally-X, released by Namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay. The decision to any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code by a programmer, whether or not the programmer had musical experience. Some music was original, some was public domain music such as folk songs, Sound capabilities were limited, the popular Atari 2600 home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones, or notes, at a time. As advances were made in technology and costs fell, a definitively new generation of arcade machines. This was further improved upon by Namcos 1982 arcade game Dig Dug, Dig Dug was composed by Yuriko Keino, who also composed the music for other Namco games such as Xevious and Phozon. Home console systems also had an upgrade in sound ability beginning with the ColecoVision in 1982 capable of four channels. However, more notable was the Japanese release of the Famicom in 1983 which was released in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985
6.
Computing platform
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Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs can run. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware, platforms may also include, Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS, this is referred to as running on bare metal, a browser in the case of web-based software. The browser itself runs on a platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser. An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in a scripting language. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform, software frameworks that provide ready-made functionality. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service, the social networking sites Twitter and facebook are also considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine, applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, which is then executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a system, including virtualized hardware, OS, software. These allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on what is physically a Mac, some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it. In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer immediately beneath it, however, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS
7.
GameCube
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The GameCube is a home video game console released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14,2001, in North America on November 18,2001, in Europe on May 3,2002, and in Australia on May 17,2002. The sixth-generation console is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and competed with Sony Computer Entertainments PlayStation 2, the GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium. The discs are similar to the format, as a result of their smaller size and the consoles small disc compartment. Contemporary reception of the GameCube was generally positive, the console was praised for its controller, extensive software library and high-quality games, but was criticized for its exterior design and lack of features. Nintendo sold 21.74 million GameCube units worldwide before it was discontinued in 2007 and its successor, the Wii, which is backwards-compatible with most GameCube software, was released in November 2006. In 1997, a hardware design company called ArtX was launched, staffed by twenty engineers who had previously worked at SGI on the design of the Nintendo 64s graphics hardware. The team was led by Dr. Wei Yen, who had been SGIs head of Nintendo Operations, at Nintendos press conference in May 1999, the console was first publicly announced as Project Dolphin, the successor to the Nintendo 64. At the conference, Nintendos Howard Lincoln said of ArtX, This company is headed up by Dr. Wei Yen, Dr. Yen has assembled at ArtX one of the best teams of 3D graphics engineers on the planet. Subsequently, Nintendo began providing development kits to game developers, Nintendo also formed a strategic partnership with IBM for the production of Dolphins CPU, code-named Gekko. ArtX was acquired by ATI in April 2000, whereupon the Flipper graphics processor design had already mostly completed by ArtX and was not overtly influenced by ATI. In total, ArtX team cofounder Greg Buchner recalled that their portion of the hardware design timeline had arced from inception in 1998 to completion in 2000. Of ATIs acquisition of ArtX, an ATI spokesperson said, ATI now becomes a major supplier to the console market via Nintendo. The Dolphin platform is reputed to be king of the hill in terms of graphics, the console was announced as the Nintendo GameCube at a press conference in Japan on August 24,2000, abbreviated as NGC in Japan and GCN in North America. Nintendo unveiled its software lineup for the console at E32001, focusing on fifteen launch titles, including Luigis Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II. Several titles that were scheduled to launch with the console were delayed. It is also the first console in the history not to accompany a Mario platform title at launch. Long prior to the launch, Nintendo had developed and patented an early prototype of motion controls for the GameCube. These motion control concepts would not be deployed to consumers for several years, prior to the Nintendo GameCubes release, Nintendo focused resources on the launch of the Game Boy Advance, a handheld game console and successor to the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color
8.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
9.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
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Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
11.
Racing video game
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They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings. In general, they can be distributed along a spectrum anywhere between hardcore simulations, and simpler arcade racing games, Racing games may also fall under the category of sports games. In 1973, Ataris Space Race was an arcade video game where players controlled spaceships that race against opposing ships, while avoiding comets. It was a competitive two-player game controlled using a two-way joystick, the same year, Taito released a similar space-themed racing video game Astro Race, which used an early four-way joystick. The following year, Taito released Speed Race, an early driving racing game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and it also featured an early racing wheel controller interface with an accelerator, gear shift, speedometer and tachometer. It could be played in either single-player or alternating two-player, where each player attempts to beat the others score, the game was re-branded as Wheels by Midway Games for release in the United States and was influential on later racing games. That same year, Sega released Moto-Cross, an early motorbike racing game, based on the motocross competition. Also known as Man T. T. Sega re-branded the game as Fonz, the game also introduced the use of haptic feedback, which caused the motorcycle handlebars to vibrate during a collision with another vehicle. Road Champion, released by Taito in 1978, was an overhead-view timed car racing game where players try to race ahead of the opposing cars and cross the finish line first to become the winner. In 1979, Segas Head On was a game that played like a maze chase game and is thus considered a precursor to the 1980 hit Pac-Man. Monaco GP, released by Sega in 1979, improved upon previous overhead-view racing games with a scrolling view. It also featured an early example of a radar, to show the cars location on the map. Turbo, released by Sega in 1981, was the first racing game to feature a third-person perspective and it was also the first racing game to use sprite scaling with full-color graphics. The most influential racing game was released in 1982, Pole Position, developed by Namco and published by Atari in North America. It was the first game to be based on a racing circuit, and the first to feature a qualifying lap. While not the first third-person racing game, Pole Position established the conventions of the genre, tX-1, developed by Tatsumi in 1983, was licensed to Namco, who in turn licensed it to Atari in America, thus the game is considered a successor to Pole Position II. It also introduced nonlinear gameplay by allowing players to choose which path to drive through after each checkpoint, if the fuel runs out, the game would end. An early attempt at creating a driving simulator was Tomys Turnin Turbo Dashboard
12.
Sports game
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A sports game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including sports, track and field, extreme sports. Some games emphasize playing the sport, whilst others emphasize strategy. Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been throughout the history of video games and is competitive. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, Sports games involve physical and tactical challenges, and test the players precision and accuracy. Most sports games attempt to model the athletic characteristics required by that sport, including speed, strength, acceleration, accuracy, as with their respective sports, these games take place in a stadium or arena with clear boundaries. Sports games often provide play-by-play and color commentary through the use of recorded audio, Sports games sometimes make use of different modes for different parts of the game. This is especially true in games about American football such as the Madden NFL series, sometimes, other sports games offer a menu where players may select a strategy while play is temporarily suspended. Some sports games also require players to shift roles between the athletes and the coach or manager and these mode switches are more intuitive than other game genres because they reflect actual sports. Older 2D sports games sometimes used a graphical scale, where athletes appeared to be quite large in order to be visible to the player. As sports games have evolved, players have come to expect a realistic graphical scale with a degree of verisimilitude. Sports games often simplify the game physics for ease of play, Games typically take place with a highly accurate time-scale, although they usually allow players to play quick sessions with shorter game quarters or periods. Sports games sometimes treat button-pushes as continuous signals rather than discrete moves, in order to initiate, for example, football games may distinguish between short and the long passes based on how long the player holds a button. Golf games often initiate the backswing with one button-push, and the swing itself is initiated by a subsequent push. ″also can customize person and can make own team″ In 1958, William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two, the players would select the angle at which to put their racket, and pressed a button to return it. Although this game was simple, it demonstrated how an action game could be played on a computer. Video games prior to the late 1970s were primarily played on university mainframe computers under timesharing systems that supported multiple computer terminals on school campuses, the two dominant systems in this era were Digital Equipment Corporations PDP-10 and Control Data Corporations PLATO
13.
Nintendo 64
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The Nintendo 64, stylized as the NINTENDO64 and often referred to as the N64, is Nintendos third home video game console for the international market. It was the last major home console to use the cartridge as its primary storage format until Nintendos seventh console, while the Nintendo 64 was succeeded by Nintendos MiniDVD-based GameCube in September 2001, the consoles remained available until the system was retired in late 2003. Codenamed Project Reality, the the N64 design was complete by mid-1995, but its launch was delayed until 1996. It launched with three games, Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, released worldwide, and Saikyō Habu Shōgi, as part of the fifth generation of gaming, the system competed primarily with the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. The suggested retail price at its United States launch was US$199.99, the console was released in a range of colors and designs over its lifetime. In 2015, IGN named it the 9th greatest video game console of all time, as of 2016, the system remains a popular retro console in North America. At the beginning of the 1990s, Nintendo led the game industry with its Nintendo Entertainment System. Although the NES follow-up console, the Super NES, was successful, competition from long-time rival Sega, and relative newcomer Sony, emphasized Nintendos need to develop a successor for the SNES, or risk losing market dominance to its competitors. Further complicating matters, Nintendo also faced a backlash from third-party developers unhappy with Nintendos strict licensing policies, the company created a design proposal for a video game system, seeking an already well established partner in that market. James H. Clark, founder of SGI, initially offered the proposal to Tom Kalinske, the historical details of these preliminary negotiations were controversial between the two competing suitors. Tom Kalinske said that he and Joe Miller of Sega of America were quite impressed with SGIs prototype, the engineers from Sega Enterprises claimed that their evaluation of the early prototype had uncovered several unresolved hardware issues and deficiencies. Those were subsequently resolved, but Sega had already decided against SGIs design, Nintendo resisted that summary conclusion, arguing that the reason for SGIs ultimate choice of partner is due to Nintendo having been a more appealing business partner than Sega. While Sega demanded exclusive rights to the chip, Nintendo was willing to license the technology on a non-exclusive basis, michael Slater, publisher of Microprocessor Report said, The mere fact of a business relationship there is significant because of Nintendos phenomenal ability to drive volume. If it works at all, it could bring MIPS to levels of volume never dreamed of, james Clark met with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi in early 1993, thus initiating Project Reality. This announcement coincided with Nintendos August 1993 Shoshinkai trade show, as with most of the computing industry, Nintendo had limited experience with 3D graphics, and worked with several outside companies to develop the technology comprising the console. Some chip technology was provided by NEC, Toshiba, and Sharp, SGI had recently acquired MIPS Computer Systems, and the two worked together toward a low-cost realtime 3D graphics hardware system. SGI and its subsidiary MIPS Technologies were responsible for the R4300i microprocessor and that software-based console prototype platform was later supplanted by a workstation-hosted console simulation board, representing the finalized console hardware. SGIs performance estimates based upon their RealityEngine supercomputing platform were ultimately reported to be accurate to the final consumer console product
14.
SSX (series)
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SSX is a series of snowboarding and skiing videogames published by EA Sports. It is a racing game with larger-than-life courses, characters. According to 2012s SSX the acronym in Team SSX means, Snowboarding, Surfing, the franchise has been critically acclaimed, with the first three installments receiving over 90. 00% on GameRankings. Initial sales for the game have been kept a secret by publisher Electronic Arts, most of the games have been released only on Sony and Nintendo consoles, with the first game being released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 and the fifth instalment exclusively on the Wii. In 1999, EA revealed the series was being developed with the Sega Dreamcast in mind, the original SSX sold close to three million units in its lifetime, spurring sequel titles SSX Tricky and SSX3. Players may choose any one of a number of snowboarders, each with their own statistics, a course is selected and the player is given the option of racing down the course or participating in a competition to do tricks. Each course is filled with ramps, rails, and other assorted objects, performing tricks fills up the players boost meter, which can then be used for additional acceleration, making tricks important even in a race. Players also have the option of practicing or exploring courses in freeride mode, SSX Tricky introduced Uber Tricks, absurdly unrealistic and exaggerated tricks, often involving detaching the board from the snowboarders feet. The player gained access to uber tricks during play after filling the adrenaline bar, SSX3 introduced a second, intermediate set of Uber Tricks. Each character has an associated Uber Trick, in SSX on Tour Uber Tricks are presented as Monster Tricks, though most of them resemble the more advanced Uber Tricks, and are much easier to perform than the Monster Tricks of SSX3. Where previous SSX titles used the main buttons to perform Uber Tricks. SSX was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards for 2011 and its Uber Tricks can be tweaked by doing certain things like holding RT and performing the trick and it gets more points. Also as an alternative to getting unlimited boost after completing six Uber tricks you instead unlock the ability to perform super uber tricks, SSX was released for the PlayStation 2 for its launch in October 2000. SSX was developed by EA Canada, while SSX Tricky was developed by EA Sports, SSX Tricky was released November 5,2001 for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Xbox. SSX Tricky was so similar to the original that many considered it a rather than a sequel. In SSX and SSX Tricky, winning medals in a variety of events unlocks new courses, characters, new outfits may be earned by completing a characters trick book, by doing a number of specific tricks during play. Three kinds of boards are available to players, trick-oriented Freestyle boards, all-around BX boards, and racing-oriented Alpine boards, the courses in both games are located around the world, for example, Tokyo Megaplex and Merqury City. The snowboarders also come from around the world, and speak in their primary languages, on October 20,2003, SSX3 was released
15.
Dolby Pro Logic
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Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. Dolby Stereo was originally developed by Dolby in 1976 for analog cinema sound systems, the format was adapted for home use in 1982 as Dolby Surround when HiFi capable consumer VCRs were introduced, it was then replaced by the newer and improved Pro-Logic system in 1987. Therefore, the term Dolby Surround can be used to describe the technology or matrix-encoded soundtrack, whereas Pro Logic refers to the decoding technology. The two technologies are mostly identical but a change in marketing was needed so as not to confuse cinema stereo which is at least four channels of audio with home stereo which is only two, Dolby Surround/Pro Logic is based on matrix technology. When a Dolby Surround soundtrack is created, four channels of sound are matrix-encoded into a stereo sound track. The centre channel is encoded by placing it equally in the left and right channels, one of the first was the MSP400 surround sound receiver and amplifier by RCA for their high-end Dimensia brand. It was released in 1987 for the Digital Command Component System, Dolby Surround is the earliest consumer version of Dolbys multichannel analog film sound decoding format Dolby Stereo. It was introduced to the public in 1982 during the home video recording formats were introducing Stereo. The term Dolby Surround is used so as not to confuse theater surround with home stereo, the term also applies to the encoding of material in this sound format. It was capable of decoding Dolby Stereo stereo tracks to 3.0 channels, in 1987 the decoding technology was updated and renamed Dolby Pro Logic. A Pro Logic decoder/processor unfolds the sound into the original 4.0 surround—left and right, center, a Pro-Logic decoder also uses Steering Logic, which drives amplifiers, to raise or lower the output volume of each channel based on the current dominant sound direction. For example, while a signal is played, the strong correlation to the center channel triggers the output volume of the left, right. This increases the channel separation achievable, to around 30 decibels between channels, by careful tuning of the response of the amplifiers, the total amount of signal energy remains constant and is unaffected by the operation of the channel steering. Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic decoders are similar in principle, the terms Dolby Stereo, Dolby Surround and Lt/Rt are all used to describe soundtracks that are matrix-encoded using this technique. In 2000, Dolby introduced Dolby Pro Logic II, an implementation of Dolby Pro Logic created by Jim Fosgate. DPL II processes any high quality stereo signal source into five separate full frequency channels, Dolby Pro Logic II also decodes 5 channels from stereo signals encoded in traditional four-channel Dolby Surround. DPL II implements greatly enhanced steering compared to DPL, and as a result, DPL II forgoes this type of processing and replaces it with simple servo circuits used to derive five channels. It identifies spatial cues in low-level, uncorrelated information, such as ambience and effects like rain or wind in the side and rear surround channels, the channels it adds are matrixed, not discrete
16.
Local area network
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By contrast, a wide area network, not only covers a larger geographic distance, but also generally involves leased telecommunication circuits or Internet links. An even greater contrast is the Internet, which is a system of globally connected business, Ethernet and Wi-Fi are the two most common transmission technologies in use for local area networks. Historical technologies include ARCNET, Token ring, and AppleTalk, the increasing demand and use of computers in universities and research labs in the late 1960s generated the need to provide high-speed interconnections between computer systems. A1970 report from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory detailing the growth of their Octopus network gave an indication of the situation. A number of experimental and early commercial LAN technologies were developed in the 1970s, Cambridge Ring was developed at Cambridge University starting in 1974. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973–1975, and filed as U. S, in 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs published a seminal paper, Ethernet, Distributed Packet-Switching for Local Computer Networks. ARCNET was developed by Datapoint Corporation in 1976 and announced in 1977 and it had the first commercial installation in December 1977 at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. The initial driving force for networking was generally to share storage and printers, there was much enthusiasm for the concept and for several years, from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would regularly declare the coming year to be, “The year of the LAN”. In practice, the concept was marred by proliferation of incompatible physical layer and network protocol implementations, typically, each vendor would have its own type of network card, cabling, protocol, and network operating system. Netware dominated the personal computer LAN business from early after its introduction in 1983 until the mid-1990s when Microsoft introduced Windows NT Advanced Server, of the competitors to NetWare, only Banyan Vines had comparable technical strengths, but Banyan never gained a secure base. During the same period, Unix workstations were using TCP/IP networking, early LAN cabling had generally been based on various grades of coaxial cable. This led to the development of 10BASE-T and structured cabling which is still the basis of most commercial LANs today, while fiber-optic cabling is common for links between switches, use of fiber to the desktop is rare. Many LANs use wireless technologies that are built into Smartphones, tablet computers, in a wireless local area network, users may move unrestricted in the coverage area. Wireless networks have become popular in residences and small businesses, because of their ease of installation, guests are often offered Internet access via a hotspot service. Network topology describes the layout of interconnections between devices and network segments, at the data link layer and physical layer, a wide variety of LAN topologies have been used, including ring, bus, mesh and star. At the higher layers, NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, AppleTalk and others were once common, simple LANs generally consist of cabling and one or more switches. A switch can be connected to a router, cable modem, a LAN can include a wide variety of other network devices such as firewalls, load balancers, and network intrusion detection. LANs can maintain connections with other LANs via leased lines, leased services, depending on how the connections are established and secured, and the distance involved, such linked LANs may also be classified as a metropolitan area network or a wide area network
17.
Nintendo Entertainment System
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The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit home video game console that was developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The best-selling gaming console of its time, the NES helped revitalize the US video game following the video game crash of 1983. With the NES, Nintendo introduced a business model of licensing third-party developers, authorizing them to produce. It was initially released in Japan as the Family Computer on July 15,1983, and was released in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986. In South Korea, it was known as the Hyundai Comboy and was distributed by SK Hynix which then was known as Hyundai Electronics and it was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In 2009, the Nintendo Entertainment System was named the single greatest video game console in history by IGN and it was judged the second greatest console behind the Sega Dreamcast in PC Magazines Top 10 Video Game Consoles of All Time. Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s, Nintendo made plans to create a console called the Famicom. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan up to that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be produced from scratch. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer, meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna which used those colors. Original plans called for the Famicoms cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors since loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated taking 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, the controllers were hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. There were concerns regarding the durability of the design and that children might step on joysticks left on the floor. Katsuyah Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use, ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used. Uemura added an eject lever to the slot which was not really necessary. He also added a microphone to the controller with the idea that it could be used to make players voices sound through the TV speaker. The console was released on July 15,1983 as the Family Computer for ¥14,800 alongside three ports of Nintendos successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye. The Famicom was slow to gather momentum, a bad chip set caused the release of the system to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983
18.
Wave Race: Blue Storm
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Wave Race, Blue Storm is a Jet Ski racing game released as a launch title for the Nintendo GameCube on September 14,2001. Players begin by selecting a character to use for the entire championship, following this, the player is presented with a screen showing the courses on which they can race and a weather forecast for each day of the circuit. The more difficult the circuit, the races the player must complete. Players can select the order in which they wish to race the courses and this decision can be affected by aforementioned forecast. If the player finds a certain course to be difficult when it is raining. After the selection of a course, gameplay begins, players begin in a field of eight racers. In the first race, players begin in eighth, as the player waits for the race to begin, a stoplight changes from red to yellow to green, indicating the start of the race. The player then begins to navigate the course, in every course, buoys are set up in two colors, red and yellow. Red buoys are supposed to be passed on the right, yellow buoys on the left, passing buoys correctly builds up your turbo meter. Other than the mentioned above, which only works at the very beginning of a race. Each stunt, unlike each buoy, fills from one-fifth to three-fifth of the meter depending on the stunt, incorrectly passing a buoy results in the loss of any built-up turbo stages. This leads to some degree of strategy, there are other, smaller red buoys which mark the boundaries of each course. Going outside of these buoys is not recommended, as staying outside of them for too long results in a disqualification, during the race, the player is often bombarded with waves and rain which can force an inexperienced player off-course, or into obstacles or other riders. Successful navigation of these waves is essential and this is where the games uniqueness in the genre comes to light. Waves are completely random and are affected by the weather, making for a different experience from that of most other games in the racing genre, every race consists of three laps. Often during a race, shortcuts will be revealed as the player passes each lap, spotting these shortcuts as they appear can be essential to victory. At the end of race, the player is awarded points proportional to the place in which they finished. A player needs a certain point total at the end of race in order to advance to the next day
19.
Walmart
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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. doing business as Walmart, is an American multinational retailing corporation that operates as a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. Headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, the company was founded by Sam Walton in 1962, as of January 31,2017, Walmart has 11,695 stores and clubs in 28 countries, under a total of 63 banners. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and it operates as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, as Asda in the United Kingdom, as the Seiyu Group in Japan, and as Best Price in India. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada and it also owns and operates the Sams Club retail warehouses. Walmart is the worlds largest company by revenue, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2016 and it is a family-owned business, as the company is controlled by the Walton family. Sam Waltons heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their company, Walton Enterprises. Walmart is also one of the worlds most valuable companies by market value, in 2016,62.3 percent of Walmarts US$478.614 billion sales came from its U. S. operations. The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972, by 1988, Walmart was the most profitable retailer in the U. S. and by October 1989, it had become the largest in terms of revenue. A Walmart in York, Pennsylvania opened in October 1990, bringing the store to the Northeast. In 1945, a businessman and a former J. C. Penney employee, Sam Walton and his primary focus was on selling products at low prices to get higher-volume sales at a lower profit margin, portraying it as a crusade for the consumer. He experienced setbacks, because the price and branch purchase were unusually high. He passed on the savings in the product pricing, sales increased 45 percent in his first year of ownership to US$105,000 in revenue, which increased to US$140,000 the next year and US$175,000 the year after that. Within the fifth year, the store was generating US$250,000 in revenue, when the lease for the location expired, Walton was unable to reach an agreement for renewal, so he opened up a new store at 105 N. Main Street in Bentonville, naming it Waltons Five and Dime and that store is now the Walmart Museum. On July 2,1962, Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store at 719 W. Walnut Street in Rogers, within its first five years, the company expanded to 24 stores across Arkansas and reached US$12.6 million in sales. In 1968, it opened its first stores outside Arkansas, in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, the company was incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31,1969. In 1970, it opened its office and first distribution center in Bentonville. It had 38 stores operating with 1,500 employees and sales of US$44.2 million and it began trading stock as a publicly held company on October 1,1970, and was soon listed on the New York Stock Exchange
20.
GameRankings
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GameRankings is a website that collects review scores from both offline and online sources to give an average rating. It indexes over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games, GameRankings is owned by CBS Interactive. Similar websites include GameStats, Metacritic, MobyGames, and TopTenReviews, GameRankings collects and links to reviews from other websites and magazines and averages specific ones. While hundreds of reviews may get listed, only the ones that GameRankings deems notable are used for the average, Scores are culled from numerous American and European sources. The site uses a grade for all reviews in order to be able to calculate an average. However, because not all use the same scoring system. When a game has accumulated 20 total reviews, it is given a ranking compared to all games in the database. The current highest rated game is Super Mario Galaxy, with 97. 64%, there are specific rules that GameRankings follows to determine which review sites are used in calculating a games overall score. From the GameRankings Help page, they are, Sites must have at least 300 archived reviews for a multi-system/multi-genre sites, Sites must publish a minimum of 15 reviews a month. Sites must be visually appealing and look professional, Sites must review a variety of titles. Sites must have a domain name with professional hosting. Site reviews must be well written, Sites must conduct themselves in a professional manner. However, some sites that follow these rules are not included and these are the top 20 games with best scores on the site. GameRankings High Scores Matter To Game Makers, Too, The Wall Street Journal, things that suck about video game reviews, That Videogame Blog, April 2,2008
21.
Metacritic
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Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of media products, music albums, games, movies, TV shows, DVDs, and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged, Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts. The site provides an excerpt from each review and hyperlinks to its source, a color of Green, Yellow or Red summarizes the critics recommendations and therefore the general appeal of the product to reviewers and, to a lesser extent, the public. It is regarded as the game industrys foremost review aggregator. Metacritics scoring converts each review into a percentage, either mathematically from the mark given, before being averaged, the scores are weighted according to the critics fame, stature, and volume of reviews. Metacritic was launched in July 1999 by Marc Doyle, his sister Julie Doyle Roberts, rotten Tomatoes was already compiling movie reviews, but Doyle, Roberts, and Dietz saw an opportunity to cover a broader range of media. They sold Metacritic to CNET in 2005, CNET and Metacritic are now owned by the CBS Corporation. Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal wrote in September 2004, Mr. Doyle,36, is now a product manager at CNET. Speaking of video games, Doyle said, A site like ours helps people cut through. unobjective promotional language and he added that the review process was not taken as seriously when unconnected magazines and websites provided reviews in isolation. In August 2010, the appearance was revamped, reaction from users was overwhelmingly negative. Certain publications are given more significance because of their stature, games Editor Marc Doyle was interviewed by Keith Stuart of The Guardian to get a look behind the metascoring process. Stuart wrote, the phenomenon, namely Metacritic and GameRankings, have become an enormously important element of online games journalism over the past few years. The ranging of metascores is, Metacritic is regarded as the foremost online review site for the video game industry. Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal has written that Metacritic influence the sales of games and he explains its influence as coming from the higher cost of buying video games than music or movie tickets. Many executives say that low scores can hurt the sales potential. He claimed that a number of businesses and financial analysts use Metacritic as an early indicator of a games potential sales and, by extension. In 2004, Jason Hall of Warner Bros. began including quality metrics in contracts with partners licensing its movies for games, if a product does not at least achieve a specific score, some deals require the publisher to pay higher royalties. In 2008, Microsoft began using Metacritic averages to de-list underperforming Xbox Live Arcade games and these are the top 10 individual games with the highest scores on the site as of 2 April 2017
22.
GameSpot
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GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1,1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and it was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which purchased CNET Networks in 2008, is the current owner of GameSpot, in addition to the information produced by GameSpot staff, the site also allows users to write their own reviews, blogs, and post on the sites forums. In 2004, GameSpot won Best Gaming Website as chosen by the viewers in Spike TVs second Video Game Award Show, the domain gamespot. com attracted at least 60 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete. com study. GameSpot was founded by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein in San Francisco, CA, initially, GameSpot focused exclusively on PC games. Its sister site, VideoGameSpot. com, was launched in December 1996 to cover console games, in 1997, VideoGameSpot. com became VideoGames. com for a short period, and by 1998, the PC and console sections were united at GameSpot. com. On October 3,2005, GameSpot adopted a new design similar to that of TV. com, a new layout change was adopted on October 2013. GameSpot UK was started in October 1997 and operated until mid-2002, during this period, GameSpot UK won the 1999 PPAi award for best website, and was short listed in 2001. Following the purchase of ZDNet by CNET, GameSpot UK was merged with the main US site, on April 24,2006, GameSpot UK was relaunched. In a similar fashion, GameSpot AU existed on a scale in the late 1990s with Australian-produced reviews. When a local version of the main CNET portal, CNET. com. au was launched in 2003, the site was fully re-launched mid-2006, with a specialized forum, local reviews, special features, local pricings in A$, Australian release dates, and more local news. GameSpot Japan in its current form launched in 2007 and it provides Japanese video game industry news, previews, reviews, features, and videos as well as translated articles from the other GameSpot sites. Jeff Gerstmann, Editorial Director of the site, was fired on November 28,2007, Gerstmann had previously given Kane & Lynch a fair or undesirable rating along with critique. Both GameSpot and parent company CNET stated that his dismissal was unrelated to the review, a month after Gerstmanns termination, freelance reviewer Frank Provo left GameSpot after eight years stating that I believe CNET management let Jeff go for all the wrong reasons. I believe CNET intends to soften the tone and push for higher scores to make advertisers happy. GameSpot staffers Alex Navarro, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, Davis co-founded Gerstmanns subsequent project, Giant Bomb, and was later joined by Shoemaker and Caravella. Navarro later returned to Giant Bomb, where he works as a Senior Editor. On March 15,2012, it was announced that CBS Interactive, as part of the deal, the non-disparagement agreement between Gerstmann and CNET was nullified, allowing him to finally speak publicly about his termination over four years prior
23.
IGN
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The website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29,1996. It focuses on games, films, television, comics, technology, the company is located in San Franciscos SOMA district in California, United States. Originally a network of websites, IGN is now distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013 and now operates as a J2 Global subsidiary. com, PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation. com and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating a network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation. com, Sega-Saturn. com, Game Sages. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand, the homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation, dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put on hold when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its channels as Affiliation Networks. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball. com, at the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its properties during the dot-com bubble. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site, IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdochs multi-media business empire, News Corporation, IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12,2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, on May 25,2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment from Hearst Corporation, ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed, prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP. com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP. com, the role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a GPM rating system incorporates an average press score and average gamer score
24.
Electronic Gaming Monthly
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Electronic Gaming Monthly was a monthly American video game magazine. It offered video game news, coverage of events, interviews with gaming figureheads, editorial content. The magazine was founded in 1988 as U. S. National Video Game Teams Electronic Gaming Monthly under Sendai Publications, in 1994, EGM spun off EGM², which focused on expanded cheats and tricks. It eventually became Expert Gamer and finally the defunct GameNOW, after 83 issues, EGM switched from Sendai Publishing to Ziff Davis publisher. Until January 2009, EGM only covered gaming on console hardware and software, in 2002, the magazines subscription increased by more than 25 percent. The magazine was discontinued by Ziff Davis in January 2009, following the sale of 1UP. com to UGO Networks, the magazines February 2009 issue was already completed, but was not published. In May 2009, EGM founder Steve Harris purchased the magazine, the magazine was relaunched in April 2010 by Harris new company EGM Media, LLC, widening its coverage to the PC and mobile gaming markets. k. a. Writers who also served stints as editor-in chief include Ed Semrad, Joe Funk, John Davison, the magazine is known for making April Fools jokes. Its April 1992 issue was the source of the Sheng Long hoax in Street Fighter II, games are reviewed by one member, except for the big games, which were reviewed by one of a pool of editors known as The Review Crew. They each assign a grade to the game and write a few paragraphs about their opinion of the game, the magazine makes a strong stance that a grade of C is average. The current letter grade system replaced a long-standing 0–10 scale in the April 2008 issue. In that system, Silver went to a game with a rating from 8 to 9, Gold to a game reviewed at 9 to 10. Until 1998, as a matter of policy, the reviewers rarely gave scores of 10. That policy changed when the reviewers gave Metal Gear Solid four 10 ratings in 1998, in addition, they gave the game with the highest average score for that issue a Game of the Month award. In 2002, EGM has also begun giving games that earned unanimously bad scores a Shame of the Month award, as there is not always such a game in each issue, this award is only given out when a game qualifies. Originally, a team of four editors reviewed all the games and this process was eventually dropped in favor of a system that added more reviewers to the staff so that no one person reviewed all the games for the month. Though the scores ranged from 0–10 on the numerical scale, the score of zero was almost never utilized, with notable exceptions being Mortal Kombat Advance, The Guy Game. EGM en Español was released in Mexico in November 2002 and it was published by Editorial Televisa and is edited by a different staff
25.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
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Brawl was announced at a pre-E32005 press conference by Nintendo president and Chief Executive Officer Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the two games in the series, assumed the role of director for the third installment at the request of Iwata. Game development began in October 2005 with a team that included members from several Nintendo. After delays due to development problems, the game was released on January 31,2008, in Japan, March 9,2008, in North America, June 26,2008, in Australia. Twenty-seven months after its original Japanese release, the game was released in Korea, the number of playable characters in Brawl has grown from that in Super Smash Bros. Melee, although a few character from Melee were cut in Brawl, Brawl is the first game in the series to have playable third-party characters. Like that of its predecessors, the object of Brawl is to knock an opponent off the screen and it is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as the Subspace Emissary and this mode is a plot-driven, side-scrolling beat em up featuring computer-generated cut scenes and a selection of playable characters. Brawl also supports multiplayer battles with up to four combatants, and is the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The game is unique, in that it may be played four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller. Brawl received critically positive reviews, with praise for the entertainment value. The games musical score, composed through a collaboration by 38 renowned video game composers, was lauded for its representation of different generations in gaming history. Brawl received a review score of 93% on Metacritic and 92. 84% on GameRankings. In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, as of September 30,2016, it is the eighth best-selling Wii game, with a total of 13.15 million copies sold worldwide. Following its predecessors, Brawl uses a battle system unlike that of fighting games. Players can choose from a selection of characters, each attempting to knock their opponents off the screen as they fight on various stages. The characters in Brawl include most of the ones as the predecessors, such as the well-known Mario. As a characters percentage increases, the character flies further back when hit, when a character is knocked beyond a stages boundary and disappears from the screen, the character loses either a life, a point, or coins, depending on the mode of play
26.
Internet Archive
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The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of universal access to all knowledge. As of October 2016, its collection topped 15 petabytes, in addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet. Its web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains over 150 billion web captures, the Archive also oversees one of the worlds largest book digitization projects. Founded by Brewster Kahle in May 1996, the Archive is a 501 nonprofit operating in the United States. It has a budget of $10 million, derived from a variety of sources, revenue from its Web crawling services, various partnerships, grants, donations. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, where about 30 of its 200 employees work, Most of its staff work in its book-scanning centers. The Archive has data centers in three Californian cities, San Francisco, Redwood City, and Richmond, the Archive is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium and was officially designated as a library by the State of California in 2007. Brewster Kahle founded the Archive in 1996 at around the time that he began the for-profit web crawling company Alexa Internet. In October 1996, the Internet Archive had begun to archive and preserve the World Wide Web in large quantities, the archived content wasnt available to the general public until 2001, when it developed the Wayback Machine. In late 1999, the Archive expanded its collections beyond the Web archive, Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software. It hosts a number of projects, the NASA Images Archive, the contract crawling service Archive-It. According to its web site, Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture, without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form, the Archives mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. In August 2012, the Archive announced that it has added BitTorrent to its file download options for over 1.3 million existing files, on November 6,2013, the Internet Archives headquarters in San Franciscos Richmond District caught fire, destroying equipment and damaging some nearby apartments. The nonprofit Archive sought donations to cover the estimated $600,000 in damage, in November 2016, Kahle announced that the Internet Archive was building the Internet Archive of Canada, a copy of the archive to be based somewhere in the country of Canada. The announcement received widespread coverage due to the implication that the decision to build an archive in a foreign country was because of the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump. Kahle was quoted as saying that on November 9th in America and it was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and it means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions
27.
MobyGames
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MobyGames is a commercial website which catalogs video games both past and present. As of October 2016, this includes over 200 gaming platforms and over 114,000 games, the site is supported by banner ads and by users paying to become patrons. The MobyGames database contains information on games and the people. Some individual developer profiles have biographical information, content is added on a volunteer crowdsourced basis, with all items tracked to a non-anonymous user account. The most commonly used sources are game packaging and manual or the game itself, registered users can rate and review any game entry, and the scores are aggregated into a single value. Users can create game have lists and want lists, which may be made public. This can generate another list of available for trade with other users. The site has an integrated forum, each listed game can have its own subforum. MobyGames was founded on March 1,1999, by Jim Leonard, Brian Hirt, Leonard had the idea of sharing information about electronic games with a larger audience. The database began with entries for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows games, on its second birthday, MobyGames started supporting other platforms, initially the leading consoles of the time such as the PlayStation, with older systems added later. MobyGames was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Games-Related Website by the International Academy of Digital Arts, in mid-2010, MobyGames was sold by its founders to GameFly for an undisclosed amount. As this was announced to the community post factum, a few major contributors left in protest. On December 18,2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs, upon assuming control of the site, Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel. Support for arcade coin-operated games was added in January 2014
