Third-person shooter
Third-person shooter is a subgenre of 3D shooter games in which the player character is visible on-screen during gaming, the gameplay consists of shooting. A third-person shooter is a game structured around shooting, in which the player can see the avatar on-screen in a third-person view. Third-person shooter is a game where instead of seeing the games through the main character’s eyes, you see the main character moving and shooting in the game and the game is focused on shooting, it is a 3D genre, that has grown to prominence in recent years on consoles. It combines the shooting elements of the first-person shooter with the jumping and climbing elements of puzzle-based games and brawlers. Third-person shooter games always incorporate an aim-assist feature, since aiming from a third-person camera is difficult. Most have a first-person view, which allows precise shooting and looking around at environment features that are otherwise hidden from the default camera. In most cases, the player must stand still to use first-person view, but newer titles allow the player to play like a FPS.
These games are related to first-person shooters, which tie the perspective of the player to an avatar, but the two genres are distinct. While the first-person perspective allows players to aim and shoot without their avatar blocking their view, the third-person shooter shows the protagonist from an "over the shoulder shot" or "behind the back" perspective. Thus, the third-person perspective allows the game designer to create a more characterized avatar and directs the player's attention as in watching a film. In contrast, a first-person perspective provides the player with greater immersion into the game universe; this difference in perspective affects gameplay. Third-person shooters allow players to see the area surrounding the avatar more clearly; this viewpoint facilitates more interaction between the character and their surrounding environment, such as the use of tactical cover in Gears of War, or navigating tight quarters. As such, the third-person perspective is better for interacting with objects in the game world, such as jumping on platforms, engaging in close combat, or driving a vehicle.
However, the third-person perspective can interfere with tasks. Third-person shooters sometimes compensate for their distinct perspective by designing larger, more spacious environments than first-person shooters; the boundaries between third-person and first-person shooters are not always clear. For example, many third-person shooters allow the player to use a first-person viewpoint for challenges that require precise aiming; the first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved was designed as a third-person shooter, but added a first-person perspective to improve the interface for aiming and shooting. The game switches to a third-person viewpoint when the avatar is piloting a vehicle, this combination of first-person for aiming and third-person for driving has since been used in other games. Metroid Prime is another first-person shooter that switches to a third-person perspective when rolling around the environment using the morph ball. Alexander R. Galloway writes that the "real-time, over-the-shoulder tracking shots of Gus Van Sant's Elephant evoke third-person shooter games like Max Payne, a close cousin of the FPS".
2D third-person shooters have existed since the earliest days of video games, dating back to Spacewar!. Arcade shooters with a 3D third-person perspective include Nintendo's Radar Scope, Atari's Tempest, Nihon Bussan's Tube Panic, Sega's Space Harrier, Atari's Xybots, Square's 3-D WorldRunner. and JJ Third-person shooters for home computers include Dan Gorlin's Airheart and Paul Norman's Beyond Forbidden Forest. Konami's run & gun shooter Contra featured several third-person shooter levels where the player trudges through indoor enemy bases. Konami's Devastators is a third-person shooter where, rather than moving forward automatically, the player walks forward by holding the Up direction, as the background scales toward the screen. Devastators featured various obstacles that could be used to take cover from enemy fire, as well as two-player cooperative gameplay. A similar shooter released that same year was Cabal, which inspired many of its own "Cabal clones," such as NAM-1975 and Wild Guns.
Kurt Kalata of Hardcore Gaming 101 cites Sega's Last Survivor, released for arcades and ported to the FM Towns and FM Towns Marty, featuring eight-player deathmatch. He notes that it has a perspective and split-screen similar to Xybots, but with different gameplay and controls. In 1993, Namco released a two-player competitive 3D third-person shooter vehicle combat game, Cyber Sled. A year Elite Systems Ltd. released Virtuoso on the 3DO. This was an early example of a home console third-person shooter which featured a human protagonist on-foot, as opposed to controlling a vehicle, made use of polygonal 3D graphics along with sprites in a 3D environment. Fade to Black was a 3D third-person shooter released around this time, but as well as featuring an on-foot protagonist rather than a vehicle, utilised polygonal 3D graphics. Tomb Raider by Eidos Interactive is claimed by some commentators as a third-person shooter, Jonathan S. Harbour of the University of Advancing Technology argues that it's "largely responsible for the popularity of th
Armored Core
Armored Core is a mecha-based video game series developed by the firm FromSoftware for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, mobile phone platforms. Armored Core games are third-person shooters in which the player pilots a large mechanical unit, itself called an "Armored Core". Armored Core: Verdict Day is the fifteenth and latest title in the series, being released worldwide on September 2013; the series' initial game came out in 1997. Story elements vary throughout the series but gameplay is focused on the player's character as a silent protagonist, acting as a mercenary, completing missions assigned by various in-game corporations and individuals; the player's character pilots his or her mecha to perform duties such as destroying enemy units/facilities or protecting a designated element from the attack by the opposing forces. The game places a heavy emphasis on customization; the mecha is composed from parts the player obtains by finding them in missions, fulfilling certain requirements, or by buying them from an in-game shop.
Money is earned by finishing missions. Certain missions offer bonuses for completing optional objectives. Certain games in the series offer additional part categories but the following are shared among all games: Head Arms Legs Core Generator Boosters FCS Arm and back weapons/units Arm shields/swords Between 1997 and 2006, PlayStation games enjoyed a yearly release schedule; as of 2013, fifteen games have been released. Armored Core: Tower City Blade is a manga by Fujimi Shobo based on the game, it was serialized in Dragon Age Pure between March 14 and April 14, 2007. A project called Armored Core: Fort Tower Song was to consist of a book and an anime released in 2007; the book was completed but the anime was not. From Software announced in 2011. Official website
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; 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 Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Electronic Gaming Monthly
Electronic Gaming Monthly is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content, product reviews; the magazine was founded in 1988 as U. S. National Video Game Team's Electronic Gaming Monthly under Sendai Publications. In 1994, EGM spun off EGM ², which focused on expanded tricks, it became Expert Gamer and the defunct GameNOW. After 83 issues, EGM switched from Sendai Publishing to Ziff Davis publisher; until January 2009, EGM only covered gaming on console software. In 2002, the magazine's 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 magazine's February 2009 issue was completed, but was not published. In May 2009, EGM founder Steve Harris purchased its assets from Ziff Davis; the magazine was relaunched in April 2010 by Harris' new company EGM Media, LLC, widening its coverage to the PC and mobile gaming markets.
Notable contributors to Electronic Gaming Monthly have included Martin Alessi, Ken Williams, "Trickman" Terry Minnich, Andrew "Cyber-Boy" Baran, Danyon Carpenter, Marc Camron, Mark "Candyman" LeFebvre, Todd Rogers, Mike Weigand a.k.a. Major Mike, Al Manuel, Howard Grossman, Arcade Editor Mark "Mo" Hain, Mike "Virus" Vallas, Jason Streetz, Ken Badziak, Scott Augustyn, Chris Johnston, Che Chou, Dave Ruchala, Crispin Boyer, Greg Sewart, Jeanne Trais, Jennifer Tsao, artist Jeremy Norm Scott, Shawn "Shawnimal" Smith, West Coast Editor Kelly Rickards, Kraig Kujawa, Dean Hager, Jeremy Parish, Mark Macdonald. Writers who served stints as editor-in chief include Ed Semrad, Joe Funk, John Davison, James Mielke, artist Jeremy "Norm" Scott, Seanbaby. In addition, writers of EGM's various sister publications – including GameNow, Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, Official U. S. PlayStation Magazine – would contribute to EGM, vice versa; 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: The World Warrior. The magazine includes the following sections: Insert Coin Letter from the editor - the editorial Login - Letters from readers and replies by the magazine Press Start This section contains a general article about video gaming EGM RoundTable - discussions around video games The Buzz - industry rumors The EGM Hot List - background information about a critically acclaimed game Features - feature articles The EGM Interview - interview with a person from the gaming industry Cover Story - preview of the game featured on the magazine cover Next Wave - previews of upcoming games Launch Point - short previews of upcoming games Review Crew - review section Review Recap - recapitulation of the review scores from the preceding issue Game Over - Commentary articles on video gaming related topics EGM's current review scale is based on a letter grade system in which each game receives a grade based on its perceived quality.
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 write a few paragraphs about their opinion of the game. The magazine makes a strong stance. Towards the top of the scale, awards are given to games that average a B- or higher from the three individual grade: "Silver" awards for games averaging a grade of B- to B+; 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 an average rating from 8 to 9, Gold to a game reviewed at 9 to 10, Platinum to a game that received nothing but 10 ratings; until 1998, as a matter of editorial policy, the reviewers gave scores of 10, never gave a Platinum Award. That policy changed when the reviewers gave Metal Gear Solid four 10 ratings in 1998, with an editorial announcing the shift. In addition, they gave the game with the highest average score for that issue a "Game of the Month" award.
If a "Game of the Month" title receives a port to another console, that version is disqualified from that month's award, such as with Resident Evil 4, which won the award for the Nintendo GameCube version and subsequently received the highest scores for the PlayStation 2 port months and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which won the Platinum award for two separate versions of the game. In 2002, EGM began giving games; as there is not always such a game in each issue, this award is only given out when a game qualifies. A team of four editors reviewed all the games; this process was 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 previous numerical scale, the score of zero was never utilized, with exceptions being Mortal Kombat Advance, The Guy Game, Ping Pals. EGM en Español was released in Mexico in November 2002, it is edited by a different staff. Sometimes the content was more focused to
North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. 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, 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 earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are 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 unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
Video game genre
A video game genre is a classification assigned to a video game based on its gameplay interaction rather than visual or narrative differences. A video game genre is defined by a set of gameplay challenges and are classified independently of their setting or game-world content, unlike other works of fiction such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of when it takes place; as with nearly all varieties of genre classification, the matter of any individual video game's specific genre is open to personal interpretation. Moreover, each individual game may belong to several genres at once; the first attempt to classify different genres of video games was made by Chris Crawford in his book The Art of Computer Game Design in 1984. In this book, Crawford focused on the player's experience and activities required for gameplay. Here, he stated that "the state of computer game design is changing quickly. We would therefore expect the taxonomy presented to become obsolete or inadequate in a short time."
Since among other genres, the platformer and 3D shooter genres, which hardly existed at the time, have gained a lot of popularity. As hardware capabilities have increased, new genres have become possible, with examples being increased memory, the move from 2D to 3D, new peripherals and location. Though genres were just interesting for game studies in the 1980s, the business of video games expanded in the 1990s and both smaller and independent publishers had little chance of surviving; because of this, games settled more into set genres that larger publishers and retailers could use for marketing. Due to "direct and active participation" of the player, video game genres differ from literary and film genres. Though one could state that Space Invaders is a science-fiction video game, such a classification "ignores the differences and similarities which are to be found in the player's experience of the game." In contrast to the visual aesthetics of games, which can vary it is argued that it is interactivity characteristics that are common to all games.
Descriptive names of genres take into account the goals of the game, the protagonist and the perspective offered to the player. For example, a first-person shooter is a game, played from a first-person perspective and involves the practice of shooting; the term "subgenre" may be used to refer to a category within a genre to further specify the genre of the game under discussion. Whereas "shooter game" is a genre name, "first-person shooter" and "third-person shooter" are common subgenres of the shooter genre. Other examples of such prefixes are real-time, turn based, side-scrolling; the target audience, underlying theme or purpose of a game are sometimes used as a genre identifier, such as with "games for girls," games for cats,"Christian game" and "Serious game" respectively. However, because these terms do not indicate anything about the gameplay of a video game, these are not considered genres. Video game genres vary in specificity, with popular video game reviews using genre names varying from "action" to "baseball."
In this practice, basic themes and more fundamental characteristics are used alongside each other. A game may combine aspects of multiple genres in such a way that it becomes hard to classify under existing genres. For example, because Grand Theft Auto III combined shooting and roleplaying in an unusual way, it was hard to classify using existing terms. Since the term Grand Theft Auto clone has been used to describe games mechanically similar to Grand Theft Auto III; the term roguelike has been developed for games that share similarities with Rogue. Elements of the role-playing genre, which focuses on storytelling and character growth, have been implemented in many different genres of video games; this is because the addition of a story and character enhancement to an action, strategy or puzzle video game does not take away from its core gameplay, but adds an incentive other than survival to the experience. According to some analysts, the count of each broad genre in the best selling physical games worldwide is broken down as follows.
The most popular genres are Shooter, Role-playing and Sports, with Platformer and Racing having both declined in the last decade. Puzzle games have declined when measured by sales, however, on mobile, where the majority of games are free-to-play, this genre remains the most popular worldwide. List of video game genres
Video game
A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a two- or three-dimensional video display device such as a TV screen, virtual reality headset or computer monitor. Since the 1980s, video games have become an important part of the entertainment industry, whether they are a form of art is a matter of dispute; the electronic systems used to play video games are called platforms. Video games are developed and released for one or several platforms and may not be available on others. Specialized platforms such as arcade games, which present the game in a large coin-operated chassis, were common in the 1980s in video arcades, but declined in popularity as other, more affordable platforms became available; these include dedicated devices such as video game consoles, as well as general-purpose computers like a laptop, desktop or handheld computing devices. The input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, mouse devices, the touchscreens of mobile devices, or a person's body, using a Kinect sensor.
Players view the game on a display device such as a television or computer monitor or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are game sound effects and voice actor lines which come from loudspeakers or headphones; some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the commercial importance of the video game industry is increasing; the emerging Asian markets and mobile games on smartphones in particular are driving the growth of the industry. As of 2015, video games generated sales of US$74 billion annually worldwide, were the third-largest segment in the U. S. entertainment market, behind broadcast and cable TV. Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats; the earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S.
Patent 2455992. Inspired by radar display technology, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen. Other early examples include: The Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain; each game used different means of display: NIMROD used a panel of lights to play the game of Nim, OXO used a graphical display to play tic-tac-toe Tennis for Two used an oscilloscope to display a side view of a tennis court, Spacewar! used the DEC PDP-1's vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game, it used a black-and-white television for its display, the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green. Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the "Brown Box", it used a standard television.
These were followed by two versions of Atari's Pong. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, spawning the video game industry. A flood of Pong clones led to the video game crash of 1977, which came to an end with the mainstream success of Taito's 1978 shooter game Space Invaders, marking the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games and inspiring dozens of manufacturers to enter the market; the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts and convenience stores. The game became the subject of numerous articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines, establishing video gaming as a growing mainstream hobby. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first "killer app" and quadrupling the console's sales; this helped Atari recover from their earlier losses, in turn the Atari VCS revived the home video game market during the second generation of consoles, up until the North American video game crash of 1983.
The home video game industry was revitalized shortly afterwards by the widespread success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which marked a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan during the third generation of consoles. A number of video game developers emerged in Britain in the early 1980s; the term "platform" refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term "system" is commonly used; the distinctions below are not always clear and there may be games that bridge one or more platforms. In addition to laptop/desktop computers and mobile devices, there are other devices which have the ability to play games but are not video game machines, such as PDAs and graphing calculators. In common use a "PC game" refers to a form of media that involves a player interacting with a personal computer conne
