1.
Atari, Inc.
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Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. In 1966, Nolan Bushnell saw Spacewar. for the first time at the University of Utah, the resulting game, Computer Space, was released by a coin-op game company, Nutting Associates. For the first time at the University of Utah, Computer Space did not fare well commercially when it was placed in Nuttings customary market, bars. Feeling that the game was too complex for the average customer unfamiliar and unsure with the new technology. Bushnell and Ted Dabney left Nutting to form their own engineering firm, Syzygy Engineering, initially wanting to start Syzygy off with a driving game, Bushnell had concerns that it might be too complicated for the young Alcorns first game. In May 1972, Bushnell had seen a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, according to Alcorn, Bushnell decided to have him produce an arcade version of the Odysseys Tennis game, which would go on to be named Pong. Atari later had to pay Magnavox a licensing fee after the latter sued Atari because of this, when they went to incorporate their firm that June, they soon found that Syzygy already existed in California. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27,1972, by August 1972, the first Pong was completed. It consisted of a black and white television from Walgreens, the game hardware. It was placed in a Sunnyvale tavern by the name of Andy Capps to test its viability. When the game begun malfunctioning a few days later and Alcorn returned to fix the machine, he was met by a lineup of people waiting for the bar to open so they could play the game. On examination, the turned out to be mundane, the coin collector was filled to overflowing with quarters, and when customers tried to jam them in anyway. Though Kees relationship to Atari was discovered in 1974, Joe Keenan did such a job managing the subsidiary that he was promoted to president of Atari that same year. In 1975, Bushnell started an effort to produce a video game console that was capable of playing all four of Ataris then-current games. Development took place at an engineering lab, which initially had serious difficulties trying to produce such a machine. However, in early 1976 the now-famous MOS Technology 6502 was released, the result was the Atari 2600, released in October 1977 as the Video Computer System, one of the most successful consoles in history. Bushnell knew he had another hit on his hands. In 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million and he departed from the division in 1979
2.
Home video game console
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A home video game console or simply home console is a video game device that is primarily used for home gamers, as opposed to in arcades or some other commercial establishment. Below is a timeline of each generation with the top three home video consoles of each based on worldwide sales. For a complete list of video consoles released in each generation please see the respective article of each generation. Legend – Unit with the highest sales of its generation, – Unit with the second highest sales of its generation. – Unit with the third highest sales of its generation, – Manufacturer released a home video console during this generation but did not sell the most units. – – Manufacturer didnt release a video game console during this generation. † – Indicates the current generation consoles on the market, although the first video games appeared in the 1950s, they were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a video game in 1951. In the late 1960s while working for Sanders Associates he created a series of game console designs. In 1972 Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home game console which could be connected to a TV set. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game, by autumn 1975, Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a scaled-down version that played only Pong and hockey, the Odyssey 100. A second, higher end console, the Odyssey 200, was released with the 100 and added on-screen scoring, up to four players, almost simultaneously released with Ataris own home Pong console through Sears, these consoles jump-started the consumer market. All three of the new consoles used simpler designs than the original Odyssey with no board game pieces or extra cartridges, in the years that followed, the market saw many companies rushing similar consoles to market. Most of the consoles from this era were dedicated consoles playing the games that came with the console. These video game consoles were often just called video games, because there was reason to distinguish the two yet. While a few companies like Atari, Magnavox, and newcomer Coleco pushed the envelope, Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System in 1976. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions, RCA and Atari soon released their own cartridge-based consoles, the RCA Studio II and the Atari 2600, respectively. Both Bally and Magnavox also brought their own programmable cartridge-based consoles to the market, however, it was not until Atari released a conversion of the golden age arcade hit Space Invaders in 1980 for the Atari 2600 that the home console industry took off
3.
Second generation of video game consoles
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The second generation of computer and video games began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F and Radofin Electronics 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System. It coincided with and was fuelled by the golden age of arcade video games. The early period saw the launch of several consoles as various companies decided to enter the market, the Atari 2600 was the dominant console for much of the second generation, with other consoles such as Intellivision, the Odyssey², and ColecoVision also enjoying market share. The second generation had a mixed legacy affected by the game crash of 1983. The Atari 2600 was discontinued on January 1,1992, ending the second generation, the duration between the start of the 2nd generation in 1976 and the start of the 3rd generation in 1983 was seven years. Due to the lifespan of the Atari 2600, which was available from 1977 to 1992. Some features that distinguished second generation consoles from first generation consoles include, AI simulation of computer-based opponents, allowing for single-player gaming. ROM cartridges for storing games, allowing any number of different games to be played on one console, Game playfields able to span multiple flip-screen areas. Blocky and simplistic-looking sprites, with a resolution of around 160 ×192 pixels. Basic color graphics, generally between 2-color and 16-color, lacked features of third generation consoles, such as scrolling tile-based playfields. The earliest console, the Magnavox Odyssey, uses removable cartridges that are merely jumpers housed in cartridges, that activate the games already wired into the console. This method was replaced during the move to Pong consoles, where the logic for one or more games was hard-coded into microchips using discrete logic. By the mid-1970s, cartridges returned with the move to CPU-based consoles, with games now consisting of microprocessor-based code, these games were burned onto ROM chips mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots on the console. When the cartridges were plugged in, the general-purpose microprocessors in the read the cartridge memory. Rather than being confined to a selection of games included in the box. The Fairchild VES was the worlds first CPU-based video game console and it was released by Fairchild Semiconductor in November 1976. When Atari released their VCS the next year, Fairchild quickly renamed it to the Fairchild Channel F, the RCA Studio II is a video game console made by RCA that debuted in January 1977. The graphics of Studio II games were black and white and resembled those of earlier Pong consoles, the Studio II also did not have joysticks or similar game controllers but instead used two ten button keypads that were built into the console itself
4.
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
5.
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
6.
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
7.
ROM cartridge
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ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games or other application programs. The cartridge slot could also be used for additions, for example speech synthesis. Some cartridges had battery-backed static random-access memory, allowing a user to save data such as game progress or scores between uses, an advantage for the manufacturer was the relative security of the software in cartridge form, which was difficult for end users to replicate. However, cartridges were expensive to manufacture compared to making a floppy disk or CD-ROM, as disk drives became more common and software expanded beyond the practical limits of ROM size, cartridge slots disappeared from later game consoles and personal computers. Cartridges are still used today with handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, due to its widespread usage for video gaming, ROM cartridges were often colloquially referred to as a game cartridge. ROM cartridges were popularized by early home computers which featured a special bus port for the insertion of cartridges containing software in ROM. Notable computers using cartridges in addition to magnetic media were the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, MSX standard, the Atari 8-bit family, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, some arcade system boards, such as Capcoms CP System and SNKs Neo Geo, also used ROM cartridges. The modern take on game cartridges was invented by Jerry Lawson as part of the Fairchild Channel F home console in 1976, the cartridge approach gained more popularity with the Atari 2600 released the following year. From the late 1970s to mid-1990s, the majority of video game systems were cartridge-based. As compact disc technology came to be used widely for data storage, Nintendo remained the lone hold-out, using cartridges for their Nintendo 64 system, the company did not transition to optical media until 2001s GameCube. SNK still released games on the cartridge based Neo Geo until 2004, ROM cartridges can not only carry software, but additional hardware expansion as well. Examples include the Super FX coprocessor chip in some Super NES game paks, micro Machines 2 on the Genesis/Mega Drive used a custom J-Cart cartridge design by Codemasters which incorporated two additional gamepad ports. This allowed players to have up to four gamepads connected to the console without the need for an additional multi-controller adapter, the ROM cartridge slot principle continues in various mobile devices, thanks to the development of high density low-cost flash memory. For example, a GPS navigation device might allow user updates of maps by inserting a memory chip into an expansion slot. An E-book reader can store the text of several books on a flash chip. Personal computers may allow the user to boot and install a system off a USB flash drive instead of CD ROM or floppy disks. Digital cameras with flash drive slots allow users to exchange cards when full. Storing software on ROM cartridges has a number of advantages over other methods of storage like floppy disks, software run directly from ROM typically uses less RAM, leaving memory free for other processes
8.
Central processing unit
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The computer industry has used the term central processing unit at least since the early 1960s. The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed over the course of their history, most modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning they are contained on a single integrated circuit chip. An IC that contains a CPU may also contain memory, peripheral interfaces, some computers employ a multi-core processor, which is a single chip containing two or more CPUs called cores, in that context, one can speak of such single chips as sockets. Array processors or vector processors have multiple processors that operate in parallel, there also exists the concept of virtual CPUs which are an abstraction of dynamical aggregated computational resources. Early computers such as the ENIAC had to be rewired to perform different tasks. Since the term CPU is generally defined as a device for software execution, the idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchlys ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner. On June 30,1945, before ENIAC was made, mathematician John von Neumann distributed the paper entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and it was the outline of a stored-program computer that would eventually be completed in August 1949. EDVAC was designed to perform a number of instructions of various types. Significantly, the programs written for EDVAC were to be stored in high-speed computer memory rather than specified by the wiring of the computer. This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time, with von Neumanns design, the program that EDVAC ran could be changed simply by changing the contents of the memory. Early CPUs were custom designs used as part of a larger, however, this method of designing custom CPUs for a particular application has largely given way to the development of multi-purpose processors produced in large quantities. This standardization began in the era of discrete transistor mainframes and minicomputers and has accelerated with the popularization of the integrated circuit. The IC has allowed increasingly complex CPUs to be designed and manufactured to tolerances on the order of nanometers, both the miniaturization and standardization of CPUs have increased the presence of digital devices in modern life far beyond the limited application of dedicated computing machines. Modern microprocessors appear in electronic devices ranging from automobiles to cellphones, the so-called Harvard architecture of the Harvard Mark I, which was completed before EDVAC, also utilized a stored-program design using punched paper tape rather than electronic memory. Relays and vacuum tubes were used as switching elements, a useful computer requires thousands or tens of thousands of switching devices. The overall speed of a system is dependent on the speed of the switches, tube computers like EDVAC tended to average eight hours between failures, whereas relay computers like the Harvard Mark I failed very rarely. In the end, tube-based CPUs became dominant because the significant speed advantages afforded generally outweighed the reliability problems, most of these early synchronous CPUs ran at low clock rates compared to modern microelectronic designs. Clock signal frequencies ranging from 100 kHz to 4 MHz were very common at this time, the design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices
9.
MOS Technology 6507
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The 6507 is an 8-bit microprocessor from MOS Technology, Inc. It is essentially a 6502 chip in a smaller, cheaper 28-pin package, to do this, A15 to A13 and some other signals such as the interrupt lines are not accessible. As a result, it can only address 8 KB of memory, the 6507 and 6502 chips use the same underlying silicon layers, and differ only in the final metallisation layer. This ties the interrupt lines to their inactive level so that they are not vulnerable to generating spurious interrupts from noise, the first three digits of the chip identifier are part of the silicon layers, and the final digit is in the metallisation layer. Micro-photography of the 6502 and 6507 shows this difference, the 6507 was only widely used in two applications, the best-selling Atari 2600 video game console and the Atari 8-bit family floppy disk controllers for the 810 and 1050 drives. In the 2600, the system was limited by the design of the ROM cartridge slot. Most other machines, notably home computers based on the 650x architecture, used either the standard 6502 or extended, rather than cut down, versions of it, the 6507 uses a 28-pin configuration, with 13 address pins and 8 data pins. The seven remaining pins are used for power, the CPU timing clock, to reset the CPU, to request bus wait states, there is no IRQ or NMI pin on the processor
10.
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
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In 1982, Atari Inc. released a port of Namcos hit arcade game Pac-Man for its Atari 2600 video game console. Like the original version, the player controls the title character with a joystick. The object is to traverse a maze, consuming all the wafers within while avoiding four ghosts, the game was programmed by Tod Frye, who was given a very limited time frame by Atari to complete the project. The technical differences between the Atari 2600 console and the originals arcade hardware—particularly the amount of available memory—presented several challenges to Frye, given the popularity of the property, Atari produced approximately 12 million units, anticipating a high number of sales. Initially, the port boosted the game industrys presence in retail. It was followed by Atari 2600 ports of Pac-Mans arcade sequels, Pac-Man is a version of the original arcade game, which Namco released in 1980, and features similar gameplay. The maze has a landscape orientation, the warp tunnel is located at the top and bottom as opposed to the sides. The screen consists of 126 dashes, the ghost box is square with the door on the right side. The four ghosts start in the box one on top of the other, the point values of items are much lower. The prize at the bottom of the ghost box is a called a vitamin worth 100 points. It behaves like a regular fruit, however, if Pac-Man loses a life when the vitamin is shown, the vitamin may not necessarily be forfeited. The player uses a joystick to navigate the round, yellow title character, the goal is to eat wafers scattered throughout the maze by moving Pac-Man over them while avoiding four ghosts. Each time Pac-Man comes into contact with a ghost, he dies, losing a life, when Pac-Man runs out of lives, the game ends. The game starts with four lives and a life is earned at each cleared maze. The ghosts must be avoided when they are their normal colors, the power pills temporarily make the character invulnerable to the ghosts, and a distinctive sound effect is made after they are eaten. During this time, the turn a purplish blue color and Pac-Man can eat the ghosts for additional points, after which the ghosts return to the center box as eyes. When the eyes reach the box, they stay there until the power pill elapses, after this happens, the eyes respawn and the ghosts exit the box. If another power pill is eaten when there are eyes in the box, before the power pill elapses, the sound effect stops and the ghosts turn back to their normal colors
11.
Pong
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Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games and the first sports arcade video game. It is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade games such as Computer Space came before it. The game was manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Bushnell based the idea on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, which later resulted in a lawsuit against Atari. Surprised by the quality of Alcorns work, Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney decided to manufacture the game, soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied Pongs gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to more innovative games. The company released several sequels that built upon the gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. It was also a success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release, Pong has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows and video games, and has been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. Pong is a sports game that simulates table tennis. Players use the paddles to hit a back and forth. The aim is for player to reach eleven points before the opponent. Pong was the first game developed by Atari, after producing Computer Space, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing ideas to other companies. The first contract was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation for a driving game, soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science, Bushnell and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games, to acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, in 2011, Bushnell stated that the game was inspired by previous versions of electronic tennis he had played before, Bushnell played a version on a PDP-1 computer in 1964 while attending college
12.
Atari 5200
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The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a home video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher-end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600. The 5200 was created to compete with the Intellivision, but wound up more directly competing with the ColecoVision shortly after its release, the 5200s internal hardware is almost identical that of Ataris 8-bit computers, although software is not directly compatible between the two systems. The 5200s controllers have a joystick and a numeric keypad along with start, pause. The 360-degree non-centering joystick was touted as offering more control than the eight-way joystick controller offered with the Atari 2600, much of the technology in the Atari 8-bit family of home computer systems was originally developed as a second-generation games console intended to replace the 2600. However, as the system was reaching completion, the computer revolution was starting with the release of machines like the Commodore PET, TRS-80. These machines had less advanced hardware than the new Atari technology, Ataris management decided to enter this market, and the technology was repackaged into the Atari 400 and 800. The chipset used in these machines was created with the mindset that the 2600 would likely be obsolete by the 1980 time frame, Atari later decided to re-enter the games market with a design that closely matched their original 1978 specifications. In its prototype stage, the Atari 5200 was originally called the Atari Video System X - Advanced Video Computer System and it is also rumored that PAM actually stood for Personal Arcade Machine, as the majority of games for the system ended up being arcade conversions. Actual working Atari Video System X machines, whose hardware is 100% identical to the Atari 5200 do exist, the initial 1982 release of the system featured four controller ports, where nearly all other systems of the day had only one or two ports. The 5200 also featured a new style of controller with a joystick, numeric keypad, two fire buttons on each side of the controller and game function keys for Start, Pause. The 5200 also featured the innovation of the first automatic TV switchbox, previous RF adapters required the user to slide a switch on the adapter by hand. The RF box was also where the power supply connected in a unique dual power/television signal setup similar to the RCA Studio IIs, a single cable coming out of the 5200 plugged into the switch box and was used for both electricity and the television signal. The 1983 revision of the Atari 5200 has two controller ports instead of four, and a back to the more conventional separate power supply. It also has changes in the cartridge port address lines to allow for the Atari 2600 adapter released that year, while the adapter was only made to work on the two-port version, modifications can be made to the four-port to make it line-compatible. In fact, towards the end of the models production run. These consoles can be identified by an asterisk in their serial number, the controller prototypes used in the electrical development lab employed a yoke and gimbal mechanism that came from an RC airplane controller kit. This simple design gave smooth linear control and was highly reliable, the design of the analog joystick, which used a weak rubber boot rather than springs to provide centering, proved to be ungainly and unreliable. They quickly became the Achilles heel of the system because of their combination of a complex mechanical design with a very low-cost internal flex circuit system
13.
Microprocessor
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A microprocessor is a computer processor which incorporates the functions of a computers central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary numeral system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a chip or on a few chips greatly reduced the cost of processing power. Integrated circuit processors are produced in numbers by highly automated processes resulting in a low per unit cost. Single-chip processors increase reliability as there are many electrical connections to fail. As microprocessor designs get better, the cost of manufacturing a chip generally stays the same, before microprocessors, small computers had been built using racks of circuit boards with many medium- and small-scale integrated circuits. Microprocessors combined this into one or a few large-scale ICs, the internal arrangement of a microprocessor varies depending on the age of the design and the intended purposes of the microprocessor. Advancing technology makes more complex and powerful chips feasible to manufacture, a minimal hypothetical microprocessor might only include an arithmetic logic unit and a control logic section. The ALU performs operations such as addition, subtraction, and operations such as AND or OR, each operation of the ALU sets one or more flags in a status register, which indicate the results of the last operation. The control logic retrieves instruction codes from memory and initiates the sequence of operations required for the ALU to carry out the instruction, a single operation code might affect many individual data paths, registers, and other elements of the processor. As integrated circuit technology advanced, it was feasible to manufacture more and more complex processors on a single chip, the size of data objects became larger, allowing more transistors on a chip allowed word sizes to increase from 4- and 8-bit words up to todays 64-bit words. Additional features were added to the architecture, more on-chip registers sped up programs. Floating-point arithmetic, for example, was not available on 8-bit microprocessors. Integration of the point unit first as a separate integrated circuit and then as part of the same microprocessor chip. Occasionally, physical limitations of integrated circuits made such practices as a bit slice approach necessary, instead of processing all of a long word on one integrated circuit, multiple circuits in parallel processed subsets of each data word. With the ability to put large numbers of transistors on one chip and this CPU cache has the advantage of faster access than off-chip memory, and increases the processing speed of the system for many applications. Processor clock frequency has increased more rapidly than external memory speed, except in the recent past, a microprocessor is a general purpose system. Several specialized processing devices have followed from the technology, A digital signal processor is specialized for signal processing, graphics processing units are processors designed primarily for realtime rendering of 3D images
14.
Fairchild Channel F
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The Fairchild Channel F is a home video game console released by Fairchild Semiconductor in November 1976 across North America at the retail price of $169.95. It was also released in Japan in October the following year and it has the distinction of being the first programmable ROM cartridge–based video game console, and the first console to use a microprocessor. It was launched as the Video Entertainment System, or VES, by 1977, the Fairchild Channel F had sold 250,000 units, trailing behind sales of the VCS. The Channel F electronics were designed by Jerry Lawson using the Fairchild F8 CPU, the F8 was very complex compared to the typical integrated circuits of the day, and had more inputs and outputs than other contemporary chips. As manager of Industrial Design, Talesfore was responsible for the design of the controllers, console. Smith was responsible for the engineering of the video cartridges. All worked for Wilf Corigan, head of Fairchild Semiconductor, a division of Fairchild Camera & Instrument, the graphics are quite basic by modern standards. The Channel F is only able to use one plane of graphics and one of four colors per line. A resolution of 128 ×64 with approximately 102 ×58 pixels visible and help from only 64 bytes of system RAM, the F8 processor at the heart of the console is able to produce enough AI to allow for player versus computer matches, a first in console history. All previous machines required a human opponent, one feature unique to this console is the hold button, which allowed the player to freeze the game, change the time or change the speed of the game. In the original unit, sound is played through a speaker, rather than the TV set. However, the System II passed sound to the television through the RF modulator, the controllers are a joystick without a base, the main body is a large hand grip with a triangular cap on top, the top being the portion that actually moved for eight-way directional control. It could be used as both a joystick and paddle, and not only could it be pushed down to operate as a fire button it could be pulled up as well, the model 1 unit contained a small compartment for storing the controllers when moving it. The System II featured detachable controllers and had two holders at the back to wind the cable around and to store the controller in, Zircon later offered a special control which featured an action button on the front of the joystick. It was marketed by Zircon as Channel F Jet-Stick in a letter sent out to registered owners before Christmas 1982, before that, only the downwards plunge motion was connected and acted as the fire button, the pull-up and twist actions werent connected to anything. Several of these cartridges were capable of playing more than one game and were priced at $19.95. The Videocarts were yellow and approximately the size and overall texture of an 8 track cartridge and they usually featured colorful label artwork. The earlier artwork was created by nationally known artist Tom Kamifuji, the console contained two built-in games, Tennis and Hockey, which were both advanced Pong clones
15.
Dedicated console
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A dedicated console is a video game console that is dedicated to a built in game or games, and is not equipped for additional games, via cartridges, discs or other media. Most of the earliest home video systems were dedicated consoles, most popularly Pong. Unlike almost all later consoles, these systems were typically not computers, since the Nintendo Entertainment System, cartridge-based consoles have dominated the home market until CD-based consoles such as the PlayStation gained prominence in the mid-to-late 1990s. Dedicated handheld systems typically comprise a screen, a number of buttons. Nintendos Game and Watch series increased the popularity of dedicated handheld games during 1980s, dedicated consoles have appeared for fishing games, where the units body itself becomes a specialized controller in the form of a rod and reel. Other dedicated consoles have been released with light guns, for hunting, shooting, rising to popularity in the early 1980s, game watches are electronic wristwatches that allow the wearer to access an included video game that uses the display in the watchs face as its screen. Game watch buttons which originally may have used for setting hour. A dedicated console differs from a handheld TV game in that the latter integrates the video game console with the game controller. Some of these are clones of old games, and are produced in China or Southeast Asia, konami has also released a line of their classic arcade games, including Frogger, on plug and play dedicated systems. The Pelican VG Pocket was an attempt to make a TV game with a backlit color LCD, beginning with the 2001 release by Toymax of the Activision TV Games, there has been a revival of interest in dedicated consoles by nostalgia-driven retrogamers. The subsequent 2002 release of the Atari 10-in-1 system prompted speculation of an Atari revival, in 2002, the Brazilian Sega distributor Tectoy rereleased the Sega Master System with numerous games built in. These are not strictly-speaking, dedicated consoles, however, as they also support cartridge-based games, as of 2006, however, no new cartridges are available for sale. Tectoy also released a portable Sega Mega Drive, with LCD screen and several games built in, in 2004, a miniaturized version of the Atari 7800 home consoles was released with 20 built-in games and no cartridge support. The dedicated console is based on a clone of the NES hardware. A newer version, Atari Flashback 2, is based on actual Atari hardware and it is reported that, while the new console has no cartridge slot, it is designed such that a knowledgeable person can add one. List of dedicated consoles Video game console Home video game console Handheld game console Microconsole
16.
Joystick
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A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the column, is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft. It often has supplementary switches to control aspects of the aircrafts flight. Joysticks are often used to video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick. Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras, miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones. The name joystick is thought to originate with early 20th century French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie, there are also competing claims on behalf of fellow pilots Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce, and A. E. George. Loraine is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary for using the joystick in his diary in 1909 when he went to Pau to learn to fly at Bleriots school. George was an aviator who with his colleague Jobling built. He is alleged to have invented the George Stick which became popularly known as the joystick. The George and Jobling aircraft control column is in the collection of the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, Joysticks were present in early planes, though their mechanical origins are uncertain. The coining of the term joystick may actually be credited to Loraine, as his is the earliest known usage of the term, the electrical two-axis joystick was invented by C. B. Mirick at the United States Naval Research Laboratory and patented in 1926, NRL was actively developing remote controlled aircraft at the time and the joystick was possibly used to support this effort. In the awarded patent, Mirick writes, My control system is applicable in maneuvering aircraft without a pilot. The Germans developed an electrical two-axis joystick around 1944, here, the joystick of the Kehl transmitter was used by an operator to steer the missile towards its target. This joystick had on-off switches rather than analogue sensors, both the Hs 293 and Fritz-X used FuG230 Straßburg radio receivers in them to send the Kehls control signals to the ordnances control surfaces. A comparable joystick unit was used for the contemporary American Azon steerable munition and this German invention was picked up by someone in the team of scientists assembled at the Heeresversuchsanstalt in Peenemünde. Here a part of the team on the German rocket program was developing the Wasserfall missile, a variant of the V-2 rocket, the Wasserfall steering equipment converted the electrical signal to radio signals and transmitted these to the missile
17.
Game controller
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A game controller is a device used with games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game, typically to control an object or character in the game. A controller is connected to a game console or computer by means of a wire or cord, although, since the mid-2000s. Input devices that have been classified as game controllers include keyboards, mouses, gamepads, joysticks, special purpose devices, such as steering wheels for driving games and light guns for shooting games, are also game controllers. Game controllers have been designed and improved over the years to be as user friendly as possible, the Microsoft Xbox controller, with its shoulder triggers that mimic actual triggers such as those found on guns, has become popular for shooting games. Some controllers are designed to be deliberately best for one type of game, such as steering wheels for driving games, One of the first video game controllers was a simple dial and single button, used to control the game Tennis for Two. Controllers have since evolved to include directional pads, multiple buttons, analog sticks, joysticks, motion detection, touch screens, a gamepad, also known as a joypad, is held in both hands with thumbs and fingers used to provide input. Gamepads can have a number of action buttons combined with one or more omnidirectional control sticks or buttons, action buttons are generally handled with the digits on the right hand, and the directional input handled with the left. Gamepads are the means of input on most modern video game consoles. Most modern game controllers are a variation of a standard gamepad, common additions include shoulder buttons placed along the edges of the pad, centrally placed buttons labeled start, select, and mode, and an internal motor to provide haptic feedback. As modern game controllers advance, so to does their user ability qualities, typically, the controllers become smaller and more compact as to more easily, and comfortably, fit within the users hand. Modern examples can be drawn from such as Xbox, whose controller has transformed subtly, yet dramatically. A paddle is a controller that features a wheel and one or more fire buttons. The wheel is used to control movement of the player or of an object along one axis of the video screen. Paddle controllers were the first analog controllers and they lost popularity when paddle, a variation, the Atari driving controller, appeared on the Atari 2600. Designed specifically for the game Indy 500, it functioned almost identically in operation, the exceptions were that its wheel can be continuously rotated in either direction, and it was missing the extra paddle included on the previous model. Unlike a spinner, friction prevented the wheel from gaining momentum, a joystick is a peripheral that consists of a handheld stick that can be tilted around either of two axes and twisted around a third. The joystick is used for flight simulators. HOTAS controllers, composed of a joystick and throttle quadrant are a combination for flight simulation among its most fanatic devotees
18.
Paddle (game controller)
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A paddle is a game controller with a round wheel and one or more fire buttons, where the wheel is typically used to control movement of the player object along one axis of the video screen. A paddle controller rotates through an arc, it has a stop at each end. The paddle wheel is usually coupled to a potentiometer, so as to generate an output voltage level varying with the wheels angle relative to a fixed reference position. A paddle is thus an absolute position controller and that is, without any previous knowledge, the sensor can be read and the result directly indicates the position of the paddle knob. This is in contrast to a rotary encoder-based device or spinner, paddles first appeared in video arcade games with Atari Inc. s Pong in 1972, while the first console to use paddles was Magnavoxs Odyssey that same year. The Apple II shipped with paddles until 1980, the Atari 2600 used paddles for several of its games, as did early home computers such as the Commodore VIC-20. Any recent game that has paddle-type control uses a quadrature encoder instead, the reason for the name paddle for this type of game controller is that the first game that used it, Pong, was a video game simulation of table tennis, whose racquets are commonly called paddles. Even though the simulated paddles appeared on-screen, it was the controllers used to move the line segments that actually came to bear the name. Some famous video games using paddles are Pong, Breakout, on the Atari 2600, the paddle controllers look very similar to the driving controllers. The driving controllers for Atari consoles operated in the way, although they did not have a wheel. In comparison to the controllers, paddle controllers rotate just under one full rotation before hitting a hard stop. They also come in pairs that plug into a single port, finally, they have a picture of a tennis racquet and the word paddle on it, as opposed to a racing car and the word driving. Because two controllers connect to each port and the 2600 has two ports, four players simultaneously can play in games that support it. The Atari paddles are also compatible with the Atari 800 home computer and this would allow eight paddles in simultaneous play. Super Breakout is one example that supported up to 8 players, Atari also offered driving controllers for use with games like Indy 500, which requires wheels that can spin around continuously in one direction. Driving controllers have a picture of a car and the driving on it. The driving controller is not compatible with paddle games, like a mechanical computer mouse, the driving controller is a quadrature encoder-based device and thus only sensed relative position, not absolute position. This controller is functionally identical to the controller used in Ataris Tempest arcade game
19.
Combat (1977 video game)
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Combat is an early video game by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. It was released as one of the nine launch titles for the system in September 1977, Combat was based on two earlier black-and-white coin-operated arcade games produced by Atari, Tank in 1974 and Jet Fighter in 1975. Earlier in 1977, Coleco had released the similarly titled Telstar Combat, an entry in its Telstar series of dedicated consoles. Unlike the Coleco game, Combat had color graphics and numerous gameplay variations, the 27 game modes featured a variety of different combat scenarios, including tanks, biplanes, and jet fighters. The tank games had interesting options such as bouncing munitions and invisibility, the biplane and jet games also allowed for variation, such as multiple planes per player and an inventive game with a squadron of planes versus one giant bomber. Atari also produced a version of Combat for Sears titled Tank Plus, Combat was programmed by Joe Decuir and Larry Wagner. Combat boasted having 27 games in one, which were all variations on the tank, biplane, the Tank game in Combat had the basis of two tanks controlled by players each moving around a playing field and shooting the other player until time ran out. The player with the score would win. There was also an Invisible Tank in which the players would be invisible except for a few seconds after firing. Along with the play there were also mazes to choose from including an empty field, a simple maze. Another set of choices in Combat were the Biplanes. Unlike the Tank version, this was played with three types of firing shots, however, there were several different gameplay modes. Players had the option of fighting one on one, having a pair of Biplanes each that moved and fired in tandem, the Bombers shot was an oversized projectile that otherwise behaved as a straight-missile. Instead of having mazes to fly through, there were two clouds in the middle of the stage that either player could fly into temporarily hiding them from view of the other player, very similar to the Biplanes level, was the Jets option. In this mode, only straight missile and guided missiles were used and it still had the same map options and squadron options as the biplanes mode, with Jets flying singly, two-on-two, or three-on-three. The cartridge and its games were reviewed in Video magazine as part of a general review of the Atari VCS. Collectively the Tank games were praised for their effects and given a review score of 6 out of 10. Both sets of Bi-Plane games were scored a 6 out of 10 each and were described as not so different from the previous lot
20.
Nolan Bushnell
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Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American electrical engineer and businessman. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheeses Pizza Time Theatre chain, Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. Nolan, who is co-founder and chairman of Brainrush, believes that Brainrush will be his biggest success, Nolan is credited with Bushnells Law, an aphorism about games easy to learn and difficult to master being rewarding. He was one of computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic Spacewar. The University of Utah was heavily involved in computer graphics research, Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years in high school and college while living in his hometown of Ogden, Utah. He was particularly interested in the arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal. He liked the concept of getting people curious about the game and he would use his love for games and theme parks to help launch both Atari and Chuck E. Cheeses Pizza-Time Theaters. Bushnells first marriage was to Paula Rochelle Nielson with whom he has 2 children, Bushnells oldest child, Alissa, worked with him at uWink. His second marriage was to Nancy with whom he has 6 children, Bushnell was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but is no longer an active member. A1999 Time article described him as a lapsed Mormon and described him smoking a pipe, the Bushnells now live in Southern California. In June 2008 it was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio would portray Bushnell in the film Atari, Bushnell was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured as well as Atari, Game Over. In 1969, Bushnell and colleague Ted Dabney formed Syzygy with the intention of producing a Spacewar clone known as Computer Space, in order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, the two took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Dabney built the prototype and Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer and they made an agreement with Nutting Associates, a maker of coin-op trivia and shooting games, who produced a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism. Computer Space was a failure, though sales exceeded $3 million. Bushnell felt that Nutting Associates had not marketed the game well and they instead incorporated under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go. They rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale, California, contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game, Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was forced out after Nolan told him he would transfer all the assets to another corporation and leave Ted with nothing. After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as scoring and sound, and Pong was born. Pong proved to be popular, Atari released a large number of Pong-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company
21.
Random-access memory
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Random-access memory is a form of computer data storage which stores frequently used program instructions to increase the general speed of a system. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the location of data inside the memory. RAM contains multiplexing and demultiplexing circuitry, to connect the lines to the addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is accessed by the same address, in todays technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuits. RAM is normally associated with types of memory, where stored information is lost if power is removed. Other types of non-volatile memories exist that allow access for read operations. These include most types of ROM and a type of memory called NOR-Flash. Integrated-circuit RAM chips came into the market in the early 1970s, with the first commercially available DRAM chip, early computers used relays, mechanical counters or delay lines for main memory functions. Ultrasonic delay lines could only reproduce data in the order it was written, drum memory could be expanded at relatively low cost but efficient retrieval of memory items required knowledge of the physical layout of the drum to optimize speed. Latches built out of vacuum tube triodes, and later, out of transistors, were used for smaller and faster memories such as registers. Such registers were relatively large and too costly to use for large amounts of data, the first practical form of random-access memory was the Williams tube starting in 1947. It stored data as electrically charged spots on the face of a cathode ray tube, since the electron beam of the CRT could read and write the spots on the tube in any order, memory was random access. The capacity of the Williams tube was a few hundred to around a thousand bits, but it was smaller, faster. In fact, rather than the Williams tube memory being designed for the SSEM, magnetic-core memory was invented in 1947 and developed up until the mid-1970s. It became a form of random-access memory, relying on an array of magnetized rings. By changing the sense of each rings magnetization, data could be stored with one bit stored per ring, since every ring had a combination of address wires to select and read or write it, access to any memory location in any sequence was possible. Magnetic core memory was the form of memory system until displaced by solid-state memory in integrated circuits. Data was stored in the capacitance of each transistor, and had to be periodically refreshed every few milliseconds before the charge could leak away
22.
Television Interface Adaptor
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The Television Interface Adaptor is the custom computer chip that is the heart of the Atari 2600 game console, generating the screen display, sound effects, and reading input controllers. Its design was affected by an attempt to reduce the amount of RAM needed to operate the display. The resulting design is notoriously difficult to program, a challenge for developers. Development of the TIA was led by Jay Miner who continued at Atari expanding on the design of the TIA for the Atari 400/800 computers with the ANTIC and CTIA/GTIA chips. Jay Miner would go on to lead the design of the chips for the Amiga Lorraine which would become the Commodore Amiga computer. Players are constantly moving, while playfields were generally static, changing only at well defined times at level changes, the conventional way to draw the playfield is to use a bitmap held in a framebuffer. Each memory location in the framebuffer holds a value that describes pixels on the screen, the display circuitry reads these values out of the buffer and uses it to generate an analog signal for display on a CRT video monitor. The mapping of the memory to screen locations, or pixels was often limited by the display hardware, on a conventional NTSC color television, maximum resolutions generally fell between 256 and 320 pixels per line, and 192 to 240 lines per screen. At the time the 2600 was being designed, RAM was extremely expensive, a typical 320 by 200 pixel display with even a single bit per pixel would require 8000 bytes of memory to store the framebuffer. This would not be suitable for a platform aimed to cost only a few hundred dollars. Even dramatic reductions in the resolution would not reduce the cost of memory to reasonable levels, instead, the design team decided to remove the memory-based framebuffer entirely. The TIA differs from the conventional approach in that the image on the screen is composed by manipulating five movable graphic objects. These are all generated on every line from their respective registers, unlike the technique used in a framebuffer-mapped model. Horizontal resolution is not uniform, as its size depends on the particular graphics object, the smallest unit of pixel corresponds to 1 color clock cycle of the chip, of which there are 160 visible ones on a line. The Playfield object consists of a two-and-a-half byte register, which can be reflected symmetrically or copied as-is to the half of the screen for 40 bits in total. The color that was if the bit was a 1 or a 0 was selected from a pre-defined palette of up to 128 colors. The TIA also supported five separate graphics objects consisting of, Two 8-pixel horizontal lines which make up the sprites Player 1 and these are single color, can be stretched by a factor of 2 or 4, and can be duplicated or triplicated. A ball - a horizontal line that is the color as the playfield
23.
Fairchild Semiconductor
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Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors, Schlumberger bought the firm in 1979 and sold it to National Semiconductor in 1987, Fairchild was spun off as an independent company again in 1997. The company has locations in the United States at San Jose, California, South Portland, Maine, West Jordan, Utah, Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. Outside the U. S. it operates locations in Singapore, Bucheon, South Korea, Penang, Malaysia, Suzhou, China, in September 2016, Fairchild was acquired by ON Semiconductor. At first he attempted to hire some of his colleagues from Bell Labs. Shockley then founded the core of the new company with what he considered the best and brightest graduates coming out of American engineering schools, while Shockley was effective as a recruiter, he was less effective as a manager. A core group of Shockley employees, later known as the traitorous eight, the eight men were Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts. Looking for funding on their own project, they turned to Sherman Fairchilds Fairchild Camera and Instrument, in 1957 the Fairchild Semiconductor division was started with plans to make silicon transistors at a time when germanium was still the most common material for semiconductor use. According to Sherman Fairchild, Noyces impassioned presentation of his vision was the reason Sherman Fairchild had agreed to create the division for the traitorous eight. Noyce advocated the use of silicon as substrate – since the costs would consist of sand and a few fine wires. Their first transistors were of the silicon mesa variety, innovative for their time, later Fairchild pioneered the planar process developed by Jean Hoerni in 1958, which was a huge improvement – transistors could be made more easily, at a lower cost and with higher performance. Fairchilds planar process made most other transistor processes obsolete, one casualty of this was Philcos transistor division, which had just built a $40 million plant to make their now-totally obsolete germanium PADT process transistors. Within a few years every other transistor company copied or licensed the Fairchild planar process and their first marketed transistor was the 2N697, and was a huge success. The first batch of 100 was sold to IBM for $150 a piece, the first planar silicon transistor was the 2N1613 developed by Jean Hoerni. Its introduction was an event in semiconductor history. Only two years later they had managed to build a circuit with four transistors on a wafer of silicon. The company grew from twelve to twelve thousand employees, and was soon making $130 million a year, Fairchilds Noyce and Texas Instruments Kilby had independently invented the integrated circuit based on bipolar technology. In 1960, Noyce invented the integrated circuit
24.
Time Warner
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Time Warner Inc. is an American multinational media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is currently the third largest entertainment company in terms of revenue, after Comcast. It was also once the worlds largest media conglomerate, Time Warner was first founded in 1990 with the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The current company consists largely of the assets of the former Warner Communications, Time Warner currently has major operations in film and television, with a limited amount in publishing operations. Among its most popular assets are HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, The CW Television Network, CNN, DC Comics, and as of August 2016, Hulu, owning 10%. In the past, other divisions of Time Warner included Time Inc. AOL, Time Warner Cable, Warner Books and Warner Music Group, all of these operations were either sold to other investors or spun off as independent companies from 2004 to 2014. On October 22,2016, AT&T announced its intent to acquire Time Warner for $108.7 billion, Time Warner consists of three divisions, Home Box Office Inc. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and Warner Bros. Home Box Office Inc. operates the namesake HBO premium television service as well as sister service Cinemax, hBO- and Cinemax-branded channels are currently available in over 70 countries around the world, and HBO programming is licensed to other television networks in over 150 countries. In 2012, HBO was the #1 premium pay television service in primetime television, in 2013, the network received five Golden Globes and 23 primetime Emmy Awards. HBO’s programming includes the airing of feature films, HBO Documentary Films, HBO original films, the network has developed content distribution platforms, like HBO GO and Max GO to help support and deliver programming to users via online and mobile devices. In 2011, Cinemax launched its first original series, Strike Back. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. operates international news, entertainment, animation, young adult, Turner brands include CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, truTV, Turner Sports, and more. Turners brands and sub brands reach broad domestic and international audiences, in addition to television network programming, Turner manages digital sports entities, including bleacherreport. com NBA. com, PGA. com and NCAA. com. Turner Sports produces sports programming and content for the Turner Networks, Turner Sports’ television line-up includes NBA and MLB games, the NCAA Tournament Games, and the PGA Championship. Turner operates PGA. com and related properties of the PGA under agreements with the PGA. Pictures Group grossed 4.3 billion dollars at the box office. Home Video is the leader with a 21% market share in total DVD
25.
Jay Miner
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Jay Glenn Miner was an American integrated circuit designer, known primarily for developing multimedia chips for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family and as the father of the Amiga. He received a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1959, Miner started in the electronics industry with a number of designs in the medical world, including a remote-control pacemaker. He moved to Atari in the late 1970s, one of his first successes was to combine an entire breadboard of components into a single chip, known as the TIA. The TIA was the hardware for the Atari 2600, which would go on to sell millions. After working on the TIA he headed up the design of the chip set known as ANTIC. These chips would be used for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers, in the early 1980s, Jay, along with other Atari staffers, had become fed up with management and decamped. They set up another project under a new company in Santa Clara, called Hi-Toro. There, they started to create a new Motorola 68000-based games console, codenamed Lorraine, to raise money for the Lorraine project, Amiga Corp. Atari continued to be interested in the teams efforts throughout this period, also in the early 1980s Jay worked on a project with Intermedics, Inc. to create their first microprocessor-based cardiac pacemaker. The microprocessor was called Lazarus and the pacemaker was eventually called Cosmos, Jay was listed co-inventor on two patents. US patent 4390022, Richard V. Calfee & Jay Miner, Implantable device with microprocessor control, issued 1983-06-28, assigned to Intermedics, Inc. US patent 4404972, Pat L. Gordon, Richard V. Calfee & Jay Miner, Implantable device with microprocessor control, issued 1983-06-28, assigned to Intermedics, the Amiga crew, having continuing serious financial problems, had sought more monetary support from investors that entire Spring. Amiga entered into discussions with Commodore, the discussions ultimately led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga outright, which would cancel any outstanding contracts - including Atari Inc. s. Jay worked at Commodore-Amiga for several years, in Los Gatos, Miner later worked as a consultant for Commodore until it went bankrupt. He was known as the Padre of the Amiga among Amiga users, Jay always took his dog Mitchy with him wherever he went. Jay endured kidney problems for most of his life, according to his wife and his sister donated one of her own. Miner died due to complications from kidney failure at the age of 62, on the Edge, The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore, Variant Press. Jay Miner Society Amiga Forever Premium Edition and Amiga Forever Video Edition, a DVD set featuring Jay Miner in several interviews and speeches
26.
Wire wrap
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Wire wrap is a method to construct electronic circuit boards. Wires can be wrapped by hand or by machine, and can be hand-modified afterwards and it was popular for large-scale manufacturing in the 60s and early 70s, and continues to be used for short runs and prototypes. The method eliminates the design and fabrication of a circuit board. Wire wrapping is unusual among other prototyping technologies since it allows for complex assemblies to be produced by automated equipment, the connections themselves are firmer and have lower electrical resistance due to cold welding of the wire to the terminal post at the corners. Wire wrap was used for assembly of high frequency prototypes and small runs, including gigahertz microwave circuits. It is unique among automated prototyping techniques in that wire lengths can be exactly controlled, Wire wrap construction became popular around 1960 in circuit board manufacturing, and use has now sharply declined. Surface-mount technology has made the technique much less useful than in previous decades, solder-less breadboards and the decreasing cost of professionally made PCBs have nearly eliminated this technology. A correctly made wire-wrap connection for 30 or 28 AWG wire is seven turns of wire with half to one. The square hard-gold-plated post thus forms 28 redundant contacts, the silver-plated wire coating cold-welds to the gold. If corrosion occurs, it occurs on the outside of the wire, a correctly designed wire-wrap tool applies up to twenty tons of force per square inch on each joint. The electronic parts sometimes plug into sockets, the sockets are attached with cyanoacrylate to thin plates of glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy. The usual posts are 0.025 in square,1 in high, premium posts are hard-drawn beryllium copper alloy plated with a 0.000025 in of gold to prevent corrosion. Less-expensive posts are bronze with tin plating,30 gauge silver-plated soft copper wire is insulated with a fluorocarbon that does not emit dangerous gases when heated. The most common insulation is Kynar, the 30 AWG Kynar wire is cut into standard lengths, then one inch of insulation is removed on each end. A wire wrap tool has two holes, the wire and 1⁄4 in of insulated wire are placed in a hole near the edge of the tool. The hole in the center of the tool is placed over the post, the result is that 1.5 to 2 turns of insulated wire are wrapped around the post, and above that,7 to 9 turns of bare wire are wrapped around the post. The post has room for three such connections, although only one or two are needed. This permits manual wire-wrapping to be used for repairs, the turn and a half of insulated wire helps prevent wire fatigue where it meets the post
27.
Sunnyvale, California
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Sunnyvale is a city located in Santa Clara County, California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 140,095, Sunnyvale is the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area and one of the major cities comprising Silicon Valley. It lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101, Sunnyvale was also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station, often referred to as the Blue Cube due to the color and shape of its windowless main building. The facility, previously known as Sunnyvale Air Force Station, was named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka and it served as an artificial satellite control facility of the United States armed forces until August 2010 and has since been decommissioned and demolished. Library services for the city are provided by the Sunnyvale Public Library, when the Spanish first arrived in the 1770s at the Santa Clara Valley, it was heavily populated by the Ohlone Native Americans. In 1777, Mission Santa Clara was built by Ohlone who converted to Christianity, in 1842, Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas was granted to Francisco Estrada and his wife Inez Castro. Portions of the land given in this grant later developed into the cities of Mountain View, two years later, in 1844, another land grant was provided to Lupe Yñigo, one of the few Native Americans to hold land grants. His land grant was first called Rancho Posolmi, named in honor of a village of the Ohlone that once stood in the area, Rancho Posolmi was later known as Rancho Ynigo. Martin Murphy Jr. came to California with his father as part of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party in 1844, in 1850, Martin Murphy Jr. bought a piece of Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas for $12,500. Murphy established a farm and ranch named Bay View. Murphy had the first wood frame house in Santa Clara County, the house was demolished in 1961 but was reconstructed in 2008 as the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum. When he died in 1884, his land was divided among his heirs, in 1860, The San Francisco and San Jose Rail Road was allowed to lay tracks on Bay View and established Murphy Station. Lawrence Station was later established on the edge of Bay View. In the 1870s, county property tax laws, imports and soil degradation caused wheat farming to become uneconomical in Santa Clara County, small fruit orchards replaced the large wheat farms. In 1871, James and Eloise Dawson established the first fruit cannery in the county, fruit agriculture for canning soon became a major industry in the county. The invention of the rail car further increased the viability of an economy based upon fruit. The fruit orchards became so prevalent that in 1886, the San Jose Board of Trade called Santa Clara County the Garden of the World, in the 1880s, Chinese workers made up 48 percent of the farm labor in Santa Clara County. This percentage reduced over time after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, in the following decade, the 1890s, multitudes of immigrants from Italy, the Azores, Portugal, and Japan arrived to work in the orchards
28.
Hong Kong
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Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China, is an autonomous territory on the Pearl River Delta of East Asia. Macau lies across the delta to the west, and the Chinese province of Guangdong borders the territory to the north. With a total area of 1,106 square kilometres. Hong Kong was later occupied by Japan during World War II until British control resumed in 1945, under the principle of one country, two systems, Hong Kong maintains a separate political and economic system from China. Except in military defence and foreign affairs, Hong Kong maintains its independent executive, legislative, in addition, Hong Kong develops relations directly with foreign states and international organisations in a broad range of appropriate fields. Hong Kong is one of the worlds most significant financial centres, with the highest Financial Development Index score and consistently ranks as the worlds most competitive and freest economic entity. As the worlds 8th largest trading entity, its legal tender, Hong Kongs tertiary sector dominated economy is characterised by simple taxation with a competitive level of corporate tax and supported by its independent judiciary system. However, while Hong Kong has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and it has a very high Human Development Index ranking and the worlds longest life expectancy. Over 90% of the population use of well-developed public transportation. Seasonal air pollution with origins from neighbouring areas of Mainland China. Hong Kong was officially recorded in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking to encompass the entirety of the island, before 1842, the name referred to a small inlet—now Aberdeen Harbour, literally means Little Hong Kong)—between Aberdeen Island and the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen was a point of contact between British sailors and local fishermen. Detailed and accurate romanisation systems for Cantonese were available and in use at the time, fragrance may refer to the sweet taste of the harbours fresh water estuarine influx of the Pearl River or to the incense from factories lining the coast of northern Kowloon. The incense was stored near Aberdeen Harbour for export before Hong Kong developed Victoria Harbour, the name had often been written as the single word Hongkong until the government adopted the current form in 1926. Nevertheless, a number of century-old institutions still retain the form, such as the Hongkong Post, Hongkong Electric. As of 1997, its name is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. This is the title as mentioned in the Hong Kong Basic Law. Hong Kong has carried many nicknames, the most famous among those is the Pearl of the Orient, which reflected the impressive nightscape of the citys light decorations on the skyscrapers along both sides of the Victoria Harbour
29.
Action-adventure game
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The action-adventure video game genre includes video games that combine core elements from the action and adventure genres. With the decline of the game genre from mainstream popularity. It is not uncommon for gamers to apply the term adventure or action adventure to describe the genre of fiction to which a game belongs, typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve, with very little or no action. If there is action, it is confined to isolated minigames. Pure action games have gameplay based on real-time interactions that challenge the reflexes, therefore, action-adventure games engage both reflexes and problem-solving, in both violent and non-violent situations. An action-adventure game can be defined as a game with a mix of elements from an action game and an adventure game, especially crucial elements like puzzles. Action-adventures require many of the physical skills as action games, but also offer a storyline, numerous characters, an inventory system, dialogue. They are faster-paced than pure adventure games, because they include both physical and conceptual challenges, action-adventure games normally include a combination of complex story elements, which are displayed for players using audio and video. The story is heavily reliant upon the characters movement, which triggers story events. Some examples of games include The Legend of Zelda, God of War. Exactly when a game stops being a game and becomes an action game is a matter of interpretation. There are quite a few disagreements in the community and in the media over what constitutes an action-adventure game. In some cases a game with puzzles will be classified as an action-adventure game. Others see action games as a genre, while an action-adventure is an action game that includes situational problem-solving. Adventure gamers may also be purists, rejecting any game that makes use of physical challenges or time pressure, regardless, the action-adventure label is prominent in articles over the internet and media. The term action-adventure is usually substituted for a particular subgenre due to its wide scope, although action-adventure games are diverse and difficult to classify, there are some distinct subgenres. These are sometimes called Real-Time Adventure games or RTAs for short, notable examples of this include Metroid Prime, Half-Life 2, Dishonored, and Far Cry 3. Third-person action-adventure, in gameplay is in the third-person
30.
Adventure (Atari 2600)
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Adventure is a video game for the Atari 2600 video game console, released in ca. late 1979–1980. In the game, the controls a square avatar whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find a magical chalice. The game world is populated by roaming enemies, three dragons that can eat the avatar and a bat that steals and hides items around the game world. Adventure was conceived as a version of the 1977 text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure. In this game, he introduced the first widely known video game Easter egg, Robinetts Easter egg became a tradition for future Atari 2600 titles. Adventure received mostly positive reviews at the time of its release and has continued to be viewed positively in the decades since and it is considered the first action-adventure and console fantasy game, and inspired other titles in the genres. More than one million cartridges of Adventure were sold, and the game has included in numerous Atari 2600 game collections for modern computer hardware. The games prototype code was used as the basis for the 1979 Superman game, the Easter egg concept pioneered by the game has transcended video games and entered popular culture. In Adventure, the goal is to recover the Enchanted Chalice that an evil magician has stolen and hidden in the kingdom. The kingdom includes two other castles and various obstacles and mazes within them, further, the kingdom is guarded by three dragons, Yorgle, Grundle, and Rhindle, that protect various items in the game and will try to chase and eat the players avatar. There is also a bat that can roam across the kingdom freely, carrying a single item around, the bat continues to fly around even if not present on the players current screen and may continue moving or swapping around objects. The players avatar is represented by a square shape that can move within. While Robinett originally intended for all rooms to be connected, a few such connections were unidirectional. Such problems were explained away as bad magic in the games manual, the players goal is to find objects to help defeat the dragons and recover the Chalice. Only one object can be carried at a time, the player can be eaten by a dragon if it is caught in its bite cycle, at which point the avatar is stuck in the dragons stomach. The ability to reset the players avatar without resetting the game is considered the first known continue game option in video games. The game offers three different skill levels, Level 1 is the easiest, as it uses a simplified room layout missing one of the castles and one of the mazes, and doesnt include the bat and one of the dragons. Level 2 is the version of the game, with the various objects appearing in set positions at the start of the game
31.
Christmas
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In several countries, celebrating Christmas Eve on December 24 has the main focus rather than December 25, with gift-giving and sharing a traditional meal with the family. Although the month and date of Jesus birth are unknown, by the fourth century the Western Christian Church had placed Christmas on December 25. Today, most Christians celebrate on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar and this is not a disagreement over the date of Christmas as such, but rather a preference of which calendar should be used to determine the day that is December 25. Although it is not known why December 25 became a date of celebration, December 25 was the date the Romans marked as the winter solstice, the shortest, and therefore darkest day of the year. Jesus was identified with the Sun based on an Old Testament verse, the date is exactly nine months following Annunciation, when the conception of Jesus is celebrated. Finally, the Romans had a series of pagan festivals near the end of the year, so Christmas may have been scheduled at this time to appropriate, or compete with, one or more of these festivals. The celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have a mix of pre-Christian, Christian, the economic impact of Christmas has grown steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world. Christmas is a form of Christs mass. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, which is from Old English Crīstesmæsse, crīst is from Greek Khrīstos, a translation of Hebrew Māšîaḥ, Messiah, meaning anointed, and mæsse is from Latin missa, the celebration of the Eucharist. The form Christenmas was also used, but is now considered archaic and dialectal, it derives from Middle English Cristenmasse. In addition to Christmas, the holiday has been known by other names throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons referred to the feast as midwinter, or, more rarely, Nativity, meaning birth, is from Latin nātīvitās. In Old English, Gēola referred to the corresponding to December and January. Noel entered English in the late 14th century and is from the Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nātālis, the canonical gospels of Luke and Matthew both describe Jesus as being born in Bethlehem in Judea, to a virgin mother. In the Gospel of Luke account, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census and it says that angels proclaimed him a savior for all people, and shepherds came to adore him. In the Matthew account, magi follow a star to Bethlehem to bring gifts to Jesus, King Herod orders the massacre of all the boys less than two years old in Bethlehem, but the family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth. The Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke are prominent in the gospels, the first recorded Christmas celebration was in Rome in 336. Christmas played a role in the Arian controversy of the fourth century, the feast regained prominence after 800, when Charlemagne was crowned emperor on Christmas Day
32.
Arcade game
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An arcade game or coin-op is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games. While exact dates are debated, the age of arcade video games is usually defined as a period beginning sometime in the late 1970s. The old Midways of 1920s-era amusement parks provided the inspiration and atmosphere for later arcade games, in the 1930s the first coin-operated pinball machines emerged. These early amusement machines differed from their later electronic cousins in that they were made of wood and they lacked plungers or lit-up bonus surfaces on the playing field, and used mechanical instead of electronic scoring-readouts. By around 1977 most pinball machines in production switched to using solid-state electronics both for operation and for scoring, another Sega 1969 release, Missile, a shooter and vehicle-combat simulation, featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen. In 1970 Midway released the game in North America as S. A. M. I, in the course of the 1970s, following the release of Pong in 1972, electronic video-games gradually replaced electro-mechanical arcade games. In 1972, Sega released a game called Killer Shark. In 1974, Nintendo released Wild Gunman, a shooter that used full-motion video-projection from 16 mm film to display live-action cowboy opponents on the screen. The 1978 video game Space Invaders, however, dealt a yet more powerful blow to the popularity of electro-mechanical games, in 1971 students at Stanford University set up the Galaxy Game, a coin-operated version of the Spacewar video game. This ranks as the earliest known instance of a video game. Later in the year, Nolan Bushnell created the first mass-manufactured game, Computer Space. In 1972, Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, Atari essentially created the coin-operated video game industry with the game Pong, the first successful electronic ping pong video game. Pong proved to be popular, but imitators helped keep Atari from dominating the fledgling coin-operated video game market, taitos Space Invaders, in 1978, proved to be the first blockbuster arcade video game. Its success marked the beginning of the age of arcade video games. Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Battlezone, Defender, by 1981, the arcade video game industry was worth $8 billion. By the late 1980s, the video game craze was beginning to fade due to advances in home video game console technology. By 1991, US arcade video game revenues had fallen to $2.1 billion, the pseudo-3D sprite/tile scaling was handled in a similar manner to textures in later texture-mapped polygonal 3D games of the 1990s
33.
Space Invaders
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Space Invaders is an arcade video game created by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to defeat waves of aliens with a cannon to earn as many points as possible. In designing the game, Nishikado drew inspiration from popular media, Breakout, The War of the Worlds, to complete it, he had to design custom hardware and development tools. It was one of the forerunners of video gaming and helped expand the video game industry from a novelty to a global industry. When first released, Space Invaders was very successful, the game has been the inspiration for other video games, re-released on numerous platforms, and led to several sequels. The 1980 Atari 2600 version quadrupled the systems sales and became the first killer app for video game consoles, Space Invaders has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows, and been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. The pixelated enemy alien has become a pop icon, often used as a synecdoche representing video games as a whole. Space Invaders is a fixed shooter game in which the player controls a laser cannon by moving it horizontally across the bottom of the screen. The aim is to defeat five rows of eleven aliens—some versions feature different numbers—that move horizontally back, the player defeats an alien, and earns points, by shooting it with the laser cannon. As more aliens are defeated, the movement and the games music both speed up. Defeating the aliens brings another wave that is difficult, a loop which can continue without end. The aliens attempt to destroy the cannon by firing at it while they approach the bottom of the screen, if they reach the bottom, the alien invasion is successful and the game ends. A special mystery ship will move across the top of the screen. The laser cannon is protected by several stationary defense bunkers—the number varies by version—that are gradually destroyed by a numerous amount of blasts from the aliens or player. A game will end if players last laser base is destroyed. Alien invaders,10,20, or 30 points, mystery ship,50,100,150, or 300 points. Points earned for shooting mystery ship varies, players earn an extra life at either 1,000 or 1,500 points
34.
Taito
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The Taito Corporation is a Japanese video game developer and publisher of arcade hardwares and mobile phones, and an operator of video arcades. It is also a publisher of home video games. Taito is wholly owned by Square Enix Holdings, despite being a subsidiary to Square Enix Holdings, the parent company has kept the branding of Taito entirely distinct from Square Enix. Taito is known for producing hit arcade games, such as Space Invaders and it has produced arcade games all around the world, while also importing and distributing American coin-op video games in Japan. Taito owns several arcades in Japan known as Taito Stations or Game Taito Stations, Taito has its headquarters in the Shinjuku Bunka Quint Building in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo, sharing the facility with its parent company. In the past, the company had operated divisions in North America, Brazil, South Korea, Italy, the company was founded in 1953 by a Russian Jewish businessman named Michael Kogan as Taito Trading Company. Taito started out importing and distributing vending machines and it was also the first company to distill and sell vodka in Japan. Later, it began leasing jukeboxes and eventually started to manufacture its own, Taito began producing electro-mechanical arcade games in the 1960s. Taito changed its name from Taito Trading Company to Taito Corporation in August 1972, several of its early arcades games saw release in America by Midway, a Chicago area-based arcade manufacturer with strong ties to Taito. Taito opened in 1973 its Taito America division, in its first years, Taito Americas sole purpose was to handle the licensing of Taitos video games to American third party publishers. It wasnt until the late 1970s that Taito America began to self-publish Taitos video games in North America, initially based in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, Taito America relocated to nearby Wheeling in 1985. In April 1986 and barely a month after becoming part of the Kyocera group, Japan Vending Machine was once an independent company but was purchased by Taito in July 1971 to strengthening its presence in the operation of amusement facilities. Pacific Industrial was created by Taito itself in 1963 to develop products for the company, in May 1988, Taito Software, the division of Taito America responsible for non-arcade operations, opened its own office in North Vancouver, British Columbia. However, by early 1991, the Vancouver location had completely shut down, Taito America ceased operations in July 1996 after more than 20 years of existence. Taito had already sold exclusive rights for publishing its games in America to Acclaim Entertainment several months before, similarly, a division existed in London, England in the United Kingdom to distribute Taito games in Europe. Taito Corporation Limited was created in 1988 and liquidated in February 1998, Taito has many well known arcade video games. Space Invaders is probably the most notable, but games such as Speed Race, Gun Fight, Qix, Jungle Hunt, Elevator Action, Buggy Challenge, Bubble Bobble, Takeshi no Chōsenjō, Chase H. Q. Puzznic, Kick Master, Gun Buster and Puzzle Bobble are all part of Taitos library, Taito also had a license from Hanna-Barbera to produce games based on its animated series
35.
West Germany
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany
36.
Missile Command
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Missile Command is a 1980 arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for European release. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Ataris vector graphics game Tempest from the same year, the 1981 Atari 2600 port of Missile Command by Rob Fulop sold over 2.5 million copies and became the third most popular cartridge for the system. The players six cities are being attacked by a hail of ballistic missiles. As a regional commander of three batteries, the player must defend six cities in their zone from being destroyed. The game is played by moving a crosshair across the sky background via a trackball, counter-missiles explode upon reaching the crosshair, leaving a fireball that persists for several seconds and destroys any enemy missiles that enter it. There are three batteries, each with ten missiles, a missile battery becomes useless when all its missiles are fired, the missiles of the central battery fly to their targets at much greater speed, only these missiles can effectively kill a smart bomb at a distance. The game is staged as a series of levels of increasing difficulty, the weapons attack the six cities, as well as the missile batteries, being struck by an enemy weapon results in destruction of the city or missile battery. Enemy weapons are only able to destroy three cities during one level, a level ends when all enemy weaponry is destroyed or reaches its target. A player who out of missiles no longer has control over the remainder of the level. At the conclusion of a level, the player bonus points for any remaining cities or unused missiles. Between levels missile batteries are rebuilt and replenished, destroyed cities are only at set point levels. The game inevitably ends when all six cities are destroyed, unless the player manages to score points to earn a bonus city before the end of the level. Like most early games, there is no way to win the game. The game, then, is just a contest in seeing how long the player can survive, on conclusion of the game, the screen displays The End, rather than Game Over, signifying that n the end, all is lost. This conclusion is skipped, however, if the player makes the score list. The game features an interesting bug, once a score of 810,000 is reached, at some later stage the speed of missiles increases greatly for a few screens. On the 255th and 256th yellow screens, known as the 0x stages, for good players these two 0x stages could earn over a million points. In this way it was possible to play game for hours on end
37.
Activision
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Activision Publishing, Inc. also known as Activision, is an American video game publisher. It was founded on October 1,1979 and was the worlds first independent developer and its first products were cartridges for the Atari 2600 video console system published from July 1980 for the US market and from August 1981 for the international market. As of January 2017, Activision is one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world and was also the top publisher for 2016 in the United States, before Activision, third-party developers did not exist. Software for video game consoles were published exclusively by makers of the systems for which the games were designed, for example, Atari was the only publisher of games for the Atari 2600. This was particularly galling to the developers, as they received financial rewards nor credit for games that sold well. Kaplan, who called the others the best designers for the in the world, recalled that Kassar called the four men towel designers and that anyone can do a cartridge. Crane, Miller, and Whitehead left Atari and founded Activision in October 1979 with former music industry executive Jim Levy and venture capitalist Richard Muchmore, David Crane has said the name Activision was based on Jim Levys idea to combine active and television. The original name proposed for the company was VSync, Inc, unlike Atari, the company credited and promoted game creators along with the games themselves. The steps taken for this included devoting a page to the developer in their instruction manuals and these approaches helped the newly formed company attract experienced talent. In recognition of this step, Kaplan, Levy, Miller, the departure of the four programmers, whose titles made up more than half of Ataris cartridge sales at the time, caused legal action between the two companies not settled until 1982. As the market for game consoles started to decline, Activision branched out, producing titles for home computers. In 1982, Activision released Pitfall. on the Atari 2600, designed and developed by David Crane, it was a huge success. Many clones of the game were introduced, including arcade games. On June 13,1986, Activision purchased struggling text adventure pioneer Infocom, Jim Levy was a big fan of Infocoms titles and wanted the company to remain solvent. About six months after the InfoWedding, Bruce Davis took over as CEO of Activision, Davis was against the merger from the start and was heavy-handed in its management. Five of them accepted this offer, in 1988, Activision began involvement in software besides video games, such as business applications. As a result, Activision changed its name to Mediagenic to better represent all of its activities. After taking over the company, the new management filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization, in the reorganization, Mediagenic merged with The Disc Company with Mediagenic being the surviving company
38.
Demon Attack
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Demon Attack is a video game written by Rob Fulop and published by Imagic. It was originally for the Atari 2600, then ported to the Intellivision, Odyssey², Atari 8-bit, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, PC, there was also a port to the TI-99/4A titled Super Demon Attack. Demon Attack is supposedly based on the 1979 arcade shooter Galaxian, the similarities prompted a lawsuit from Atari, who had purchased the latters home video game rights. Imagic settled out of court, and Demon Attack became Imagics best-selling game as of 1983, marooned on the ice planet Krybor, the player uses a laser cannon to destroy legions of demons that attack from above. Visually, the appear in waves similar to other space-themed shooters. Each wave introduces new weapons with which the attack, such as long streaming lasers. Starting in Wave 5, demons also divide into two smaller, bird-like creatures that eventually attempt descent onto the players cannon. Starting in Wave 9, the demons shots follow directly beneath the monsters, the game was originally programmed to end after the 84th wave, as Fulop did not expect anyone to wrap the game. Two days after its release however, a kid was able to beat the game. After this initial run of cartridges, Fulop went back and changed one line of code so that the game never ends, the Odyssey² version was the first third-party game for the console. Commenting on Demon Attacks critical reception, AllGame described it as one of the most critically praised Atari 2600 games of all time, the VCS version is considered to be a classic by many Atari fans. Video magazine reviewed the VCS version of Demon Attack in 1982, describing it as quite simply excellent, video Games praised the Intellivision version of the game, stating that while the VCS version is a very good TV-game, this one is even better. Ahoy. called the VIC-20 version excellent and its a super-grabber type of twitch game, and good for a few long nights. AllGame gave the game a four and a star rating out of five, referring to it as an excellent game in the ubiquitous slide-and-shoot genre with graphics that were beautifully drawn. The review also noted that As with so many shooters of its type, the action can get repetitive, but no matter -- the game is fun, the enemies are incredibly varied, and the sound effects are solid. Demon Attack at the Internet Archive Console Living Room Demon Attack at AtariAge Demon Attack at MobyGames
39.
Games by Apollo
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Games by Apollo was a third-party developer of games for the Atari 2600 video game system, based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded in October 1981 by Pat Roper as a subsidiary of his National Career Consultants, in 1980, Pat Roper was president of Texas-based National Career Consultants, a producer of educational films. He knew nothing about the industry, but while playing NFL Football on the Intellivision. Roper formed a company called Games by Apollo, citing the name Apollo as a recognizable symbol of youth. Instead of hiring away existing game designers from Mattel or Atari, as developers had done, Roper placed an advertisement in the Dallas Morning News. PROGRAMMER-VIDEO-GAMES We nd you to us in our exciting adventures. If you have exper & know-how in this area, pls. send is your resume, send to this paper ad no 3397752. All replies strictly confidential Patrick, Roper, sent a copy of the Morning News ad by a friend, a young programmer from Iowa names Ed Salvo contacted Roper to pitch him Skeet Shoot, a game he had developed in about four weeks. Roper flew Salvo to Dallas and offered to make him lead developer for the nascent company, Salvo initially turned him down, thinking it was too risky. After Salvo returned to Iowa, Roper contacted him and offered to buy Skeet Shoot for $5,000, Salvo accepted and agreed to a contract to develop a second game, Spacechase. With Games by Apollo now a going concern, Roper gave Salvo the job of director of development, Spacechase would become Apollos best-selling title. One of the marketing ideas was a customized or monogrammed version of the game. Though fewer than ten were sold, several were given to press, PM Magazine sent Leeza Gibbons to Apollos offices to film a segment on the company and Spacechase. During the segment, Salvo made a customized Spacechase for her, other programmers interviewed for the piece were Dan Oliver, Steve Stringfellow and Ernie Runyon. Space Cavern was the first scrolling 2600 game and it was created after Roper flew Salvo to the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas to see Imagics new game Demon Attack. Roper had been impressed and wanted one just like it. He gave programmer Dan Oliver the game play and specifications for Space Cavern without identifying where he got the idea, Apollo attended the June 1982 CES in Chicago with a booth of their own, which included the obligatory hiring of models to demonstrate its games. Shortly after, they hired Cyndy Spence, formerly of Atari and she in turn brought in well-known advertising agency Benton & Bowles to represent Apollo
