1.
Game Boy line
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The Game Boy line is a line of handheld game consoles developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. The product line has sold 200 million units worldwide, the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined sold 118.69 million units worldwide. All versions of the Game Boy Advance combined have sold 81.51 million units, all Game Boy systems combined have sold 200.20 million units worldwide. The Game Boy line was succeeded by the Nintendo DS line, a number of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games have been rereleased digitally through the Virtual Console service for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Nintendos Game Boy handheld was first released in 1989, yokoi was also responsible for the Game & Watch series of handhelds when Nintendo made the move from toys to video games. By following this simple mantra, the Game Boy line managed to gain a vast following despite technically superior alternatives which would have color graphics instead and this is also apparent in the name, which connotes a smaller sidekick companion to Nintendos consoles. Game Boy continues its success to this day and many at Nintendo have dedicated the handheld in Yokois memory, Game Boy celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2004, which nearly coincided with the 20-year anniversary of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. To celebrate, Nintendo released the Classic NES Series and an NES controller-themed color scheme for the Game Boy Advance SP, in 2006, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said on the rumored demise of the Game Boy brand, No, its not true after all. What we are saying is that for whichever platform, we are always conducting research and development for the new system, be it the Game Boy. Perhaps they misunderstood a part of story, but as far as the handheld market is concerned we really want to focus on more sales of the DS. The original gray Game Boy was first released in Japan on April 21,1989 and it plays games from ROM-based media contained in small plastic detachable units called cartridges. The game that pushed the Game Boy into the reaches of success was Tetris. Tetris was widely popular, and on the format could be played anywhere. It came packaged with the Game Boy, and broadened its reach, adults, releasing Tetris on the Game Boy was selected as #4 on GameSpys 25 Smartest Moments in Gaming. The original Game Boy was one of the first cartridge-based systems that more than four players at one time. In fact, it has shown that the system could support 16 simultaneous players. However, this feature was supported in Faceball 2000. In 1995, the Play it Loud version of the original Game Boy was released in five different colors such as red, yellow, green, black, the Game Boy Pocket is a redesigned version of the original Game Boy having the same features released in 1996
2.
Nintendo
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Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo is one of the worlds largest video game companies by market capitalization, founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small businesses, such as cab services. The word Nintendo can be translated from Japanese to English as leave luck to heaven. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseballs Seattle Mariners, as of 31 March 2014, Nintendo has cumulative sales of over 670.43 million hardware units and 4.23 billion software units. The company has created and released some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce cards to satisfy demand, in 1949, the company adopted the name Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd. doing business as The Nintendo Playing Card Co. outside Japan. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing cards in Japan and organizes its own contract bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup. In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U. S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company and he found that the biggest playing card company in the world was using only a small office. Yamauchis realization that the card business had limited potential was a turning point. He then acquired the license to use Disney characters on playing cards to drive sales, in 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Co. Ltd. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using newly injected capital during the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company called Daiya. However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It also set up a hotel chain, a TV network. All of these ventures failed, and after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new Nintendo Games department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester
3.
Handheld game console
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A handheld game console is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls, and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video consoles and contain the console, screen, speakers. In 1976, Mattel introduced the first handheld game with the release of Auto Race. Later, several companies—including Coleco and Milton Bradley—made their own single-game, the oldest true handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges is the Milton Bradley Microvision in 1979. Nintendo is credited with popularizing the handheld console concept with the release of the Game Boy in 1989, the origins of handheld game consoles are found in handheld and tabletop electronic game devices of the 1970s and early 1980s. These electronic devices are capable of playing only a game, they fit in the palm of the hand or on a tabletop. In 1978, handheld games were described by Popular Electronics magazine as nonvideo electronic games. This synthesis happened in 1976, when Mattel began work on a line of calculator-sized sports games that became the worlds first handheld electronic games. The project began when Michael Katz, Mattels new product category marketing director, told the engineers in the group to design a game the size of a calculator. Our big success was something that I conceptualized—the first handheld game, I asked the design group to see if they could come up with a game that was electronic that was the same size as a calculator. —Michael Katz, former marketing director, Mattel Toys, the result was the 1976 release of Auto Race. Followed by Football later in 1977, the two games were so successful that according to Katz, these simple electronic handheld games turned into a $400 million category, Mattel would later win the honor of being recognized by the industry for innovation in handheld game device displays. Soon, other manufacturers including Coleco, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, Entex, in 1979 the LCD-based Microvision, designed by Smith Engineering and distributed by Milton-Bradley, became the first handheld game console and the first to use interchangeable game cartridges. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi, traveling on a bullet train, Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Starting in 1980, Nintendo began to release a series of games designed by Yokoi called the Game & Watch games. For later, more complicated Game & Watch games, Yokoi invented a cross shaped directional pad or D-pad for control of on-screen characters, the result was the Nintendo Game Boy. In 1982, the Bandai LCD Solarpower was the first solar-powered gaming device, some of its games, such as the horror-themed game Terror House, features two LCD panels, one stacked on the other, for an early 3D effect. In 1983, Takara Tomys Tomytronic 3D simulates 3D by having two LED panels that were lit by light through a window on top of the device
4.
Fourth generation of video game consoles
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In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation of games consoles began on October 30,1987 with the Japanese release of NEC Home Electronics PC Engine. This generation saw strong console wars, Nintendo was able to capitalize on its previous success in the third generation and managed to win the largest worldwide market share in the fourth generation as well. Sega was extremely successful in this generation and began a new franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog, several other companies released consoles in this generation, but none of them were widely successful. Nevertheless, several companies started to take notice of the maturing video game industry. This generation ended with the discontinuation of the Neo Geo in 2004 and it launched in North America during August 1989, under the name TurboGrafx-16. Initially, the PC Engine was quite successful in Japan, partly due to titles available on the then-new CD-ROM format, NEC released a CD add-on in 1990 and by 1992 had released a combination TurboGrafx and CD-ROM system known as the TurboDuo. In the United States, NEC used Bonk, a caveman, as their mascot. The TurboGrafx-16 failed to maintain its sales momentum or to make an impact in North America. The TurboGrafx-16 and its CD combination system, the Turbo Duo, ceased manufacturing in North America by 1994, though a small amount of software continued to trickle out for the platform. In Japan, a number of adult titles were also available for the PC Engine, such as a variety of strip mahjong games. The Mega Drive was released in Japan on October 29,1988, the console was released in New York City and Los Angeles on August 14,1989 under the name Sega Genesis, and in the rest of North America later that year. It was launched in Europe and Australia on November 30,1990 under its original name and their advertising was often directly adversarial, leading to commercials such as Genesis does what Nintendont and the SEGA. scream. Segas version of Mortal Kombat received generally favorable reviews in the gaming press. With the new ESRB rating system in place, Nintendo reconsidered its position for the release of Mortal Kombat II, the Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service reported that during the key shopping month of November 1994, 63% of all 16-bit video game consoles sold were Sega systems. The console was never popular in Japan, but still managed to sell 40 million units worldwide, by late 1995, Sega was supporting five different consoles and two add-ons, and Sega Enterprises chose to discontinue the Mega Drive in Japan to concentrate on the new Sega Saturn. Nintendos fourth-generation console, the Super Famicom, was released in Japan on November 21,1990, the machine reached North America as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 23,1991, and Europe and Australia in April 1992. Later titles such as Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country would keep the Super Famicom/SNES relevant well into the fifth generation era of 32-, the CD-i format was announced in the late 80s, with the first machines compatible with the format being released in 1991. The Phillips CD-i main selling point was that it was more than a game machine, due to an agreement between Nintendo in Philips about an abortive CD add-on for the SNES, Philips also had rights to use some of Nintendo franchises
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
8.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
9.
Serbia and Montenegro
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Serbia and Montenegro, officially the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, was a country in Southeast Europe, created from the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia after its breakup in 1992. The republics of Serbia and Montenegro together established a federation in 1992 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the FRY aspired to be a sole legal successor to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but those claims were opposed by other former republics. The United Nations also denied its request to continue the membership of the former state. It re-applied for UN membership on 27 October and was admitted on 1 November 2000, the FRY was initially dominated by Slobodan Milošević as President of Serbia and then President of Yugoslavia. Milošević installed and forced the removal of several presidents and prime ministers. However, the Montenegrin government, initially enthusiastic supporters of Milošević, a loose union, Serbia and Montenegro were united only in certain realms, such as defense. The two constituent republics functioned separately throughout the period of the Federal Republic, and continued to operate under separate economic policies, on 21 May 2006, the Montenegrin independence referendum was held, and 55. 5% of voters voted in favor of independence. The state union came to an end after Montenegros formal declaration of independence on 3 June 2006, after the dissolution, Serbia became the legal successor of the union, while Montenegro re-applied for membership in international organizations. With the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, the new state followed the wave of democratic change, Yugoslavias collapse began in 1991 when Slovenia, Croatia, and the Republic of Macedonia declared independence. On 26 December 1991, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Serb rebel-held territories in Croatia agreed that they would form a new third Yugoslavia. Zulfikarpašić believed that Bosnia could benefit from a union with Serbia, Montenegro, the FRY was suspended from a number of international institutions. This was due to the ongoing Yugoslav wars during the 1990s, the Government of Yugoslavia supported Croatian and Bosnian Serbs in the wars from 1992 to 1995. Because of that, the country was under economic and political sanctions, in this way, every Bosnian Serb was transferred from the Yugoslav army to what became the newly created Bosnian Serb Army. Through this, the Bosnian Serb army also received military equipment and full funding from the FRY. Furthermore, Serbian Radical Party founder and paramilitary Vojislav Šešelj claimed that President Milošević personally asked him to send paramilitaries into Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1995, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević represented the FRY and Bosnian Serbs at peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, US, from 1996, the first public signs of political discord between parts of Montenegrin leadership and the Serbian leadership began to appear. Milošević did not respond to the platform, considering it unconstitutional, by October 2000 Milošević had lost power in Serbia. Subsequent governments of Montenegro carried out policies, and political tensions with Serbia simmered despite political changes in Belgrade
10.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
11.
Australian dollar
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Within Australia, it is almost always abbreviated with the dollar sign, with A$ or AU$ sometimes used to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. It is subdivided into 100 cents, in 2011, the Australian dollar was the fifth most traded currency in the world, accounting for 7. 6% of the worlds daily share. It trades in the foreign exchange markets behind the US dollar, the euro, the yen. The currency is referred to by foreign-exchange traders as the Aussie dollar. With pounds, shillings and pence to be replaced by decimal currency on 14 February 1966, in 1963, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, a monarchist, wished to name the currency the royal. Other proposed names included more exotic suggestions such as the austral, the oz, the boomer, the roo, the kanga, the emu, the digger, the quid, the dinkum and the ming. Menzies influence resulted in the selection of the royal, and trial designs were prepared and printed by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Treasurer, Harold Holt, announced the decision in Parliament on 5 June 1963. The royal would be subdivided into 100 cents, but the existing names shilling, florin, the name royal for the currency proved very unpopular, with Holt and his wife even receiving death threats. On 24 July Holt told the Cabinet the decision had been a terrible mistake, on 18 September Holt advised Parliament that the name was to be the dollar, of 100 cents. The Australian pound, introduced in 1910 and officially distinct in value from the pound sterling since devaluation in 1931, was replaced by the dollar on 14 February 1966. The rate of conversion for the new currency was two dollars per Australian pound, or ten Australian shillings per dollar. The exchange rate was pegged to the pound sterling at a rate of $1 =8 shillings, in 1967, Australia effectively left the sterling area, when the pound sterling was devalued against the US dollar and the Australian dollar did not follow. It maintained its peg to the US dollar at the rate of A$1 = US$1.12, on 27 September 2012, the Reserve Bank of Australia stated that they had ordered work on a project to upgrade the current banknotes. The upgraded banknotes will incorporate a number of new features so that they remain secure into the future, the first new banknotes were issued from the 1st of September 2016, with the remaining denominations to be issued in the coming years. In 1966, coins were introduced in denominations of 1,2,5,10,20 and 50 cents. The initial 50-cent coins contained high silver content and were withdrawn after a year after the value of the silver content was found to exceed the face value of the coins. One-dollar coins were introduced in 1984, followed by two-dollar coins in 1988, the one- and two-cent coins were discontinued in 1991 and withdrawn from circulation. In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of decimal currency, the 2006 mint proof and uncirculated sets included one-, in early 2013, Australias first triangular coin was introduced, to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of Parliament House
12.
Game Boy Color
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It is the successor of the Game Boy. The Game Boy Color, as suggested by the name, features a color screen and it is slightly thicker and taller than the Game Boy Pocket, which is a redesigned Game Boy released in 1996. As with the original Game Boy, it has a custom 8-bit processor somewhat related to a Zilog Z80 central processing unit, the original name - with its American English spelling of color - remained unchanged even in markets where colour was the accepted English spelling. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined have sold 118.69 million units worldwide and it was discontinued in 2003, shortly after the release of the Game Boy Advance SP. The resultant product was backward compatible, a first for a handheld system and this became a major feature of the Game Boy line, since it allowed each new launch to begin with a significantly larger library than any of its competitors. The Game Boy Color also has three times as much memory as the original, the screen resolution was the same as the original Game Boy, which is 160x144 pixels. The Game Boy Color also featured an infrared port for wireless linking. A few games used Hi-Color mode to increase the number of colors available on-screen and this is a mode used most notably by the Italian company 7th Sense s. r. l. and can display more than 2000 different colors on the screen. Some examples of using this method are The Fish Files, The New Addams Family Series and Alone in the Dark. When playing an original Game Boy game on a later system and this is achieved by pressing certain button combinations, namely either A or B and a direction key while the Game Boy logo is displayed on the screen. These palettes each contain up to ten colors, the grayscale palette produces an appearance identical to that experienced on the original Game Boy, the inverted colors palette inverts the colors from the Game Boy Colors color palettes. In addition, some Game Boy games have a palette that is enabled when no buttons are pressed. Any game that not have a special palette will default to the dark green palette. The default palettes are stored in a database within the internal boot ROM of the system, titles that have color palettes on Super Game Boy will usually default to a similar palette when played on a Game Boy Color. These games would display a message and refuse to play if used in older Game Boy models. Pokémon Gold and Silver are also examples of Game Boy Color games that work on an original Game Boy system, the clear-colored Game Boy Color cartridges will function correctly only when used in a Game Boy Color or a later model. The logo for Game Boy Color spelled out the word COLOR in the five colors in which the unit was manufactured. Other colors were sold as limited editions or in specific countries, the last Game Boy Color game released in Japan was From TV Animation – One Piece, Maboroshi no Grand Line Boukenhen
13.
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
14.
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
15.
Sharp Corporation
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Sharp Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products, headquartered in Sakai-ku, Sakai. Since 2016 it has been a part of Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. Sharp employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, the company was founded in September 1912 in Tokyo and takes its name from one of its founder’s first inventions, the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil, which was invented by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1915. As of 2013, Sharp Corporation is the tenth-largest, by market share, in Japan it has been a long-time leader. Sharp has at times also been the most popular mobile phone brand in the Japanese market, in 1912, Tokuji Hayakawa founded a metal workshop in Tokyo. The first of his inventions was a snap buckle named ‘Tokubijo’. Another of his inventions was the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil in 1915, after the pencil business was destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, the company relocated to Osaka and began designing the first generation of Japanese radio sets. These went on sale in 1925, in 1953, Sharp started producing TV sets. In 1964, Sharp developed the world’s first transistor calculator, which was priced at JP¥535,000 and it took Sharp several years to develop the product as they had no experience in making computing devices at the time. Two years later, in 1966, Sharp introduced its first IC calculator using 145 Mitsubishi-made bipolar ICs and its first LSI calculator was introduced in 1969. This was the first pocketable calculator priced at less than JP¥100,000, the company produced the first LCD calculator in 1973. All of these units are considered collectors items on the secondary market, one of the company’s main inventors of LCD calculators was Tadashi Sasaki. The company ventured into the high end stereo market in 1976 with the introduction of high end receivers, amplifiers, speakers, turntables and cassette players. The Optonica line as it was called, consisted of quality and technically advanced components. The line was changed, in 1981, and moved mainly into digital high end. Sharp’s Mobile Communications Division created the world’s first commercial camera phone, since 2000, Sharp has heavily invested in LCD panel manufacturing plants, Kameyama in 2004, Sakai in 2009. The Sakai plant is still the only 10th generation LCD manufacturing plant on the globe, however, the 2008 financial crisis and strong Yen significantly lowered world demand for Japanese LCD panels. Furthermore, the switch to digital TV broadcasting was completed in Japan by the middle of 2011
16.
Tetris (Game Boy)
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Tetris is a puzzle video game for the Game Boy released in 1989. It is a version of Alexey Pajitnovs original Tetris and it was bundled in the North American and European releases of the Game Boy itself. It was the first game compatible with the Game Link Cable, a colorized remake of the game was released on the Game Boy Color entitled Tetris DX. A Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console version of Tetris was released in December 2011 and it was delisted from the Nintendo eShop after December 31,2014. The Game Boy version of Tetris plays identically to versions of Tetris released on other platforms, a pseudorandom sequence of tetrominoes – shapes composed of four square blocks each – fall down the playing field. The object of the game is to manipulate these tetrads, by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90-degree units, when one or more such lines are created, they disappear, and the blocks above move down by the number of lines cleared. As in most standard versions of Tetris, blocks do not automatically fall into open gaps when lines are cleared, as the game progresses, the tetrominoes fall faster. The game ends when at least part of a tetromino extends beyond the top of the playfield when setting in place. The player can see which block will appear next in a window off to the side of the playing field. Points are awarded based on the current level and number of lines cleared, the level increases each time the player clears ten lines, as does the speed of falling tetrominoes. The player may adjust the difficulty before beginning a game by selecting a starting level and/or choosing to pre-fill the play area with a number of lines of randomly placed blocks. This version of Tetris includes a mode, in which each players objective is to remain in play for longer than his or her opponent. Each player plays on their own Game Boy, with the two connected via the Game Link Cable. During gameplay, when a player scores a Double, Triple or Tetris, one or more rows of blocks are added to the bottom of their opponents stack. In 1988, computer game publisher Henk Rogers noticed the game at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in a Spectrum HoloByte booth. Rogers was told to pursue the rights, and secured them from both Spectrum HoloByte and Atari-spinoff company Tengen, who had secured a license at the time. He additionally approached Robert Stein, who had secured permission for both companies to distribute Tetris through company Mirrorsoft, to seek rights for it to be distributed with the Game Boy. However, after several months passed Stein had not produced the rights for the Game Boy, requesting more time from Arakawa, he traveled to Moscow to speak with the USSRs Ministry of Software and Hardware Export and Pajitnov
17.
Game & Watch
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Game & Watch is a line of handheld electronic games produced by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, each Game & Watch features a game to be played on an LCD screen in addition to a clock. This console inspired Nintendo to make the Game Boy and it was the earliest Nintendo product to gain major success. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi, traveling on a Shinkansen, saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons, Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. The units use LR4x/SR4x button-cell batteries, the type used in most laser pointers or handheld calculators. Different models were manufactured, with some having two screens and a clam-shell design, the Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS later reused this design. Titles available in Game & Watch form vary from Mickey Mouse to Balloon Fight, including Nintendo staples such as Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, the modern cross Control Pad design was developed in 1982 by Yokoi for the Donkey Kong handheld game. The design proved to be popular for subsequent Game & Watch titles and this particular design was patented and later earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award. Most of the titles have a GAME A and a GAME B button, in Flagman, Game B is a mode where you have to press the right button in a certain amount of time, not memorizing patterns. In Judge, Boxing, Donkey Kong 3, and Donkey Kong Hockey, in Climber, Balloon Fight, and Super Mario Bros. There is no Game B button, as only 10,000 units were produced and it was never available for retail sale, the yellow version is considered rare. Mario the Juggler, released in 1991, was the last game created in the Game & Watch series. The Game & Watch games were renewed between 1995 and 2002 with the Game & Watch Gallery series, five Game & Watch collections released for the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. They feature the original ports, as well as new, modernized versions starring the Mario series cast, in 2001, Nintendo released Manhole-e bundled with its Nintendo e-Reader systems. Although an entire line of Game & Watch e-Reader cards were planned, between July 2006 and March 2010, Nintendo produced two Game & Watch Collection cartridges for the Nintendo DS to be released exclusively for Club Nintendo members. The first cartridge featured three games from the Game & Watch Multi Screen series, Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House. The second compilation, Game & Watch Collection 2, contained Parachute, Octopus, both cartridges are now available to the general public. Between July 2009 and April 2010 Nintendo released nine separate Game & Watch ports for DSiWare including remakes of Ball, Flagman, Manhole, and Marios Cement Factory among others
18.
Japanese language
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Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to language groups, particularly to Korean. Little is known of the prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, during the Heian period, Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end in 1853 of Japans self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person, Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener. Japanese has no relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji, in its writing system. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used in a fashion, such as for imported acronyms. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period, Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan, the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, in these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early 8th century, the end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794
19.
Satoru Okada
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Satoru Okada was the general manager of Nintendo Research & Engineering, the division designing and developing Nintendo handheld game consoles. He is best known for creating the original Game Boy and he was also assistant producer and director of and contributor to several Nintendo games, notably Metroid, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. In 1996, Yokoi left Nintendo which caused R&D1 to split and his team lacked Yokoi but nevertheless developed hugely successful handheld consoles, those being the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Advance SP and most recently the Nintendo DS. Okada initially opposed the Nintendo DS dual-screen design, but was overruled by Hiroshi Yamauchi, Okada retired from Nintendo in January 2012. Satoru Okada at MobyGames IGN, Okada on the Game Boy Advance
20.
Gunpei Yokoi
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Gunpei Yokoi, sometimes transliterated Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese video game designer. Yokoi graduated from Doshisha University with a degree in electronics and he was first hired by Nintendo in 1965 to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its Hanafuda cards. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop it as a product for the Christmas rush. He worked on toys until the company decided to video games in 1974. While traveling on the Shinkansen, Yokoi saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then got the idea for a watch that doubled as a video gaming pastime, and went on to create Game & Watch. In 1981, Yamauchi appointed Yokoi to supervise Donkey Kong, a game created by Shigeru Miyamoto. After the worldwide success of Donkey Kong, Yokoi continued to work with Miyamoto on the next Mario game and he proposed the multiplayer concept and convinced his co-worker to give Mario some superhuman abilities, such as the ability to jump unharmed from great heights. Yokoi produced several R&D1 games, such as Kid Icarus and Metroid and he designed R. O. B. and the Game Boy, the latter of which became a worldwide success. Another of his creations, the Virtual Boy, was a commercial failure, according to his colleague Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at 50 to do as he pleased. His retirement had simply been a bit later than planned, according to David Sheffs book Game Over, Yokoi never actually intended for the console to be released in its present form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on the Nintendo 64, amid the failure of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi left Nintendo on August 15,1996 after thirty-one years at the company. However, he did not leave before completing the more successful Game Boy Pocket as a gift in July of that year. Leaving with several of his subordinates to form a new company called Koto, Yokoi articulated his philosophy of Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology in the book, Yokoi Gunpei Game House, which consists of a collection of interviews. Withered technology in this context refers to a technology which is cheap. Lateral thinking refers to finding new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting edge technology, novel, in the interview he suggested that expensive cutting edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product. Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy, at the time of its development, Sharp and Casio were fiercely competing in the digital calculator market
21.
Nintendo Entertainment System
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The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit home video game console that was developed and manufactured by Nintendo. The best-selling gaming console of its time, the NES helped revitalize the US video game following the video game crash of 1983. With the NES, Nintendo introduced a business model of licensing third-party developers, authorizing them to produce. It was initially released in Japan as the Family Computer on July 15,1983, and was released in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986. In South Korea, it was known as the Hyundai Comboy and was distributed by SK Hynix which then was known as Hyundai Electronics and it was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In 2009, the Nintendo Entertainment System was named the single greatest video game console in history by IGN and it was judged the second greatest console behind the Sega Dreamcast in PC Magazines Top 10 Video Game Consoles of All Time. Following a series of arcade game successes in the early 1980s, Nintendo made plans to create a console called the Famicom. A test model was constructed in October 1982 to verify the functionality of the hardware, because 65xx CPUs had not been manufactured or sold in Japan up to that time, no cross-development software was available and it had to be produced from scratch. Perhaps we could say it is a family computer, meanwhile, Hiroshi Yamauchi decided that the console should use a red and white theme after seeing a billboard for DX Antenna which used those colors. Original plans called for the Famicoms cartridges to be the size of a cassette tape, careful design attention was paid to the cartridge connectors since loose and faulty connections often plagued arcade machines. As it necessitated taking 60 connection lines for the memory and expansion, the controllers were hard-wired to the console with no connectors for cost reasons. There were concerns regarding the durability of the design and that children might step on joysticks left on the floor. Katsuyah Nakawaka attached a Game & Watch D-pad to the Famicom prototype and found that it was easy to use, ultimately though, they installed a 15-pin expansion port on the front of the console so that an optional arcade-style joystick could be used. Uemura added an eject lever to the slot which was not really necessary. He also added a microphone to the controller with the idea that it could be used to make players voices sound through the TV speaker. The console was released on July 15,1983 as the Family Computer for ¥14,800 alongside three ports of Nintendos successful arcade games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Popeye. The Famicom was slow to gather momentum, a bad chip set caused the release of the system to crash. Following a product recall and a reissue with a new motherboard, the deal was set to be finalized and signed at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1983
22.
Sega
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Nonetheless, Sega remains the worlds most prolific arcade producer, with over 500 games in over 70 franchises on more than 20 different arcade system boards since 1981. Sega, along with their sub-studios, are known for their multi-million selling game franchises, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Virtua Fighter, Phantasy Star, Yakuza, Segas head offices are located in Tokyo. Segas North American division, Sega of America, is headquartered in Irvine, California, Segas European division, Sega Europe, is headquartered in London. After the war, the founders sold that company and established a new distributor called Service Games and this company provided coin-operated slot machines to U. S. bases in Japan and changed its name again to Service Games of Japan by 1953. David Rosen, an American officer in the United States Air Force stationed in Japan and this company eventually became Rosen Enterprises, and in 1957, began importing coin-operated games to Japan. On May 31,1960, Service Games Japan was closed, Three days later, two new companies were established to take over its business activities, Nihon Goraku Bussan and Nihon Kikai Seizo. By 1965, Rosen Enterprises grew to a chain of over 200 arcades, Rosen then orchestrated a merger between Rosen Enterprises and Nihon Goraku Bussan, becoming chief executive of the new company, Sega Enterprises, which derived its name from Service Games. Within a year, Sega began the transition from importer to manufacturer, with the release of the submarine simulator game, the game sported light and sound effects considered innovative for that time, eventually becoming quite successful in Japan. It was soon exported to both Europe and the United States, becoming the first arcade game in the US to cost 25 cents per play, in 1969, Rosen sold Sega to American conglomerate Gulf and Western Industries, although he remained as CEO following the sale. Under Rosens leadership, Sega continued to grow and prosper, and in 1974, Gulf and Western made Sega Enterprises, a subsidiary of an American company renamed Sega Enterprises, Inc. allowing them to take the companys stock public. Sega prospered heavily from the gaming boom of the late 1970s. In 1982, Segas revenues surpassed $214 million and that year they introduced the first game with isometric graphics, Zaxxon, the industrys first stereoscopic 3D game, SubRoc 3D, and the first laserdisc video game, Astron Belt. Astron Belt wasnt released in the U. S. until 1983, other notable games from Sega during this period are Head On, Monaco GP, Carnival, Turbo, Space Fury, Astro Blaster, and Pengo. In 1983-4, Sega published Atari 2600 versions of some of its arcade games, Carnival, Space Fury, Turbo, and Zaxxon were licensed to Coleco as launch titles for the ColecoVision console in 1982. Some of these and other titles were licensed to different companies for 8-bit computer versions, the Atari 8-bit computer port of Zaxxon is from Datasoft, for example, while the Commodore 64 port is from Synapse. An overabundance of games in 1983 led to the game crash. Seeking an alternate source of revenue from the arcade market, Sega designed and released its first home video game console. G&W sold the U. S. assets of Sega Enterprises that same year to pinball manufacturer Bally Manufacturing, nakayama became the new CEO of Sega, Robert Deith chairman of the board, and Rosen became head of its subsidiary in the United States
23.
Game Gear
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The Game Gear is an 8-bit handheld game console released by Sega on October 6,1990 in Japan,1991 in North America and Europe, and Australia in 1992. The Game Gear primarily competed with Nintendos Game Boy, the Atari Lynx and NECs TurboExpress. The handheld shares much of its hardware with the Master System and is able to play its own titles as well as those of the Master System, the latter being made possible by the use of an adapter. Containing a full-color backlit screen with a format, Sega positioned the Game Gear as a technologically superior handheld to the Game Boy. Though the Game Gear was rushed to market, its game library and price point gave it an edge over the Atari Lynx. However, due to issues with its battery life, lack of original titles, and weak support from Sega. The Game Gear was succeeded by the Genesis Nomad in 1995 and it was re-released as a budget system by Majesco in 2000, under license by Sega. Developed under the name Project Mercury, the Game Gear was first released in Japan on October 6,1990, in North America and Europe in 1991, and in Australia in 1992. Originally retailing at JP¥19,800 in Japan, US$149.99 in North America, and GB£99.99 in Europe, the Game Gear was developed to compete with the Game Boy, which Nintendo had released in 1989. The original Game Gear pack-in title was Columns, which was similar to the Tetris cartridge that Nintendo had included when it launched the Game Boy. With a late start into the gaming market, Sega rushed to get the Game Gear into stores quickly. Part of the intention of this move was to make Master System games easy to port to the Game Gear. With its quick launch in Japan, the handheld sold 40,000 units in its first two days,90,000 within a month, and the number of orders for the system was over 600,000. According to Sega of America marketing director Robert Botch, there is clearly a need for a quality system that provides features other systems have failed to deliver. This means easy-to-view, full-colour graphics and exciting quality games that appeal to all ages, before the Game Gears launch in 1990, Sega had success marketing its 16-bit home console, the Genesis, by advertising it as a more mature option for gamers. In keeping with this approach, Sega positioned the Game Gear as a grown-up option compared to the Game Boy. In North America, marketing for the Game Gear included side-by-side comparisons of Segas new handheld with the Game Boy, one Sega advertisement featured the quote, If you were color blind and had an IQ of less than 12, then you wouldnt mind which portable you had. Such advertising drew fire from Nintendo, who sought to have organized against Sega for insulting disabled persons
24.
Atari
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Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972, currently by Atari Interactive, a subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA. The original Atari, Inc. founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was a pioneer in arcade games, home game consoles. The companys products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, in 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split due to its role in the video game crash of 1983, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text Games on arcade games, the Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiels Tramel Technology Ltd. which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation. In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse-merged with disk-drive manufacturer JT Storage, in 1998,6 November Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS, creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive. After IESAs acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Inc. intermittently published Atari branded titles for Infogrames Interactive, on October 11,2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc. making it a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a firm, Syzygy Engineering, that designed and built Computer Space. On June 27,1972 Atari, Inc. was incorporated, Bushnell asked Alcorn produce an arcade version of the Magnavox Odysseys Tennis game, which would be named Pong. While Bushnell incorporated Atari in June 1972, Syzygy Company was never formally incorporated, Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27,1972. Joe Keenans management of the led to him being promoted president of Atari that same year. In 1976, Bushnell, through Grass Valley, CA firm Cyan Engineering, the result was the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS. The introductory price of $199 included a console, two joysticks, a pair of paddles, and the Combat game cartridge, Bushnell knew he had another potential hit on his hands but bringing the machine to market would be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for an estimated $28–32 million, Nolan continued to have disagreements with Warner Management over the direction of the company, the discontinuation of the pinball division, and most important, the notion of discontinuing the 2600. In 1978, Kee Games was disbanded, in December of that year, Nolan Bushnell was fired following an argument with Manny Gerard. E started fighting like cats and dogs, and then the wheels came off that fall. Warner claimed they fired me, recalled Bushnell, development of a successor to the 2600 started as soon as it shipped. The original team estimated the 2600 had a lifespan of three years, it then set forth to build the most powerful machine possible within that time frame. Mid-way into their effort the home computer revolution took off, leading to the addition of a keyboard and features to produce the Atari 800 and its smaller sibling, the new machines had some success when they finally became available in quantity in 1980
25.
Atari Lynx
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The Atari Lynx is a 16-bit handheld game console that was released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America, and in Europe and Japan in 1990. The Lynx holds the distinction of being the worlds first handheld game with a color LCD. The system is notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics. The Lynx competed with the Game Boy, as well as the Game Gear and TurboExpress and it was discontinued when Atari was acquired by Hasbro Interactive in 1995. Comlynx was originally developed to run over infrared links and this was changed to a cable-based networking system before the final release. The Lynx was cited as the first gaming console with hardware support for zooming and these particular features were achieved over a year prior to the launch of the Super NES, whose stock hardware features the comparable Mode 7 but which cannot scale sprites. The Lynx was the handheld game system to be released with the Atari name. The first was Atari Inc. s handheld electronic game Touch Me, Atari Inc. had previously worked on several other handheld projects including the Breakout, Space Invaders, and the Atari Cosmos portable/tabletop console. However, those projects were shut down during development, some just short of their commercial release. The Lynx system was developed by Epyx as the Handy Game. In 1986, two former Amiga designers, R. J. Mical and Dave Needle, had been asked by manager at Amiga, David Morse. Morse now worked at Epyx, a software company that had a recent string of hit games. Morses son had asked him if he could make a gaming system, prompting the lunch with Mical. Morse convinced Mical and Needle to develop the idea and they were hired by Epyx to be a part of the design team, planning and design of the console began in 1986 and was completed in 1987. Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1989, facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought out partners. Nintendo, Sega, and other companies declined, but Atari Corp. and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari Corp. would handle production and marketing, while Epyx would handle software development. The Handy was designed to run games from the format. Thus, less RAM is available and the games initially load relatively slowly, there are trace remnants of a cassette tape interface physically capable of being programmed to read a tape
26.
NEC
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NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational provider of information technology services and products, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC provides IT and network solutions to enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited and its NEC Semiconductors business unit was one of the worldwide top 20 semiconductor sales leaders before merging with Renesas Electronics. NEC is a member of the Sumitomo Group, kunihiko Iwadare and Takeshiro Maeda established Nippon Electric Limited Partnership on August 31,1898 by using facilities that they had bought from Miyoshi Electrical Manufacturing Company. Iwadare acted as the partner, Maeda handled company sales. Western Electric, which had an interest in the Japanese phone market, was represented by Walter Tenney Carleton, Carleton was also responsible for the renovation of the Miyoshi facilities. It was agreed that the partnership would be reorganized as a company when treaty would allow it. On July 17,1899, the treaty between Japan and the United States went into effect. Nippon Electric Company, Limited was organized the day with Western Electric Company to become the first Japanese joint-venture with foreign capital. Ernest Clement and Carleton were named as directors, Maeda and Mototeru Fujii were assigned to be auditors. Iwadare, Maeda and Carleton handled the overall management, the company started with the production, sales and maintenance of telephones and switches. NEC modernized the facilities with the construction of the Mita Plant in 1901 at Mita Shikokumachi. It was completed in December 1902, the Japanese Ministry of Communications adopted a new technology in 1903, the common battery switchboard supplied by NEC. The common battery switchboards powered the subscriber phone, eliminating the need for a permanent magnet generator in each subscribers phone, the switchboards were initially imported, but were manufactured locally by 1909. NEC started exporting telephone sets to China in 1904, in 1905, Iwadare visited Western Electric in the U. S. to see their management and production control. On his return to Japan he discontinued the system of sub-contracting and replaced it with a new system where managers. Inefficiency was also removed from the production process, the company paid higher salaries with incentives for efficiency. New accounting and cost controls were put in place, and time clocks installed, between 1899 and 1907 the number of telephone subscribers in Japan rose from 35,000 to 95,000
27.
TurboExpress
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The PC Engine GT is a handheld video game console by NEC Home Electronics, released in Japan in late 1990 and later in the United States as the TurboExpress. It is essentially a version of the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine home console that came two to three years earlier. Its launch price in Japan was ¥44,800, whereas in the U. S. it was $249.99, briefly raising to $299.99, soon dropping back to $249.99, and was $199.99 by 1992. The TurboExpress was technically advanced at the time, able to all the TurboGrafx-16s HuCard games. It has a 66 mm screen, the size as the original Game Boy. It has 8 kilobytes of RAM, the Turbo runs its HuC6280 CPU at 1.79 or 7.16 MHz. The TurboExpress primarily competed with Nintendos Game Boy, Segas Game Gear, however, with 1.5 million units sold, far behind its two main competitors, NEC failed to gain significant sales or market share in the handheld market. Due to a problem with cheap capacitors, sound failure is a frequent problem with the TurboExpress, the screen used in the TurboExpress was another source for problems, though it was state of the art when it was released. The LCD technology used was still new and the rate of pixel failure was very high. Brand-new TurboExpress systems often had several bad pixels, text is also difficult or impossible to read in certain circumstances, as many times fonts were written to be seen on a television screen, not on a small LCD screen. As a result, certain RPGs and adventure games can be difficult to play on the unit, some TurboGrafx-16 HuCards save game data to the internal memory of the TurboGrafx-CD unit, TurboDuo, or TurboBooster Plus. The TurboExpress lacks this internal memory, and as a result it is not capable of saving in this manner, most games provide a password save mechanism as an alternative. The battery life is three hours for 6 AA batteries. This is also a problem for other color and backlit or sidelit handhelds of the period, such as the Game Gear at 5–6 hours, the Sega Nomad at 2–3 hours, and the Atari Lynx at more than 4 hours. CPU, HuC6280 CPU speed,7.16 MHz or 1.79 MHz Resolution, falcon, a flight simulator, includes a head-to-head dogfight mode that can only be accessed via TurboLink, same as Bomberman 93 Com-Link multiplayer. However, very few TG-16 games offer co-op play modes especially designed with the TurboExpress in mind, turboVision is a TV tuner adapter for the TurboExpress. It allowed a player to watch television, or go back to playing games with the flip of a switch, in other words. It includes an RCA audio/video input for external composite video signals, however, due to the adoption of the High Definition Television HDTV digital standard, this adapter will no longer function as a television due to the lack of any HDTV digital processing circuitry
28.
Game Boy Advance
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The Game Boy Advance is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21,2001, in North America on June 11,2001, in Australia and Europe on June 22,2001, and in the Peoples Republic of China on June 8,2004. Nintendos competitors in the market at the time were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac. Despite the competitors best efforts, Nintendo maintained a majority market share with the Game Boy Advance, as of June 30,2010, the Game Boy Advance series has sold 81.51 million units worldwide. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, was released in November 2004 and is compatible with Game Boy Advance software. The Game Boy Advance was designed by the French designer Gwénaël Nicolas, in 1996, magazines including Electronic Gaming Monthly, issues 53 and 54 of Total. and the July 1996 issue of Game Informer featured reports of a new Game Boy, codenamed Project Atlantis. It also may have referred to the unnamed, unreleased Game Boy Color successor prototype that was revealed at 2009s Game Developers Conference and it was announced that Nintendo Co. Ltd. was working on a game for the system called Marios Castle. When playing Game Boy or Game Boy Color games on the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy games can be played using the same selectable color palettes as on the Game Boy Color. Every Nintendo handheld system following the release of the Game Boy Advance SP has included a built-in light and rechargeable battery. The Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS 2D graphics hardware have scaling and rotation for traditional tiled backgrounds in its modes 1 and 2 and scaling, more complex effects such as fuzz are possible by using other equations for the position, scaling, and rotation of each line. The character mode supports up to 4 tile map background layers per frame, with each tile being 8x8 pixels in size and having 16 or 256 colors. The character mode supports up to 128 hardware sprites per frame, with any sprite size from 8x8 to 64x64 pixels. With hardware comparable to the Super NES, the Game Boy Advance represents progress for sprite-based technology, the Game Boy Advance has platformers, SNES-style role-playing video games, and classic games ported from various 8-bit and 16-bit systems of the previous generations. This includes the Super Mario Advance series, as well as the backward compatibility with all earlier Game Boy titles. Final Fantasy VI Advance was the final licensed Japanese GBA game release, Released November 2006, it was the final Nintendo-published game for the system. The Legend of Spyro, The Eternal Night was the final European GBA game, samurai Deeper Kyo was the final North American GBA game, released in February 2008. The last Nintendo-developed game released for the system was the Japan-only rhythm game Rhythm Tengoku, an accessory for the GameCube, known as the Game Boy Player, was released in 2003 as the successor to the Super Game Boy peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The accessory allows Game Boy Advance games, as well as Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, however, some games may have compatibility issues due to certain features
29.
Super Mario Land
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Super Mario Land is a 1989 side-scrolling platform video game developed and published by Nintendo as a launch title for their Game Boy handheld game console. It is the first Mario platform game ever to be released for a handheld console, unlike other Mario games, Super Mario Land is set in Sarasaland, a new environment depicted in line art, and Mario pursues Princess Daisy. The game introduces two Gradius-style shooter levels, at Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchis request, Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokois Nintendo R&D1 developed a Mario game to sell the new console. It was the first portable version of Mario and the first to be made without Mario creator, accordingly, the development team shrunk Mario gameplay elements for the device and used some elements inconsistently from the series. Super Mario Land was expected to showcase the console until Nintendo of America bundled Tetris with new Game Boys, the game launched alongside the Game Boy first in Japan and later worldwide. Super Mario Land was later rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS via Virtual Console in 2011 again as a launch title, reviews for the game were laudatory. Reviewers were satisfied with the smaller Super Mario Bros. but noted its short length and they considered it among the best of the Game Boy launch titles. The handheld console became a success and Super Mario Land ultimately sold over 18 million copies. Both contemporaneous and retrospective reviewers praised the games soundtrack, the game begot a series of sequels, including the 1992 Super Mario Land 2,6 Golden Coins and 1994 Wario Land, Super Mario Land 3, whom the later would spun-off into its own sub-series. The game was included in several top Game Boy game lists, in Super Mario Land, Mario travels to Sarasaland to save Princess Daisy from Tatanga, an evil spaceman. Two of the twelve levels are forced-scrolling Gradius-style shooters where Mario helms a submarine or airplane. Levels end with a challenge to reach an alternative exit located above the regular exit. The former leads to a bonus minigame that awards extra lives or a Fire Flower power-up, unlike other Mario games, which take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, Super Mario Land is set in Sarasaland and drawn in line art. Mario pursues Princess Daisy, in her debut, rather than the series damsel in distress, Princess Peach. Some elements recur from previous Mario games, such as suspended in midair, pipes that lead to other areas. Super Mario Land was developed by Nintendo R&D1 and published by Nintendo in 1989 as a title for their Game Boy handheld console. The job fell to Nintendo R&D1, a development team led by Game Boy inventor Gunpei Yokoi, Yokoi had previously created the Game & Watch series and worked with his protégé, Shigeru Miyamoto, on the game that invented Mario, Donkey Kong. Super Mario Land was the fourth Super Mario title, the first portable Mario game, absent Miyamotos direction, the development team used elements new and inconsistent with the series as Super Mario Land shrunk elements of the series to fit the portable devices small screen
30.
Baseball (1983 video game)
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Baseball is a 1983 video game from Nintendo, one of the first early titles for the Family Computer. The games launch position and the appeal of its namesake sport are said to have made Baseball a key to the NESs overall success. As in real baseball, the object of the game is to score the most runs, the game supports one player versus a computer opponent, or two players. Each player can select one of six teams. In gameplay, the practical difference between the teams is the uniform colors. Baseball is slightly different from its NES counterpart, the game features additional graphics and some speech. PlayChoice-10 – Baseball is one of the games in PlayChoice-10 arcade machines, Game Boy – Baseball is one of the first games to have launched with the Game Boy, along with Super Mario Land and Tetris. The background music is different than the NES version, e-Reader – Baseball is one of the NES games ported to the Game Boy Advance e-Reader in 2002. The review said that the 1985 test market launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System had heavily relied upon Baseball, the review summarized that the NES came out a winner—thanks, in part, to Baseball. In 2006, GameSpot gave Baseball a 4.2 out of 10, stating that while it was easy to play, the bare-bones replica of the sport hasnt withstood the test of time
31.
Yakuman (video game)
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Yakuman is a 1989 mahjong video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for its handheld Game Boy system. There is a successor to this game on to the Nintendo DS called Yakuman DS, one of the four original Game Boy games available for the Japanese launch of that system on April 21,1989. Released alongside Alleyway, Super Mario Land, and Baseball, it bears the distinction of being the only of the four Japanese Game Boy launch titles never released outside Japan, if there are two copies, two Game Boys and a link cable, two-player mode is possible. Yakuman is the name of the hand in the Chinese board game. Players have to beat the opponents hand by either matching panels of different numbers within the family or by grouping panels that belong to the same family in different numbers. The options to turn off the music for the game. Players have a choice of five opponents to play with, four male, the Yakuman Player as seen on the cover art appears as a collectible sticker in Super Smash Bros
32.
Tennis (1984 video game)
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Tennis is a sports game developed and released by Nintendo for the NES. In North America and Europe, Tennis was one of 18 launch games for the NES, a Game Boy version was also released. The game features single-player and two-player modes for singles and doubles matches, a computerized opponents artificial intelligence can be set to one of five difficulty levels. In 1985, Hudson Soft published Tennis for the PC-8801 and it was also included in the Nintendo Vs. System series under the name Vs. Tennis. Nintendo ported the game to the Game Boy in 1989, the original version is embedded in the life simulation game Animal Crossing, and features in the party video game WarioWare, Twisted. as one of 9-Volts minigames. For the Virtual Console, Nintendo republished the Famicom/NES version of Tennis to the Wii in 2006 and the Wii U in 2013, jimmy Connors Tennis List of Nintendo Entertainment System games Super Tennis Top Players Tennis Tennis at NinDB
33.
D-pad
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Like early video game joysticks, the vast majority of D-pads are digital, in other words, only the directions provided on the D-pad buttons can be used, with no intermediate values. However, combinations of two directions do provide diagonals and many modern D-pads can be used to provide eight-directional input if appropriate, although digital D-pads offer less flexibility than analog sticks, they can easily be manipulated with very high accuracy. They are also far less demanding in maintenance and do not protrude very far from the controller, making them ideal for consoles such as the Game Boy, DS. D-pads have appeared on other kinds of equipment, including A/V remote controls, calculators, PDAs, smartphones. A precursor to the D-pad was the four buttons used in arcade games such as UPLs Blockade. A precursor to the standard D-pad on a game console was used by the Intellivision. The Intellivisions unique controller featured the first alternative to a joystick on a home console, similar directional buttons were also used on the Atari Game Brain, the unreleased precursor to the Atari 2600, and on some early dedicated game consoles such as the VideoMaster Star Chess game. Nintendos known cross design was developed in 1982 by Gunpei Yokoi for their Donkey Kong handheld game and this particular design was patented and later earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award. In 1984, the Japanese company Epoch created a game system called the Epoch Game Pocket Computer. It featured a D-pad, but it was not popular for its time, all major video game consoles since have had a D-pad of some shape on their controllers. To avoid infringing on Nintendos patent, most controller manufacturers use a cross in a shape for the D-pad. Sega coined the term D button to describe the pad, using the term describing the controllers for the Sega Genesis in instruction manuals. Arcade games, however, have continued using joysticks. Modern consoles, beginning with the Nintendo 64, provide both a D-pad and a compact thumb-operated analog stick, depending on the game, one type of control may be more appropriate than the other. In many cases with games that use a thumbstick, the D-pad is used as a set of buttons, all four usually centered on a kind of task. Even without a stick, some software uses the D-pads eight-directional capabilities to act as eight discrete buttons. Jam Sessions for the Nintendo DS, for example, uses the D-pad to select music chords during play, many, though not all, such designs include a trigger button in the center of the button arrangement, usually labeled Enter, OK, or the like. Some older devices do not have d-pads as such, but simple single-axis, on some remotes, the d-pad can also be used to control a robot using a signal-compatible receiver
34.
Contrast (vision)
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Contrast is the difference in luminance or colour that makes an object distinguishable. In visual perception of the world, contrast is determined by the difference in the color and brightness of the object. The human visual system is sensitive to contrast than absolute luminance. The maximum contrast of an image is the contrast ratio or dynamic range, the human contrast sensitivity function shows a typical band-pass filter shape peaking at around 4 cycles per degree with sensitivity dropping off either side of the peak. The high-frequency cut-off represents the optical limitations of the systems ability to resolve detail and is typically about 60 cycles per degree. The high-frequency cut-off is related to the density of the retinal photoreceptor cells. The low frequency drop-off is due to lateral inhibition within the ganglion cells. A typical retinal ganglion cell presents a centre region with either excitation or inhibition, one experimental phenomenon is the inhibition of blue in the periphery if blue light is displayed against white, leading to a yellow surrounding. The yellow is derived from the inhibition of blue on the surroundings by the center, since white minus blue is red and green, this mixes to become yellow. For example, in the case of computer displays, contrast depends on the properties of the picture source or file. For some screens the angle between the surface and the observers line of sight is also important. There are many definitions of contrast. Some include color, others do not, travnikova laments, Such a multiplicity of notions of contrast is extremely inconvenient. It complicates the solution of many applied problems and makes it difficult to compare the results published by different authors, various definitions of contrast are used in different situations. Here, luminance contrast is used as an example, but the formulas can also be applied to other physical quantities, in many cases, the definitions of contrast represent a ratio of the type Luminance difference Average luminance. The rationale behind this is that a difference is negligible if the average luminance is high. Below, some definitions are given. Weber contrast is defined as I − I b I b, with I and I b representing the luminance of the features, the measure is also referred to as Weber fraction, since it is the term that is constant in Webers Law
35.
Switch
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In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can make or break an electrical circuit, interrupting the current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The mechanism of a switch removes or restores the conducting path in a circuit when it is operated, the most familiar form of switch is a manually operated electromechanical device with one or more sets of electrical contacts, which are connected to external circuits. The mechanism actuating the transition between two states can be either a toggle or momentary type. A switch may be manipulated by a human as a control signal to a system, such as a computer keyboard button, or to control power flow in a circuit. Switches may be operated by process variables such as pressure, temperature, flow, current, voltage, for example, a thermostat is a temperature-operated switch used to control a heating process. A switch that is operated by electrical circuit is called a relay. Large switches may be operated by a motor drive mechanism. An ideal switch would have no voltage drop when closed, and it would have zero rise time and fall time during state changes, and would change state without bouncing between on and off positions. Practical switches fall short of ideal, they have resistance, limits on the current and voltage they can handle, finite switching time. The ideal switch is used in circuit analysis as it greatly simplifies the system of equations to be solved. Theoretical treatment of the effects of non-ideal properties is required in the design of networks of switches. In the simplest case, a switch has two pieces, often metal, called contacts, connected to an external circuit, that touch to complete the circuit. The contact material is chosen for its resistance to corrosion, because most metals form insulating oxides that would prevent the switch from working, contact materials are also chosen on the basis of electrical conductivity, hardness, mechanical strength, low cost and low toxicity. Sometimes the contacts are plated with noble metals and they may be designed to wipe against each other to clean off any contamination. Nonmetallic conductors, such as plastic, are sometimes used. To prevent the formation of insulating oxides, a minimum wetting current may be specified for a given switch design, in electronics, switches are classified according to the arrangement of their contacts. A pair of contacts is said to be closed when current can flow from one to the other, when the contacts are separated by an insulating air gap, they are said to be open, and no current can flow between them at normal voltages. The terms make for closure of contacts and break for opening of contacts are also widely used, the terms pole and throw are also used to describe switch contact variations
36.
Rechargeable battery
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It is composed of one or more electrochemical cells. The term accumulator is used as it accumulates and stores energy through an electrochemical reaction. Rechargeable batteries are produced in different shapes and sizes, ranging from button cells to megawatt systems connected to stabilize an electrical distribution network. Several different combinations of materials and electrolytes are used, including lead–acid, nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion. Some rechargeable battery types are available in the sizes and voltages as disposable types. Devices which use rechargeable batteries include automobile starters, portable devices, light vehicles, tools, uninterruptible power supplies. Emerging applications in hybrid internal combustion-battery and electric vehicles drive the technology to reduce cost, weight, and size, Battery storage power stations use rechargeable batteries for load-leveling and for renewable energy uses. Load-leveling reduces the power which a plant must be able to generate, reducing capital cost. The US National Electrical Manufacturers Association estimated in 2006 that US demand for batteries was growing twice as fast as demand for disposables. Small rechargeable batteries can power portable devices, power tools, appliances. Heavy-duty batteries power electric vehicles, ranging from scooters to locomotives and they are used in distributed electricity generation and in stand-alone power systems. During charging, the active material is oxidized, producing electrons. These electrons constitute the current flow in the external circuit, the energy used to charge rechargeable batteries usually comes from a battery charger using AC mains electricity, although some are equipped to use a vehicles 12-volt DC power outlet. Regardless, to energy in a secondary cell, it has to be connected to a DC voltage source. The negative terminal of the cell has to be connected to the terminal of the voltage source. Chargers take from a few minutes to several hours to charge a battery, slow dumb chargers without voltage or temperature-sensing capabilities will charge at a low rate, typically taking 14 hours or more to reach a full charge. Rapid chargers can typically charge cells in two to five hours, depending on the model, with the fastest taking as little as fifteen minutes, fast chargers must have multiple ways of detecting when a cell reaches full charge to stop charging before harmful overcharging or overheating occurs. The fastest chargers often incorporate cooling fans to keep the cells from overheating, Battery charging and discharging rates are often discussed by referencing a C rate of current
37.
AC adapter
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An AC adapter, AC/DC adapter, or AC/DC converter is a type of external power supply, often enclosed in a case similar to an AC plug. Other common names include plug pack, plug-in adapter, adapter block, domestic mains adapter, line power adapter, wall wart, power brick, adapters for battery-powered equipment may be described as chargers or rechargers. AC adapters are used with devices that require power but do not contain internal components to derive the required voltage. The internal circuitry of a power supply is very similar to the design that would be used for a built-in or internal supply. Size and weight of the device was largely determined by the transformer, ratings over a few watts made the devices too large and heavy to be physically supported by a wall outlet. The output voltage of these adapters varied with load, for equipment requiring a stable voltage. Losses in the transformer and the regulator were considerable, efficiency was relatively low. In the early twenty-first century, switched-mode power supplies became almost ubiquitous for this purpose, mains voltage is rectified to a high direct voltage driving a switching circuit, which contains a transformer operating at a high frequency and outputs direct current at the desired voltage. The high-frequency ripple is more easily filtered out than mains-frequency, the high frequency allows the transformer to be small, which reduces its losses, and the switching regulator can be much more efficient than a linear regulator. The result is a more efficient, smaller, and lighter device. Safety is ensured, as in the linear circuit, because there is still a transformer which electrically isolates the output from the mains. However, unless very carefully designed and using suitable components, switching adapters are more likely to fail than the type, due in part to complex circuitry. Unless designed well, these adapters may be damaged by overloads, even transient ones. A very common mode of failure is due to the use of electrolytic capacitors whose equivalent series resistance increases with age, well-designed circuits pay attention to the ESR, ripple current rating, pulse operation, and temperature rating of capacitors. External AC adapters are used to power small or portable electronic devices. The advantages include, Safety – External power adapters can free product designers from worrying about some safety issues, much of this style of equipment uses only voltages low enough not to be a safety hazard internally, although the power supply must out of necessity use dangerous mains voltage. If an external power supply is used, the equipment need not be designed with concern for hazardous voltages inside the enclosure and this is particularly relevant for equipment with lightweight cases which may break and expose internal electrical parts. Heat reduction – Heat reduces reliability and longevity of electronic components, a separate power supply removes a source of heat from the apparatus
38.
AA battery
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The AA battery—also called a double A or Mignon battery—is a standard size single cell cylindrical dry battery. The IEC60086 system calls it size R6, and ANSIC18 calls it size 15, historically, it is known as HP7 in official documentation the United Kingdom, though it is colloquially known as a double A battery. AA batteries are common in electronic devices. An AA battery is composed of an electrochemical cell that may be either a primary battery or a rechargeable battery. The exact terminal voltage and capacity of an AA size battery depends on cell chemistry, however, ANSI and IEC Battery nomenclature gives several designations for cells in this size, depending on cell features and chemistry. An AA cell measures 49. 2–50.5 mm in length, alkaline AA cells have a weight of roughly 23 g, lithium AA cells have a mass around 15 g, and rechargeable Ni-MH cells around 31 g. Primary zinc–carbon AA batteries have around 400–900 milliamp-hours capacity, with measured capacity highly dependent on test conditions, duty cycle, zinc–carbon batteries are usually marketed as general purpose batteries. Zinc-chloride batteries store around 1000 to 1500 mAh are often sold as heavy duty or super heavy duty, alkaline batteries from 1700 mAh to 3000 mAh cost more than zinc-chloride batteries, but last proportionally longer. Lithium iron disulfide batteries are intended for use in equipment compatible with alkaline zinc batteries, a fresh alkaline zinc battery can have an open-circuit voltage of 1.6 volts, but an iron-disulfide battery with an open-circuit voltage below 1.7 volts is entirely discharged. Lithium ion chemistry has a voltage of 3. 6-3.7 volts. Nickel-zinc cell AAs are also available, but not widely used, in 2011, AA cells accounted for approximately 60% of alkaline battery sales in the United States. In Japan, 58% of alkaline batteries sold were AA, known in country as tansan. In Switzerland, AA batteries totaled 55% in both primary and secondary battery sales, list of battery sizes Battery nomenclature Datasheet for Energizer alkaline AA battery Datasheet for Energizer lithium AA battery Datasheet for Duracell alkaline AA battery
39.
Battery (electricity)
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An electric battery is a device consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections provided to power electrical devices such as flashlights, smartphones, and electric cars. When a battery is supplying power, its positive terminal is the cathode. The terminal marked negative is the source of electrons that when connected to a circuit will flow. It is the movement of ions within the battery which allows current to flow out of the battery to perform work. Historically the term specifically referred to a device composed of multiple cells. Primary batteries are used once and discarded, the materials are irreversibly changed during discharge. Common examples are the battery used for flashlights and a multitude of portable electronic devices. Secondary batteries can be discharged and recharged multiple times using mains power from a wall socket, examples include the lead-acid batteries used in vehicles and lithium-ion batteries used for portable electronics such as laptops and smartphones. According to a 2005 estimate, the battery industry generates US$48 billion in sales each year. Batteries have much lower energy than common fuels such as gasoline. This is somewhat offset by the efficiency of electric motors in producing mechanical work. The usage of battery to describe a group of electrical devices dates to Benjamin Franklin, alessandro Volta built and described the first electrochemical battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800. This was a stack of copper and zinc plates, separated by brine-soaked paper disks, Volta did not understand that the voltage was due to chemical reactions. Although early batteries were of value for experimental purposes, in practice their voltages fluctuated. It consisted of a pot filled with a copper sulfate solution, in which was immersed an unglazed earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid. These wet cells used liquid electrolytes, which were prone to leakage and spillage if not handled correctly, many used glass jars to hold their components, which made them fragile and potentially dangerous. These characteristics made wet cells unsuitable for portable appliances, near the end of the nineteenth century, the invention of dry cell batteries, which replaced the liquid electrolyte with a paste, made portable electrical devices practical. Batteries convert chemical energy directly to electrical energy, a battery consists of some number of voltaic cells
40.
Volt
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The volt is the derived unit for electric potential, electric potential difference, and electromotive force. One volt is defined as the difference in potential between two points of a conducting wire when an electric current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power between those points. It is also equal to the difference between two parallel, infinite planes spaced 1 meter apart that create an electric field of 1 newton per coulomb. Additionally, it is the difference between two points that will impart one joule of energy per coulomb of charge that passes through it. It can also be expressed as amperes times ohms, watts per ampere, or joules per coulomb, for the Josephson constant, KJ = 2e/h, the conventional value KJ-90 is used, K J-90 =0.4835979 GHz μ V. This standard is typically realized using an array of several thousand or tens of thousands of junctions. Empirically, several experiments have shown that the method is independent of device design, material, measurement setup, etc. in the water-flow analogy sometimes used to explain electric circuits by comparing them with water-filled pipes, voltage is likened to difference in water pressure. Current is proportional to the diameter of the pipe or the amount of water flowing at that pressure. A resistor would be a reduced diameter somewhere in the piping, the relationship between voltage and current is defined by Ohms Law. Ohms Law is analogous to the Hagen–Poiseuille equation, as both are linear models relating flux and potential in their respective systems, the voltage produced by each electrochemical cell in a battery is determined by the chemistry of that cell. Cells can be combined in series for multiples of that voltage, mechanical generators can usually be constructed to any voltage in a range of feasibility. High-voltage electric power lines,110 kV and up Lightning, Varies greatly. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of metals to produce electricity was zinc. In 1861, Latimer Clark and Sir Charles Bright coined the name volt for the unit of resistance, by 1873, the British Association for the Advancement of Science had defined the volt, ohm, and farad. In 1881, the International Electrical Congress, now the International Electrotechnical Commission and they made the volt equal to 108 cgs units of voltage, the cgs system at the time being the customary system of units in science. At that time, the volt was defined as the difference across a conductor when a current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power. The international volt was defined in 1893 as 1/1.434 of the emf of a Clark cell and this definition was abandoned in 1908 in favor of a definition based on the international ohm and international ampere until the entire set of reproducible units was abandoned in 1948. Prior to the development of the Josephson junction voltage standard, the volt was maintained in laboratories using specially constructed batteries called standard cells
41.
Direct current
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Direct current is a flow of electrical charge carriers that always takes place in the same direction. The current need not always have the magnitude, but if it is to be defined as dc. This contrasts with alternating current which varies the direction of flow, sources of direct current include power supplies, electrochemical cells and batteries, and photovoltaic cells and panels. The intensity, or amplitude, of a direct current might fluctuate with time, in some such cases the dc has an ac component superimposed on it. An example of this is the output of a cell that receives a modulated light communications signal. A source of dc is sometimes called a dc generator, batteries and various other sources of dc produce a constant voltage. This is called pure dc and can be represented by a straight, the peak and effective values are the same. The peak to peak value is zero because the instantaneous amplitude never changes, in some instances the value of a dc voltage pulsates or oscillates rapidly with time, in a manner similar to the changes in an ac wave. The unfiltered output of a wave or a full wave rectifier. In 1820, Hans Christian Orsted discovered that electrical current creates a magnetic field and this discovery made scientists relate magnetism to the electric phenomena. In 1879, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. He improved a 50-year-old idea using lower current electricity, a vacuum inside the globe and a small carbonized filament. At that time, the idea of lightning was not new. Edison not only invented an incandescent electric light, but an electric lighting system contained all the necessary elements to make the incandescent light safe, economical. Prior to 1879, direct current electricity had been used in lighting for the outdoors and it was in the 1880s when the modern electric utility industry began. It was an evolution from street lighting systems and from gas and it was located in Lower Manhattan, on Pearl Street. This station provided light and electricity to customers in a one square mile range, the station was called Thomas Edisons Pearl Street Electricity Generating Station. This station introduced four elements of an electric utility system, Efficient distribution, competitive price, reliable central generation
42.
Ampere
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The ampere, often shortened to amp, is a unit of electric current. In the International System of Units the ampere is one of the seven SI base units and it is named after André-Marie Ampère, French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics. SI defines the ampere in terms of base units by measuring the electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current. The ampere was then defined as one coulomb of charge per second, in SI, the unit of charge, the coulomb, is defined as the charge carried by one ampere during one second. In the future, the SI definition may shift back to charge as the base unit, ampères force law states that there is an attractive or repulsive force between two parallel wires carrying an electric current. This force is used in the definition of the ampere. The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, is the quantity of electricity carried in 1 second by a current of 1 ampere, conversely, a current of one ampere is one coulomb of charge going past a given point per second,1 A =1 C s. In general, charge Q is determined by steady current I flowing for a time t as Q = It, constant, instantaneous and average current are expressed in amperes and the charge accumulated, or passed through a circuit over a period of time is expressed in coulombs. The relation of the ampere to the coulomb is the same as that of the watt to the joule, the ampere was originally defined as one tenth of the unit of electric current in the centimetre–gram–second system of units. That unit, now known as the abampere, was defined as the amount of current that generates a force of two dynes per centimetre of length between two wires one centimetre apart. The size of the unit was chosen so that the derived from it in the MKSA system would be conveniently sized. The international ampere was a realization of the ampere, defined as the current that would deposit 0.001118 grams of silver per second from a silver nitrate solution. Later, more accurate measurements revealed that this current is 0.99985 A, at present, techniques to establish the realization of an ampere have a relative uncertainty of approximately a few parts in 107, and involve realizations of the watt, the ohm and the volt. Rather than a definition in terms of the force between two current-carrying wires, it has proposed that the ampere should be defined in terms of the rate of flow of elementary charges. Since a coulomb is equal to 6. 2415093×1018 elementary charges. The proposed change would define 1 A as being the current in the direction of flow of a number of elementary charges per second. In 2005, the International Committee for Weights and Measures agreed to study the proposed change, the new definition was discussed at the 25th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 2014 but for the time being was not adopted. The current drawn by typical constant-voltage energy distribution systems is usually dictated by the power consumed by the system, for this reason the examples given below are grouped by voltage level
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Phone connector (audio)
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A phone connector, also known as phone jack, audio jack, headphone jack or jack plug, is a common family of electrical connector typically used for analog signals, primarily audio. It is cylindrical in shape, typically two, three, four and, recently, five contacts. Three-contact versions are known as TRS connectors, where T stands for tip, R stands for ring, similarly, two-, four- and five- contact versions are called TS, TRRS and TRRRS connectors respectively. The phone connector was invented for use in telephone switchboards in the 19th century and is widely used. In its original configuration, the diameter of the sleeve conductor is 1⁄4 inch. The mini connector has a diameter of 3.5 mm, specific models are termed stereo plug, mini-stereo, mini jack, headphone jack and microphone jack, or are referred to by size, i. e.3. 5mm or 6. 35mm. In the UK, the terms jack plug and jack socket are commonly used for the male and female phone connectors. In the US, an electrical connector is called a jack. Phone plugs and jacks are not to be confused with the similar terms phono plug and phono jack which refer to RCA connectors common in consumer hi-fi, the 3.5 mm connector is, however, sometimes—but counter to the connector manufacturers nomenclature—referred to as mini phono. Modern phone connectors are available in three standard sizes, the original 1⁄4 in version dates from 1878, when it was used for manual telephone exchanges, making it the oldest electrical connector standard still in use. The 3.5 mm or miniature and 2.5 mm or sub-miniature sizes were originally designed as two-conductor connectors for earpieces on transistor radios since the 1950s, the standard still used today. The 3.5 mm connector, which is the most commonly used in application today, was popularized by the Sony EFM-117J radio which was released in 1964. It became very popular with its application on the Walkman in 1979, the 3.5 mm and 2.5 mm sizes are sometimes referred to as 1⁄8 in and 3⁄32 in respectively in the United States, though those dimensions are only approximations. All three sizes are now available in two-conductor and three-conductor versions. Four- and five-conductor versions of the 3.5 mm plug are used for certain applications, a four-conductor version is often used in compact camcorders and portable media players, and sometimes also in laptop computers and smartphones, providing stereo sound plus a video signal. Proprietary interfaces using both four- and five-conductor versions exist, where the conductors are used to supply power for accessories. The four-conductor 3.5 mm plug is used as a connector on handheld amateur radio transceivers from Yaesu. It is also used in some amps like the LH Labs Geek Out V2+ for a balanced output, the most common arrangement remains to have the male plug on the cable and the female socket mounted in a piece of equipment, the original intention of the design
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Game Link Cable
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The Nintendo Game Link Cable is an accessory for the Game Boy line of handheld video game systems, allowing players to connect Game Boys of all types for multiplayer gaming. Depending on the games, a Game Link Cable can be used to two games of the same title, like Tetris, or two compatible games like Pokémon Red and Blue, and co-op Super Mario Land. Games can be linked for head-to-head competition, cooperative play, trading items, unlocking hidden features, the first generation Game Link Cable was released alongside the original Game Boy and has large connectors on both ends. It can only be used to two original Game Boys to play Game Link-compatible games, usually denoted by a Game Link logo on the packaging. The second generation started with the release of the Game Boy Pocket which used a much smaller Game Link connector than those used on the original Game Boy. Although the pin assignment and basic shape remained the same. The second generation Game Link Cables came in a few varieties, the first was called the Game Boy Pocket Game Link Cable, and was designed to be used with the Game Boy Pocket. The MGB-008 was the only Game Link cable to be white in color, the MGB-008 features the smaller second generation connectors on both ends, allowing two Game Boy Pockets to link. The next cable in this generation is called the Universal Game Link Cable and it features the smaller second generation connector on one end, and the cable splits into both a second generation and first generation connector at the other end. This link cable was included with the Game Boy Printer in the USA and Europe, therefore, the Game Boy Color is compatible with the MGB-008 and MGB-010. Despite this, the Game Boy Color did receive its own designated link cable, Nintendo also released a small adaptor called the Universal Game Link Adapter which features a small second generation socket and a first generation plug. The adapter can be used in conjunction with either the MGB-008 or the CGB-003, in the USA and Europe, Nintendo released the CGB-003 and DMG-14 as a set called the Universal Game Link Cable Set. The Super Game Boy 2 also shares the same smaller style link cable port and therefore uses the same cables, the third generation started with the release of the Game Boy Advance which was released alongside its own link cable called the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable. It features yet another new type of link cable port which is used on the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP and this link cable can only be used for connecting Game Link compatible Game Boy Advance games. A small hub is included in the middle of the cable, which allows a second Game Link cable to be branched off of the first, and in turn and this provides connections for four consoles in total, meaning games can be played with up to four players. The second generation Game Link cable cannot be used to link Game Boy Advance games, also compatible with Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, e-Reader, and Game Boy Player is the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter. Unlike the AGB-005, the adapter is not compatible with all Game Boy Advance multiplayer games. Only certain games feature specific support for the AGB-015, the fourth and last generation Game Link Cable, called the Game Boy Micro Game Link Cable, was designed specifically for use with the Game Boy Micro
Media related to Game Boy at Wikimedia Commons
