Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen known as the Olsen twins as a duo, are American fashion designers and former child actresses. The dizygotic twins made their acting debut as infants playing Michelle Tanner on the television series Full House. At the age of six, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen began starring together in TV, video projects, which continued to their teenage years. Through their company Dualstar, the Olsens joined the ranks of the wealthiest women in the entertainment industry at a young age; the twins were born in Sherman Oaks, California, to David "Dave" Olsen and Jarnette "Jarnie". They are dizygotic twins, they have an elder brother, a younger sister, actress Elizabeth, as well as a half-sister, Courtney Taylor, a half-brother, Jake. The twins' parents divorced in 1995; the Olsen twins have Norwegian ancestry. In 1987, at the age of six months, the twins were cast in the role of Michelle Tanner on the ABC sitcom Full House, they began filming at nine months old. In order to comply with child labor laws that set strict limits on how long a child actor may work, the sisters took turns playing the role.
The Olsens continued to portray Michelle throughout the show's run, which concluded in 1995. In 1992, Mary-Kate and Ashley shared the role of Michelle Tanner when they guest-starred on the Full House crossover episode of Hangin' with Mr. Cooper. While starring on Full House, the Olsens began appearing in films for video and television; the first such film, To Grandmother's House We Go, debuted in 1992 and featured cameos from several other Full House actors. In 1993, the Olsens established the company Dualstar, which would produce the twins' subsequent films and videos, including 1993's Double, Double and Trouble and 1994's How the West Was Fun. A series of musical mystery videos called The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley premiered in 1994 and continued through 1997. In 1995, following the end of Full House, the Olsens made their feature film debut in It Takes Two, co-starring Steve Guttenberg and Kirstie Alley. In the same year, they introduced a second video series, You're Invited to Mary-Kate & Ashley's... which continued to release new entries until 2000.
The following year, the Olsens appeared in an episode of All My Children. In 1997, they appeared once again as guest stars in an episode of Sister Sister. In 1998, the twins returned to series television with another ABC sitcom, Two of a Kind, co-starring Christopher Sieber as their characters' widowed father; the series aired in reruns on cable for several years afterward. 1998 saw the release of Billboard Dad, the first of a new string of direct-to-video films starring the Olsens. The final such film, The Challenge, debuted in 2003. In 2000, the Olsens appeared in an episode of 7th Heaven as bad girls Carol Murphy; the following year, the sisters starred in two new series: So Little Time, a live-action sitcom on Fox Family. Both shows were canceled after one season, although Mary-Kate received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for her performance on So Little Time. In early 2004, Mary-Kate and Ashley had a cameo voice role in an episode of The Simpsons as the readers of Marge's book-on-tape, The Harpooned Heart.
In 2004, the twins starred in a second feature film, New York Minute. It would be their last film together, as well as Ashley's last acting role. Mary-Kate has continued to appear in television. Mary-Kate and Ashley had a fan club until 2000, "Mary-Kate & Ashley's Fun Club", where fans would pay to receive Mary-Kate and Ashley collectibles and photos; each subscription included an issue of Our Funzine, Mary-Kate and Ashley's fan club magazine available through the club, a collectibles catalog, where one could purchase T-shirts, baseball caps, key rings, school folders and various other items. Subscribers would receive "surprise gifts", lyric sheets to Mary-Kate and Ashley's songs, a school folder, a membership card, a full-sized poster, two black and white photos, a color photo with reprint autographs; the club was advertised at the beginning of Mary-Kate and Ashley movies until 1998. Mary-Kate and Ashley were popular figures in the preteen market during the late 1990s and early 2000s, their names and likenesses extended, not only to movies and videos, but to clothes, purses, books, CDs and cassette tapes and makeup, magazines and board games, posters and telephones and CD players—with a market share made up of the tween demographic.
Mattel produced various sets of Mary-Kate and Ashley fashion dolls from 2000 to 2005, along with separate outfits and accessory packs. The sisters became co-presidents of Dualstar on their 18th birthday in 2004. Upon taking control of the company, Mary-Kate and Ashley made moves to secure the future of the company by releasing products that appealed to the teen market, including home decoration and fragrances; the Dualstar brand has been sold in more than 3,000 stores in the United States and over 5,300 stores worldwide. The Olsens have appeared on the Forbes "Celebrity 100" list since 2002; as the sisters have matured, they expressed greater interest in their fashion choices, with The New York Times declaring Mary-Kate a fashion icon for pioneering her signature "ho
Nintendo
Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by market capitalization, creating some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon. Founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as cab services and love hotels. Abandoning previous ventures in favor of toys in the 1960s, Nintendo developed into a video game company in the 1970s becoming one of the most influential in the industry and one of Japan's most-valuable companies with a market value of over $37 billion in 2018. Nintendo was founded as a playing card company by Fusajiro Yamauchi on 23 September 1889. Based in Kyoto, the business marketed Hanafuda cards; the handmade cards soon became popular, 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"; the word Nintendo can be translated as "leave luck to heaven", or alternatively as "the temple of free hanafuda". In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U. S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company, the dominant playing card manufacturer there. He found. Yamauchi's realization that the playing card business had limited potential was a turning point, he 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 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; this business was successful.
However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the labour unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It set up a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company and several other ventures. All of these ventures failed, after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped, Nintendo's stock price plummeted to its lowest recorded level of ¥60. In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the Ultra Hand, an extendable arm developed by its maintenance engineer Gunpei Yokoi in his free time. Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new "Nintendo Games" department as a product developer. Nintendo continued to produce popular toys, including the Ultra Machine, Love Tester and the Kousenjuu series of light gun games. Despite some successful products, Nintendo struggled to meet the fast development and manufacturing turnaround required in the toy market, fell behind the well-established companies such as Bandai and Tomy. In 1973, its focus shifted to family entertainment venues with the Laser Clay Shooting System, using the same light gun technology used in Nintendo's Kousenjuu series of toys, set up in abandoned bowling alleys.
Following some success, Nintendo developed several more light gun machines for the emerging arcade scene. While the Laser Clay Shooting System ranges had to be shut down following excessive costs, Nintendo had found a new market. Nintendo's first venture into the video gaming industry was securing rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console in Japan in 1974. Nintendo began to produce its own hardware in 1977, with the Color TV-Game home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles were produced, each including variations of a single game. A student product developer named, he worked for Yokoi, one of his first tasks was to design the casing for several of the Color TV-Game consoles. Miyamoto went on to create and produce some of Nintendo's most famous video games and become one of the most recognizable figures in the video game industry. In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video arcade game industry with EVR Race, designed by their first game designer, Genyo Takeda, several more games followed.
Nintendo had some small success with this venture, but the release of Donkey Kong in 1981, designed by Miyamoto, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success of the game and many licensing opportunities gave Nintendo a huge boost in profit and in addition, the game introduced an early iteration of Mario known in Japan as Jumpman, the eventual company mascot. In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi conceived the idea of a handheld video game, while observing a fellow bullet train commuter who passed the time by interacting idly with a portable LCD calculator, which gave birth to Game & Watch. In 1980, Nintendo launched Watch -- a handheld video game series developed by Yokoi; these systems do not contain interchangeable cartridges and thus the hardware was tied to the game. The first Game & Watch game, was distributed worldwide; the modern "cross" D-pad design was developed by Yokoi for a Donkey Kong version. Proven to be popular, the design was patented by Nintendo, it earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.
In 1983, Nintendo launched the Family Computer home video game console in Japan, alongside ports of its most popular arcade games. In 1985, a cosmetically reworked version of the system known
Thermal printing
Thermal printing is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated. Two-colour direct thermal printers can print both black and an additional colour by applying heat at two different temperatures. Thermal transfer printing is a different method that uses a heat-sensitive ribbon instead of heat-sensitive paper, but uses similar thermal print heads. A thermal printer comprises; the printer sends an electric current to the heating elements of the thermal head, which generate heat. The heat activates the thermo-sensitive coloring layer of the thermosensitive paper, which changes color where heated; such a printing mechanism is known as direct system. The heating elements are arranged as a line of small spaced dots; the paper is impregnated with a solid-state mixture of a suitable matrix. When the matrix is heated above its melting point, the dye reacts with the acid, shifts to its colored form, the changed form is conserved in metastable state when the matrix solidifies back enough.
Thermal printers print more and faster than impact dot matrix printers. They are smaller and consume less power, making them ideal for portable and retail applications, its efficiency can be utilized in retail sectors. Roll-based printers can be refilled. Commercial applications of thermal printers include filling station pumps, information kiosks, point of sale systems, voucher printers in slot machines, print on demand labels for shipping and products, for recording live rhythm strips on hospital cardiac monitors. Many popular microcomputer systems from the late 1970s and early 1980s had first-party and aftermarket thermal printers available for them - such as the Atari 822 printer for the Atari 8-bit systems, the Apple Silentype for the Apple II and the Alphacom 32 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and ZX81, they used unusually-sized supplies and were used for making permanent records of information in the computer, rather than for correspondence. Through the 1990s many fax machines used thermal printing technology.
Toward the beginning of the 21st century, thermal wax transfer and inkjet printing technology supplanted thermal printing technology in fax machines, allowing printing on plain paper. Thermal Receipt Printers are efficient and quick, its efficiency can be utilized in retail sectors. Thermal printers are still used in seafloor exploration and engineering geology due to their portability and ability to create continuous reels or sheets. Thermal printers found in offshore applications are used to print realtime records of side scan sonar and sub-seafloor seismic imagery. In data processing, thermal printers are sometimes used to create hard copies of continuous seismic or hydrographic records stored in digital SEG Y or XTF form; the Game Boy Printer, released in 1998, was a small thermal printer used to print out certain elements from some Game Boy games. Early formulations of the thermo-sensitive coating used in thermal paper were sensitive to incidental heat, friction and water. Thermal coating formulations are far more stable.
In many hospitals in the United Kingdom, many common ultrasound sonogram devices output the results of the scan onto thermal paper. This can cause problems if the parents wish to preserve the image by laminating it, as the heat of most laminators will darken the entire page—this can be tested for beforehand on an unimportant thermal print. An option is to laminate a permanent ink duplicate of the image. Reports began surfacing of studies in the 2000s finding the oestrogen-related chemical bisphenol A mixed in with thermal papers. While the health concerns are uncertain, various health and science oriented political pressure organizations such as the Environmental Working Group have pressed for these versions to be pulled from market. Barcode printer Thermal transfer printing Computer printing Daisy wheel printing Dye-sublimation printer Line matrix printer Line printer Label printer Label printer applicator Thermographic printing Game Boy Printer
Game Boy Advance
The Game Boy Advance is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed 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, in mainland China on June 8, 2004 as iQue Game Boy Advance; the GBA was part of the sixth generation. The original model was not backlit and Nintendo addressed that with the release of the redesigned Game Boy Advance SP in 2003. Another redesign, the Game Boy Micro, was released in 2005; 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. Contrary to the previous Game Boy models, which were all following the "portrait" form factor of the original Game Boy, the Game Boy Advance was designed in a "landscape" form factor, putting the buttons to the sides of the device instead of below the screen; the Game Boy Advance was designed by the French designer Gwénaël Nicolas and his Tokyo-based design studio Curiosity Inc.
In 1996, magazines including Electronic Gaming Monthly, Next Generation, issues 53 and 54 of Total! and the July 1996 issue of Game Informer featured reports of a new Game Boy, codenamed Project Atlantis. Although Nintendo's expectations of releasing the system in at least one territory by the end of 1996 would make that machine seem to be the Game Boy Color, it was described as having a 32-bit RISC processor, a 3-by-2-inch color LCD screen, a link port—a description that more matches the Game Boy Advance, it may have referred to the unnamed, unreleased Game Boy Color successor prototype, revealed at 2009's Game Developers Conference. It was announced that Nintendo of Japan was working on a game for the system called "Mario's Castle". Nintendo tabled the project in 1997, since the original Game Boy was still too popular to merit the release of a successor; the technical specifications of the original Game Boy Advance are, as provided by Nintendo: Backward compatibility for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games is provided by a custom 4.194/8.388 MHz Z80-based coprocessor, while a link port at the top of the unit allows it to be connected to other devices using a Game Link cable or GameCube link cable.
When playing Game Boy or Game Boy Color games on the Game Boy Advance, the L and R buttons can be used to toggle between a stretched widescreen format and the original screen ratio of the Game Boy. 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 and rotation for bitmaps in modes 3 through 5. On each machine supporting this effect, it is possible to change the scaling and rotation values during the horizontal blanking period of each scanline to draw a flat plane in a perspective projection. More complex effects such as fuzz are possible by using other equations for the position 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 and with 16 or 256 colors per sprite. 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, 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 system's backward compatibility with all earlier Game Boy titles. All titles were GBA-exclusive and none of these were backwards compatible with older Game Boy systems, it featured a warning message, refuse to play on classic Game Boy. 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. 2 Games in 1: Columns Crown & ChuChu Rocket! was the final European GBA game, released November 2008. 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, which went on to form the popular Rhythm Heaven series. 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, to be played on the GameCube. However, some games may have compatibility issues due to certain features. Game Boy Advance games are compatible with the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite handheld consoles, which feature a cartridge slot at the bottom, they are not, compatible with the Nintendo DSi, as it does not feature a cartridge slot. As part of an Ambassador Program for early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS system, ten Game Boy Advance games were made available free for players who bought a system before August 2011. Unlike other Virtual Console games for the system, players were not able to use features such
Magical Drop
Magical Drop, sometimes referred to in Japanese as MagiDro, is a series of puzzle games first released in the arcade, primarily for several platforms such as the Neo Geo Arcade, Super Famicom, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Bandai WonderSwan, GBC and the Neo Geo Pocket Color. A stack of random colored bubbles descend from the top, a player is defeated when a bubble hits the bottom. Bubbles can be picked up and dropped by the player's clown at the bottom, are destroyed when three or more of the same color are put together on a single column. Chains are formed either when a single drop caused a chain reaction, or when more than one group of bubbles is destroyed in quick succession; the game is played with two players, chains cause the opponent's stack to descend faster. There are the Black Pierrot being named after a tarot card. Different characters have different attack patterns; the columns of the opponent's stack will descend at different rates relative to each other depending on the character chosen.
This causes a disjunction of colors that may make it more difficult for the other player to clear their stack. For example, with the character Devil, all the columns will descend at the same rate, whereas with Sun, the middle columns will descend faster than the others. In 1995, Data East released the first game in the series as a coin-operated version of this game titled Magical Drop. Despite the arcade game being released worldwide while using the English title in North America and Europe, Data East gave the official English names of its successors the same names as their Japanese counterparts, while the home versions of the first game were never released outside Japan; the series became better known for its Neo-Geo sequels, Magical Drop II and Magical Drop III, due to the popularity of the Neo-Geo platform. The last games in the series released in the United States were Magical Drop Pocket for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 1999 and Magical Drop for the Game Boy Color in 2000. G-mode bought and now owns the intellectual rights to the Magical Drop franchise along with several other of Data East's franchises and titles.
While Data East declared bankruptcy in 2003, other publishers have re-released the PlayStation titles Magical Drop 3 + Wonderful and Magical Drop F. Magical Drop II and Magical Drop III are available on the subscription service GameTap. In 2007, the Super Famicom version of the first Magical Drop title was released in Japan on the Virtual Console for the Wii by G-mode. In 2009, versions of Magical Drop for Android phones and iPhone were released in May and September, respectively. On May 25, 2010, Magical Drop II was released on the Virtual Console by G-mode. In 2010, Magical Drop III was included as part of Data East Arcade Classics and released on the Virtual Console in Japan on July 6, 2010. At E3 2011, UTV Ignition Entertainment announced a new sequel, Magical Drop V. Handled by the French developer Golgoth Studio, the game was released for PC on November 15, 2012. Fool: A little man wearing a purple robe, he is always seen carrying a cat with him. In the sequel, it is revealed in his ending that there are, in fact, two Fools, they are brothers Magician: A young man with a narcissistic streak.
While seeming mature, he has an absurd sense of humor High Priestess: A scholarly young lady who spends most of her time reading books Chariot: A hot-blooded knight who has no fear and never backs down from danger Devil: A mischievous young boy with demonic traits such as horns and dragon wings Star: A young girl holding two jugs of water. While cheerful, she can turn into a crybaby World: A goddess-like woman with three eyes and a ribbon covering parts of her body, she debuted in the original game as the final opponent, was not playable until the sequel Justice: A teenage girl with a strong sense of justice, true to her namesake Strength: A muscular man who wears iron knuckles. He is sometimes referred to as Father Strength Empress: A villainous woman who wears a dominatrix outfit, though she was a kind and gentle woman, she debuted in the game as the final opponent Black Pierrot: An evil jester-like demon who acts as the game's secret boss. He was responsible for the corruption of Empress Emperor Hierophant Lovers Young Strength Death Temperance Sun Judgement Hermit Moon Hanged Man Tower Wheel of Fortune The first game in the series, first released to arcades in 1995.
It features Fool, High Priestess, Chariot and Star as playable characters. It features a single-player mode, where the player battles each playable character before taking on World in one final encounter, as well as a two-player multiplayer mode; the game received an updated version named Magical Drop Plus 1!, which adds a Solo Play mode that challenges players to obtain a high score without having to battle an AI opponent. Magical Drop Plus 1! was released in English as Chain Reaction. Magical Drop was ported to the Super Famicom, which includes a puzzle mode that challenges players to solve preset puzzles given a limited number of possible moves; the game was re-imagined for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn with different, pre-rendered characters. A port of the game is part of Magical Drop III + Wonderful. Name as opposed to using Chain Reaction; the second game in the series moved from Data East's proprietary arcade hardware to SNK's Neo Geo. It first released in 1996. In addition to the cast of the first Magical Drop, Magical Drop II introduces Justice, as
Video game console emulator
A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass the limitations of the original hardware, such as broader controller compatibility, timescale control, greater performance, clearer quality, easier access to memory modifications, one-click cheat codes, unlocking of gameplay features. Emulators are a useful tool in the development process of homebrew demos and the creation of new games for older, discontinued, or more rare consoles; the code and data of a game are supplied to the emulator by means of a ROM file or an ISO image, which are created by either specialized tools for game cartridges, or regular optical drives reading the data. Most games retain their copyright despite the increasing time-span of the original system and products' discontinuation; as an alternative, specialized adapters such as the Retrode allow emulators to directly access the data on game cartridges without needing to copy it into a ROM image first.
By the mid-1990s, personal computers had progressed to the point where it was technically feasible to replicate the behavior of some of the earliest consoles through software, the first unauthorized, non-commercial console emulators began to appear. These early programs were incomplete, only emulating a given system, resulting in defects. Few manufacturers published technical specifications for their hardware, which left programmers to deduce the exact workings of a console through reverse engineering. Nintendo's consoles tended to be the most studied, for example the most advanced early emulators reproduced the workings of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy. Programs like Marat Fayzullin's iNES, VirtualGameBoy, Super Pasofami, VSMC were the most popular console emulators of this era. A curiosity was Yuji Naka's unreleased NES emulator for the Genesis marking the first instance of a software emulator running on a console; this rise in popularity opened the door to foreign video games, exposed North American gamers to Nintendo's censorship policies.
This rapid growth in the development of emulators in turn fed the growth of the ROM hacking and fan-translation. The release of projects such as RPGe's English language translation of Final Fantasy V drew more users into the emulation scene; as computers and global computer networks continued to advance and emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Fifth generation consoles such as Nintendo 64, PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance, saw significant progress toward emulation during their production; this led to an effort by console manufacturers to stop unofficial emulation, but consistent failures such as Sega v. Accolade 977 F.2d 1510, Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation 203 F.3d 596, Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem 214 F.3d 1022, have had the opposite effect. According to all legal precedents, emulation is legal within the United States.
However, unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country-specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention.. Accordingly, video game publishers and developers have taken legal action against websites that illegally redistribute their copyrighted software forcing sites to remove their titles or taking down the websites entirely. Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. 964 F.2d 965 as fair use as long as the user obtained a purchased copy of the machine. To mitigate this however, several emulators for platforms such as Game Boy Advance are capable of running without a BIOS file, using high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy. Due to their popularity, emulators have been a target of online scams in the form of trojan horse programs designed to mimic the appearance of a legitimate emulator, which are promoted through spam, on YouTube and elsewhere.
The Federal Trade Commission has since issued an advisory warning users to avoid downloading such software, in response to reports of a purported Nintendo Switch emulator released by various websites as a front for a survey scam. Due to the high demand of playing old games on modern systems, consoles have begun incorporating emulation technology; the most notable of these is Nintendo's Virtual Console. Released for the Wii, but present on the 3DS and Wii U, Virtual Console uses software emulation to allow the purchasing and playing of games for old systems on this modern hardware. Though not all games are available, the Virtual Console has a large collection of games spanning a wide variety of consoles; the Virtual Console's library of past games consists of titles originating from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii, as well as Sega's Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive, NEC's TurboGrafx-16, SNK's Neo Geo.
The service for the Wii includes games
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. is a platform video game developed and published by Nintendo. The successor to the 1983 arcade game, Mario Bros. it was released in Japan in 1985 for the Famicom, in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 and 1987 respectively. Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, as they travel the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist, Bowser, they must traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits with the aid of power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and Starman. The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and was planned as a farewell salute to cartridge games on the Famicom, in anticipation of the forthcoming release of the Famicom Disk System, drawing technical influence from several of the console's previous games, it was designed with ease of access in mind, with the first level, World 1-1, designed to introduce the core mechanics.
The music was composed by Koji Kondo, is considered influential in making music a larger aspect of video games. Super Mario Bros. is cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise going towards its precise controls. It has sold over 40 million physical copies making it one of the bestselling games of all time, it is credited alongside the NES as one of the key factors in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, helped popularize side-scrolling platform games. It began an expansive franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series, a feature film. Ports and remakes of the game have been released for most of Nintendo's future systems. Alongside Mario himself, Super Mario Bros. has become a prominent aspect of popular culture. In Super Mario Bros. the player takes on the role of the protagonist of the series. Mario's younger brother, Luigi, is controlled by the second player in the game's multiplayer mode and assumes the same plot role and functionality as Mario.
The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces, save Princess Toadstool. The game is a side-scrolling platformer; the game world features coins scattered around for Mario to collect and special bricks marked with a question mark, which when hit from below by Mario may reveal more coins or a special item. Other "secret" invisible, bricks may contain more coins or rare items. If the player gains a Super Mushroom, Mario grows to double his size and gains the ability to break bricks above him. If Mario gets hit in this mode instead of dying he turns back to regular Mario. Players start with a certain number of lives and may gain additional lives by picking up green spotted orange 1-Up mushrooms hidden in bricks, or by collecting 100 coins, defeating several enemies in a row with a Koopa shell, or bouncing on enemies successively without touching the ground. Mario loses a life if he takes damage while small, runs out of time; the game ends when the player runs out of lives, although a button input can be used on the game over screen to continue from the first level of the world in which the player died.
Mario's primary attack is jumping on top of enemies, though many enemies have differing responses to this. For example, a Goomba will flatten and be defeated, while a Koopa Troopa will temporarily retract into its shell, allowing Mario to use it as a projectile; these shells may be deflected off a wall to destroy other enemies, though they can bounce back against Mario, which will hurt or kill him. Other enemies, such as underwater foes and enemies with spiked tops, cannot be jumped on and damage the player instead. Mario can defeat enemies above him by jumping to hit the brick that the enemy is standing on. Mario may acquire the Fire Flower from certain? Blocks that when picked up changes the color of Super Mario's outfit and allows him to throw fireballs. A less common item is the Starman, which appears when Mario hits certain concealed or otherwise invisible blocks; this item makes Mario temporarily invincible to most hazards and capable of defeating enemies on contact. The game consists of eight worlds with four sub-levels called "stages" in each world."
The final stage of each world takes place in a castle where Bowser is fought above a suspension bridge. Bowser and his decoys are defeated by jumping over them and reaching the axe on the end of the bridge, although they can be defeated using a Fire Flower; the game includes some stages taking place underwater, which contain different enemies. In addition, there are secret areas in the game. Most secret areas contain more coins for Mario to collect, but some contain "warp pipes" that allow Mario to advance directly to worlds in the game without completing the intervening stages. After completing the game once, the player is rewarded with the ability to replay the game with changes made to increase its difficulty, such as all Goombas in the game being replaced with Buzzy Beetles, enemies similar to Koopa Troopas who cannot be defeated using the Fire Flower. In the fantasy setting of the Mushroom Kingdom, a tribe of turtle-like creatures known as the Koopa Troopas invade the kingdom and uses the magic of its king, Bowser, to turn its inhabitants, known as the Mushroom People, into inanimate objects such as bricks and horsehair plants.
Bowser and his army kidnap Princess Toadstool, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom and the only one with the ability
