Saw (franchise)
Saw is an American horror franchise distributed by Lionsgate, produced by Twisted Pictures and created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, that consists of eight feature films and additional media. In 2003, Wan and Whannell made a short film to help pitch as a potential feature film; this was done in 2004 with the release of the first installment at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was released theatrically that October; the sequels were directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, David Hackl, Kevin Greutert, were written by Wan, Bousman, Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, were released subsequently every October, on the Friday before Halloween, between 2004 and 2010. Both of the creators remained with the franchise as executive producers. On July 22, 2010, producer Mark Burg confirmed that the seventh film, Saw 3D, is the final installment of the series. Lionsgate expressed interest in continuing the franchise in 2012 with a reboot. In November 2013, it was reported. An eighth film, was released in October 2017.
The franchise revolves around John Kramer called the "Jigsaw Killer" or "Jigsaw". He was introduced in Saw and developed in more detail in Saw II. Rather than killing his victims outright, Jigsaw traps them in situations that he calls "tests" or "games" to test their will to live through physical or psychological torture and believes if they survive, they will be rehabilitated. Despite the fact that John was murdered in Saw III, the films continue to focus on the posthumous influence of the Jigsaw Killer and his apprentices by exploring his character via flashbacks; the franchise grossed more than $1 billion from box office and retail sales by 2009, the films have collectively grossed over $976 million at the worldwide box office as of 2018. The film series as a whole has received mixed to negative reviews by critics, but has been a financial success at the box office and is one of the highest-grossing horror film franchises of all time. While the films are classified as torture porn by critics, the creators of Saw disagree with the term.
Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the roots of the series, presenting John Kramer as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill Tuck, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Jill lost her unborn baby, due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene. Saw VI showed that another drug addict, Amanda Young had an unintentional role in the death of Gideon. John grieved over the loss of his child, distanced himself from his friends and his wife. John and Jill drifted apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Bitter over his squandered life and the loss of his unborn son, John began observing the lives of others and became more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the gift of life that he had just been denied. John was denied. Flashbacks from Saw II show that, after surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves.
In Saw IV flashbacks, he designed the first trap and test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" or "games" as a form of "instant rehabilitation" that would change the world, "one person at a time". John was soon given the name "The Jigsaw Killer", because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who did not escape his traps. John stated that this name was given to him by the media, that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something—what he called the "survival instinct". Few of Jigsaw's victims are able to survive his brutal mechanical traps, which are ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical and psychological torture to escape. In Saw V, police lieutenant Mark Hoffman's ties with John are revealed in a series of flashbacks during the film. Hoffman's sister is murdered by Seth Baxter. Seth is arrested. Jigsaw kidnaps Hoffman and blackmails him into becoming his apprentice in his "rehabilitation" methods, though Hoffman would become a willing apprentice, helping set up John's tests from the beginning, starting with Paul's trap.
The first surviving victim, Amanda Young, views Jigsaw as a hero who changed her life for the better. Amanda, upon Jigsaw's request, agrees to become his protégée. After Amanda survives, John shows Jill her rehabilitation, Jill becomes knowledgeable of John's traps and becomes somewhat of an accomplice as well. In Saw, Jigsaw has chained the man who diagnosed his cancer, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Stanheight, a photographer, tailing the doctor due to belief he is cheating on his wife. Lawrence has instructions to kill Adam by six o'clock. Flashbacks show detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who suspect Lawrence of being Jigsaw, following a trail of clues from other Jigsaw traps. Sing's death from a shotgun trap after saving a victim named Jeff causes Tapp to obsess over catching Jigsaw. On, he chases Zep Hindle, who monitors Adam and Lawrence's tests, gets shot in the chest. Even
Klonoa
Klonoa is a video game series created by Namco and Klonoa Works, as well as the name of the titular character of the series. The character and series were launched with the release of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile for the PlayStation in 1997. Klonoa is described within the games and manga as a "Dream Traveler", fated to travel to various places where the state of dreams is in danger, but he himself is not aware of that, his traditional voice actor is Kumiko Watanabe, he is voiced by Eric Stitt in the English version of the remake of the first game. He has Namco's mascot Pac-Man on the side of his blue hat. Wanting to be a hero, he is young and good-hearted, is willing to go against all odds to make sure justice is served, he is able to befriend characters along the way who support his cause. His attitude is innocent and a bit naive, as shown in Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. Klonoa was designed by Yoshihiko Arai. Arai's first design, "Shady", had a shadow-like appearance. However, he felt that the lack of color did not seem tasteful, dropped the design.
His next design was created with characteristically animal eyes and long ears, as Arai felt that a person's eyes and silhouette are the features noticed when they are first met. He added a large hat with a Pac-Man emblem on it and collar to give the character a childlike and energetic quality; the design was used for Klonoa. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile was released in late 1997 in Japan and was critically well received by numerous gaming publications and magazines, it was one of the first PlayStation platform games to feature two-dimensional character artwork on a rendered, three-dimensional backdrop. It was described as 2.5 D to distinguish it between other games that relied on the other. A remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, was released on December 4, 2008, in Japan for the Wii console, it features revised graphics and voice acting, as well as many unlockable bonuses that were not in the original. These include new costumes, Mirrored Visions, challenge areas, it was released in North America on May 5, 2009, in Europe on May 22, 2009.
Klonoa's second appearance, Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum was released in Japan for the Japanese-only WonderSwan handheld system in 1999. It is Klonoa's first handheld appearance and his first two-dimensional one. Despite lacking the artful style of the first game, Moonlight Museum set the standard for the approaching Game Boy Advance titles like Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, which came out two years later. Though it was similar in style and execution to the previous game, it was developed for the more sophisticated Game Boy Advance hardware and was available in North America and Europe. Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil was released for the PlayStation 2 with moderate success in 2001, its different types of gameplay includes a standard set of platformer levels in the "2.5D" style, hoverboarding down snowy mountains and water parks, time-attack challenges, puzzle solving, boss fights, introducing the "360 degrees" system. A third handheld title, Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament, was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2002 with a belated release in North America three years later.
Utilizing the same game engine as Empire of Dreams, Dream Champ Tournament was a similar gaming experience that benefited from more sophisticated puzzles and featured a newer cast of supporting characters. A sports title, Klonoa Beach Volleyball, released for the PlayStation in Japan and Europe, featured Klonoa and his friends in a unique version of volleyball. A North American version was not released. Klonoa Heroes: Densetsu no Star Medal was released in Japan in late 2002. Taking a unique twist on the series, the game is an action role-playing game rather than a platformer and is played from a top-down perspective. A webcomic adaption of the series made by Namco Bandai subsidiary ShiftyLook, called Klonoa: Dream Traveller of Noctis Sol, began publication on September 26, 2012, it was illustrated with new pages being published every Wednesday. The webcomic came to an abrupt end following the shutdown of ShiftyLook in late 2014. On August 7, 2014, Games.it published a rumor. On October 27, 2016, a Klonoa film adaptation was announced, was in development under the animation production company Henshin.
In January 2019, the film was confirmed cancelled. The games are set in different worlds, though the known ones are Phantomile and Lunatea, it revolves around Klonoa and how he, the Dream Traveler, must save whatever world he is in from peril. Along the way he makes some of them becoming recurring characters; the game is an early example of a side scrolling 3D game. It is an puzzle type of game; the main gameplay feature involves using Klonoa's ring and "Wind Bullets" to inflate enemies, which can be thrown at other objects or at the ground, giving him a boost upwards allowing him to double jump. Klonoa had cameo appearances in Alpine Racer 3, Smash Court 3, Taiko no Tatsujin. Klonoa and Guntz appear as a playable duo in Namco's cross-over role-playing game Namco × Capcom, they retain similar moves from Klonoa Heroes. Joka and various varieties of Moos appear as a part of the game's enemies while Lolo & The High Priestess of La-Lakoosha appear as non-playable characters. In Tales of Destiny 2, a Klonoa plushie can be seen at the left side of the character Harold's room.
In Tales of Symphonia, the character Presea could get a Klonoa costume. In Tales of Hearts and Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku, Klonoa appears as a summon character. In Tales of Vesperia, Klonoa appears in the form of a fellowship statue named F Statue. There is a Klonoa costume for the character K
God of War (franchise)
God of War is a mythology-based action-adventure video game franchise. Created by David Jaffe at Sony's Santa Monica Studio, the series debuted in 2005 on the PlayStation 2 video game console, has become a flagship title for the PlayStation brand, consisting of eight games across multiple platforms; the story is about Kratos, a Spartan warrior tricked into killing his wife and daughter by his former master, the Greek God of War Ares. Kratos seeks to rid himself of the nightmares by serving the other Olympian gods, but soon finds himself in confrontation with them due to their machinations. Years after the destruction of ancient Greece, Kratos ends up in ancient Norway with a young son named Atreus; the two journey throughout several realms to fulfill a promise to the boy's deceased mother, inadvertently making enemies of the Norse gods. Santa Monica has developed all main entries, while Ready at Dawn and Javaground/Sony Online Entertainment-Los Angeles developed the three side games. Sony Interactive Entertainment has published all games except the mobile phone installment.
There are two eras in the series. The first era are the first seven games, which are based on Greek mythology with vengeance as a central motif. God of War, God of War II, God of War III comprise its main trilogy; the fourth main installment, was released for the PS3 and serves as a prequel to all other games. The three side games include Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta for the PlayStation Portable, Betrayal for mobile phones that supported the Java Platform, Micro Edition; the second era, based on Norse mythology, began with the fifth main installment titled God of War, which released for the PlayStation 4. To go along with the new installment, Sony released a short prequel story, A Call from the Wilds, as a text-based game through Facebook Messenger. Games in the series have been praised as some of the best action games of all time; some of them have been remastered for newer PlayStation platforms. The franchise has sold over 27 million units worldwide with the release of 2018's installment.
Strong sales and support of the series led to the franchise's expansion into other media, such as three comic book series and three novels. A film adaptation of the original installment has been in development since 2005. Merchandise includes artwork, clothing and prop replicas, as well as the games' soundtracks, including a heavy metal album, Blood & Metal, featuring original music by various bands who were inspired by the series. God of War was first released in North America on March 22, 2005, for the PlayStation 2. After ten years in the service of the Olympian gods, Spartan soldier Kratos is tasked by Athena to find Pandora's Box. A series of flashbacks reveals that Kratos was once the servant of Ares, who saved the Spartan and his army from annihilation in battle, but tricked him into killing his family which forced his metamorphosis into the "Ghost of Sparta". Kratos finds Pandora's Box, after killing Ares, he ascends to Mount Olympus to become the new God of War. God of War II was first released in North America on March 13, 2007, for the PlayStation 2.
Angered at his fellow gods, Kratos runs amok across the city of Rhodes. Zeus intervenes and betrays Kratos, saved by the Titan Gaia, she tells him he must now find the Sisters of Fate, who can change his fate and prevent his death at the hands of Zeus. Kratos is successful and as he is about to kill the god, Athena sacrifices herself to save Zeus and preserve Olympus, tells Kratos that he is the son of Zeus. Kratos joins forces with Gaia and the Titans to attack Olympus. God of War: Betrayal was released on June 20, 2007, for mobile phones supporting Java ME, it is the only game in the series to be released as a two-dimensional side-scroller and released on a non-PlayStation platform. The game's narrative takes place between the events of Ghost of Sparta and God of War II. Kratos is framed for murder, rampages across Greece seeking the true assassin. Kratos succumbs to bloodlust and kills Ceryx, the son of the god Hermes—an act that alienates him from his fellow gods. God of War: Chains of Olympus was first released in North America on March 4, 2008, for the PlayStation Portable.
Its narrative takes place during Kratos' ten years of service to the gods. Kratos halts a Persian invasion of the Greek city of Attica, learns that the world has been plunged into darkness by the god Morpheus. Kratos investigates the abduction of the sun god Helios, prevents the Machiavellian plan of the goddess Persephone to use the Titan Atlas to destroy the world. God of War III was first released in North America on March 16, 2010, for the PlayStation 3. Reigniting the Great War, Kratos is soon abandoned by the Titans, who were only using him to exact their own revenge. Helped by the spirit of Athena, elevated to a new level of understanding, she instructs him to seek the Flame of Olympus in order to defeat Zeus. Kratos engages the gods and the Titans in an epic series of battles across the Underworld and Olympus and learns that Pandora's Box is within the Flame, he discovers that Pandora herself is the key to pacifying the Flame and allowing him to open the Box. After killing Zeus, he refuses to help Athena assume the role of new patron of mankind and disappears.
God of War: Ghost of Sparta was first released in North America on November 2, 2010, for the PlayStation Portable. Set between the events
Souls (series)
Souls is a series of action role-playing games developed by FromSoftware. The series began with the release of Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3 in 2009, was followed by Dark Souls and its sequels, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, in the 2010s; the series' creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki, served as director for each of them with the exception of Dark Souls II. The Souls games are played in a third-person perspective, focus on exploring interconnected environments while fighting enemies with weapons, magic, or both. Players battle bosses to progress through the story, while interacting with strange non-playable characters; the series has been both praised and criticized for its high level of game difficulty, is considered a spiritual successor to King's Field. Other FromSoftware games, such as Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, share many related concepts with the series; the games take place within a dark medieval fantasy setting, where the player fights against knights and various monsters.
A recurring theme is that of a once prosperous kingdom which has fallen into ruin. In Demon's Souls, the player attempts to halt the spread of a demon-infested fog that threatens to consume the world. In contrast, the Dark Souls trilogy revolves around the player's attempts, through various means, to either reverse or perpetuate the spread of an undead curse known as the "Darksign" that prevents true death but prompts a gradual descent into madness and decay called "Hollowing" - based on their choices, they do this by linking the "first flame", like many others have done before, which becomes a plot point in itself. The protagonist of each Souls game can have a varying gender, appearance and starting class via character creation. Players can choose between classes, including knights, barbarians and mages; each class has its own starting equipment and abilities that can be tailored to the player's experience and choices as they progress. The player gains souls from gameplay battles which act as both experience points to level up and as currency to buy items.
Souls gained are proportional to the difficulty of fighting certain enemies. One of the core mechanics of the series is that it uses death to teach players how to react in hostile environments, encouraging repetition, learning from past mistakes, prior experience as a means of overcoming its difficulty. Upon losing all of their health points and dying, players lose their Souls and are teleported back to a bonfire where they last rested, which serves as a checkpoint. One chance is given for the player to recover their lost Souls in the form of a bloodstain, placed at or around where they last died. If the player dies again before reaching their bloodstain, the Souls are permanently gone; as most enemies are respawned following player death, or if the player should rest at a bonfire, the player has the opportunity to regain more Souls by repeated combat encounters. The bonfire is a type of campfire in the action role-playing game Dark Souls and its sequels that functions as a checkpoint for the player character's progress, as well as reviving most enemies that the player killed.
In the game, in Dark Souls II and III, they function as warp points. Another core aspect of the Souls games is its dependency on endurance in battle. Performing attacks, blocking, or dodging consume stamina, which otherwise restores if the player stands still or just walks around. Certain moves cannot be executed if the player lacks a certain amount of stamina, making them vulnerable to attack. Players must balance their rate of attacks against defensive moves and brief periods of rest to survive more difficult encounters. Online interaction in the Souls games is integrated into the single-player experience. Throughout levels, players can see the actions of other players as ghosts in the same area that may show hidden passages or switches; when a player dies, a bloodstain can be left in other players' game world that when activated can show a ghost playing out their final moments, indicating how that person died and helping the player avoid the same fate in advance. Players can leave messages on the ground that can either help players by providing hints and warnings or harm players by leaving false hints.
Players can engage in both player versus player combat and cooperative gameplay using invasion or summoning mechanics. Released in 2009 for PlayStation 3, Demon's Souls is the first game in the Souls series, it has been described as a spiritual successor to the King's Field series of games, while at the same time being described as a separate entity "guided by differing core game design concepts." It drew inspiration from video games such as Ico, The Legend of Zelda, as well as manga such as Berserk, Saint Seiya and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Demon's Souls takes place in the fictional kingdom of Boletaria, being ravaged by a cursed fog that brings forth demons who feast on the souls of mortals. Unlike its successors, Demon's Souls uses a central hub system known as the "Nexus" where players can level up, repair equipment, or buy certain items, before venturing into one of the five connected worlds; the "World Tendency" feature is exclusive to Demon's Souls, where the difficulty of exploring a world is dependent on how many bosses have been killed, how the player dies.
The gameplay involves a character-creation system and emphasizes gathering loot through combat with enemies in a non-linear series of varied locations. It had an online multiplayer system integrated into single-player, in which players could leave messages and warnings for other players' worlds, as well as join other players to assist and/or kill them; the multiplayer
Middle East
The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest Middle Eastern nation; the corresponding adjective is Middle Eastern and the derived noun is Middle Easterner. The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Persians and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Arabs constitute the largest ethnic group in the region by a clear margin. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians, Copts, Lurs, Samaritans, Shabaks and Zazas. European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines, Italo-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Pashtuns and sub-Saharan Africans; the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism and Islam.
The Middle East has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting economically from petroleum exports; the term "Middle East" may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office. However, it became more known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to "designate the area between Arabia and India". During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry which would become known as The Great Game. Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but of its center, the Persian Gulf, he labeled the area surrounding the Persian Gulf as the Middle East, said that after Egypt's Suez Canal, it was the most important passage for Britain to control in order to keep the Russians from advancing towards British India.
Mahan first used the term in his article "The Persian Gulf and International Relations", published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar. Naval force has the quality of mobility; the British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden and the Persian Gulf. Mahan's article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled "The Middle Eastern Question," written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include "those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India." After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term. Until World War II, it was customary to refer to areas centered around Turkey and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean as the "Near East", while the "Far East" centered on China, the Middle East meant the area from Mesopotamia to Burma, namely the area between the Near East and the Far East.
In the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term "Middle East" gained broader usage in Europe and the United States, with the Middle East Institute founded in Washington, D. C. in 1946, among other usage. The description Middle has led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, "Near East" was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while "Middle East" referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkestan. In contrast, "Far East" referred to the countries of East Asia With the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, "Near East" fell out of common use in English, while "Middle East" came to be applied to the re-emerging countries of the Islamic world. However, the usage "Near East" was retained by a variety of academic disciplines, including archaeology and ancient history, where it describes an area identical to the term Middle East, not used by these disciplines.
The first official use of the term "Middle East" by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, which pertained to the Suez Crisis. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as "the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia." In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms "Near East" and "Middle East" were interchangeable, defined the region as including only Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. The Associated Press Styleboo
Personal computer
A personal computer is a multi-purpose computer whose size and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large costly minicomputer and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. Institutional or corporate computer owners in the 1960s had to write their own programs to do any useful work with the machines. While personal computer users may develop their own applications these systems run commercial software, free-of-charge software or free and open-source software, provided in ready-to-run form. Software for personal computers is developed and distributed independently from the hardware or operating system manufacturers. Many personal computer users no longer need to write their own programs to make any use of a personal computer, although end-user programming is still feasible; this contrasts with mobile systems, where software is only available through a manufacturer-supported channel, end-user program development may be discouraged by lack of support by the manufacturer.
Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the personal computer market, first with MS-DOS and with Microsoft Windows. Alternatives to Microsoft's Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry; these include free and open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux. Advanced Micro Devices provides the main alternative to Intel's processors; the advent of personal computers and the concurrent Digital Revolution have affected the lives of people in all countries. "PC" is an initialism for "personal computer". The IBM Personal Computer incorporated the designation in its model name, it is sometimes useful to distinguish personal computers of the "IBM Personal Computer" family from personal computers made by other manufacturers. For example, "PC" is used in contrast with "Mac", an Apple Macintosh computer.. Since none of these Apple products were mainframes or time-sharing systems, they were all "personal computers" and not "PC" computers.
The "brain" may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far. In the history of computing, early experimental machines could be operated by a single attendant. For example, ENIAC which became operational in 1946 could be run by a single, albeit trained, person; this mode pre-dated the batch programming, or time-sharing modes with multiple users connected through terminals to mainframe computers. Computers intended for laboratory, instrumentation, or engineering purposes were built, could be operated by one person in an interactive fashion. Examples include such systems as the Bendix G15 and LGP-30of 1956, the Programma 101 introduced in 1964, the Soviet MIR series of computers developed from 1965 to 1969. By the early 1970s, people in academic or research institutions had the opportunity for single-person use of a computer system in interactive mode for extended durations, although these systems would still have been too expensive to be owned by a single person.
In what was to be called the Mother of All Demos, SRI researcher Douglas Engelbart in 1968 gave a preview of what would become the staples of daily working life in the 21st century: e-mail, word processing, video conferencing, the mouse. The demonstration required technical support staff and a mainframe time-sharing computer that were far too costly for individual business use at the time; the development of the microprocessor, with widespread commercial availability starting in the mid 1970's, made computers cheap enough for small businesses and individuals to own. Early personal computers—generally called microcomputers—were sold in a kit form and in limited volumes, were of interest to hobbyists and technicians. Minimal programming was done with toggle switches to enter instructions, output was provided by front panel lamps. Practical use required adding peripherals such as keyboards, computer displays, disk drives, printers. Micral N was the earliest commercial, non-kit microcomputer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
It was built starting in 1972, few hundred units were sold. This had been preceded by the Datapoint 2200 in 1970, for which the Intel 8008 had been commissioned, though not accepted for use; the CPU design implemented in the Datapoint 2200 became the basis for x86 architecture used in the original IBM PC and its descendants. In 1973, the IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center developed a portable computer prototype called SCAMP based on the IBM PALM processor with a Philips compact cassette drive, small CRT, full function keyboard. SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL/1130. In 1973, APL was available only on mainframe computers, most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP 9800 offered only BASIC; because SCAMP was the first to emulate APL/1130 performance on a portable, single user computer, PC Magazine in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer". This seminal, single user portable computer now resides in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.
C.. Successful demonstrations of the 1973 SCAMP prototype led to the IBM 5100 portable microcomputer launched in 1975 with the ability to be programmed in both APL and BASIC for engineers, analysts and other business problem-solvers. In the late 1960s such a machine would have been nearly as large as two desks and would have weigh
Arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine installed in public businesses such as restaurants and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games or merchandisers. While exact dates are debated, the golden age of arcade video games is defined as a period beginning sometime in the late 1970s and ending sometime in the mid-1980s. Excluding a brief resurgence in the early 1990s, the arcade industry subsequently declined in the Western hemisphere as competing home video game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox increased in their graphics and game-play capability and decreased in cost; the first popular "arcade games" included early amusement-park midway games such as shooting galleries, ball-toss games, the earliest coin-operated machines, such as those that claimed to tell a person's fortune or that played mechanical music. The old Midways of 1920s-era amusement parks provided the inspiration and atmosphere for arcade games.
In the 1930s the first coin-operated pinball machines emerged. These early amusement machines differed from their electronic cousins in that they were made of wood, they lacked plungers or lit-up bonus surfaces on the playing field, used mechanical instead of electronic scoring-readouts. By around 1977 most pinball machines in production switched to using solid-state electronics both for operation and for scoring. In 1966 Sega introduced an electro-mechanical game called Periscope - an early submarine simulator and light gun shooter which used lights and plastic waves to simulate sinking ships from a submarine, it became an instant success in Japan and North America, where it was the first arcade game to cost a quarter per play, which would remain the standard price for arcade games for many years to come. In 1967 Taito released an electro-mechanical arcade game of their own, Crown Soccer Special, a two-player sports game that simulated association football, using various electronic components, including electronic versions of pinball flippers.
Sega produced gun games which resemble first-person shooter video games, but which were in fact electro-mechanical games that used rear image projection in a manner similar to the ancient zoetrope to produce moving animations on a screen. The first of these, the light-gun game Duck Hunt, appeared in 1969; that same year, Sega released an electro-mechanical arcade racing game, Grand Prix, which had a first-person view, electronic sound, a dashboard with a racing wheel and accelerator, a forward-scrolling road projected on a screen. Another Sega 1969 release, Missile, a shooter and vehicle-combat simulation, featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen, it was the earliest known arcade game to feature a joystick with a fire button, which formed part of an early dual-control scheme, where two directional buttons are used to move the player's tank and a two-way joystick is used to shoot and steer the missile onto oncoming planes displayed on the screen.
In 1970 Midway released the game in North America as S. A. M. I.. In the same year, Sega released Jet Rocket, a combat flight-simulator featuring cockpit controls that could move the player aircraft around a landscape displayed on a screen and shoot missiles onto targets that explode when hit. In the course of the 1970s, following the release of Pong in 1972, electronic video-games replaced electro-mechanical arcade games. In 1972, Sega released an electro-mechanical game called Killer Shark, a first-person light-gun shooter known for appearing in the 1975 film Jaws. In 1974, Nintendo released Wild Gunman, a light-gun shooter that used full-motion video-projection from 16 mm film to display live-action cowboy opponents on the screen. One of the last successful electro-mechanical arcade games was F-1, a racing game developed by Namco and distributed by Atari in 1976; the 1978 video game Space Invaders, dealt a yet more powerful blow to the popularity of electro-mechanical games. In 1971 students at Stanford University set up the Galaxy Game, a coin-operated version of the video game Spacewar.
This ranks as the earliest known instance of a coin-operated video game. In the same year, Nolan Bushnell created the first mass-manufactured game, Computer Space, for Nutting Associates. In 1972, Atari was formed by Ted Dabney. Atari created the coin-operated video game industry with the game Pong, the first successful electronic ping pong video game. Pong proved to be popular, but imitators helped keep Atari from dominating the fledgling coin-operated video game market. Taito's Space Invaders, in 1978, proved to be the first blockbuster arcade video game, its success marked the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games. Video game arcades sprang up in shopping malls, small "corner arcades" appeared in restaurants, grocery stores and movie theaters all over the United States and other countries during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Battlezone and Bosconian were popular. By 1981, the arcade video game industry was worth US$8 billion. During the late 1970s and 1980s, chains such as Chuck E.
Cheese's, Ground Round and Busters, ShowBiz Pizza Place and Gatti's Pizza combined
