1.
Charcoal
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Charcoal is a lightweight, black residue, consisting of carbon and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis- the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen, the whole pile is covered with turf or moistened clay. The firing is begun at the bottom of the flue, the success of the operation depends upon the rate of the combustion. The operation is so delicate that it was left to colliers. They often lived alone in small huts in order to tend their wood piles, for example, in the Harz Mountains of Germany, charcoal burners lived in conical huts called Köten which are still much in evidence today. The massive production of charcoal was a cause of deforestation. The increasing scarcity of easily harvested wood was a factor behind the switch to fossil fuel equivalents, mainly coal. Charcoal made at 300 °C is brown, soft and friable, and readily inflames at 380 °C, made at higher temperatures it is hard and brittle, in Finland and Scandinavia, the charcoal was considered the by-product of wood tar production. The best tar came from pine, thus pinewoods were cut down for tar pyrolysis, the residual charcoal was widely used as substitute for metallurgical coke in blast furnaces for smelting. Tar production led to deforestation, it has been estimated all Finnish forests are younger than 300 years. The end of tar production at the end of the 19th century resulted in rapid re-forestation, the charcoal briquette was first invented and patented by Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer of Pennsylvania in 1897 and was produced by the Zwoyer Fuel Company. The process was popularized by Henry Ford, who used wood. Ford Charcoal went on to become the Kingsford Company, Charcoal has been made by various methods. The traditional method in Britain used a clamp and this is essentially a pile of wooden logs leaning against a chimney. The chimney consists of 4 wooden stakes held up by some rope, the logs are completely covered with soil and straw allowing no air to enter. It must be lit by introducing some burning fuel into the chimney, if the soil covering gets torn by the fire, additional soil is placed on the cracks. Once the burn is complete, the chimney is plugged to prevent air from entering, the true art of this production method is in managing the sufficient generation of heat, and its transfer to wood parts in the process of being carbonised. A strong disadvantage of this method is the huge amount of emissions that are harmful to human health
2.
Nintendo 64 controller
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The Nintendo 64 controller is the standard game controller included with the Nintendo 64. Released by Nintendo in late 1996 in Japan and North America, and 1997 in Europe, it features ten buttons, one digital Control Stick and a directional pad, all laid out in an M shape. The controller was designed by Nintendo R&D3, who were directed to try out new ideas that would break from the mold of gaming controllers. Thats why the A and B Buttons are placed for easiest access on the new controller, theyre the buttons that get high traffic. The controller was designed to be held in three different positions, first, it can be held by the two outer grips, allowing use of the D-pad, right-hand face buttons and the L and R shoulder buttons. This style was intended to play in 2D games by emulating the setup on the Super NES controller. It can be held by the center and right-hand grip, allowing the use of the single control stick, the right hand-buttons, the R shoulder button. This style was intended for 3D games, finally, the controller can be held by the center and left-hand grip, allowing for a combination of the D-pad, L-shoulder, analog stick and Z button. This was implemented in GoldenEye 007, additionally, though the controller was not designed with this setup in mind, one controller can be held in each hand with a thumb on each analog stick and index fingers on the Z trigger. This setup allows dual-analog control on some first-person shooters such as Perfect Dark, the analog stick and right-hand face and shoulder buttons are usually used in games. In some games such as Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the control stick, very few games use the directional pad exclusively, two examples are the 3D puzzle game Tetrisphere and the side-scrolling platformer Kirby 64, The Crystal Shards. This layout would become dominant in design, and several third-party manufacturers would produce aftermarket N64 controllers with more conventional layouts, such as the MakoPad. The controller also includes four C buttons, which were intended to control the camera in the N64s three-dimensional environments. However, since the pad only contains three face buttons, the C-buttons often became assigned to ulterior functions. An example of this is The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, one game, Robotron 64, allows one player to use two controllers to control an avatar. This way, the plays like its predecessor, Robotron 2084. Star Wars Episode 1, Racer, GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark also use this set up for different gameplay experiences compared to the standard single controller option. The controller initially came in six colors but other colors were released later, when the Nintendo 64 is switched on, the joystick on each controller is automatically calibrated by recording the current position as the center position
3.
Nintendo Integrated Research & Development
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The Nintendo Integrated Research & Development division handled everything related to producing Nintendos console hardware and associated peripherals. The department was the oldest development faction of Nintendo, both departments were split into several sub-groups. Unlike the software departments, the hardware groups generally worked together on most projects, on September 16,2015, IRD merged with the Nintendo System Development division, becoming the Nintendo Platform Technology Development. General Manager, Genyo Takeda The Integrated Research & Development Department was the development team responsible for all of Nintendos home video game consoles. The department was split into five different groups who worked together on most projects, the manager, Genyo Takeda, and most of the chief engineers originated from the Nintendo R&D3 hardware division. The Research & Engineering Department was the development team responsible for all of Nintendos portable and handheld systems. The department was split into four different groups who worked together on most projects, the manager, Satoru Okada, and most of the chief engineers originate from the Nintendo R&D1 hardware division that created all the Game & Watch and hand held LCD cabinets in the early 1980s. On February 16,2013, Nintendo RED was combined with Nintendo Integrated Research & Development
4.
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
5.
Home video game console
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A home video game console or simply home console is a video game device that is primarily used for home gamers, as opposed to in arcades or some other commercial establishment. Below is a timeline of each generation with the top three home video consoles of each based on worldwide sales. For a complete list of video consoles released in each generation please see the respective article of each generation. Legend – Unit with the highest sales of its generation, – Unit with the second highest sales of its generation. – Unit with the third highest sales of its generation, – Manufacturer released a home video console during this generation but did not sell the most units. – – Manufacturer didnt release a video game console during this generation. † – Indicates the current generation consoles on the market, although the first video games appeared in the 1950s, they were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a video game in 1951. In the late 1960s while working for Sanders Associates he created a series of game console designs. In 1972 Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home game console which could be connected to a TV set. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game, by autumn 1975, Magnavox, bowing to the popularity of Pong, cancelled the Odyssey and released a scaled-down version that played only Pong and hockey, the Odyssey 100. A second, higher end console, the Odyssey 200, was released with the 100 and added on-screen scoring, up to four players, almost simultaneously released with Ataris own home Pong console through Sears, these consoles jump-started the consumer market. All three of the new consoles used simpler designs than the original Odyssey with no board game pieces or extra cartridges, in the years that followed, the market saw many companies rushing similar consoles to market. Most of the consoles from this era were dedicated consoles playing the games that came with the console. These video game consoles were often just called video games, because there was reason to distinguish the two yet. While a few companies like Atari, Magnavox, and newcomer Coleco pushed the envelope, Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System in 1976. The VES, however, contained a programmable microprocessor so its cartridges only needed a single ROM chip to store microprocessor instructions, RCA and Atari soon released their own cartridge-based consoles, the RCA Studio II and the Atari 2600, respectively. Both Bally and Magnavox also brought their own programmable cartridge-based consoles to the market, however, it was not until Atari released a conversion of the golden age arcade hit Space Invaders in 1980 for the Atari 2600 that the home console industry took off
6.
Fifth generation of video game consoles
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The fifth-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles and video game handhelds from approximately 1993 to 2001. For home consoles, the console was the PlayStation by a wide margin, followed by the Nintendo 64. Both were discontinued before the other made their debut. The Neo Geo Pocket was released in 1998, but was dropped by SNK in favor of the fully backwards compatible Neo Geo Pocket Color just a year later, Nintendos Game Boy Color was the winner in handhelds by a large margin. There were also two updated versions of the original Game Boy, Game Boy Light and Game Boy Pocket, there was considerable overlap between this and the sixth generation of consoles, which began with the launch of the Dreamcast in Japan on November 27,1998. The fifth generation officially ended with the discontinuation of the PlayStation in March 2006, early efforts from then-industry leaders Sega and Nintendo saw the introduction of the 32X and Super FX, which provided rudimentary 3D capabilities to the 16-bit Genesis and Super NES. Prime examples of this trend include Virtua Fighter 2 on the Saturn, Tomb Raider on the PlayStation and Saturn, Tekken and Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation, and Super Mario 64 on the N64. Their 3D environments were widely marketed and they steered the industrys focus away from side-scrolling and rail-style titles, as well as opening doors to more complex games and genres. 3D became the focus in this era as well as a slow decline of cartridges in favor of CDs, due to the ability to produce games less expensively. Publicly, Nintendo defended this decision on the grounds that it would give games shorter load times than a compact disc, however, it also had the dubious benefit of allowing Nintendo to charge higher licensing fees, as cartridge production was considerably more expensive than CD production. Many third-party developers like EA Sports viewed this as an attempt to raise more money for Nintendo. Nintendos decision to use a cartridge based system sparked a small scale war among gamers as to which was better, a Nintendo magazine ad placed a Space Shuttle next to a snail and dared consumers to decide which one was better. Almost every other system used the new CD-ROM technology. Consequent to the storage and cost advantages of the CD-ROM format, there was much confusion over which console was superior to the others. Also, console makers routinely boasted theoretical maximum limits of each systems 3D polygon rendering without accounting for real world in-game performance, the FM Towns Marty is considered the worlds first 32-bit console, being released in February 20,1993 by Japanese electronic company Fujitsu. Never released outside Japan, it was marketed as a console version of the FM Towns home computer. It failed to make an impact in the due to its expense relative to other consoles. While using a 32-bit word length, however, the Intel 80386SX CPU only supports 16-bit bus addressing, despite massive third party support and an unprecedented amount of hype for a first-time entrant into the industry, the 3DO Interactive Multiplayers $700 price tag hindered its success
7.
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
8.
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
9.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
10.
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
11.
Australasia
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Australasia, a region of Oceania, comprises Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. Charles de Brosses coined the term in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes and he derived it from the Latin for south of Asia and differentiated the area from Polynesia and the southeast Pacific. The bulk of Australasia sits on the Indo-Australian Plate, together with India, physiographically, Australasia includes New Zealand, Australia, and Melanesia, New Guinea and neighbouring islands north and east of Australia in the Pacific Ocean. The designation is applied to all the lands and islands of the Pacific Ocean lying between the equator and latitude 47° south. Most of Australasia lies on the portion of the Indo-Australian Plate, flanked by the Indian Ocean to the west. Sometimes the term encompasses the island of New Guinea. Many organisations whose names include the prefix Australasian Society of, limit their scope of operation to just Australia and New Zealand. In the past, Australasia has been used as a name for combined Australia/New Zealand sporting teams, examples include tennis between 1905 and 1915, when New Zealand and Australia combined to compete in the Davis Cup international tournament, and at the Olympic Games of 1908 and 1912. From an ecological perspective the Australasia ecozone forms a region with a common geologic and evolutionary history. In this context, Australasia is limited to Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the Wallace Line marks the biological divide from the Indomalaya ecozone of tropical Asia – Borneo and Bali lie on the western, Asian side. These three land masses have been separated from other continents, and from one another, for millions of years, all of Australasia shares the Antarctic flora, although the northern, tropical islands also share many plants with Southeast Asia. Mainland Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania are separated from one another by shallow continental shelves and they share a similar fauna which includes marsupial and monotreme mammals and ratite birds. Eucalypts are the predominant trees in much of Australia and New Guinea, New Zealand has no extant native land mammals aside from bats, but also had ratite birds, including the kiwi and the extinct moa. Media related to Australasia at Wikimedia Commons
12.
Nintendo 64 Game Pak
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Nintendo 64 Game Pak are ROM cartridges that store game data for the Nintendo 64. Their sizes vary from 4 MiB to 64 MiB, the Game Paks design tradeoffs were intended to achieve maximal system speed and minimal system cost, with a lesser storage space and a higher unit cost per game. Launched in 1996, the Nintendo 64 was the last major home console to use a cartridge as its primary storage format until the release of the Nintendo Switch in 2017. Nintendos data storage strategy with the Nintendo 64 had always been to develop a complementary higher-capacity disk-based peripheral, the 64DD, to accompany the Nintendo 64 Game Pak. This resulted in 1999s 64DD, a peripheral which was launched years late and only in Japan as a commercial failure. The company had intended to do likewise with this generation. In a 1994 interview, Nintendo summarized its analysis of the advantages of cartridges for its upcoming console. Right now, cartridges offer faster access time and more speed of movement, so, well introduce our new hardware with cartridges. But eventually these problems with CDs will be overcome, when that happens, youll see Nintendo using CD as the software storage medium for our 64-bit system. That sentiment was soon revised, also in 1994, Nintendos vice president of marketing Peter Main stated that The choice we made is not cartridge versus CD, when it comes to speed, no other format approaches the silicon-based cartridge. The Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, which destroyed a major RAM factory in Japan, Nintendo planned to continue to supplement the use of system RAM through innovations in high speed ROM cartridges. SGI suggested that Nintendo should utilize cartridges to keep the consoles costs low and performance high. In 1997, Nintendo game designer Shigesato Itoi explained, CD holds a lot of data, DD holds an amount of data and backs the data up. By attaching a DD to the console, we can drastically increase the number of possible genres. I think we’ll make the game on a cartridge first, then, finish it up as a full-out 64DD game. Many Nintendo 64 games were developed in a way that depended upon or were expanded by that device, however, after the devices launch had been delayed several years until 1999 and restricted to Japan, it was discontinued early as a commercial failure. In 1996, prior to the Nintendo 64s launch, President of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi praised the experience of the cartridge format. But look at the latest buzzword in the computer world — plug-and-play — which is nothing, customers having no loading time is a great advantage
13.
64DD
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The 64DD, colloquially referred to as the Nintendo 64DD, is a magnetic disk drive peripheral for the Nintendo 64 game console developed by Nintendo. It was originally announced in 1995, prior to the Nintendo 64s 1996 launch, only ten software titles were released until the unit was discontinued in February 2001. It was a failure, with at least 15,000 total units sold. DD is short for dynamic drive, furthermore, the 64DDs software titles and hardware accessories let the user create movies, characters, and animations to be used within various games and shared online. The system could connect to the Internet through a dedicated online service called Randnet for e-commerce, online gaming. Upon the decline of 64DDs commercial viability, most such titles were either ultimately delivered on Nintendo 64 cartridges alone, ported to other consoles. In 1994, during the Nintendo 64s development phase, Nintendo had explored the possibility of complementing the cartridge format with the CD-ROM format, the 64DD was first announced at Nintendos 1995 Shoshinkai trade show, at which time Nintendo said it would launch by the end of 1996. The name references both the Nintendo 64 console and the 64 MB storage capacity of the disks, nicknamed Bulky Drive, its first public appearance was at the 1996 Shoshinkai show, from November 22 to 24. There, Nintendo of America Chairman Howard Lincoln stated that the prototype had received its finalized hardware specifications, also at that show, Nintendos Director of Corporate Communications, Perrin Kaplan, made the companys first launch window announcement for the peripheral, scheduled for late 1997 in Japan. Included in the roster of committed developers, Rare officially discounted any rumors of the peripherals impending pre-release cancellation. The event featured Creator, a music and animation game by Software Creations and they touted the games ability to be integrated into other games, allowing a player to replace any such games textures and possibly create new levels and characters. There was no playable version of Creator available at this show, on April 3–4,1997, Nintendo of America hosted a Developers Conference in Seattle, WA where a surprise overview was delivered by Nintendo Developer Support staff Mark DeLoura about the 64DD. At that time, the delays were attributed to the protracted development of both the disks and the drive technologies. On June 9,1997, Nintendo and Alps Electric announced their partnership for the still tentatively titled 64DD. Also at the show, Nintendos main game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, speculated that the first games to be released for the new system would be SimCity 64, Mario Artist, Pocket Monsters, and Mother 3. He said that it would have been easier to understand if the DD was already included when the N64 first came out, it’s getting harder to explain after the fact. To illustrate the significance of the 64DD to all game development at Nintendo, Itoi said. All things start with the 64DD, there are so many ideas I wouldn’t have been allowed to come up with if we didn’t have the 64DD
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.
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
16.
Hertz
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The hertz is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units and is defined as one cycle per second. It is named for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the first person to provide proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz are commonly expressed in SI multiples kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz, kilo means thousand, mega meaning million, giga meaning billion and tera for trillion. Some of the units most common uses are in the description of waves and musical tones, particularly those used in radio-. It is also used to describe the speeds at which computers, the hertz is equivalent to cycles per second, i. e. 1/second or s −1. In English, hertz is also used as the plural form, as an SI unit, Hz can be prefixed, commonly used multiples are kHz, MHz, GHz and THz. One hertz simply means one cycle per second,100 Hz means one hundred cycles per second, and so on. The unit may be applied to any periodic event—for example, a clock might be said to tick at 1 Hz, the rate of aperiodic or stochastic events occur is expressed in reciprocal second or inverse second in general or, the specific case of radioactive decay, becquerels. Whereas 1 Hz is 1 cycle per second,1 Bq is 1 aperiodic radionuclide event per second, the conversion between a frequency f measured in hertz and an angular velocity ω measured in radians per second is ω =2 π f and f = ω2 π. This SI unit is named after Heinrich Hertz, as with every International System of Units unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is upper case. Note that degree Celsius conforms to this rule because the d is lowercase. — Based on The International System of Units, the hertz is named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, who made important scientific contributions to the study of electromagnetism. The name was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1930, the term cycles per second was largely replaced by hertz by the 1970s. One hobby magazine, Electronics Illustrated, declared their intention to stick with the traditional kc. Mc. etc. units, sound is a traveling longitudinal wave which is an oscillation of pressure. Humans perceive frequency of waves as pitch. Each musical note corresponds to a frequency which can be measured in hertz. An infants ear is able to perceive frequencies ranging from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, the range of ultrasound, infrasound and other physical vibrations such as molecular and atomic vibrations extends from a few femtoHz into the terahertz range and beyond. Electromagnetic radiation is described by its frequency—the number of oscillations of the perpendicular electric and magnetic fields per second—expressed in hertz. Radio frequency radiation is measured in kilohertz, megahertz, or gigahertz
17.
Nintendo 64 accessories
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This is a list of accessories for the Nintendo 64 video game console. Initially available in seven colors, it was released in transparent versions of said colors. The N64 pads analog stick is notorious for wearing out quickly, eventually becoming unable to return to centre position. Also, the stick would become uncalibrated if not centered properly when the system was booted up, if the stick was not centered. Because this may not be discovered until the player enters the game, early titles such as Wonder Project J2, Koruro no Mori no Josette would lose calibration if the player moved the cursor while accessing the Controller Pak save. This feature could be used to cheat in some games, in Doom, when the stick is held down when calibrating, the player will be able to run faster when pushing the stick up. On a side note, this is the last official Nintendo Controller to use standard Phillips screws, starting with the GameCube, tri-wing screws have been used for security. The Controller Pak is the memory card, comparable to those seen in the PlayStation. Certain games allowed saving of files to the Controller Pak. The Controller Pak was marketed as a way to exchange data with other Nintendo 64 owners and it is plugged into the controller and allowed the player to save game progress and configuration. The number of pages that a game occupied varied and it is powered by a common CR2032 battery. A Controller Pak is initially useful, and even necessary for the earlier N64 games, over time, the Controller Pak lost ground to the convenience of a battery backed SRAM found in some cartridges. Because the Nintendo 64 used a cartridge format that allows saving data on the cartridges themselves, few first party. The vast majority are from third-party developers and this is most likely due to the increased production and retail costs which would have been caused by including self-contained data on the cartridge. Some games use it to save data that is too large for the cartridge, such as Mario Kart 64. Another game is Tony Hawks Pro Skater, which uses 11 pages, quest 64 and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon used the Controller Pak exclusively for saved data. The Japan-only game Animal Forest used the Controller Pak to travel to other towns, the Jumper Pak is a filler that plugged into the consoles memory expansion port. It serves no purpose other than to terminate the RAMBUS bus in the absence of the Expansion Pak
18.
Silicon Graphics
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Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Early systems were based on the Geometry Engine that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at Stanford University, for much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and were a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market. They reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in January 1990, through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGIs stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of Maya to other platforms is an event in this process. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor, Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGIs core markets. The porting of Maya to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows further eroded the low end of SGIs product line, in response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price Ed McCracken was fired and SGI brought in Richard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzos leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline, one such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations instead of just ones which ran IRIX, the companys version of UNIX. This put the company in more direct competition with the likes of Dell. The product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later, SGIs premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems damaged SGIs credibility in the market. In 1999, in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a company, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to SGI. The new logo drew criticism for wasting the professional associated with the previous cube logo. SGI continued to use the Silicon Graphics name for its product line. In November 2005, SGI announced that it had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its common stock had fallen below the share price for listing on the exchange. SGIs market capitalization dwindled from a peak of seven billion dollars in 1995 to just $120 million at the time of delisting. In February 2006, SGI noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year, in mid-2005, SGI hired Alix Partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit. SGI announced it was postponing its scheduled annual December stockholders meeting until March 2006 and it proposed a reverse stock split to deal with the de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange
19.
Reality Coprocessor
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Reality Coprocessor is one of the Nintendo 64s two main chips, alongside the NEC VR4300, a derivative of the MIPS R4200. The RCP was developed by Silicon Graphics for Nintendo, specifically for the Nintendo 64 video game console, the RCP consists of two main components, the Reality Signal Processor and the Reality Display Processor. The RSP is a processor designed for high performance 3D calculations. It handles some audio and most video pre-processing of the Nintendo 64 and its capabilities include real-time edge anti-aliasing, automatic load-management, texture mapping, and real-time depth buffering. The RSP has access to 4 KB of DMEM and executes instructions contained within its 4 KB of IMEM and these instructions are collectively referred to as microcode. Microcode may be designed to perform tasks such as lighting calculations or RDP display list processing. The RSP is able to transfer data to and from main memory, the RDP is programmed by the use of display lists. A display list contains a series of commands, each of variable size, the RDP is capable of rendering shaded, textured, and depth buffered geometry to an arbitrary frame buffer in main memory. The RDP contains 4 KB of on-chip TMEM in which the RDP can reference up to eight textures at any given time. The size of the available texture memory may be reduced further if using texture lookup tables, since the high 2 KB will be used to store the lookup tables
20.
SharkWire Online
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SharkWire Online is a specialized GameShark device with a serial port and modem added, accompanied by a now defunct dialup Internet portal service. It was sold only in the US, by InterAct which is most famous for its GameShark, scheduled for launch in January 2000, it was the only Nintendo 64 online service to have been launched apart from Nintendos Randnet service in Japan. The SharkWire Onlines Nintendo 64 accessories were developed by Datel in the UK, the now defunct dialup portal system was developed between InterAct and its communications partners, Spyglass, Inc. The SharkWire Online was presented to the public at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on May 13–15,1999. Later in 1999, it was test marketed in Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company considered the possibility of eventually supporting online multiplayer gaming, and opening up access to the wider Internet beyond their proprietary portal. The company ran a $5–10 million advertising campaign created by advertising agency J. Walter Thompson across TV, print, radio, direct and it portrayed an aggressive image of teenaged hacking versus the FBI, which gives kids a feeling of control and power over the establishment. Before InterAct closed down operations, SharkWire Online and all other trademarks of GameShark were sold to Mad Catz, the SharkWire Online product centers around a cartridge, which contains a modem and the Mosaic web browser licensed by Spyglass, Inc. The products operation requires Nintendos Expansion Pak for RAM, the keyboard and telephone cords are plugged directly into the SharkWire Online cartridge. To navigate the menus, Controller 1 must be attached to the Nintendo 64 console, the accompanying dialup service was intended as a safely proxied and customized Internet access method for children aged 7 to 14 years. The service allowed the player to upload and download game saves with their Controller Pak, the portal contained copies of articles which had already been published on the Internet by InterActs content partners. These partners included Fox Sports, Electronics Boutique, Gamepro, Prima, Eidos, Capcom USA, Jones Soda, Airwalk, UPN, and Arnette Sunglasses. While subsequent GameSharks were released for the N64, the SharkWire Online was not updated, a review by News on 6 found the online portal content to be well-written and suitable more for young children, although very limited in content and scope and less suitable for more mature gamers. The review found the email functionality to be once the faulty keyboard was replaced
21.
Super Mario 64
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Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is the first Super Mario game to utilize three-dimensional graphics, along with Pilotwings 64, it was one of the launch titles for the console. It was released in Japan on June 23,1996, and later in North America, Europe and it is the best-selling game on the Nintendo 64, with more than eleven million copies sold. An enhanced remake called Super Mario 64 DS was released for the Nintendo DS in 2004, in the game, Mario explores Princess Peachs castle and must rescue her from Bowser. The game established a new archetype for the 3D genre, much as Super Mario Bros. did for 2D sidescrolling platformers, while doing so, it still preserves many gameplay elements and characters of earlier Mario games, and the same visual style. The game has left an impression on 3D game design, particularly notable for its use of a dynamic camera system. The title is acclaimed by critics and fans as one of the greatest and most revolutionary video games of all time. Super Mario 64 is a 3D platformer where the player controls Mario through several courses, each course is an enclosed world in which the player is free to wander in all directions and discover the environment without time limits. The worlds are filled with enemies that attack Mario, as well as creatures that provide assistance, offer information. The player gathers stars in each course, some only appear after completing certain tasks. These challenges include defeating a boss, solving puzzles, racing an opponent, as more stars are collected, more areas of the castle hub world become accessible. The player unlocks doors in the castle with keys obtained by defeating Bowser in special courses, there are many hidden mini-courses and other secrets to the game, most containing extra stars required for the full completion of the game. There are three special cap power-ups appear in areas on many stages. Some courses contain cannons that Mario can access by speaking to a pink Bob-omb Buddy, after entering a cannon, Mario can be shot out to reach distant places. When the player has the Wing Cap equipped, cannons can be used to high altitudes or fly across most levels quickly. Marios abilities in Super Mario 64 are far more diverse than those of previous Mario games, the player can make Mario walk, run, jump, crouch, crawl, swim, climb, kick, or punch using the game controllers analog stick and buttons. Special jumps can be executed by combining a regular jump with other actions, including the double and triple jumps, long jump, there are also special maneuvers, such as wall jumping—jumping from one wall to another in rapid succession to reach areas that would otherwise be too high. The player can pick up and carry items, an ability which is used to solve various puzzles
22.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
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In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom, or SFC for short. In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics, although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another. It was released in Brazil on September 2,1992, by Playtronic, the SNES is Nintendos second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System. The console introduced advanced graphics and sound compared with other systems at the time. The development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated in game cartridges helped to keep it competitive in the marketplace. The SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, and continues to be popular among fans, collectors, retro gamers, and emulation enthusiasts, some of whom still make homebrew ROM images. To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, the two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics, however, it took several years for Segas system to become successful. Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system, designed by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21,1990 for 25,000 yen. The systems release also gained the attention of the Yakuza, leading to a decision to ship the devices at night to avoid robbery, with the Super Famicom quickly outselling its chief rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendos success was due to its retention of most of its key third-party developers from its earlier system, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei. Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a version of the Super Famicom. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23,1991, the SNES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for £150, with a German release following a few weeks later. Most of the PAL region versions of the use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL, uses the North American design, both the NES and SNES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente. The SNES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were received in the marketplace. In Japan, only two games were available, Super Mario World and F-Zero. In North America, Super Mario World launched as a bundle with the console, and other titles include F-Zero, Pilotwings, SimCity
23.
GameCube
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The GameCube is a home video game console released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14,2001, in North America on November 18,2001, in Europe on May 3,2002, and in Australia on May 17,2002. The sixth-generation console is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and competed with Sony Computer Entertainments PlayStation 2, the GameCube is the first Nintendo console to use optical discs as its primary storage medium. The discs are similar to the format, as a result of their smaller size and the consoles small disc compartment. Contemporary reception of the GameCube was generally positive, the console was praised for its controller, extensive software library and high-quality games, but was criticized for its exterior design and lack of features. Nintendo sold 21.74 million GameCube units worldwide before it was discontinued in 2007 and its successor, the Wii, which is backwards-compatible with most GameCube software, was released in November 2006. In 1997, a hardware design company called ArtX was launched, staffed by twenty engineers who had previously worked at SGI on the design of the Nintendo 64s graphics hardware. The team was led by Dr. Wei Yen, who had been SGIs head of Nintendo Operations, at Nintendos press conference in May 1999, the console was first publicly announced as Project Dolphin, the successor to the Nintendo 64. At the conference, Nintendos Howard Lincoln said of ArtX, This company is headed up by Dr. Wei Yen, Dr. Yen has assembled at ArtX one of the best teams of 3D graphics engineers on the planet. Subsequently, Nintendo began providing development kits to game developers, Nintendo also formed a strategic partnership with IBM for the production of Dolphins CPU, code-named Gekko. ArtX was acquired by ATI in April 2000, whereupon the Flipper graphics processor design had already mostly completed by ArtX and was not overtly influenced by ATI. In total, ArtX team cofounder Greg Buchner recalled that their portion of the hardware design timeline had arced from inception in 1998 to completion in 2000. Of ATIs acquisition of ArtX, an ATI spokesperson said, ATI now becomes a major supplier to the console market via Nintendo. The Dolphin platform is reputed to be king of the hill in terms of graphics, the console was announced as the Nintendo GameCube at a press conference in Japan on August 24,2000, abbreviated as NGC in Japan and GCN in North America. Nintendo unveiled its software lineup for the console at E32001, focusing on fifteen launch titles, including Luigis Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II. Several titles that were scheduled to launch with the console were delayed. It is also the first console in the history not to accompany a Mario platform title at launch. Long prior to the launch, Nintendo had developed and patented an early prototype of motion controls for the GameCube. These motion control concepts would not be deployed to consumers for several years, prior to the Nintendo GameCubes release, Nintendo focused resources on the launch of the Game Boy Advance, a handheld game console and successor to the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color
24.
Nintendo 64 technical specifications
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The Nintendo 64 technical specifications describe the consoles processor, memory, and other components. CPU, 64-bit NEC VR4300 with 24 KB L1 cache, running at 93.75 MHz Performance,125 MIPS,93.75 MFLOPS, GPU, 64-bit Reality Coprocessor, running at 62.5 MHz and over 100 MFLOPS. Sampling frequency,44.1 kHz or 48 kHz, selectable 4.5 MB RDRAM on a 9-bit 562, the Nintendo 64s central processing unit is the NEC VR4300, a less expensive derivative of the 64-bit MIPS Technologies R4300i. Built by NEC on a 0.35 µm process, the VR4300 is a RISC 5-stage scalar in-order execution processor, with integrated floating-point unit, the 4.6 million transistor CPU is cooled passively by an aluminum heatspreader that makes contact with a steel heat sink above. With a clock rate of 93.75 MHz, the N64s VR4300 is said to be the most powerful console CPU of the generation of video game consoles. N64 game titles generally use faster and more compact 32-bit data-operations, in addition, 32-bit code executes faster and requires less storage space, which is at a premium on the N64s vintage cartridges. The CPU is challenged by a 250 MB/s bus to the system RAM, and in order to access the RAM, the CPU must go through the Reality Coprocessor and this challenge is further compounded by the RDRAMs high access latency. Tools that emulate the Nintendo 64 benefit from the scarcity of 64-bit operations in the executable code. Most of these emulators perform most calculations at 32-bit precision and trap the few subroutines that actually make use of 64-bit instructions, Nintendo 64s graphics and audio duties are performed by the 64-bit SGI coprocessor, named the Reality Coprocessor, or RCP. The RCP is a 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two components, the Reality Drawing Processor and the Reality Signal Processor. Each area communicates with the other by way of a 128-bit internal data bus that provides 1.0 GB/s of bandwidth, the RSP is a MIPS R4000-based 128-bit integer vector processor. It is programmable through microcode, allowing the functions to be significantly altered by each software title if necessary, to allow for different types of work, precision. The RSP performs transform, clipping and lighting calculations, and triangle setup, the Reality Display Processor is primarily the Nintendo 64s pixel rasterizer, and also handles the consoles Z-buffer compute. Instead of a sound processor, the RSP frequently performs audio functions. It can play back most types of audio including uncompressed PCM, MP3, MIDI, the RSP is theoretically capable of a maximum of 100 channels of PCM at a time, but only in a case where all system resources are devoted to audio. It has a sampling rate of 48 kHz with 16-bit audio. In practice, however, storage limitations caused by the ROM cartridge format limit the audio size, some game titles are designed for higher quality audio when storage expansions are available, as with F-Zero X Expansion Kit. The RDP performs rasterization, converting images into raster format before output to the display, the RCP also provides the CPUs access to main system memory via a 250 MB/s bus
25.
Rumble Pak
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The Rumble Pak (Japanese, 振動パック, Hepburn, is a removable device from Nintendo which provides force feedback while playing video games. Games that support the Rumble Pak cause it to vibrate in select situations, such as firing a weapon or receiving damage. Versions of the Rumble Pak are available for the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo DS, a select few Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games use a similar technology built into the game cartridge. The original Rumble Pak, designed for the Nintendo 64 controller, was released in April 1997 in Japan, July 1997 in North America and it requires two AAA batteries and is inserted into the controllers memory cartridge slot, which prevents simultaneous use of the Controller Pak. The Rumble Pak was introduced bundled with the game Star Fox 64, Rumble Pak support soon became a standard for N64 games. Launch titles Wave Race 64 and Super Mario 64 were re-released in Japan in July 1997 with Rumble Pak support, several thirdparty versions of the Rumble Pak, such as the Tremor Pak, followed. Some draw power from the controller instead of batteries, but the lower power makes them less effective, the TremorPak Plus allows a memory card to be inserted simultaneously, eliminating the need to switch between two accessories. The Nyko Hyper Pak Plus contains internal memory and allows the user to adjust the amount of feedback between hard and too hard, when reviewing Star Fox 64, IGN praised the Rumble Pak, stating that it adds an unusual burst of arcade ecstasy to the game. IGNs Levi Buchanan wrote an 11th birthday article on the Nintendo 64s Rumble Pak and he said that it is bulky and heavy when attached to the Nintendo 64 controller, but that he trade-off was actually worth it. More recently, in TWGNewss Top 10 Controller Innovations article, the Rumble Pak is listed as #8, saying the Rumble Pak added a whole new level of immersion to the fifth generation of video games. The Rumble Pak for the Nintendo DS is an official DS Option Pak shaped like a Game Boy Advance cartridge and is designed to be inserted in the systems Game Boy Advance game slot and it was the first Nintendo DS accessory to utilize the slot. In North America, it was first made available bundled with Metroid Prime Pinball, the accessory was released differently in Europe due to a delay of Metroid Prime Pinball in that region. Various DS games supporting the Rumble Pak had been released in Europe before the accessory was available, the accessory was eventually released as a pack-in with the game Actionloop in the UK. For this reason, a version of the Rumble Pak is available in Japan. It was initially available in just black, but other colors produced by unlicensed accessory manufacturer eWin, other color variations been released by eWin. The Nintendo DS Rumble Pak is incompatible with the Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL, however, none of the games supporting the Rumble Pak require it for proper operation of the game, meaning that the games themselves are still compatible with DSi. The Nintendo DS Rumble Pak was initially met with criticism as reviewers pointed out the limited number of games compatible with the card. Reviewers also pointed out the annoying squealing noise or electronic chirp that the device made when rumbling, IGN stated that Good thing its free, because at this point we wouldnt bother buying it as an extra
26.
Nintendo 64 games
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This is a list of games released solely for a specific console. For related lists of other consoles, see Lists of video games, the Nintendo 64 video game console has a library of games, which were primarily released in plastic ROM cartridges. Two small indentations on the back of each cartridge allows it to connect or pass through the systems cartridge dustcover flaps, all regions have the same connectors, and region-locked cartridges will fit into the other regions systems by using a cartridge converter or by simply removing the cartridges casing. However, the systems are equipped with lockout chips that will only allow them to play their appropriate games. Both Japanese and North American systems have the same NTSC lockout, a bypass device such as the N64 Passport or the Datel Action Replay can be used to play import titles, but a few games require an additional boot code before they can be played. Of the consoles 388 official releases,85 are region-locked to Japan,50 to North America, the last game to be published for the system was the North American-locked Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 on August 20,2002. The best-selling game is Super Mario 64 with 11 million units as of May 21,2003, the Nintendo 64 library is to date the smallest overall library of game titles on a Nintendo home console. This list does not include games for Nintendos 64DD disk drive peripheral, the list is initially organized alphabetically by their English titles or their alphabet conversions, however, it is also possible to sort each column individually. It is arranged with the different titles being listed once for each program that it contains, in the case of two English regions bearing a game with different names, the first version is listed first. All English titles are listed first, with an alternate title listed afterward, Lists of video games Regional lockout Video game developer Video game publisher Video game genres Nintendo 64 Games. Archived from the original on March 20,2007
27.
Nintendo 64
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The Nintendo 64, stylized as the NINTENDO64 and often referred to as the N64, is Nintendos third home video game console for the international market. It was the last major home console to use the cartridge as its primary storage format until Nintendos seventh console, while the Nintendo 64 was succeeded by Nintendos MiniDVD-based GameCube in September 2001, the consoles remained available until the system was retired in late 2003. Codenamed Project Reality, the the N64 design was complete by mid-1995, but its launch was delayed until 1996. It launched with three games, Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, released worldwide, and Saikyō Habu Shōgi, as part of the fifth generation of gaming, the system competed primarily with the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. The suggested retail price at its United States launch was US$199.99, the console was released in a range of colors and designs over its lifetime. In 2015, IGN named it the 9th greatest video game console of all time, as of 2016, the system remains a popular retro console in North America. At the beginning of the 1990s, Nintendo led the game industry with its Nintendo Entertainment System. Although the NES follow-up console, the Super NES, was successful, competition from long-time rival Sega, and relative newcomer Sony, emphasized Nintendos need to develop a successor for the SNES, or risk losing market dominance to its competitors. Further complicating matters, Nintendo also faced a backlash from third-party developers unhappy with Nintendos strict licensing policies, the company created a design proposal for a video game system, seeking an already well established partner in that market. James H. Clark, founder of SGI, initially offered the proposal to Tom Kalinske, the historical details of these preliminary negotiations were controversial between the two competing suitors. Tom Kalinske said that he and Joe Miller of Sega of America were quite impressed with SGIs prototype, the engineers from Sega Enterprises claimed that their evaluation of the early prototype had uncovered several unresolved hardware issues and deficiencies. Those were subsequently resolved, but Sega had already decided against SGIs design, Nintendo resisted that summary conclusion, arguing that the reason for SGIs ultimate choice of partner is due to Nintendo having been a more appealing business partner than Sega. While Sega demanded exclusive rights to the chip, Nintendo was willing to license the technology on a non-exclusive basis, michael Slater, publisher of Microprocessor Report said, The mere fact of a business relationship there is significant because of Nintendos phenomenal ability to drive volume. If it works at all, it could bring MIPS to levels of volume never dreamed of, james Clark met with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi in early 1993, thus initiating Project Reality. This announcement coincided with Nintendos August 1993 Shoshinkai trade show, as with most of the computing industry, Nintendo had limited experience with 3D graphics, and worked with several outside companies to develop the technology comprising the console. Some chip technology was provided by NEC, Toshiba, and Sharp, SGI had recently acquired MIPS Computer Systems, and the two worked together toward a low-cost realtime 3D graphics hardware system. SGI and its subsidiary MIPS Technologies were responsible for the R4300i microprocessor and that software-based console prototype platform was later supplanted by a workstation-hosted console simulation board, representing the finalized console hardware. SGIs performance estimates based upon their RealityEngine supercomputing platform were ultimately reported to be accurate to the final consumer console product
28.
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
29.
Hepburn romanization
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The system was originally proposed by the Romanization Club in 1885. The revised edition by Romaji-Hirome-kai in 1908 is called standard style romanization, Hepburn is based on English phonology and has competed with the alternative Nihon-shiki romanization, which was developed in Japan as a replacement of Japanese script. In 1930, a Special Romanization Study Commission was appointed to compare the two, the ordinance was temporarily overturned by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the Occupation of Japan, but was reissued in 1954. In 1972, a version of Hepburn was codified as ANSI standard Z39. 11-1972. It was proposed in 1989 as a draft for ISO3602, the ANSI Z39. 11-1972 standard was consequently deprecated on October 6,1994. As of 1978, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, in addition The Japan Times, the Japan Travel Bureau, and many other private organizations used Hepburn instead of Kunrei-shiki. The National Diet Library used Kunrei-shiki, although Hepburn is not a government standard, some government agencies mandate it. In many other areas where it de jure status, Hepburn remains the de facto standard. Signs and notices in city offices and police stations, at shrines, temples, English-language newspapers and media use the simplified form of Hepburn. Cities and prefectures use it in information for English-speaking residents and visitors, official tourism information put out by the government uses it, as do guidebooks, local and foreign, on Japan. Many students of Japanese as a foreign language learn Hepburn, there are many variants of Hepburn romanization. The two most common styles are, Traditional Hepburn, as defined in various editions of Hepburns dictionary and this variant is characterized by the rendering of syllabic n as m before the consonants b, m and p, e. g. Shimbashi for 新橋. Modified Hepburn, also known as Revised Hepburn, in which the rendering of syllabic n as m before certain consonants is no longer used, in Japan itself, there are some variants officially mandated for various uses, Railway Standard, which follows the Hyōjun-shiki Rōmaji. All JR railways and other major railways use this type for station names, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Standard, which follows the modified Hepburn style. This is used for road signs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Passport Standard, a permissive standard which explicitly allows the use of non-Hepburn romaji in personal names, notably for passports. In particular, rendering the syllabic n as m before b, m, p, details of these variants can be found below. The romanizations set out in the first and second versions of Hepburns dictionary are primarily of historical interest, supporters argue that Hepburn is not intended as a linguistic tool. The long vowels are indicated by macrons
30.
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
31.
Nintendo Switch
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The Nintendo Switch is the seventh major home video game console developed by Nintendo. Known in development as the NX, it was unveiled in October 2016, Nintendo considers the Switch a hybrid console, it is designed primarily as a home console, with the main unit inserted onto a docking station to connect to a television. Alternatively, it can be removed from the dock and used similarly to a computer through its LCD touchscreen. The Switch supports both physical flash ROM cartridges and digital content for games and software, and does not use region locking. From 2014, Nintendo had several quarters of financial losses due to poor sales of its previous console, the Wii U. Then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata pushed the company towards mobile gaming and novel hardware, the Switchs design is aimed at a wider demographic of video game players through the multiple modes of use, while retaining Nintendos hardware uniqueness and innovation. Nintendo saw 2014 as one of its largest financial losses in its modern history, previously, the company had been hesitant about this market, with then-president Satoru Iwata considering that they would cease to be Nintendo and lose their identity if they attempted to enter it. Following Iwatas death in July 2015, Kimishima was named as president of Nintendo, in an interview with Asahi Shimbun, Kimishima stated that the Switch was designed to provide a new way to play that would have a larger impact than the Wii U. In some cases, games for the Switch are designed to encourage social interactions in groups, Kimishima said that as Nintendo is an entertainment company, they see games on the Switch that encourage enjoyable social interactions such as these as supporting their ultimate goals. EPD deputy general manager Yoshiaki Koizumi served as the producer of the Switch during development. According to Miyamoto, the Switchs development within Nintendo was headed by employees, with him saying. its really been them that have put this forward. For Miyamoto, his limited involvement allowed him to more time on Nintendos software titles being developed at the time. The development of the Switch continued Nintendos blue ocean approach for the competitive console marketplace, One choice made by the development team was to use an existing system on a chip rather than creating their own as they had done on previous consoles. Koizumi said that this break from tradition was to help be able to gain more third-party support for the console by using an SOC they could easily port to. The first public news of the Switch hardware was alongside the announcement of Nintendo, at this stage, Nintendo referred to the console under the codename NX, and described it as a brand new concept. At an investors meeting in April 2016, Nintendo announced that it planned to release the NX worldwide in March 2017. At a Nintendo shareholders meeting following the conference, Miyamoto stated that the company had concerns that competitors could copy ideas from the NX if they revealed it too soon. The following month, rumors began to surface surrounding the nature of the console, including its use of Nvidia Tegra hardware, and being a hybrid device intended for both home and mobile use
32.
MiniDVD
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MiniDVD is a DVD disc which is 8 centimetres in diameter. Most MiniDVDs hold 1.4 GB of data, but there are variants that hold up to 5.2 GB, the 8 cm optical disc format was originally used for music CD singles, hence the commonly used names CD single and miniCD. Similarly, the manufactured 8 cm DVDs were originally used for music videos, MiniDVD is known also as 3 inch DVD, referring to its approximate diameter in inches. A MiniDVD can be played back in most Blu-ray and DVD players that are tray loaded, the trays on players and DVD drives have an inner ring where the 8 cm disc is centered for loading in the player. Most slot loading players cannot use this format, there are exceptions, however, such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, however, the Wii U does not. Recordable 8 cm discs are used in DVD-based camcorders. The most common MiniDVDs hold 1.4 GB of data, Nintendo used a disc-based format for their GameCube system, which is a variant of an 8 cm DVD. This format is supported by the Wii. Blu-ray Disc CD Video DVD DVD card HD DVD Laserdisc Nintendo optical disc Universal Media Disc Video CD VideoNow miniDVD definition on AfterDawn. com
33.
Time (magazine)
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Time is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It was founded in 1923 and for decades was dominated by Henry Luce, a European edition is published in London and also covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong, the South Pacific edition, which covers Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney, Australia. In December 2008, Time discontinued publishing a Canadian advertiser edition, Time has the worlds largest circulation for a weekly news magazine, and has a readership of 26 million,20 million of which are based in the United States. As of 2012, it had a circulation of 3.3 million making it the eleventh most circulated magazine in the United States reception room circuit, as of 2015, its circulation was 3,036,602. Richard Stengel was the editor from May 2006 to October 2013. Nancy Gibbs has been the editor since October 2013. Time magazine was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, the two had previously worked together as chairman and managing editor respectively of the Yale Daily News. They first called the proposed magazine Facts and they wanted to emphasize brevity, so that a busy man could read it in an hour. They changed the name to Time and used the slogan Take Time–Its Brief and it set out to tell the news through people, and for many decades the magazines cover depicted a single person. More recently, Time has incorporated People of the Year issues which grew in popularity over the years, notable mentions of them were Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Matej Turk, etc. The first issue of Time was published on March 3,1923, featuring Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the House of Representatives, on its cover, a facsimile reprint of Issue No. 1, including all of the articles and advertisements contained in the original, was included with copies of the February 28,1938 issue as a commemoration of the magazines 15th anniversary. The cover price was 15¢ On Haddens death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time, the Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923–1941. In 1929, Roy Larsen was also named a Time Inc. director, J. P. Morgan retained a certain control through two directorates and a share of stocks, both over Time and Fortune. Other shareholders were Brown Brothers W. A. Harriman & Co. the Intimate History of a Changing Enterprise 1957–1983. According to the September 10,1979 issue of The New York Times, after Time magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase its circulation by utilizing U. S. radio and movie theaters around the world. It often promoted both Time magazine and U. S. political and corporate interests, Larsen next arranged for a 30-minute radio program, The March of Time, to be broadcast over CBS, beginning on March 6,1931
34.
Glossary of video game terms
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This glossary of video game terms lists the general video game industry terms as commonly used in Wikipedia articles. 1-up In games where players have a number of lives to complete a game or level, 1v1 Abbreviation of 1 versus 1, which means two players battling against each other. 8-bit A descriptor for hardware or software that arose during the generation of video game consoles. 16-bit A descriptor for hardware or software that arose during the generation of video game consoles. 2D graphics The game features 2-dimensional objects,2. 5D graphics A game consisting of 3D graphics set in a 2D plane of movement, where objects outside of this 2D plane can have an effect on the gameplay. 32-bit A descriptor for hardware or software that arose during the generation of video game consoles. 4X A genre of video games, short for explore, expand, exploit. 64-bit A descriptor for hardware or software that arose during the generation of video game consoles. AAA A high-budget game with a development team, or game studios that make them. AAA games are usually multiplatform, have multimillion dollar marketing budgets, abandonware The idea of a game being forgotten about, or abandoned by the developers for multiple different reasons, one being copyright issues. Act See Level Action point A subunit of a players turn, for example, during each turn, a player can take a set number of actions, each costing a point. Action role-playing game A genre of role-playing video games where battle actions are performed in real-time instead of a turn-based mechanic. Actions per minute The total number of actions the player can perform in a minute, ADS Aiming Down Sights, or, Aim Down Sights. Refers to the alternate method of firing a gun in an FPS game. AFK Abbreviation of Away From Keyboard, generally said through a chat function in online multiplayer games when a player intends to be temporarily unavailable. Often used in gaming to grind, sometimes facetiously used in reference to irritated bystanders. Aimbot A first-person shooter cheat that lets players shoot other player-characters without aiming, in most cases, the reticle locks on to a target within the players line of sight and the player only has to pull the trigger. Aimbots are one of the most popular cheats in multiplayer FPS, alpha release An initial, incomplete version of a game, alpha versions are usually released early in the development process to test a games most critical functionality and prototype design concepts
35.
Pilotwings 64
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Pilotwings 64 is a video game for the Nintendo 64, originally released in 1996 along with the debut of the console. The game was co-developed by Nintendo and the American visual technology group Paradigm Simulation and it was one of three launch titles for the Nintendo 64 in Japan as well as Europe and one of two launch titles in North America. Pilotwings 64 is a follow-up to Pilotwings for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also like that game, Pilotwings 64 received production input from Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto. Pilotwings 64 is a 3D amateur flight simulator that puts the player in control of one of six pilots as they try to pilot licenses through various forms of aviation. The events are flying an autogyro, using a jet pack, several bonus tasks are offered, such as skydiving and a human cannonball test. The game also puts focus on allowing the player to explore its detailed 3D environments. The game received positive scores and praise from gaming publications and news sources alike for its visual presentation. Similar to its SNES predecessor, Pilotwings 64 serves to demonstrate the capabilities of its gaming hardware. Although the flight simulator did not enjoy the commercial success as its fellow launch game Super Mario 64. Pilotwings 64 is a 3D flight simulator in which the player must complete a variety of missions involving different airborne vehicles, before each mission, the player must choose one of six character pilots, each with their own advantages and disadvantages based on factors such as weight. The tests presented to the player him or her to complete an objective in order to earn a license for the given event. Depending on the mission, points are awarded or deducted based on time, damage, fuel usage, accuracy, softness of landing, the player is awarded either a bronze, silver, or gold license based on the number of points attained. More difficult tests become available as the player progresses, the first, hang gliding, usually requires the player to fly through a series of floating marker rings or snap a photograph of a particular piece of scenery before landing in a target area. The players movement is affected by currents and altitude can be gained by flying through thermal columns. The second event is the Rocket Belt, a jet pack allows the player to move and gain height as well as hover, tilt. Goals entail flying through rings or popping large balloons before landing, the third event, the gyrocopter, challenges the player to take off and land on a runway after completing objectives like navigating a path of rings or destroying targets with missiles. Pilotwings 64 also features several events that are unlocked if the player performs well in the main missions. The player can earn medals on many of these events
36.
PlayStation (console)
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The PlayStation is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The console was released on 3 December 1994 in Japan,9 September 1995 in North America,29 September 1995 in Europe, the console was the first of the PlayStation lineup of home video game consoles. It primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn as part of the generation of video game consoles. The PlayStation is the first computer entertainment platform to ship 100 million units, in 2000, a redesigned, slim version called the PSone was released, replacing the original grey console and named appropriately to avoid confusion with its successor, the PlayStation 2. In 1999, Sony announced the successor to the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, which is compatible with the PlayStations DualShock controller and games. The last PSone units were sold in winter 2004 before it was discontinued in March 2005. The inception of what would become the released PlayStation dates back to 1986 with a joint venture between Nintendo and Sony, Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the Play Station or SNES-CD. A contract was signed, and work began, Kutaragi was nearly fired by Sony because he was originally working with Nintendo on the side without Sonys knowledge. It was then-CEO, Norio Ohga, who recognized the potential in Kutaragis chip, Ohga kept Kutaragi on at Sony, and it was not until Nintendo cancelled the project that Sony decided to develop its own console. This was also to be the used in SNES-CDs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendos leading position in the video gaming market. The product, dubbed the Play Station was to be announced at the May 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, yamauchi decided that the contract was totally unacceptable and he secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. After the collapse of the project, Sony briefly considered allying itself with Sega to produce a stand-alone console. The Sega CEO at the time, Tom Kalinske, took the proposal to Segas Board of Directors in Tokyo, Kalinske, in a 2013 interview recalled them saying that’s a stupid idea, Sony doesnt know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either, why would we want to do this. The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction and, in October 1991, however, it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever produced. However, Sony decided in early 1993 to begin reworking the Play Station concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. As part of process the SNES cartridge port was dropped. Early advertising prior to the launch in North America referenced PSX
37.
Sega Saturn
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The Saturn has a dual-CPU architecture and eight processors. Its games are in CD-ROM format, and its library contains several arcade ports as well as original titles. Development of the Saturn began in 1992, the same year Segas groundbreaking 3D Model 1 arcade hardware debuted. The Saturn was initially successful in Japan, but failed to sell in numbers in the United States after its surprise May 1995 launch. After the debut of the Nintendo 64 in late 1996, the Saturn rapidly lost market share in the U. S. where it was discontinued in 1998, having sold 9.26 million units worldwide, the Saturn is considered a commercial failure. The failure of Segas development teams to release a game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, although the Saturn is remembered for several well-regarded games, including Nights into Dreams. The Panzer Dragoon series, and the Virtua Fighter series, its reputation is mixed due to its hardware design. Segas management has been criticized for its decision-making during the systems development, released in 1988, the Genesis was Segas entry into the fourth generation of video game consoles. In mid-1990, Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama hired Tom Kalinske as president, however, the release of a CD-based add-on for the Genesis, the Sega CD, had been commercially disappointing. Sega also experienced success with arcade games, in 1992 and 1993, the companys new Sega Model 1 arcade system board showcased Sega AM2s Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which played a crucial role in popularizing 3D polygonal graphics. The Model 1 was a system board, and bringing home releases of its games to the Genesis required more than its hardware could handle. Several alternatives helped to bring Segas newest arcade games to the console, such as the Sega Virtua Processor chip used for Virtua Racing, development of the Saturn was supervised by Hideki Sato, Segas director and deputy general manager of research and development. According to Sega project manager Hideki Okamura, the Saturn project started over two years before the system was showcased at the Tokyo Toy Show in June 1994, the name Saturn was initially the systems codename during development in Japan, but was eventually chosen as the official product name. In 1993, Sega and Japanese electronics company Hitachi formed a joint venture to develop a new CPU for the Saturn, the Saturn was ultimately designed around a dual-SH2 configuration. According to Kazuhiro Hamada, Segas section chief for Saturn development during the systems conception, the chip has a calculation system similar to a DSP, but we realized that a single CPU would not be enough to calculate a 3D world. According to Kalinske, Sega of America fought against the architecture of Saturn for quite some time, seeking an alternative graphics chip for the Saturn, Kalinske attempted to broker a deal with Silicon Graphics, but Sega of Japan rejected the proposal. Silicon Graphics subsequently collaborated with Nintendo on the Nintendo 64, publicly, Kalinske defended the Saturns design, Our people feel that they need the multiprocessing to be able to bring to the home what were doing next year in the arcades. In 1993, Sega restructured its internal studios in preparation for the Saturns launch, New teams, such as Panzer Dragoon developer Team Andromeda, were formed during this time
38.
IGN
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The website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29,1996. It focuses on games, films, television, comics, technology, the company is located in San Franciscos SOMA district in California, United States. Originally a network of websites, IGN is now distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013 and now operates as a J2 Global subsidiary. com, PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation. com and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating a network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation. com, Sega-Saturn. com, Game Sages. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand, the homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation, dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put on hold when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its channels as Affiliation Networks. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball. com, at the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its properties during the dot-com bubble. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site, IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdochs multi-media business empire, News Corporation, IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12,2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, on May 25,2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment from Hearst Corporation, ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed, prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP. com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP. com, the role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a GPM rating system incorporates an average press score and average gamer score
39.
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
40.
Lost Decade (Japan)
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The Lost Decade or the Lost 10 Years is the time after the Japanese asset price bubbles collapse within the Japanese economy. Over the period of 1995 to 2007, GDP fell from $5.33 to $4.36 trillion in terms, real wages fell around 5%. It took longer to recover from the impact of events because the conditions imposed by the new environment were not favorable to the Japanese management style at that time. Japans strong economic growth in the half of the 20th century ended abruptly at the start of the 1990s. In the late 1980s, abnormalities within the Japanese economic system had fueled a speculative price bubble of a massive scale. The bubble was caused by the excessive loan growth quotas dictated on the banks by Japans central bank, as economist Paul Krugman explained, Japans banks lent more, with less regard for quality of the borrower, than anyone elses. In doing so they helped inflate the economy to grotesque proportions. Trying to deflate speculation and keep inflation in check, the Bank of Japan sharply raised inter-bank lending rates in late 1989 and this sharp policy caused the bursting of the bubble and the Japanese stock market crashed. Equity and asset prices fell, leaving overly leveraged Japanese banks, yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News writing in Salon stated that the zombie banks were one of the reasons for the following long stagnation. Additionally Michael Schuman of Time magazine noted that these banks kept injecting new funds into unprofitable zombie firms to keep them afloat, however, most of these companies were too debt-ridden to do much more than survive on bail-out funds. Schuman believed that Japans economy did not begin to recover until this practice had ended, eventually, many of these failing firms became unsustainable, and a wave of consolidation took place, resulting in four national banks in Japan. Many Japanese firms were burdened with debts, and it became very difficult to obtain credit. Many borrowers turned to sarakin for loans, as of 2012, the official interest rate was 0. 1%, the interest rate has remained below 1% since 1994. Despite mild economic recovery in the 2000s, conspicuous consumption of the 1980s such as spending on whiskey. Many Japanese companies replaced a part of their workforce with temporary workers. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force, for the wider Japanese workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1997, real wages have fallen around 13%—an unprecedented number among developed nations. The wider economy of Japan is still recovering from the impact of the 1991 crash and it took 12 years for Japans GDP to recover to the same levels as 1995
41.
James H. Clark
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James Henry Clark is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape Communications Corporation, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in computer graphics led to the development of systems for the fast rendering of computer images. Clark was born in Plainview, Texas and endured a difficult childhood and he dropped out of high school after being suspended, and spent four years in the Navy where he was introduced to electronics. There, Clark earned his Bachelors and a masters degrees in physics, clarks research work concerned geometry pipelines, specialized software or hardware that accelerates the display of three dimensional images. In 1982, James Clark along with several Stanford graduate students founded Silicon Graphics, the earliest Silicon Graphics graphical workstations were mainly terminals, but they were soon followed by stand-alone graphical Unix workstations with very fast graphics rendering hardware. In the mid-1980s, Silicon Graphics began to use the MIPS CPU as the foundation of their newest workstations, soon, Silicon Graphics became the world leader in the production of Hollywood movie visual effects and 3-D imaging. Silicon Graphics focused on the market where they could charge a premium for their special hardware. In the early 1990s, Clark fell out with Silicon Graphics management, the next year Clark and Andreessen founded Netscape. The founding of Netscape and its IPO in 1996 launched the Internet boom on Wall Street during the mid-to-late 1990s, Clark reaped the financial benefits of that boom—with an investment of US$5 million, he earned US$2 billion. Just as the Internet boom came to an end, Clark moved on again, in 1995, Clark became interested in streamlining the paperwork associated with the health-care industry. The resulting start-up, Healtheon, was founded in early 1996 with backing from Kleiner Perkins, however, an Atlanta, Georgia startup company, WebMD originally focused on medical content was also making similar in-roads. Knowing WebMD had financial backing from Microsoft, Clark decided to merge Healtheon with the original WebMD to form the WebMD Corporation, WebMD is a leader in health information on the Internet. In 1999, Jim Clark launched myCFO, a company formed to help wealthy Silicon Valley individuals manage their fortunes, in late 2002, while Clark served on the board of directors, most of myCFOs operations were sold to Harris Bank and now operate as Harris myCFO. Clark was chairman and financial backer of network-security startup Neoteris, founded in 2000, which was acquired by NetScreen in 2003 and subsequently by Juniper Networks. In 2003, the company was acquired by Genaissance Pharmaceuticals Inc. Clark was the subject of the 1999 bestseller The New New Thing, ISBN 0-340-76699-9 Clark was a notable investor in Kibu. com, an Internet website for teens, which received approximately $22 million in funding. The website shut down in 2000, returning its remaining capital to investors, Clark co-produced the 2009 movie The Cove. His funding made possible the purchase and covert installation of some high-tech camera, the film addresses the problem of whale and dolphin killing in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan
