1.
Video game industry
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The video game industry is the economic sector involved in the development, marketing and Monetizing of video games. It encompasses dozens of job disciplines and employs thousands of people worldwide, the computer and video game industry has grown from focused markets to mainstream. They took in about US$9.5 billion in the US in 2007,11.7 billion in 2008, sound cards were developed for addition of digital-quality sound to games and only later improved for music and audiophiles. Early on, graphics cards were developed for more colors, later, graphic cards were developed for graphical user interfaces and games, GUIs drove the need for high resolution, and games began using 3D acceleration. They also are one of the pieces of hardware to allow multiple hookups. Product and talent layer, includes developers, designers and artists, production and tools layer, generates content production tools, game development middleware, customizable game engines, and production management tools. Distribution layer, or the industry, involved in generating and marketing catalogs of games for retail. Hardware layer, or the providers of the platform, which may be console-based, accessed through online media. This layer now includes network infrastructure and non-hardware platforms such as machines, or software platforms such as browsers or even further Facebook. End-users layer, or the users/players of the games, the game industry employs those experienced in other traditional businesses, but some have experience tailored to the game industry. Some of the specific to the game industry include, game programmer, game designer, level designer, game producer, game artist. Most of these professionals are employed by video game developers or video game publishers, however, many hobbyists also produce computer games and sell them commercially. Recently, game developers have begun to employ those with extensive or long-term experience within the modding communities, prior to the 1970s, there was no significant commercial aspect of the video game industry, but many advances in computing would set the stage for the birth of the industry. In 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a patent for a cathode ray tube amusement device and their game, which uses a cathode ray tube hooked to an oscilloscope display, challenges players to fire a gun at target. One of the first known examples is Spacewar, developed by Harvard and MIT employees Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. The introduction of easy-to-program languages like BASIC for mainframes allowed for more games to be developed. In 1971 the arcade game, Computer Space was released, the following year, Atari, Inc. released the first commercially successful video game, Pong, the original arcade version of which sold over 19,000 arcade cabinets. That same year saw the introduction of video games to the market with the release of the early video game console
2.
Brand name
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A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes one seller’s product from those of others. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising, however, the term has been extended to mean a strategic personality for a product or company, so that ‘brand’ now suggests the values and promises that a consumer may perceive and buy into. Branding is a set of marketing and communication methods that help to distinguish a company from competitors, the key components that form a brands toolbox include a brand’s identity, brand communication, brand awareness, brand loyalty, and various branding strategies. Brand equity is the totality of a brands worth and is validated by assessing the effectiveness of these branding components. To reach such an invaluable brand prestige requires a commitment to a way of doing business. A corporation who exhibits a strong brand culture is dedicated on producing intangible outputs such as customer satisfaction, reduced price sensitivity and customer loyalty. A brand is in essence a promise to its customers that they can expect long-term security, when a customer is familiar with a brand or favours it incomparably to its competitors, this is when a corporation has reached a high level of brand equity. Many companies are beginning to understand there is often little to differentiate between products in the 21st century. Branding remains the last bastion for differentiation, in accounting, a brand defined as an intangible asset is often the most valuable asset on a corporation’s balance sheet. The word ‘brand’ is often used as a referring to the company that is strongly identified with a brand. Marque or make are often used to denote a brand of motor vehicle, a concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept, like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service, or business. A commodity brand is a associated with a commodity. The word, brand, derives from Dutch brand meaning to burn and this product was developed at Dhosi Hill, an extinct volcano in northern India. Roman glassmakers branded their works, with Ennion being the most prominent, the Italians used brands in the form of watermarks on paper in the 13th century. Blind Stamps, hallmarks, and silver-makers marks are all types of brand, industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the barrels used, Bass & Company, the British brewery, claims their red-triangle brand as the worlds first trademark. Another example comes from Antiche Fornaci Giorgi in Italy, which has stamped or carved its bricks with the same proto-logo since 1731, cattle-branding has been used since Ancient Egypt. The term, maverick, originally meaning an un-branded calf, came from a Texas pioneer rancher, Sam Maverick, use of the word maverick spread among cowboys and came to apply to unbranded calves found wandering alone
3.
Oakhurst, California
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Oakhurst is a census-designated place in Madera County, California,14 miles south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. At the 2010 census, the population was 2,829, according to the Oakhurst Area Chamber of Commerce, the area population was 12,787 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Madera–Chowchilla metropolitan statistical area, Oakhurst is located on the Fresno River 3 miles south-southwest of Yosemite Forks, at an elevation of 2274 feet. It is located at the junction of state highways 41 and 49, nearby communities include Ahwahnee, Coarsegold and Bass Lake. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has an area of 6.006 square miles. The Fresno Flats post office opened in 1873, moved and changed its name to Oakhurst in 1912, the pioneering computer game developer Sierra On-Line was based in Oakhurst from 1981 to 1999. The company achieved many firsts, including the development of the first 3D adventure game. The 2010 United States Census reported that Oakhurst had a population of 2,829, the population density was 471.0 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Oakhurst was 2,532 White,473 Hispanic or Latino,22 African American,61 Native American,44 Asian,3 Pacific Islander,66 from other races, and 101 from two or more races. The Census reported that 2,772 people lived in households,0 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, there were 61 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 14 same-sex married couples or partnerships. 386 households were made up of individuals and 216 had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.26. There were 744 families, the family size was 2.80. The median age was 48.4 years, for every 100 females there were 90.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 86.2 males, there were 1,379 housing units at an average density of 229.6 per square mile, of which 691 were owner-occupied, and 535 were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 3. 5%, the vacancy rate was 5. 5%. 1,485 people lived in owner-occupied housing units and 1,287 people lived in housing units. As of the 2000 census, there were 2868 people,1,250 households, the population density was 484.8 people per square mile. There were 1,380 housing units at a density of 233.3 per square mile
4.
Ken Williams (game developer)
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Ken Williams is an American retired game programmer who co-founded On-Line Systems together with his wife Roberta Williams. On-Line Systems eventually became Sierra On-Line and was ultimately renamed Sierra Entertainment, the couple were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. At its height, Sierra employed nearly 1,000 people prior to its acquisition in 1996, Williams was born in October 30,1954 and is from Simi Valley, California. Ken and Robertas early contributions to the game industry were partially chronicled in the book Hackers. He wrote the textbook Apple II Computer Graphics, and articles for Softline, Williams and wife Roberta co-founded On-Line Systems in 1979. Sierras notable online service, the ImagiNation Network, was purchased by AT&T in 1994, Williams was the president of Sierra until the company was sold to CUC International in July 1996, but he remained with the company leading its strategic direction until November 1997. Vivendi currently holds the Sierra name, in his role as Sierras CEO, Williams focused on innovation, Im not sure how typical I am of other CEOs. most of my time is spent looking at product. To me, everything is about being able to build awesome product, any game which does not push the state of the art leaves an opportunity for a competitors game to look better. In Sierras later years, the focus had shifted to publishing many titles from other studios. Commenting on first-person shooters, Williams recalls, By the time I decided we wanted into the genre, with 20/20 hindsight, I blew it when I had the chance to buy id and didnt. Valve was the first group I had spoken with that could put Sierra in front of id. Williams has cited Microsoft and these two companies were our role models. I read every book written on both companies, I did everything to try to understand how they thought, and how they did business. Williams is no longer active in the gaming industry. He focused on writing, and managing a Web site construction tool called Talkspot and he has published three books on boating, talking about his worldwide cruising along with his wife Roberta on their 68-foot Nordhavn trawler. In addition, he publishes a blog about cruising, Kens Blog, williamss trademarks have been his mustache and hair. His appearance has inspired Sierras designers for some sprites, honoring Williams with cameo appearances in some games, ken married Roberta Williams at the age of 19. They have two children, D. J. and Chris, the Williams family has homes in Seattle, France and Mexico
5.
Bellevue, Washington
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Bellevue is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, across Lake Washington from Seattle. As the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, Bellevue has variously been characterized as an edge city, the city had a population of 122,363 at the 2010 census. Prior to 2008, downtown Bellevue underwent rapid change, with high rise projects under construction. The downtown area is currently the second largest city center in Washington state with 1,300 businesses,45,000 employees and 10,200 residents, based on per capita income, Bellevue is the 6th wealthiest of 522 communities in the state of Washington. In 2008, Bellevue was named number 1 in CNNMoneys list of the best places to live and launch a business, in 2014, Bellevue was ranked as the 2nd best place to live by USA Today. More than 145 companies have located in Bellevue. Current companies with headquarters in Bellevue include Expedia and T-Mobile, the name Bellevue is French for beautiful view. Bellevue was settled in 1869 by William Meydenbauer and Aaron Mercer, prior to the opening of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in 1940, Bellevue was a rural area with little development. Although it was small, developers were pushing to change that, in the 1920s and he envisioned plans that included the bridging of Lake Washington and an area filled with golf courses and airports. His map with these visions was published in 1928, once the Murrow Memorial Bridge opened, access from Seattle improved, and the area gradually grew into a bedroom community. After the Japanese Internment began in 1942 a large quantity of land was available for development. This made way for the development of the Bellevue downtown area. Bellevue incorporated as a third city on March 21,1953. Following the 1963 opening of a bridge across the lake, the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. It has since become one of the largest cities in the state, with several structures in its core. The city experienced a boom during the mid 2000s, with the building of developments such as Lincoln Square. Reflective of Bellevues growth over the years is Bellevue Square, now one of the largest shopping centers in the region, opened in 1946, the mall underwent a significant expansion in the 1980s. Patterned after what many civic leaders consider the successful redevelopment of the downtown core, Bellevue is located at 47°36′N 122°12′W
6.
Washington (state)
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It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Washington is sometimes referred to as Washington State or the State of Washington to distinguish it from Washington, Washington is the 18th largest state with an area of 71,362 square miles, and the 13th most populous state with over 7 million people. Washington is the second most populous state on the West Coast and in the Western United States, Mount Rainier, an active stratovolcano, is the states highest elevation at almost 14,411 feet and is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States. Washington is a leading lumber producer and its rugged surface is rich in stands of Douglas fir, hemlock, ponderosa pine, white pine, spruce, larch, and cedar. Manufacturing industries in Washington include aircraft and missiles, shipbuilding and other equipment, lumber, food processing, metals and metal products, chemicals. Washington has over 1,000 dams, including the Grand Coulee Dam, built for a variety of purposes including irrigation, power, flood control, the Washington Territory was named after George Washington, the first President of the United States. The area was part of a region called the Columbia District after the Columbia River. The area was renamed Washington in order to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia, Washington is the only U. S. state named after a president. To distinguish it from the U. S. capital, which is named for George Washington, Washington is sometimes referred to as Washington State, or, in more formal contexts. Washingtonians and other residents of the Pacific Northwest refer to the state simply as Washington, calling the nations capital Washington, D. C. or, often, Washington is the northwestern-most state of the contiguous United States. Washington is bordered by Oregon to the south, with the Columbia River forming the western part, to the west of Washington lies the Pacific Ocean. The high mountains of the Cascade Range run north-south, bisecting the state, from the Cascade Mountains westward, Western Washington has a mostly marine west coast climate, with mild temperatures and wet winters, autumns and springs, and relatively dry summers. The Cascade Range contains several volcanoes, which reach altitudes significantly higher than the rest of the mountains, from the north to the south, these major volcanoes are Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams. Mount Rainier, the tallest mountain in the state, is 50 miles south of the city of Seattle and it is also covered with more glacial ice than any other peak in the contiguous 48 states. Western Washington also is home of the Olympic Mountains, far west on the Olympic Peninsula and these deep forests, such as the Hoh Rainforest, are among the only temperate rainforests in the continental United States. Eastern Washington – the part of the state east of the Cascades – has a dry climate. It includes large areas of steppe and a few truly arid deserts lying in the rain shadow of the Cascades. Farther east, the climate becomes less arid, with annual rainfall increasing as one goes east to 21.2 inches in Pullman, the Okanogan Highlands and the rugged Kettle River Range and Selkirk Mountains cover much of the northeastern quadrant of the state
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
Vivendi Games
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Headed by Bruce Hack, it was headquartered in Los Angeles, California and employed over 3,400 people at four separate development divisions. It later merged with Activision and is now known as Activision Blizzard, the direct predecessor of Vivendi Games was Universal Interactive, the game publishing division of Universal Studios. Founded in 1993, it was best known for publishing the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon series, CUC Software was founded in February 1996, when CUC International, a large mail order and subscription company, offered to acquire entertainment software developer Sierra Entertainment. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Sierra published adventure game such as Kings Quest, Gabriel Knight. Sierra was a company, which employed roughly 1,000 employees at 12 different acquired studios. CUC offered to absorb Sierras stock shares at a price roughly 90% higher than what Sierra was trading, at the same time, CUC also approached Davidson & Associates, a leading publisher and distributor of educational software, with an offer of a similar stock swap. Headquartered in Torrance, California, Davidson published the Math Blaster, Warcraft, Davidson was also a public company, founded and headed by Bob Davidson, who acted as CEO, and also by Jan Davidson, who acted as President. Soon after its creation, CUC Software acquired in January 1997 Knowledge Adventure, a developer of educational software. CUC also acquired Gryphon Software, another software company. Davidson & Associates and Gryphon were then absorbed into Knowledge Adventure, in 1997, CUC Software also acquired Berkeley Systems and integrated Berkeley Systems into Sierra On-Line. CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997, the company sold its consumer software operations, which included Sierra and Blizzard, to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. In June 2000, Vivendi acquired Seagram to become Vivendi Universal, in 2004, Vivendi Universal Games sold one of its divisions, Knowledge Adventure to a group of private investors. When parent company Vivendi Universal dropped the Universal in its name in 2006 to simply become Vivendi SA, Vivendi Universal Games followed suit and it ceased to publish under its own name and instead assigned those duties to its divisions. Spyro and Crash Bandicoot were assigned to Sierra Entertainment in this arrangement, in 2006, Vivendi Games created a new mobile division Vivendi Games Mobile, which was promised to begin publishing and distributing games in 2006 through mobile carriers and portals. In December 2007, it was announced that Vivendi Games would merge with games publisher Activision, in July 2008, the merger went active. Activision Blizzard operated the games division of Vivendi SA, and became an independent company on July 25,2013, Blizzard Entertainment is a development studio best known for creating the series Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORPG games, has currently over 3.5 million subscribers, Blizzard Entertainment later became independent, as compared to a subsidiary. Sierra Entertainment creates and publishes software for consoles, handheld gaming devices, Sierra Entertainment features a portfolio of titles, including F. E. A. R
9.
Activision
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Activision Publishing, Inc. also known as Activision, is an American video game publisher. It was founded on October 1,1979 and was the worlds first independent developer and its first products were cartridges for the Atari 2600 video console system published from July 1980 for the US market and from August 1981 for the international market. As of January 2017, Activision is one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world and was also the top publisher for 2016 in the United States, before Activision, third-party developers did not exist. Software for video game consoles were published exclusively by makers of the systems for which the games were designed, for example, Atari was the only publisher of games for the Atari 2600. This was particularly galling to the developers, as they received financial rewards nor credit for games that sold well. Kaplan, who called the others the best designers for the in the world, recalled that Kassar called the four men towel designers and that anyone can do a cartridge. Crane, Miller, and Whitehead left Atari and founded Activision in October 1979 with former music industry executive Jim Levy and venture capitalist Richard Muchmore, David Crane has said the name Activision was based on Jim Levys idea to combine active and television. The original name proposed for the company was VSync, Inc, unlike Atari, the company credited and promoted game creators along with the games themselves. The steps taken for this included devoting a page to the developer in their instruction manuals and these approaches helped the newly formed company attract experienced talent. In recognition of this step, Kaplan, Levy, Miller, the departure of the four programmers, whose titles made up more than half of Ataris cartridge sales at the time, caused legal action between the two companies not settled until 1982. As the market for game consoles started to decline, Activision branched out, producing titles for home computers. In 1982, Activision released Pitfall. on the Atari 2600, designed and developed by David Crane, it was a huge success. Many clones of the game were introduced, including arcade games. On June 13,1986, Activision purchased struggling text adventure pioneer Infocom, Jim Levy was a big fan of Infocoms titles and wanted the company to remain solvent. About six months after the InfoWedding, Bruce Davis took over as CEO of Activision, Davis was against the merger from the start and was heavy-handed in its management. Five of them accepted this offer, in 1988, Activision began involvement in software besides video games, such as business applications. As a result, Activision changed its name to Mediagenic to better represent all of its activities. After taking over the company, the new management filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization, in the reorganization, Mediagenic merged with The Disc Company with Mediagenic being the surviving company
10.
Activision Blizzard
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Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game developer. Activision Blizzard currently includes five units, Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, Major League Gaming, Activision Blizzard Studios. The company owns and operates additional studios under an independent studios model, including Treyarch, Infinity Ward and Toys for Bob, and its titles have broken a number of release records. Call of Duty, Black Ops III grossed $550 million in sales during its opening weekend in 2015. In December 2007, Activision announced that the company and its assets would merge with fellow games developer and publisher Vivendi Games, at the time, Vivendi was best known as the holding company for the game studios Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment. The new company was to be named Activision Blizzard, and would retain its headquarters in California. Bobby Kotick of Activision was announced as the new president and CEO, the European Commission permitted the merger to take place in April 2008, approving that there werent any antitrust issues in the merger deal. On July 8,2008, Activision announced that stockholders had agreed to merge, Vivendi was the majority shareholder, with a 52% stake in the company. At this point, Jean-Bernard Levy replaced René Penisson as chairman of Activision Blizzard, the merger made Activision Blizzard the parent company of Vivendi Games former divisions. While Blizzard retained its autonomy and corporate leadership in the merger, other Vivendi Games divisions such as Sierra ceased operation, with the merger, Kotick was quoted stating if a Sierra product did not meet Activisions requirements, they wont likely be retained. However, a number of Sierras games such as Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Activision Blizzard does not publish games under its central name and instead uses its studios to publish games. In early 2010, the independent studio Bungie entered into a 10-year publishing agreement with Activision Blizzard, by the end of 2010, Activision Blizzard was the largest video games publisher in the world. The 2011 release of Activision Blizzards Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3 grossed $400 million in the US and UK alone in its first 24 hours, making it the biggest entertainment launch of all time. Call of Duty, Black Ops III grossed $550 million in sales during its opening weekend in 2015. In 2011, Activision Blizzard debuted its Skylanders franchise, which led to the press crediting the company with inventing and popularizing a new toys-to-life category. The first release Skylanders, Spyros Adventure was nominated for two Toy Industry Association awards in 2011, Game of the Year and Innovative Toy of the Year. Skylanders, Spyros Adventure and its sequels were released for consoles and PC. At the conclusion of the deal, Vivendi was no longer Activision Blizzards parent company, bobby Kotick and Brian Kelly retained a 24. 4% stake in the company overall
11.
Simi Valley, California
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The city of Simi Valley, in the eponymous valley, is in the southeast corner of Ventura County, California, United States. 30 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, Simi Valley is part of the Greater Los Angeles Area, the city sits next to Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, and Los Angeles. The citys 2014 population has been estimated at 126,871, the city of Simi Valley is surrounded by the Santa Susana Mountain range and the Simi Hills, west of the San Fernando Valley, and northeast of the Conejo Valley. It is largely a bedroom community, feeding the cities in the Los Angeles area and the San Fernando Valley to the east. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where the president was buried in 2004, is in Simi Valley. Simi Valley has been ranked twice as the 18th most conservative city in the United States, once by The Bay Area Center For Voting Research, the Reagan Library has hosted Republican primary debates, last in 2012, and the first primary debates in 2016. A study done by the University of Vermont ranked Simi Valley as the fifth-happiest city in the United States, according to crime statistics by the FBI in 2013, Simi Valley is the seventh-safest city in the U. S. with a population of 100,000 or more. The U. S. Census Bureau of 2012 reported a household income of $87,894, which is higher than the California median of $70,231. Simi Valley was once inhabited by the Chumash people, who also settled much of the region from the Salinas Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains, with their presence dating back 10, around 5,000 years ago these tribes began processing acorns, and harvesting local marshland plants. Roughly 2,000 years later, as hunting and fishing techniques improved, shortly after this sharp increase a precious stone money system arose, increasing the viability of the region by offsetting fluctuations in available resources relating to climate changes. The native people who inhabited Simi Valley spoke a dialect of the Chumash language. Simi Valleys name derived from the Chumash word Shimiyi, which refers to the stringy, the name could have derived from strands of mist from coastal fog that move into the Oxnard Plain and wind their way up the Calleguas Creek and the Arroyo Las Posas into Simi Valley. The origin of the name was preserved because of the work of the anthropologist John P. Harrington, whose brother, the word Simiji was constructed by whites to the word Simi. There are other explanations about the name Simi, but this one was given to me by my brother who worked over 40 years for the Smithsonian Institution and it seems most plausible to me. Three Chumash settlements existed in Simi Valley during the Mission period in the late 18th and early 19th century, Shimiyi, Ta’apu, the cave is located on private land owned by Boeing, formerly operated by Rocketdyne for testing rocket engines and nuclear research. Other areas containing Chumash Native American pictographs in the Simi Hills are for instance by Lake Manor, the first Europeans to visit Simi Valley were members of the Spanish Portolà expedition, the first European land entry and exploration of the present-day state of California. The expedition traversed the valley on January 13–14,1770, traveling from Conejo Valley to San Fernando Valley and they camped near a native village in the valley on the 14th. Rancho Simi was the earliest Spanish colonial land grant within Ventura, the name derives from Shimiji, the name of the Chumash Native American village here before the Spanish
12.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
13.
Apple II
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The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and it is the first model in a series of computers which were produced until Apple IIe production ceased in November 1993. The Apple II marks Apples first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market – branded towards American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. Along with the PET2001 and the TRS-80, Byte magazine referred to these as the 1977 Trinity of personal computing. The Apple II had the feature of being able to display color graphics. By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced the product designer Jerry Manock to create the shell for the Apple II – a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that would conceal the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas, printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland, the original retail price of the computer was $1,298 and $2,638. To reflect the color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries, the Apple II used a multiplicity of idiosyncratic engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs. This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate circuit for the DRAM chips. Similarly, in the graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and can thus be implemented in software. This also allows for subpixel font rendering since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green, the Apple II at first used data cassette storage like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978 the company introduced an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components. The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniaks designs, with a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM, he created a functional floppy-disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations. The cost of such terminals could easily exceed the price of the computer itself, the Apple IIs PCB underwent several revisions as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6000 units shipped used it, later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in a mode and had garbage on screen. This was eliminated on the later board revisions, Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors, but Wozniak was later able to generate 16 in low-res mode
14.
Fortran
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Fortran is a general-purpose, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. It is a language for high-performance computing and is used for programs that benchmark. Fortran encompasses a lineage of versions, each of which evolved to add extensions to the language while usually retaining compatibility with prior versions, the names of earlier versions of the language through FORTRAN77 were conventionally spelled in all-capitals. The capitalization has been dropped in referring to newer versions beginning with Fortran 90, the official language standards now refer to the language as Fortran rather than all-caps FORTRAN. In late 1953, John W. Backus submitted a proposal to his superiors at IBM to develop a practical alternative to assembly language for programming their IBM704 mainframe computer. Backus historic FORTRAN team consisted of programmers Richard Goldberg, Sheldon F. Best, Harlan Herrick, Peter Sheridan, Roy Nutt, Robert Nelson, Irving Ziller, Lois Haibt, and David Sayre. Its concepts included easier entry of equations into a computer, a developed by J. Halcombe Laning and demonstrated in the Laning. A draft specification for The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System was completed by mid-1954, the first manual for FORTRAN appeared in October 1956, with the first FORTRAN compiler delivered in April 1957. John Backus said during a 1979 interview with Think, the IBM employee magazine, the language was widely adopted by scientists for writing numerically intensive programs, which encouraged compiler writers to produce compilers that could generate faster and more efficient code. The inclusion of a complex data type in the language made Fortran especially suited to technical applications such as electrical engineering. By 1960, versions of FORTRAN were available for the IBM709,650,1620, significantly, the increasing popularity of FORTRAN spurred competing computer manufacturers to provide FORTRAN compilers for their machines, so that by 1963 over 40 FORTRAN compilers existed. For these reasons, FORTRAN is considered to be the first widely used programming language supported across a variety of computer architectures, the arithmetic IF statement was similar to a three-way branch instruction on the IBM704. However, the 704 branch instructions all contained only one destination address, an optimizing compiler like FORTRAN would most likely select the more compact and usually faster Transfers instead of the Compare. Also the Compare considered −0 and +0 to be different values while the Transfer Zero, the FREQUENCY statement in FORTRAN was used originally to give branch probabilities for the three branch cases of the arithmetic IF statement. The Monte Carlo technique is documented in Backus et al, many years later, the FREQUENCY statement had no effect on the code, and was treated as a comment statement, since the compilers no longer did this kind of compile-time simulation. A similar fate has befallen compiler hints in other programming languages. The first FORTRAN compiler reported diagnostic information by halting the program when an error was found and that code could be looked up by the programmer in a error messages table in the operators manual, providing them with a brief description of the problem. Before the development of disk files, text editors and terminals, programs were most often entered on a keyboard onto 80-column punched cards
15.
Compiler
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A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language, with the latter often having a binary form known as object code. The most common reason for converting source code is to create an executable program, the name compiler is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a lower level language. If the compiled program can run on a computer whose CPU or operating system is different from the one on which the compiler runs, more generally, compilers are a specific type of translator. While all programs that take a set of programming specifications and translate them, a program that translates from a low-level language to a higher level one is a decompiler. A program that translates between high-level languages is called a source-to-source compiler or transpiler. A language rewriter is usually a program that translates the form of expressions without a change of language, the term compiler-compiler is sometimes used to refer to a parser generator, a tool often used to help create the lexer and parser. A compiler is likely to many or all of the following operations, lexical analysis, preprocessing, parsing, semantic analysis, code generation. Program faults caused by incorrect compiler behavior can be difficult to track down and work around, therefore. Software for early computers was written in assembly language. The notion of a high level programming language dates back to 1943, no actual implementation occurred until the 1970s, however. The first actual compilers date from the 1950s, identifying the very first is hard, because there is subjectivity in deciding when programs become advanced enough to count as the full concept rather than a precursor. 1952 saw two important advances. Grace Hopper wrote the compiler for the A-0 programming language, though the A-0 functioned more as a loader or linker than the notion of a full compiler. Also in 1952, the first autocode compiler was developed by Alick Glennie for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester and this is considered by some to be the first compiled programming language. The FORTRAN team led by John Backus at IBM is generally credited as having introduced the first unambiguously complete compiler, COBOL was an early language to be compiled on multiple architectures, in 1960. In many application domains the idea of using a higher level language quickly caught on, because of the expanding functionality supported by newer programming languages and the increasing complexity of computer architectures, compilers have become more complex. Early compilers were written in assembly language, the first self-hosting compiler – capable of compiling its own source code in a high-level language – was created in 1962 for the Lisp programming language by Tim Hart and Mike Levin at MIT. Since the 1970s, it has become practice to implement a compiler in the language it compiles
16.
Text mode
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Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a rectangular grid of character cells. Text mode is contrasted to all points addressable mode or other kinds of computer graphics modes, text mode applications communicate with the user with command-line interfaces and text user interfaces. A typical example is the IBM code page 437 character set and this was an analogy of early mechanical printers which had fixed pitch. This way, the output seen on the screen could be sent directly to the printer maintaining exactly the same format, depending on the environment, the screen buffer can be directly addressable. Programs that display output on remote video terminals must issue special control sequences to manipulate the screen buffer, the most popular standards for such control sequences are ANSI and VT100. Text mode video rendering came to prominence in the early 1970s, the advantages of text modes as compared to graphics modes include lower memory consumption and faster screen manipulation. Early framebuffers were standalone devices which cost thousands of dollars, in addition to the expense of the advanced high-resolution displays to which they were connected. For applications that required simple line graphics but for which the expense of a framebuffer could not be justified, but there were many computer applications for which all that was required was the ability to render ordinary text in a quick and cost-effective fashion to a cathode ray tube. Text mode avoids the problem of memory by having dedicated display hardware re-render each line of text from characters into pixels with each scan of the screen by the cathode ray. In turn, the hardware needs only enough memory to store the pixels equivalent to one line of text at a time. For example, a screen buffer sufficient to hold a standard grid of 80 by 25 characters requires at least 2,000 bytes. S. dollars, another advantage of text mode is that it has relatively low bandwidth requirements in remote terminal use. Text mode rendering with user-defined characters has also been useful for 2D computer, a video controller implementing a text mode usually uses two distinct areas of memory. Character memory or a table contains a raster font in use. Display matrix tracks which character is in each cell, in the simple case the display matrix can be just a matrix of code points, but it usually stores for each character position not only a code, but also attributes. The video controller has two registers, scan line counter and dot counter, serving as coordinates in the dot matrix. Each of them must be divided by corresponding glyph size to obtain an index in the display matrix, the character memory resides in a read-only memory in some systems. Other systems allow the use of RAM for this purpose, making it possible to redefine the typeface, in some historical graphics chips, including the TMS9918, the MOS Technology VIC, and the Game Boy graphics hardware, this was actually the canonical way of doing pixel graphics
17.
Adventure game
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An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving. The genres focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, many adventure games are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. Initial adventure games developed in the 1970s and early 1980s were text-based, within the Asian markets, adventure games continue to be popular in the form of visual novels, which make up nearly 70% of PC games released in Japan. The Asian markets have found markets for adventure games for portable and mobile gaming devices. The video game genre is defined by its gameplay, unlike the literary genre, which is defined by the subject it addresses. Essential elements of the genre include storytelling, exploration, and puzzle solving, Adventure games have been described as puzzles embedded in a narrative framework, where games involve narrative content that a player unlocks piece by piece over time. While the puzzles that players encounter through the story can be arbitrary, combat and action challenges are limited or absent in adventure games, thus distinguishing them from action games. In the book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design, only that combat is not the primary activity. Some adventure games include a minigame from another video game genre. Hybrid action-adventure games blend action and adventure games throughout the experience, incorporating more physical challenges than pure adventure games. This definition is hard to apply, however, with debate among designers about which games are action games. Adventure games are distinct from role-playing video games that involve action, team-building. Adventure games lack the numeric rules or relationships seen in role-playing games and these games lack any skill system, combat, or an opponent to be defeated through strategy and tactics. However, some hybrid games exist here, where role-playing games with strong narrative, finally, adventure games are classified separately from puzzle video games. Although an adventure game may involve puzzle-solving, they involve a player-controlled avatar in an interactive story. Adventure games contain a variety of puzzles, decoding messages, finding and using items, opening locked doors, solving a puzzle will unlock access to new areas in the game world, and reveal more of the game story. Logic puzzles, where mechanical devices are designed with interfaces to test a players deductive reasoning skills, are common. Others have been criticized for requiring players to guess, either by clicking on the right pixel
18.
Mystery House
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Mystery House is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II, Mystery House is the first graphical adventure game and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line. The game starts near an abandoned Victorian mansion, the player is soon locked inside the house with no other option than to explore. The mansion contains many interesting rooms and seven people, Tom, a plumber, Sam, a mechanic, Sally, a seamstress, Dr. Green, a surgeon, Joe, a gravedigger, Bill, a butcher, and Daisy. Initially, the player has to search the house in order to find a cache of jewels. However, terrible events start happening and dead bodies begin appearing and it becomes obvious that there is a murderer on the loose in the house, and the player must discover who it is or become the next victim. At the end of the 1970s, Ken Williams sought to set up a company for software for the market-dominating Apple II computer. One day, he took a teletype terminal to his residence to work on the development of an accounting program, rummaging through a catalog, he found a program called Colossal Cave Adventure. He and his wife Roberta both played it all the way through and their encounter with this game would lead to their influence on video-gaming history. Having finished Colossal Cave Adventure, they began to search for something similar, Roberta Williams liked the concept of a textual adventure very much, but she thought that the player would have a more satisfying experience with images and began to think of her own game. She thus conceived Mystery House, the first graphical adventure game, Ken spent a few nights developing the game on his Apple II using 70 simple two-dimensional drawings done by Roberta. The software was packaged in Ziploc bags containing a 5¼-inch disk, to their great surprise, Mystery House was an enormous success, quickly becoming a best-seller at a first-release price of US$24.95. Eventually, it more than 10,000 copies, which was a record-breaking phenomenon for the time. Though Ken believed that the market would be less of a growth market than the professional software market. In 1980, the Williamses founded On-Line Systems, which would become Sierra On-Line in 1982, Mystery House was re-released in 1982 through the SierraVenture line, which produced a number of early Sierra games until 1983. The game was released into the public domain in 1987 as part of Sierras seventh anniversary celebration. The game went on to sell 80,000 units worldwide, though the game is often considered the first adventure game to use graphics, dungeon crawl role-playing video games had already been using graphics prior to its release. Applying graphics to a game, however, was unprecedented as previous story-based adventure games were entirely text-based
19.
Wizard and the Princess
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Wizard and the Princess, also known as Adventure in Serenia, is an adventure game by On-Line Systems for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64. It was the title released in On-Line Systems Hi-Res Adventures series after Mystery House. Wizard and the Princess is a prelude to the Kings Quest series in both story and concept and it was also the first adventure game released with full color graphics. The game takes place in the land of Serenia where King Georges daughter Princess Priscilla has been kidnapped by a wizard named Harlin. Harlin has held her inside his castle far in the mountains, the King has offered half of his kingdom to anyone brave enough to travel to the Wizards castle, defeat him and return his daughter. The player assumes the role of a wanderer who answers this challenge. He boasted of using his magic to change the world creating obstacles for anyone who would challenge him and he turned back the sands of time leaving the adventurer in the desert just outside the village of Serenia. He mocks the hero telling him that he may have been defeated once, the princess gives the hero some words of advice and a computer to help him defeat Harlin, and tells him he has become the wanderer. The manual story as reprinted was also included with the Roberta Williams Collection, the introduction for Adventure of Serenia, explained that the adventurer, with the help of a computer, had magically transported to Serenia to save the Princess. The instruction sheet had the title listed as The Wizard and the Princess, the story was based on the many fairy tales Roberta used to read as a child. The game improved upon Mystery House by adding color graphics and it was the first adventure game to have full color graphics and sold over 60,000 copies. The Apple II could only display six different colors simultaneously, Wizard and the Princess was ported to the IBM PC in 1982, Sierras first game for the PC platform. For unknown reasons, this version was retitled Adventure in Serenia, Roberta Williams reputedly referred to the colors on the IBM PC as atrocious upon seeing the completed game running for the first time. Ports for the Atari 8-bits and Commodore 64 followed in 1982–83 under the original title, Adventure in Serenia was also a launch title for the IBM PCjr, announced in late 1983. The Atari computer version is monochrome hi-res mode and could be played in a shade of green, blue, or black depending on the chip in the computer, later versions also included an orange mode depending on the machines chipset. Dithering was used to create shades on screen, the color version for the Atari 8-bit more or less resembled the on-screen colors and dithering of the Apple II, but on a light greenish tinged screen. The Commodore version uses more on-screen colors and solid colors, the items in the game were more detailed and of higher resolution have alternative artwork. According to Sierras Interaction magazine, this game can be considered a prequel to the Kings Quest series, Kings Quest V marked a return to the Kingdom of Serenia
20.
Cranston Manor
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Cranston Manor is a graphic adventure game released in 1981. It was created by Ken Williams and Harold DeWitz, in the game, the player must invade a mansion that was occupied by a millionaire and steal the sixteen treasures that are inside of it. The game allows players to switch between graphics-based and text-based gameplay
21.
Ulysses and the Golden Fleece
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Ulysses and the Golden Fleece is a graphic adventure game released in 1981 for the Apple II. It was created by Bob Davis and Ken Williams, with a graphic at the top of the game screen, the player navigates the game via a two-word command parser. The game was ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, PC Magazine rated Ulysses 14.0 out of a total of 18 points. It called the graphics gorgeous, but noted the limited text parser compared to Infocoms Infidel, the IBM PC version of Ulysses and the Golden Fleece can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive
22.
The Dark Crystal (video game)
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The Dark Crystal is a graphic adventure computer game based on Jim Hensons fantasy film, The Dark Crystal. The game was designed by Roberta Williams and published under the SierraVenture line in 1983 as Hi-Res Adventure #6 and it was the first Hi-Res Adventure released under the SierraVenture line, the previous titles being released under earlier names and later re-released under SierraVenture. The Dark Crystal is set in Thra, a world with three suns, every thousand years the three suns come together in an event known as The Great Conjunction. The player controls Jen, a gelfling, two souls are destined to battle to reveal the secrets of their past. One warriors fate rests in the hands of a villain who is hellbent on destruction. The game features no music, a single beep is used to alert that no other than the return key can be taken. It took Roberta Williams a little over a month to develop the design for the game, the game would go on to receive a Certificate of Merit in the category of 1984 Best Computer Adventure at the 5th annual Arkie Awards. The Dark Crystal at MobyGames HI-RES VOL,1, NO.3 / MARCH1984 The Sierra Help Pages Gamespot An official free re-creation of the game
23.
IBM PCjr
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The IBM PCjr was IBMs first attempt to enter the home computer market. It was manufactured for IBM in Lewisburg, Tennessee by Teledyne, the PCjr is also the first PC compatible machine that supports page flipping for graphics operation. The fully programmable 16-color palette logic in the PCjr allows any set of colors from among the 16-color RGBI color set—the same set of colors available in CGA text modes—in each mode. That is, in graphics mode, each pixel color value can be independently mapped to any one of the 16 real RGBI colors. When the BIOS is used to set a video mode, it sets up the PCjr palette table to emulate the CGA color palette for that mode. Programs specifically written to use PCjr graphics can subsequently reprogram the palette table to use any colors desired, palette changes must be made during horizontal or vertical blanking periods of a video frame in order to avoid corrupting the display. However, the provision of a vertical retrace interrupt simplifies this, the video hardware of the PCjr is the first to offer a vertical retrace interrupt, or any raster interrupt. In general, the PCjr video hardware can do anything that a CGA can, but the design of hardware-control registers, the functions of the CGA Mode Register and Color Select Register are implemented in the VGA using different registers. The Status Register has been moved into the VGA and has significant differences. Those are the registers, the light pen registers. Alteration of other CRTC registers cannot be assumed to produce the results from the PCjr video system as from the CGA. The 6845 CRTC and the VGA together are responsible for refreshing the internal DRAM of the PCjr. Additional external DRAM, in sidecar expansion modules, is refreshed separately, not by the CRTC, the PCjrs sound is provided by a Texas Instruments SN76489 which can produce three square waves of varying amplitude and frequency along with a noise channel powered by a shift register. Only one sound source can be selected at a time, the sources cannot be mixed, IBM claimed that an average of two wait states are added, but the designers of the Tandy 1000 claimed that six was a more accurate figure. Therefore, under some circumstances the 8088 in the PCjr actually can run at the rated 4.77 MHz, for infrared wireless operation, it was powered by common AA cells. With a built-in RF modulator, the PCjr can send video and audio to a TV, the PCjr Color Display sold by IBM included an internal amplified speaker, being the only IBM monitor in the PC line to do so. Cartridge BASIC enhances the standard IBM BASIC with commands to support the new video, further reinforcing the home-friendly goal, the PCjr also introduced two ROM cartridge slots on the front of the unit, meant to load software quickly and easily. The cartridge are plugged in from the front, prompting the computer to automatically reboot, loading and saving data from cartridge software is possible via the floppy drive
24.
King's Quest I
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Kings Quest is an adventure game developed by Sierra On-Line and published originally for the IBM PCjr in 1984 and later for several other systems between 1984 and 1989. The game was titled simply as Kings Quest, the subtitle Quest for the Crown was added to the game box in the 1987 rerelease. It is as the first official part of the long Kings Quest series, in which a knight, Sir Graham. Designed by Roberta Williams, the game was revolutionary and highly influential in the evolution of the adventure game genre by introducing more detailed graphics. An official remake titled Roberta Williams Kings Quest I, Quest for the Crown was released in 1990, an unofficial remake titled Kings Quest I VGA was released by Tierra Entertainment in 2001. Kings Quest features interactive graphics that were an enormous leap over the mostly static rooms of previous graphical interactive fiction, prior to Kings Quest, the typical adventure game presented the player a pre-drawn scene, accompanied by a text description. The players interaction with the game consisted entirely of typing commands into the parser, then reading the parsers response. Kings Quest is the first adventure game to integrate graphical animation into the view of game world. Because of this, Kings Quest shifted the focus away from the scenery, to the players character. There are animation sequences for most player-world interactions reachable through the course of exploration. For example, there were different animation sequences showing Graham picking up objects from the ground, opening doors, and wading through water. Depth perspective was simulated as well, Graham could walk behind objects, causing his character to be hidden from view, or walk in front of them, obscuring the object. This attention to animation, while commonplace in action games. The original version of the game primarily on textual input as its interface. As the player used the keyboard to explore the game world, Kings Quest was innovative in its use of 16-color graphics for the IBM PC platform. Selecting RGB mode at the screen would instead result in the usual 320×200 CGA graphics mode limited to 4 colors. In this mode, dithering was employed to simulate extra colors, like previous static-screen Sierra adventures, Kings Quest used vector graphics rather than pre-rendered bitmaps which would take far too much disk space. Each screen is drawn line-by-line and painted in and this technique was used on all Sierra adventure games up to Kings Quest V
25.
King's Quest
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Kings Quest is a graphic adventure game series created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a series from the golden era of adventure games. Following the success of its first installments, the series was responsible for building the reputation of Sierra. Roberta Williams, co-founder and former co-owner of Sierra, designed all of the Kings Quest games until the reboot in 2015. The Kings Quest series chronicles the saga of the family of the Kingdom of Daventry through their various trials. The story takes place two generations and across many lands as the heroes and heroines fight evil witches and wizards. The exception is Kings Quest, Mask of Eternity, where the protagonist is Connor of Daventry, the later sequels have more elaborate story lines, more complicated puzzles, and more original and well-developed characters. Technologically, the series pioneered the use of animation and pseudo-3D environments in graphic adventure games, so that the character could, for example. The primary way in which characters solve puzzles and advance through the game is by using items found earlier in the game and stored in their inventory. Other puzzles include the mapping of labyrinths, deserts, or other places, solving riddles. It is important to use all ones characters senses to gather all the available, look, listen, smell, taste. The Kings Quest usually involves becoming a king or the adventures of members of the family of Daventry in other lands to save their kingdom. Often, the quest is given to the protagonist through the magic mirror. In Kings Quest II, Romancing the Throne, the quest is for King Graham to find his queen, through the magic mirror, retrieved in the first game, he learns of the beautiful Valanice captured by the witch Hagatha in the land of Kolyma. Gwydion begins as a peasant of Llewdor and a slave of the wizard Manannan, but ultimately discovers he is really the long lost son of the Graham, Kings Quest V, Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder. Returns to the King in his attempt to both his kingdom and family from Mordack, Hagathas and Manannans brother and also an evil magician. This is the first game which does not include the magic mirror, Kings Quest VI, Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow follows Prince Alexanders attempt to save his true love, marry her, and ultimately becoming the king of the Land of the Green Isles. The magic mirror pointed him in the direction to finding the kingdom
26.
The Black Cauldron (film)
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The Black Cauldron is a 1985 American animated dark fantasy adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in association with Silver Screen Partners II and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 25th Disney animated feature film, it is based on the first two books in The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, a series of five novels that are, in turn. The film is directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich, who had directed Disneys previous animated film The Fox and the Hound in 1981 and it features the voices of Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, John Byner, and John Hurt. It was the first Disney animated film to receive a PG rating as well as the first Disney animated film to feature computer-generated imagery, the film was released theatrically by Buena Vista Distribution on July 24,1985. Disney released the film for the first time on video in 1998. In the land of Prydain, Taran is an assistant pig-keeper on the farm of Caer Dallben. Dallben learns that the Horned King is searching for a relic known as the Black Cauldron, which is capable of creating an invincible army of undead warriors. Dallben fears the Horned King may try to steal his pig Hen Wen, which has oracular powers, Dallben directs Taran to take Hen Wen to safety, unfortunately, Tarans foolish daydreaming causes Hen Wen to be captured by the Horned Kings forces. Taran follows them to the Horned Kings stronghold, along the way, he encounters the small, pestering companion Gurgi, who joins Taran on his search. Frustrated by Gurgis antics, Taran leaves the former to sneak into the castle and rescues Hen Wen, a fellow captive named Princess Eilonwy frees Taran as she is trying to make her own escape. In the catacombs beneath the castle, Taran and Eilonwy discover the ancient burial chamber of a king and it contains magic that allows him effectively to fight the Horned Kings minions and so to fulfill his dream of heroism. Along with a prisoner, the comical, middle-aged bard Fflewddur Fflam. Upon discovering that Taran has escaped, the Horned King orders his dwarf companion Creeper to send the Gwythaints to follow Taran, following Hen Wens trail, the four stumble into the underground kingdom of the Fair Folk who reveal that Hen Wen is under their protection. When the cheerful, elderly King Eiddileg reveals that he knows where the cauldron is, orddu agrees to trade the cauldron for Tarans sword, and he reluctantly agrees, although he knows that to yield it will cost his chance for heroism. Before vanishing, the reveal that the cauldron is indestructible, and that its power can only be broken by someone who climbs in under his own free will. Although Taran feels foolish for aspiring to destroy the cauldron alone, his companions show their belief in him, suddenly, the celebration is interrupted by the Horned Kings soldiers who have finally reached the marshes themselves. They seize the cauldron and arrest everyone but Gurgi, and take their prisoners back to the castle, the Horned King uses the cauldron to raise the dead and his Cauldron-born army begins to pour out into the world. Gurgi manages to free the captives and Taran decides to cast himself into the cauldron and it consumes the Horned King in a tunnel of fire and blood, as well as destroying the castle, using up all its powers forever
27.
Mark Crowe
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Mark Crowe is an American video game designer, artist, and writer who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line and its subsidiary Dynamix. He later worked at Pipeworks Software as Studio Design Director, Crowe is best known for creating the Space Quest series, mostly with his fellow Guy from Andromeda, Scott Murphy. Crowe started working at Sierra in its Art Department, creating designs for boxes, Crowe worked on several Sierra games, including Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood and Kings Quest II, before collaborating with Scott Murphy on The Black Cauldron. Crowe was the Art Director for the game when Murphy was added as a programmer, during the development of The Black Cauldron, Murphy and Crowe discovered their mutual fondness for science fiction. Eventually, they created a concept to propose to Sierra founder Ken Williams that would eventually become the beginning scenes of Space Quest. First released in 1986, Space Quest was a hit among adventure game fans. During this time, Crowe also worked on games from other series, including Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, after Space Quest IV, Crowe moved to work at Eugene, Oregon, home of Sierra subsidiary Dynamix, where he developed Space Quest V without Murphys input. During his time at Dynamix, Crowe worked on other games. Following major layoffs at Sierra and Dynamix in 1999, Crowe joined some of his former co-workers from Dynamix at Pipeworks Software, at Pipeworks, Crowe worked on a number of games including Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters Melee and Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian. In 2012, Crowe left Pipeworks to join with Murphy and Chris Pope to start their own company called Guys from Andromeda, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, they began work on a project called SpaceVenture as a spiritual successor to the Space Quest series. In 2015, After Murphy needed some time away from the project for reasons, Crowe. The game sequence features a character called Cluck Yegger and is built to play a key role in the game, to bring more funding into the project, Crowe and Pope decided to make the Cluck Yegger sequence into a game and release it to the public. The game was named Cluck Yegger in Escape From The Planet of The Poultroid and it was released privately to backers of SpaceVenture on October 29. 2015, and then was greenlit on Steam and released publicly on November 9,2015, official website Mark Crowe on Facebook Mark Crowe profile at MobyGames
28.
Scott Murphy (video game designer)
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Scott Murphy is an American video game designer, programmer, and writer who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line. He is best known for creating the Space Quest series, mostly with his fellow Guy from Andromeda, Murphy started out in Sierras hometown of Oakhurst, California by cooking at a local restaurant. When his friend Doug Oldfield joined Sierra, Murphy discovered his love for adventure games, Murphy worked his way up from customer support to actually working on games. He first worked with Mark Crowe on The Black Cauldron, Crowe was the Art Director for the game when Murphy was added as a programmer. Murphy slowly became the programmer on the project, I put in a lot of free time over a summer spending nights out at his house debugging Black Cauldron. And then I ended up being the one working on it. After a while, Ken and Al Lowe bailed out on me, so I got Black Cauldron shipping, and I was hooked. During the development of The Black Cauldron, Murphy and Crowe discovered their mutual fondness for science fiction, eventually, they created a four-room concept to propose to Sierra founder Ken Williams that would eventually become the beginning scenes of Space Quest. First released in 1986, Space Quest was a hit among adventure game fans. During this time, Murphy also worked on games from other series, including Kings Quest, EcoQuest, after Space Quest IV, Crowe moved to work at Eugene, Oregon, home of Sierra subsidiary Dynamix, where he developed Space Quest V without Murphys input. Space Quest returned to Murphy after Sierra came to him with a Space Quest 6 that had started by Josh Mandel before he was ejected from the project. Murphy had been fired a month and a prior, and as he had no formal education beyond high school, took up odd jobs. In 2012, Murphy and Crowe came back together, and were joined by Chris Pope to start their own company called Guys from Andromeda, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, they began work on a project called SpaceVenture as a spiritual successor to the Space Quest series. Official website Scott Murphy profile at MobyGames
29.
Space Quest I
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Space Quest, Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter, commonly known as Space Quest I, is a graphic adventure game released in October 1986 by Sierra On-Line. It is the first game in the Space Quest series and it quickly became a hit, selling in excess of 100,000 copies. Total sales are believed to be around 200,000 to date, Space Quest was the brainchild of Sierra programmers Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, who had worked on prior titles like Kings Quest II, but had not designed their own game before. According to Murphy, at time, everything at Sierra was so somber and had an almost medieval atmosphere. So we decided Why not make a fun, silly game, players of the original game are never told the heros name, but are instead asked to enter their own. The default name of Roger Wilco — a reference to the radio communication, Roger. Roger is a member of the crew on board the scientific spaceship Arcada. Roger emerges from an on-duty nap in a closet to find that the ship has been boarded and seized by the sinister Sariens. Using a keycard that he found from the body of a crew member, he finds his way to an escape pod. After crash-landing, he himself in the dry and barren wasteland of the planet Kerona. After making his way through the desert and a system of underground caves, after succeeding in this task, he returns to the alien with proof of his success in the form of a piece of Orats flesh. As a reward, the alien lets him into an underground complex inhabited by aliens, and provides Roger with a skimmer. The alien tells Roger there is a town that he may travel to in order to find a way off the planet, after navigating a rocky section of the planet, Roger reaches the town of Ulence Flats and goes to the local bar. By playing a slot machine, Roger wins enough money to buy a spaceship. He overhears from a bar customer the location of the Sariens spaceship, the Deltaur and he then finds his way to the Star Generator and programs it to self-destruct, escaping the ship just before it explodes. At the end of the game, Rogers efforts are rewarded when he receives the Golden Mop as a token of gratitude from the people of Xenon. The game was created using Sierras AGI engine and featured a pseudo-3D environment, allowing the character to move in front of, the Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari ST and Mac versions of the game offered basic mouse support for movement as well. The game had a 160×200 resolution displaying 16 colors, just as Kings Quest adapted the text-adventure puzzle games set in a medieval world to a visual display, Space Quest did the same for the space puzzle game
30.
Space Quest
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Space Quest is a series of six comic science fiction computer adventure games released between 1986 and 1995. The games follow the adventures of a janitor named Roger Wilco as he campaigns through the galaxy for truth, justice. The series featured a sense of humor heavily reliant on puns. Roger Wilco, a loser, is often depicted as the underdog who repeatedly saves the universe – only to be either ignored or punished for violating minor regulations in the process. Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, who had worked together on the Sierra game The Black Cauldron. They also wanted it to star a janitor, Murphy commented that Sierra was in a mindset where everything was medieval and it was all fairly serious. I wanted to do a game that was more fun and we even liked the idea of fun death. I mean, if the player is gonna die or fail, so we came up with the idea of making death amusing. Lets face it, most adventure games involve a good deal of frustration for the player, but we felt that if we made failure fun, to an extent, you might have players actually going back and looking for new ways to die, just to see what happens. Crowe noted, We wanted to do two things for the player, One, we wanted him to feel as if he were in a movie, where he could just sort of kick back and enjoy the scenery. We also wanted the player to feel as if he really was the character on the screen, although skeptical, Ken Williams gave the idea a shot. Scott and Mark created a demo, which ended up becoming the first four rooms of Space Quest I. Both Space Quests I and II were developed in Adventure Game Interpreter, Space Quest III was written in Sierras Creative Interpreter, which had 3-D capabilities. Space Quest IV marked an evolution in terms of graphics by increasing the number of colors from 16 to 256 colors, Roger Wilco is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Space Quest series, introduced in Space Quest, The Sarien Encounter in 1986. Roger is a bumbling if well-meaning everyman character, a janitor who has a tendency to attract trouble and stumble into dangerous or interesting situations. Despite saving the universe on multiple occasions, he seems unable to gain any respect from society, the characters name is a reference to voice procedure, one of many puns in the series. The first two Space Quest games allowed the player to choose the name, which defaulted to Roger Wilco if left blank. This feature was removed in the remake of the first game
31.
Chuck Benton
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Softporn Adventure is a comedic, adult-oriented text adventure game produced for the Apple II in 1981. The game was created by Charles Benton and released by On-Line Systems, Chuck Benton, a Massachusetts native, had a difficult time finding a publisher for Softporn until Ken Williams discovered it at a trade show and decided to give the game a chance. In the game, the searches for certain items that will allow him to win the affections of three beautiful women. Benton claimed that parts of the game were based on his own life, Softporn Adventure was originally written for the Apple II in Applesoft BASIC in 1981 by programmer Chuck Benton. Benton programmed the game as an exercise to teach himself programming on the Apple II, bentons friends enjoyed the game and encouraged him to self-publish it. Sometime in 1981, Benton was selling his game at a show where he encountered Ken Williams, co-founder. Williams eventually decided to release the game as part of On-Line Systems catalog, the games box cover and advertisement features three nude women and a male waiter in a hot tub, shot at Ken and Roberta Williamss home. The ad was considered scandalous at the time because of the degree of nudity displayed. The photographer was Brian Wilkinson. Wilkinson shot several dozen takes before arriving at the image used for the cover. The photo accompanying Times article was of the Softporn Adventure advertisement, united Press International also covered the games release. Because computer stores did not want to only one game from On-Line they purchased other software with it. Bentons own romantic life also reportedly improved, due to the ongoing controversy, Softporn was withdrawn from sale after only a few months. Customers asked for a version for women, but Benton could not find a female collaborator and he worked on other Sierra games until leaving the company in 1985 to found Technology Systems, Inc. Softalk was the first publication to run an advertisement, the letters-to-the-editor section of the magazine ran numerous pieces written by readers who were offended by the ad on moral or anti-pornography grounds. These letters were avidly responded to, however, by readers who supported representations of sexuality or simply did not have conservative social views. Lowe then used the puzzles of Softporn Adventure for creating Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Lowe reportedly came up with the name Leisure Suit Larry after remarking that Softporn was so outdated that it ought to be wearing a leisure suit. In 1991, Softporn Adventure was also ported by designer Gary Thompson to MS-DOS for the PC, Thompson loved Softporn Adventure in 1981, so he printed out the source code and archived it. In the late 1980s he re-designed, and re-wrote it for the PC, in 1991, after purchasing a copy of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, he realized it was the same game
32.
Leisure Suit Larry
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Leisure Suit Larry is an adult-themed video game series created by Al Lowe. It was published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009, then by Codemasters from 2009, the games follow Larry Laffer, a balding, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing man in his 40s. The game play revolves around him attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to seduce attractive women, the Larry games were one of Sierras most popular game series during the genres heyday, when it was first released in the mid-1980s. The series contains the games produced by Sierra that contain significant sexual themes. In general, the follow the escapades of Larry Laffer as he attempts to convince a variety of nubile women to sleep with him. A common link between the games are Larrys explorations of luxurious and cosmopolitan hotels, ships, beaches, resorts, the character of Larry Laffer was voiced by Jan Rabson. At most, the raunchier moments were usually hidden as Easter eggs, things became racier again toward the end of the series, particularly in the final installment, Love for Sail. Leisure Suit Larry, Magna Cum Laude, a version of the series, featured a different protagonist. It was developed by High Voltage Software and released by Sierra in 2004, in 2007, Vivendi Universal Games announced a mobile remake of Love for Sail. In 2008, Sierra Entertainment announced plans to release Leisure Suit Larry and it was developed by Team17, and the publishing rights were offered to Codemasters, who published the game in 2009. Larry Lovage, the protagonist of Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, was voiced by Tim Dadabo, in June 2011, Replay Games announced on their blog that they had acquired a license for the Leisure Suit Larry series. Replay Games planned to re-release the titles it licensed and it was also announced that the series creator, Al Lowe, would be involved with the development of the new releases. The HD game, titled Leisure Suit Larry, Reloaded was originally announced to be released in late 2012, in April 2013, Lowe said that early development had begun on a remake of Larry 2, Josh Mandel later confirmed the games early development in a Kickstarter update. Leisure Suit Larry, Love for Sail, other sources claim that it was nothing but an internal office prank. The franchises installments were numbered as if this installment had been published, two official reasons were given by Al Lowe for the cancellation of Leisure Suit Larry 4. The first was that Sierra had begun work on an installment for The Sierra Network. This completed a relatively cohesive trilogy, and was a dead-end for a new story arc and it became one of softwares big jokes. The absence of the floppy disks was introduced as an element in the sequel to explain how Larry, as a computer generated character
33.
Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel
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Police Quest, In Pursuit of the Death Angel is an adventure game produced by Jim Walls for Sierra On-Line, and originally released in 1987 built on their AGI. It was remade in 1992 using 256 color VGA graphics and the SCI engine, which improved the appearance and audio of the game. Police Quest, In Pursuit of The Death Angel, is a game whose gameplay is centered on interacting with the environment to resolve a series of scenarios. These largely revolve around typical police work, such as securing crime scenes and recovering stolen vehicles, the lack of traditional puzzles made the game stand out at the time of release, although it also resulted in some criticism of the dry police work. Unlike many games of this genre, the style of play depends largely on a strict adherence to police rules. Failure to abide to proper procedure typically leads to the player being penalized on points, Police Quest, In Pursuit of the Death Angel is based in the fictional town of Lytton, California. The player character is Sonny Bonds, an officer with the Lytton Police Department, Police Quest 2 includes conflicting dates for events of the first game. According to Police Quest 3, the events of the first game occurred in 1987, Police Quest 1 is stated as taking place in 1992 in the remade version of the game, despite Police Quest 3 being set in 1991. The exact dates vary between each game, Police Quest, In Pursuit of the Death Angel casts the player as Sonny Bonds, a police officer assigned to traffic duty in the fictional town of Lytton, California. During his regular patrol, Bonds is sent to investigate a car crash, upon investigation of the accident, Bonds discovers that the deceased driver of the vehicle has been shot in the head. After Sergeant Dooley arrives on the scene and takes control of the investigation, the shift finishes and Bonds visits The Blue Room, a local hangout for off-duty police officers, where he talks with his friend Jack Cobb about her daughter Kathys drug problem. After returning to duty, Bonds locates the stolen Cadillac and pulls it over, with the help of Officer Jack, Bonds arrests the driver, Jason Taselli, and identifies the car as the stolen vehicle with a new light blue paint job. Further investigations reveal drugs which help to link Taselli with the murder of Lonny West, partly due to his work on the case, Bonds is promoted to Acting Detective with the Narcotics division. Further investigations reveal the name of the lord to be Jessie Bains, The Death Angel. After learning about Kathys death, the department vows to bring Bains to justice, going undercover, Bonds infiltrates the gambling ring at the Hotel Delphoria with the help of prostitute Marie Wilkins, and is taken to a card game with Jessie Bains. Gaining Bains trust, Bonds is taken to Bains hotel room where Bonds calls in his backup, jesse discovers Sonnys true identity but before he can kill him, the backup arrives and guns Bains down. The game is the most realistic of those developed by Sierra by the late eighties and it was released for the IBM PC, Apple II, Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple IIGS. A SCI1.1 enhanced version in 256 color VGA was released in 1992, computer Gaming World recommended Police Quest, praising some of the graphics as the most terrific this reviewer has ever seen
34.
Police Quest and SWAT
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Police Quest are a series of police simulation video games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1998. The first five were adventure simulation games, the first three of which were designed by former police officer Jim Walls, the fourth and later titles were designed by former LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates. The first three games were produced by police officer Jim Walls and follow the adventures of Sonny Bonds. Jim Walls makes a appearance in each game, typically in the introduction. It is suggested that he may be each games narrator, assigned to traffic duty, Sonny investigates what appears to be a simple car crash but turns out to be a homicide. Relieved by his supervisor, Sergeant Dooley, Sonny goes on a coffee break with a fellow officer. He gives a traffic citation to a driver, single-handedly faces a tough gang of drunken bikers. As the game progresses, he advances from patrol officer to temporary narcotics detective to undercover agent in hope of tracking down a drug dealer named Jessie Bains. In order to find Jessie Bains, Sonny enlists the help of his high school sweetheart, Sweet Cheeks Marie. It was released for MS-DOS, Apple II, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, a SCI1.1 enhanced remake in 256 color VGA was released in 1992, which was also the first game released in the series not to feature dead ends. Police Quest II, The Vengeance Released in 1988 and running on the then-current SCI0 engine, after arresting Jessie Bains, Bonds is permanently promoted to the homicide division. He begins dating Marie Wilkans, who helped him in his work in exchange for the dismissal of prostitution charges against her as Sweet Cheeks Marie. A dark shadow is cast over Sonnys happy life, however, with the help of his partner Keith, Bonds must protect his girlfriends life as well as his own while pursuing The Death Angel once again. Despite Sonnys efforts, Bains kills several people who were involved in his arrest, Sonny pursues Bains to Steelton, the current home of Donald Colby, a reformed drug pusher from the original Police Quest. Police Quest II is notably more mature than the first title in the series and relies more on proper procedure. Police Quest III, The Kindred Sonny and Marie are married following Bains death, promoted once more, Sonny now has to deal with rampant crime as a drug cartel begins operating in Lytton and evidence of a satanic cult starts to appear. When Marie is stabbed in a parking lot, Sonnys police work becomes personal. Sonny must deal with a partner with questionable ethics as well as patterns in crime to find his next lead
35.
Quest for Glory
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Quest for Glory is a series of hybrid adventure/role-playing video games, which were designed by Corey and Lori Ann Cole. The series was created in the Sierra Creative Interpreter, a toolset developed at Sierra specifically to assist with adventure game development. The series combines humor, puzzle elements, themes and characters borrowed from various legends, puns, the series was originally titled Heros Quest. However, Sierra failed to trademark the name and this decision meant that all future games in the series used the new name. Lori Cole pitched Quest for Glory to Sierra as a, rich, narrative-driven, the series consisted of five games, each of which followed directly upon the events of the last. New games frequently referred to previous entries in the series, often in the form of cameos by recurring characters, the objective of the series is to transform the player character from an average adventurer to a hero by completing non-linear quests. The game also was revolutionary in its character import system and this allowed players to import their individual character, including the skills and wealth s/he had acquired, from one game to the next. Hybrids by their gameplay and themes, the games feature serious stories leavened with humor throughout, there are real dangers to face, and true heroic feats to perform, but silly details and overtones creep in. Cheap word play is particularly frequent, to the point that the games ending refers to itself as the heros latest set of adventures. The games have recurring story elements, for example, each installment in the series requires the player to create a dispel potion. The games include a number of eggs, including a number of allusions to other Sierra games. For example, if a player types pick nose in the first game, if their skill is high enough. You now have an open nose, if the skill is too low, the player could insert the lock pick too far, killing himself. Another example is Dr. Cranium, an allusion to The Castle of Dr. Brain, in the fourth game. Each game draws its inspiration from a different culture and mythology, each game varies somewhat from the tradition it is derived from, for example, Baba Yaga, a character borrowed from Slavic folklore, appears in the first game which is based on German mythology. The second game, which uses Middle Eastern folklore, introduces several Arab, characters from every game and genre in the series reappear in the fourth and fifth games. Many CRPG enthusiasts consider the Quest for Glory series to be among the best in the genre, the website Polygon and the Kotaku blog have characterised the game as a precursor to modern day RPGs. Fraser Brown of the Destructoid blog considers the games, one of the greatest adventure series of all time, rowan Kaizer of the blog Engadget credits the games hybrid adventure and roleplaying systems for the series success
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