What was the first video game published by ESP Software?
Grandia (video game)
In March 1999, Game Art's Japanese publisher ESP Software showcased a PlayStation version of "Grandia" at that year's Tokyo Game Show expo, along with confirmation that the game would be released in English for the first time in North America by Sony Computer Entertainment America. Working Designs, which had previously worked with Game Arts on bringing their "Lunar" games to the region, had expressed interest in publishing the game, but were ultimately unable to secure the rights. New features for the PlayStation version included support for the system's DualShock analog control sticks and vibration function, as well as compatibility with Sony's Japanese-only PocketStation peripheral, which allows players to download game data on a portable device for use in a special mini-game. Although the company had expressed interest in bringing the game to the PlayStation as early as 1998, technical problems originally prevented the title from being ported to the system. Game Arts was later able to release the game with a slight loss in frame rate and a marginal decrease in video effects the following June. The North American version was originally announced by Sony as a summer release during the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, but was pushed back to the following October. "Grandia" was later released for the PlayStation in Europe in 2000 by Ubisoft.
Sierra Championship Boxing
"Sierra Championship Boxing" was the first PC game Evryware developed. The game was initially going to be published by Microsoft, but Microsoft decided at the last minute that the home market wasn't big enough yet. Evryware's contact at Microsoft told Ken Williams at Sierra On-Line about the game; Sierra offered Evryware a contract and published the game in 1983.
Silverball
Silverball is a 1993 pinball video game developed by Digital Extremes and Epic MegaGames and published by MicroLeague. It is basically a set of "Epic Pinball" tables distributed through retail. Silverball was the first set of pinball games created by James Schmalz and paved the way for the development of "Epic Pinball".
List of Sierra Entertainment video games
Sierra Entertainment is a software label which publishes games from indie developers. Founded in 1980 by Ken and Roberta Williams, it developed and published a large variety of video games, including a number of best-selling games and series, for various platforms between 1980 and 2008. After 2004, Sierra developed no new games but worked strictly as a publisher. In 2014, the brand was resurrected as an indie publisher by owners Activision Blizzard.
ESPN Baseball Tonight
It was the first in a series of ESPN-themed sports games. The next to be released was "ESPN Sunday Night NFL".
Star Wars
The first officially licensed "Star Wars" electronic game was Kenner's 1979 table-top "Star Wars" Electronic Battle Command. In 1982, Parker Brothers published the first "Star Wars" video game for the Atari 2600, "". It was followed in 1983 by Atari's rail shooter arcade game "Star Wars", which used vector graphics and was based on the Death Star trench run scene from the 1977 film. The next game, "" (1984), used more traditional raster graphics, with the following game "" (1985) returning to vector graphics.
Turbo Esprit
Turbo Esprit is a video game published by Durell Software in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. The game was very detailed and advanced for its time, featuring car indicator lights, pedestrians, traffic lights, and a view of the car's interior controls. It may also feature the earliest example of a free-roaming city environment in a computer game. "Turbo Esprit" was the first free-roaming driving game, and has been cited as a major influence on the later "Grand Theft Auto" series.
FASA
The highly successful "BattleTech" line led to a series of video games, some of the first virtual reality gaming suites, called Virtual World (created by a subdivision of the company known at the time of development as ESP, an acronym for "Extremely Secret Project") and a Saturday-morning .
Radar Scope
Contrary to popular belief, it was not Nintendo's first arcade video game. Prior Nintendo games include "EVR Race" (released only in Japan), "Computer Othello" (released only in Japan), "Sheriff" (released in the U.S. by Exidy as "Bandido"), "Space Fever" (released only in Japan), and "Space Firebird" (released by Nintendo and Gremlin Industries in the U.S.).
Ape Escape
"Ape Quest" was officially released in 2008 exclusively to the US PSN store, and was the first game to be developed by Sony Computer Entertainment America. It was then published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in May 2008 and was finally released in March 2009 in Japan. It was the first game in the series to be a PSN-only title, excluding Asia, where it received a physical release. In 2009, a game titled "Ape Escape" was announced along with the PlayStation Move. Fans and critics speculated that it was the fourth entry in the series, after Sony's 2006 advertisement. In Q3 2010, "PlayStation Move: Ape Escape" was officially announced under the party genre, and with a different name for every region. It was released in Japan in December 2010, Asia in January 2011, and the UK and Europe in mid-2012. In the US, the title was only made available on the PSN store. After the release of "PlayStation Move: Ape Escape", no titles were announced in 2012, making it the first year since 2002 that no "Ape Escape" title had been released and the first year in the history of the franchise that no title had been announced within each region. Despite this, Spike is a character in "PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale", which was released in November 2012.One of the main story elements of each of the main series involves a white-haired monkey named Specter obtaining a helmet known as the Peak Point Helmet (Pipo Helmet for short), which boosts his intelligence. After equipping an army of monkeys with Pipo Helmets, and using an enhanced helmet for himself, Specter sends his monkey army to take over the world, and Space. It is up to the game's protagonists, equipped with various gadgets, to capture the monkeys and restore order to the world.
ESPN NBA 2K5
ESPN NBA 2K5 is a basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by both Sega and Global Star Software. It was released in September 2004 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox in North America, and February 2005 in Europe. The sixth installment in the "NBA 2K" series, it is the successor to "ESPN NBA Basketball", and the predecessor to "NBA 2K6". Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons is the cover athlete; this marks the first time in the series that a player other than Allen Iverson was featured as a cover athlete. It is the last "NBA 2K" game to be released by Sega before the company sold Visual Concepts to Take-Two Interactive, forming 2K Sports, (the ESPN branding would be dropped, making later releases known as simply "NBA 2Kx" and later "NBA 2Kxx".)
ESPN NFL 2K5
"ESPN NFL 2K5" was the first in the "2K" series priced at $19.99 the day it shipped, much lower than market leader "Madden NFL" at $49.99. This greatly reduced "Madden" sales that year; one EA Sports developer recalled that "[i]t scared the hell out of us". EA reduced "Madden NFL 2005"s price to $29.95. In December 2004 EA Sports acquired an exclusive rights agreement with the NFL and NFLPA to be the sole creator of NFL video games. The deal terminated 2K Sports production of any further NFL games. The ensuing season, Madden 2006, saw pricing returned to the $49.99 MSRP.
Games by Apollo
Games by Apollo Inc. (also known as Apollo) was a third-party developer of games for the Atari 2600 video game system, based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded in October 1981 by Pat Roper as a subsidiary of his National Career Consultants (NCC). Apollo's first title was "Skeet Shoot", and neither it nor the ten games that followed caught on, and the company was one of the first to declare bankruptcy as a result of the North American video game crash of 1983.
Entertainment Software Publishing
The first consideration was that after the debut of the 'next generation consoles' - the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation, factors such as increased visual detail and higher quality music resulted in a sudden increase in costs to developing studios. This mainly burdened studios that only had mid-level funding. The GD-NET companies proposed a plan that would allow them to focus their resources on development rather than production and promotion. They created ESP as a sales and public relations outlet.
Star Ship
Star Ship is a first-person space combat simulator video game programmed by Bob Whitehead and published by Atari, Inc. for its Video Computer System (later known as the Atari 2600). The game was one of the nine launch titles offered when the Atari 2600 launched on September 11, 1977. Based on the Atari arcade game "Starship 1", it was the first space-related game developed for the Atari VCS. The re-branded Sears TeleGames version is titled Outer Space.
Space Race (video game)
Space Race is an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc. and released on July 16, 1973. It was the second game by the company after "Pong" (1972), which marked the beginning of the commercial video game industry. In the game, two players each control a rocket ship, with the goal of being the first to move their ship from the bottom of the screen to the top. Along the way are asteroids, which the players must avoid. "Space Race" was the first racing arcade video game and the first game with a goal of crossing the screen while avoiding obstacles.
ESPN Inc.
On September 7, 1979, ESPN cable channel went on the air with 24-hours of programming on the weekends and limited hours during the week. 625 cable system affiliates were signed up at launch and they had 1 million household subscribed total (out of 20 million households with cable). The channel's first game featured the Milwaukee Schlitzes and the Kentucky Bourbons slow-pitch world series softball.
Ape Escape
Ape Escape is a series of video games developed primarily by SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, starting with "Ape Escape" for PlayStation in 1999. The series often incorporates ape-related humour, unique gameplay, and a wide variety of pop culture references; it is also notable for being the first game to make the DualShock or Dual Analog controller mandatory.
ESP Guitars
In 1985, George Lynch discovered ESP while on tour in Tokyo. Lynch walked into an ESP shop looking for a replacement neck and learned that ESP also built custom guitars. As a result, his famous ESP Kamikaze was made and ESP released George Lynch's Kamikaze as its first signature model. ESP soon introduced the M1 Standard, MI Custom, Horizon Custom, and the Surveyor bass into the market.
List of BioWare video games
BioWare was given the opportunity to work on another popular intellectual property, "Star Wars", when LucasArts approached them at the turn of the millennium.
"" released first on Microsoft's Xbox video game console in 2003. While it was not BioWare's first console game, it helped the studio break into the console market since Microsoft Game Studios wanted to partner with them on console exclusive titles, such as "Jade Empire" (2005) and "Mass Effect" (2007). In March 2006, BioWare expanded their operations and opened a new studio in Austin, Texas, to helm the development of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In October 2007, American publisher Electronic Arts (EA) announced that it had acquired BioWare. Under EA, BioWare established the fantasy RPG series "Dragon Age", continued to release games in their science fiction RPG series "Mass Effect", and opened a new studio in Montreal. They also revisited the "Star Wars" franchise with BioWare Austin's MMORPG "" (2011).
Engine Software
Engine Software BV was founded in 1995 by several friends who met and worked together previously in the active Dutch demo scene for the MSX home computer. After seeing their first game, developed for the Super NES, unreleased, the company was asked by fellow game developer Vicarious Visions to support them in the development of several Game Boy Color games. The relation between Vicarious Visions and Engine Software lasted another generation of handheld consoles, the Game Boy Advance, after which the companies each went their own way. Engine Software still often works or has worked with other developers, most notably A2M, 1st Playable Productions, and PopCap Games. In 2011 the studio switched from being a handheld developer to a full multi-platform development studio developing games for iPad, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation Vita. In 2012 Engine Software was signed by 505 Games to bring the highly rated indie title Terraria to consoles, followed by a Vita release of the same game in December 2013.
Early history of video games
That game was "Computer Space", developed by Bushnell and Ted Dabney. They had found the Data General Nova, a US$4,000 computer that they thought would be powerful enough to run four games of "Spacewar" at once; the computer turned out to not actually be powerful enough for the project. While investigating the concept of replacing some of the computer with purpose-built hardware, however, the pair discovered that making a system explicitly for running such a game, rather than general programs, would be much less expensive: as low as $100. By 1971 when Bushnell met with Pitts and Tuck, a prototype version had been successfully displayed for a short time in August 1971 in a local bar, the design was nearly finished, and the pair had founded a company around it called Syzygy. Bushnell had also found a manufacturer for the game, Nutting Associates, who would make the final game cabinets and sell them to distributors. Bushnell felt that "Galaxy Game" was not a real competitor to "Computer Space", due to its high price. Pitts and Tuck believed, however, that despite the economic argument their game was superior, as they felt that "Galaxy Game" was a true expansion of "Spacewar", while "Computer Space" just a pale imitation. Some players at the time, however, believed "Galaxy Game" to actually be just a version of "Spacewar!". "Galaxy Game"s prototype installation was very popular, though at a low price-per-game, and the pair developed a second version to display at the same location; they were never able to enter production, though, as they eventually had to abandon the idea after spending US$65,000 developing it due to the high cost and lack of business plan.
Around the same time as "Galaxy Game"s prototype installation, "Computer Space" was released. It was the first coin-operated video game to be commercially sold (and the first widely available video game of any kind). While it did well in its initial locations near college campuses, it performed very poorly in bars and arcades where pinball and other arcade games were typically placed; while it was commercially successful and made over US$1,000,000, it did not meet the high expectations of Nutting, who had expected to sell more than 1,500 units. Bushnell and Dabney immediately started work on another game, using the same television set design as "Computer Space", as well as founding their own company Atari, Inc. to back their projects. While initially this game was to be a driving game that Bushnell planned to design, their first employee, Allan Alcorn, took a prototype ping-pong game suggestion of Bushnell's and expanded on it to create a game the company immediately seized on. They were unable to find a manufacturer, but on the evidence of the success of their prototype installation, decided to produce the game cabinets themselves. "Pong" was released in 1972, a year after "Computer Space". It was immensely commercially successful, selling over 8,000 units. It inspired copycat games to be sold in America, Europe, and Japan, and led to the popularization of the medium.
Data East
Data East entered the video game console market in 1986 with the release of "B-Wings" for the Famicom. Although this was the first title that Data East published for a console, it wasn't the first game the company developed for the home market as it had earlier designed the Famicom ports of "BurgerTime" and "Tag Team Wrestling"; both of which were programmed by Sakata SAS Co., Ltd and released by Namco. In North America, the subsidiary Data East USA was the first third-party company to release video games for the NES. Data East would become a licensee for several home systems, notably the Famicom/NES (1986), PC Engine (1988), Game Boy (1990), Mega Drive (1991), Super Nintendo (1991), Neo Geo (1993), Sega Saturn (1995), PlayStation (1996), WonderSwan (1999) and NeoGeo Pocket Color (1999). Several of Data East's video games series, such as "Tantei Jingūji Saburō", "Glory of Hercules" and "Metal Max", were created specifically for home consoles.
EA Sports
In 2005, EA Sports and ESPN signed a massive 15-year deal for ESPN to be integrated into EA Sports video games from 2K Sports and Sega. EA's use of the ESPN license has steadily increased over the early life of the deal. EA's early usage of the ESPN license began with ESPN Radio and a sports ticker in titles like Madden NFL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and NCAA Baseball and Football. The ESPN integration now includes streaming podcasts, text articles (including content only available previously to ESPN Insider subscribers), and ESPN Motion video (including such programs as "Pardon the Interruption").
Emo Ray vs the Intergalactic Teddy Bears
Emo Ray VS The Intergalactic Teddy Bears is an open world episodic video game which was released on November 28, 2012 in North America. The title is Sony PlayStation Home's first full-length game and was developed by American studio Heavy Water Entertainment and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. The soundtrack for the game was created by rock band So Long Davey!.
Joel Billings
Joel Billings approached Avalon Hill to publish a computer game called "Computer Bismarck", and when they turned him down he decided to found his own company to publish the game. Billings started SSI in 1979 just after finishing college, with a $1000 initial investment. The first product was "Computer Bismarck", which he co-wrote. Designed for the TRS-80 and Apple II home computers, it is viewed as the first computer war game ever published. It sold 7000 copies, considered reasonably successful for its time. The company was an industry leader for years in war games and role-playing video games.
Eipix Entertainment
Parallel to its work in the HOPA genre, Eipix also develops and publishes a variety of games". Free the Witch", the first Eipix-developed free-to-play game, was released in 2016 through Big Fish Games. Later in the same year, Eipix also became a self-publishing company, independently releasing its own games for a variety of mobile platforms. The company's first independent release was the free-to-play game "Hoppy Land", published on the iTunes app store on August 31, 2016, followed by "Nom Nom" on October 4, 2016 and "Spiny Core" on December 16, 2016.
Emiliano Sciarra
In 1988 he published his first game: a shoot 'em up videogame for the Commodore 64 called "Ciuffy" (Systems Editoriale), created using the software "SEUCK" by Sensible Software.
ESPN X Games Skateboarding
ESPN X Games Skateboarding is a video game developed by Konami for the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance. The PlayStation 2 version was released in North America on August 13, 2001, in Japan on September 20, 2001, and in Europe on January 25, 2002; the Game Boy Advance version was released in North America on September 12, 2001, in Japan on October 25, and in Europe on November 16. A release was planned in Australia, but was ultimately canceled. The game was released as part of Konami's ESPN The Games brand.Aside from the practice, multiplayer, and free skate modes, players can participate in an X Games competition in either street or vert. In X Games, players attempt to earn the highest score within a one-minute time limit. One of the playable levels is inspired by the halfpipe used in X Games Six. The game also has an arcade mode, where players roam levels and complete various goals, and collecting spinning X Games logos, which unlocks other playable levels.
Computer Space
At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers and technicians with access to computers, primarily at research institutions and large companies. One of these games was "Spacewar!", created in 1962 for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer by Steve Russell and others in the programming community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The two-player game has the players engage in a dogfight between two spaceships, set against the backdrop of a starfield, with a central star exerting gravitational force upon the ships. The game was copied to several of the early minicomputer installations in American academic institutions after its initial release, making it potentially the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. "Spacewar" was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time, later migrating to early microcomputer systems. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of "Spacewar" blossoms spontaneously wherever there is a graphics display connected to a computer," and contributor Martin Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT". Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: the PDP-1 was priced at US$120,000 and only 55 were ever sold, most without a monitor, which prohibited the original "Spacewar" or any game of the time from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. The original developers of "Spacewar" considered ways to monetize the game, but saw no options given the high price of the computer on which it ran. The first commercial video game based on "Spacewar" would not be released until "Computer Space" in 1971.
Phoenix Games
Phoenix Games was a partnership between Dan Bress and Phil Edgren, and was a successor to the company Little Soldier Games, to which Bress and Edgren had both contributed before it was shut down. Ed Konstant of Little Soldier Games wrote a few products for Phoenix Games, including "The Book of Fantasy Miniatures" (1978) and the open-ended deduction game "Elementary Watson" (1978), whose printing was paid for by Gamescience in return for rights to the Little Soldier back catalog. Some transitional books between the companies, such as "The Book of Shamans" (1978) were published under the Little Soldier Games label, which was itself listed as a division of Phoenix Games. Phoenix Games continued on with Little Soldier's general fantasy role-playing game publications, but they also did broader work in the RPG field than Little Soldier had, supplementing their generic fantasy supplements with generic science-fiction supplements. Kerry Lloyd got his first book, a "generic fantasy" adventure called "The Mines of Keridav" (1979), published through Maryland game company Phoenix Games. Phoenix Games disappeared before the sequel, "The Demon Pits of Caeldo", could be published, so Lloyd decided to start his own gaming company, Gamelords. Phoenix Games also published the fantasy role-playing game supplements "The Book of Shamans" by Ed Lipsett and "The Book of Treasure" by Phil Edgren in 1978, and the fantasy adventure "The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey" by R. Norman Carter in 1979. Phoenix Games also published Ed Lipsett's series of science-fiction role-playing game supplements "Spacefarer's Guide to Planets: Sector One" (1978), "" (1979), "Spacefarer's Guide to Alien Monsters" (1979), and "Spacefarer's Guide to Alien Races" (1979). Lipsett's books led to his "Star Quest" (1983) game, Japan's first entirely original RPG.
Christian video game
Starting in the late 1980s the unlicensed game developer Color Dreams using the name of Wisdom Tree, developed the first Christian video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, called "Bible Adventures". It featured Bible accounts such as Noah's Ark, Baby Moses, and David and Goliath. It was released in 1991 to Christian bookstores.
List of Atari, Inc. games
In 1975 Atari released Home Pong, its first of several "Pong"-based dedicated video game consoles, and in 1977 released its first home video game console, the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed the Atari 2600). From that point onward Atari developed both arcade games and console games, and in 1979 added games for their first home computers, the Atari 400 and 800. Atari produced a second home video game console in 1982, the Atari 5200, and four more home computer versions. Beginning in Summer 1981, Atari published the Atari Program Exchange, a quarterly mail-order catalog of software written for Atari computers by external developers which Atari then distributed to customers. In May 1983, Atari started the Atarisoft division, which produced ports of games by Atari and others for non-Atari home computers. In July 1984, as a result of falling sales due to the video game crash of 1983, Atari, Inc. was split apart by Warner Communications; the arcade division continued as a subsidiary of Warner under the name Atari Games, while the console and computer games divisions were sold off as Atari Corporation.
Spider-Man in video games
"" was released in 1991 for coin-operated arcades. Developed by Sega on Sega System 32 hardware, the game is a four-player, platform beat-'em-up similar to Data East's "Captain America and the Avengers" released the same year. The player plays as Spider-Man, Black Cat, Namor the Sub-Mariner, or Hawkeye, with the game divided into four acts.
"" developed by B.I.T.S. and released in 1992 for the Nintendo Entertainment System was the first game featuring Spider-Man on the NES. It was an action platform game that involved Spider-Man swinging across various levels to defeat each one of the Sinister Six; Electro, Sandman, Mysterio, Hobgoblin, Vulture and Doctor Octopus. Ports to the Master System and Game Gear followed in 1993.
ESPN Extreme Games
ESPN Extreme Games (later renamed 1Xtreme due to the ESPN license expiring for Sony) was a game released for the PlayStation in 1995. A version was released for MS-DOS a short time later. The game featured all the sports included in the Summer X-Games of 1995, but it did not feature events like the half pipe in skateboarding. It was similar to "Road Rash", which was a game published by Electronic Arts. The game was followed by two sequels, 2Xtreme and 3Xtreme.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 (PES 2011, known as World Soccer: Winning Eleven 2011 in Asia) is an association football video game in the "Pro Evolution Soccer" series developed and published by Konami with production assistance from the Blue Sky Team. It was released in 2010-2011. The UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League are featured within the game, and for the first time in the series, UEFA Super Cup and CONMEBOL's Copa Libertadores are fully licensed.
History of Eastern role-playing video games
The earliest role-playing video game on a console was "Dragonstomper" on the Atari 2600 in 1982. "Bokosuka Wars", originally released for the Sharp X1 computer in 1983, was ported to the NES console in 1985, and was a commercial success in Japan, where it laid the foundations for the tactical role-playing game subgenre. Other notable early console RPGs included ports of Namco's 1984 arcade action role-playing games: "The Tower of Druaga", which was ported to the NES in 1985, and "Dragon Buster", the first video game to feature a life meter (called "Vitality" in-game), also ported to the NES in 1987.
ESPN 3D
ESPN 3D launched on June 11, 2010 with a 3D broadcast of the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup between South Africa and Mexico. Other programs broadcast on the channel in its first year included the 2011 BCS National Championship Game and various college football and basketball games. Early programming included 25 matches from the 2010 World Cup and the Summer X Games. Up to 85 live events were shown on the network in 2010. ESPN 3D produced 14 games from the National Basketball Association (NBA) during the 2010-11 season, including seven playoff games. The first NBA game broadcast on ESPN 3D was a December 17, 2010 match between the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks. On June 30, 2011, ESPN announced that ESPN 3D would air the first men's semi-finals match of the 2011 Wimbledon Championships live, to be followed by a tape delayed broadcast of the second men's semi-finals. On July 4, 2011, it would also air a recorded broadcast of the ladies' and men's finals. ESPN 3D also broadcast all of the games of the 2011 Little League World Series.
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (video game)
British independent game studio Rebellion Developments became involved with the franchise in 1994 with the release of "Alien vs Predator" for the Atari Jaguar, described by 1UP.com as "probably the only good Jaguar game ever made". Rebellion later developed an enhanced remake of the game for the PC, which was the first PC game to require a video card and went on to win a BAFTA award. The first feature film in the franchise, "Alien vs. Predator", was released in 2004 and did not include a tie-in video game. In August 2007, Sierra Entertainment announced that the company had partnered with Fox to produce a video game corresponding with the sequel film "". Rebellion was identified as the game's developer. The company, while not strictly handheld-focused, has a reputation in the industry for developing PSP games.
Safari Software
Safari Software was a software developer and published founded c. 1989 in Houston, Texas. Patrick Aalto, prior to founding Safari, released a freeware game titled Line Wars in 1989 inspired by the original Elite video game engine. The first game to be released under this arrangement was P-Squared Productions' "Traffic Department 2192", released in 1994. However, in certain regions where Epic had limited distribution abilities, such as Australia, Safari utilized other companies such as Manaccom.
Electronic Arts
After Sega's "ESPN NFL 2K5" successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN. The ESPN deal gave EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11, 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) for exclusive rights to college football content.
Star Wars video games
The first official licensed "Star Wars" electronic game was Kenner's 1979 table-top "Star Wars" Electronic Battle Command. The game had three levels of play (basic, intermediate, and advanced). Players took turns examining star systems with the aim of avoiding black holes, locating enemies, and searching for MAGNA, "the FORCE-giving star". The game was billed as "the most exciting computer game you will ever play".
Extreme Pinball
Extreme Pinball is a 1995 pinball video game published by Electronic Arts for DOS and PlayStation. It was the first game developed by Digital Extremes, though founder James Schmalz had also previously created "Solar Winds", "Silverball" and "Epic Pinball" in 1993. It was released via PlayStation Network in 2010.
Early Edu-Ware products
Originally developed by Steffin before founding Edu-Ware, he wrote a second version of the program soon after establishing the publishing company. The program was offered as both a stand-alone versions, and in a compendium, along with "Statistics" and "Compu-Read", called Edu-Pak I. Edu-Ware upgraded the program to high resolution graphics using its EWS3 graphics engine in 1982, renaming it "Perception 3.0", which was featured in the company's catalogs until 1984.
"Rescue" is a low-resolution graphics action game in which the player uses game paddles move his spaceship to intercept with a damaged ship randomly floating around the screen. The program was offered in both disk and cassette stand-alone versions, as well as in a compendium, along with "War", called Rescue/War, but was dropped from Edu-Ware's catalog by 1980.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
A demo of "PES 2011" was released for PC and PS3 in September 2010. The demo allowed users to play ten-minute games with four teams available: FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich or Copa Libertadores pair Chivas de Guadalajara and SC Internacional. A video presentation was also included after each match outlining the full game's content in readiness of the game's UK launch on 8 October 2010.
Video gaming in Japan
The first Nintendo Space World show was held on July 28, 1989. It was a video game trade show that was hosted by Nintendo until 2001. At the same year, "Phantasy Star II" for the Genesis established many conventions of the RPG genre, including an epic, dramatic, character-driven storyline dealing with serious themes and subject matter, and a strategy-based battle system. The game's science fiction story was also unique, reversing the common alien invasion scenario by instead presenting Earthlings as the invading antagonists rather than the defending protagonists. Capcom's "Sweet Home" for the NES introduced a modern Japanese horror theme and laid the foundations for the survival horror genre, later serving as the main inspiration for "Resident Evil" (1996). "Tengai Makyo: Ziria" released for the PC Engine CD that same year was the first RPG released on CD-ROM and the first in the genre to feature animated cut scenes and voice acting. The game's plot was also unusual for its feudal Japan setting and its emphasis on humour; the plot and characters were inspired by the Japanese folk tale "Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari". The music for the game was also composed by noted musician Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Bismarck (video game)
Personal Software Services was founded in Coventry, England, by Gary Mays and Richard Cockayne in 1981. The company were known for creating games that revolved around historic war battles and conflicts, such as "Theatre Europe", "Iwo Jima" and "Falklands '82". The company had a partnership with French video game developer ERE Informatique, and published localised versions of their products to the United Kingdom. In 1986, Cockayne took a decision to alter their products for release on 16-bit consoles, as he found that smaller 8-bit consoles such as the ZX Spectrum lacked the processing power for larger strategy games. The decision was falsely interpreted as "pull-out" from the Spectrum market by a video game journalist. Following years of successful sales throughout the mid 1980s, Personal Software Services experienced financial difficulties, in which Cockayne admitted that "he took his eye off the ball". The company was acquired by Mirrorsoft in February 1987, and was later dispossessed by the company due to strains of debt.
List of games by Epic Games
Beginning with the 1996 game "Fire Fight", Epic ceased its publishing and self-publishing operations, and after the release and success of "Unreal" (1998) renamed itself in 1999 to Epic Games and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina; it and a temporary office in Canada during "Unreal"s development were the first time the company had a central office for their employees. After the name change, the company focused almost solely on the "Unreal" series of shooters for the next few years, and expanded from PC games to console games. In 2006 the company launched its "Gears of War" series of games, and in 2010 the company moved into mobile games with the "Infinity Blade" series after purchasing Chair Entertainment. Epic returned to retail publishing in 2015 for its own titles, and has solely self-published since. In addition to games, Epic develops and licenses the Unreal Engine, which is also used as the game engine for many of its own games.
Eroge
Eroge, also known as erotic games, have their origins in the early 1980s, when Japanese companies introduced their own brands of microcomputer to compete with those of the United States. Competing systems included the Sharp X1, Fujitsu FM-7, MSX, and NEC PC-8801. NEC was behind its competitors in terms of hardware (with only 16 colors and no sound support) and needed a way to regain control of the market. Thus came the erotic game. The first commercial erotic computer game, "Night Life", was released by Koei in 1982. It was an early graphic adventure, with sexually explicit images. That same year, Koei released another erotic title, "Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku" ("Seduction of the Condominium Wife"), which was an early role-playing adventure game with colour graphics, owing to the eight-color palette of the NEC PC-8001 computer. It became a hit, helping Koei become a major software company.
Square Enix
In 2008, Square Enix released their first game for the iPod, "". Square Enix made a new brand for younger children gaming that same year, known as Pure Dreams. Pure Dreams' first two games, "" and "Pingu's Wonderful Carnival" were released that year. After acquiring Eidos in 2009, Square Enix combined it with its European publishing wing to create Square Enix Europe, which continues to publish Eidos franchises such as "Tomb Raider" (63 million sales), "Hitman" (15 million), "Deus Ex" (4 million), "Thief" (2.5 million) and "Legacy of Kain" (3.5 million). Square Enix has also served as the Japanese publisher for Ubisoft games since 2009.
ESPN Speed World
ESPN Speed World is a Super NES and Sega Genesis video game that was released in 1994 exclusively for North America based on the television series of the same name. The title screen of the video game was partially inspired by the 1993 running of the First Union 400 racing event; which occurred on April 18, 1993. The real-life drivers from the mid-1990s are missing because the game only has an "ESPN" license and not an official "NASCAR" license.
Epic Games
Epic Games, Inc. (formerly Potomac Computer Systems and later Epic MegaGames, Inc.) is an American video game and software development company based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following his first commercial video game release, "ZZT" (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames in early 1992, and brought on Mark Rein, who is the company's vice president to date. Moving their headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was simplified to Epic Games.
Ape Escape (video game)
Ape Escape is a platform video game, developed by SCE Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation in May 1999 in North America, and June 1999 in Japan. The first in the "Ape Escape" series, the game tells the story of an ape named Specter who gains enhanced intelligence and a malevolent streak through the use of an experimental helmet. Specter produces an army of apes, which he sends through time in an attempt to rewrite history. Spike, the player character, sets out to capture the apes with the aid of special gadgets.
Blank Check (game show)
Blank Check is an American game show that aired on NBC from January 6 to July 4, 1975. It was promoted as "television's first ESP game". Art James was host, with Johnny Jacobs as announcer (though Johnny Gilbert would fill in on occasion).
Eternal Darkness
"Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem" was first released and published by Nintendo on June 24, 2002 in North America, October 25, 2002 in Japan and November 1, 2002 in Europe. It was the first video game published directly by Nintendo, rather than a third-party developer, to be rated M (Mature) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
History of video games
SuperSet Software created "Snipes", a text-mode networked computer game in 1983 to test a new IBM Personal Computer–based computer network and demonstrate its abilities. "Snipes" is officially credited as being the original inspiration for NetWare. It is believed to be the first network game ever written for a commercial personal computer and is recognized alongside 1974 game "Maze War" (a networked multiplayer maze game for several research machines) and "Spasim" (a 3D multiplayer space simulation for time shared mainframes) as the precursor to multiplayer games such as 1987's "MIDI Maze", and "Doom" in 1993. In 1995 iDoom (later Kali.net) was created for games that only allowed local network play to connect over the internet. Other services such as Kahn, TEN, Mplayer, and Heat.net soon followed after. These services ultimately became obsolete when game producers began including their own online software such as Battle.net, WON and later Steam.
Bill Williams (game designer)
Bill Williams's first published game was "Salmon Run" for the Atari 8-bit computers, published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1982. He then authored two titles for Synapse Software: "Necromancer" (1982) and "Alley Cat" (1983). "Alley Cat" was begun by another programmer, John Harris, who abandoned the project. Synapse ported "Salmon Run" to the VIC-20, publishing it in 1983 under the label Showcase Software. In 1984, Synapse published the stress reduction package "Relax", combining a sensor headband and mini-games providing biofeedback. The software was a collaboration between Williams and fellow Synapse game designer Kelly Jones (who wrote the 1983 Atari 8-bit game "Drelbs").
Elf Bowling
To date, there have been eight editions of the game for PC computers.Unauthorized and without permission from copyright and trademark owner Matthew Lichtenwalter, CEO of NStorm, a subsidiary of Commotion Interactive, Inc., the first two "Elf Bowling" games were released by Ignition Entertainment under the title "Elf Bowling 1 & 2" for the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance. The pack was universally panned by critics and is considered one of the worst video games of all time, citing poor graphics, crude audio and controls, and no extras beyond the original freeware version. It ranks as one of the lowest scoring games at both GameSpot and Metacritic, receiving only 1.4 out of 10 at GameSpot and 12 out of 100 at Metacritic.
Eric Goldberg (game designer)
For Simulations Publications, Incorporated (SPI), Eric Goldberg designed "Commando", a man-to-man tactical combat game featuring character creation and skills. Goldberg also designed "DragonQuest" (1980), SPI's biggest roleplaying game and perhaps its first true roleplaying game. Goldberg also contributed to Chaosium's "Thieves' World" (1981). Goldberg and his long-time friend and SPI co-worker Greg Costikyan approached Dan Gelber about turning Gelber's RPG design called 'Paranoia' from a game he ran for his local group into a professional product. Gelber gave Goldberg and Costikyan his notes and they turned those ideas into a complete manuscript. During his time working at SPI, Goldberg also designed "Eric Goldberg's KURSK" which was subsequently published in 1980. This project was the 2nd Edition of SPI's original "KURSK" game (1971). In 1983, Goldberg took a job at West End Games as the new Vice President of Research & Development. Gelber, Costikyan, and Goldberg licensed "Paranoia" to West End Games, and Ken Rolston helped rewrite the rules before it was published in 1984. Goldberg designed "Tales of the Arabian Nights" (1985), a paragraph-based storytelling board game.
Eugene Jarvis
As Jarvis worked on pinball games at Williams in the late 1970s, "Space Invaders" was released, sparking great interest in microprocessor video games. Jarvis wanted to try making a video game. When thinking of design ideas with famed pinball designer Steve Ritchie, they developed the concept for "Defender" — a side-scroller with the player flying over the surface of a planet. "Defender" (1980) was Jarvis's first video game and turned out to be a huge hit, helping kick off the golden age of arcade games and eventually becoming one of the highest grossing video games ever. Williams expanded greatly with the success of "Defender", but Jarvis left to found an independent game development firm called Vid Kidz with Larry DeMar in February 1981. After four months of tag-team programming between DeMar and Jarvis, they produced Vid Kidz's first game: "Stargate" (1981), an enhanced sequel to "Defender" that they sold to Williams.
ESPN MLS GameNight
ESPN MLS GameNight is a video game of the sports genre released in 2000 by Konami and Saffire Corporation Corporation. The game is considered to be an enhanced remake of ISS Pro Evolution, also published by Konami. It is the only MLS game to have been released on the PlayStation. The sequel, "ESPN MLS ExtraTime 2002", was released on the PlayStation 2 seven months later.
Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force is a first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. The game was initially released on September 20, 2000 for Windows and Mac OS personal computers. Aspyr Media was responsible for porting the game to the Mac OS platform. "Elite Force" was later ported to the PlayStation 2 console by Pipe Dream Interactive and published by Majesco Entertainment on December 11, 2001.
Theatre Europe
Theatre Europe is a turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Personal Software Services. It was first released in the United Kingdom for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari 8-bit home computers in 1985. It was later released in France by ERE Informatique in 1986, and was released in the United States by Datasoft later that year. It was also ported to the Tatung Einstein home computer in 1989, exclusively in the United Kingdom. It is the fifth instalment of the "Strategic Wargames" series.
Planet of the Apes (video game)
Planet of the Apes is a 2001 action-adventure video game in the "Planet of the Apes" franchise. The franchise's first video game, it was released as a tie-in to the 2001 "Planet of the Apes" film, though the plot is inspired by Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel and the 1968 film adaptation. Fox Interactive contracted Visiware to develop the game for PC and PlayStation and partnered with Ubi Soft as co-publisher. Torus Games developed a Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color versions, which are based on the 1968 film and its 1970 sequel.
The Simpsons
Numerous video games based on the show have been produced. Some of the early games include Konami's arcade game "The Simpsons" (1991) and Acclaim Entertainment's "" (1991). More modern games include "" (2001), "" (2003) and "The Simpsons Game" (2007). Electronic Arts, which produced "The Simpsons Game", has owned the exclusive rights to create video games based on the show since 2005. In 2010, they released a game called "The Simpsons Arcade" for iOS. Another EA-produced mobile game, "", was released in 2012 for iOS users, then in 2013 for Android and Kindle users. Two "Simpsons" pinball machines have been produced: one that was available briefly after the first season, and another in 2007, both out of production.
History of Eastern role-playing video games
"", released for the MSX in 1987 and for the Mega Drive as "Super Hydlide" in 1989, adopted the morality meter of its predecessor, expanded on its time option with the introduction of an in-game clock setting day-night cycles and a need to sleep and eat, and made other improvements such as cut scenes for the opening and ending, a combat system closer to "The Legend of Zelda", the choice between four distinct character classes, a wider variety of equipment and spells, and a weight system affecting the player's movement depending on the overall weight of the equipment carried. That same year, Kogado Studio's sci-fi RPG "Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War" featured a unique "tug of war" style real-time combat system, where battles are a clash of energy between the party and the enemy, with the player needing to push the energy towards the enemy to strike them, while being able to use a shield to block or a suction ability to absorb the opponent's power. It also featured a unique non-linear conversation system, where the player can recruit allies by talking to them, choose whether to kill or spare an enemy, and engage enemies in conversation, similar to "Megami Tensei". Also in 1987, the survival horror game "", an MSX2 title developed by Fun Factory and published by Victor Music Industries, was the first true survival horror RPG. Designed by Katsuya Iwamoto, the game revolved around a female SWAT member Lila rescuing survivors in an isolated monster-infested town and bringing them to safety in a church. It was open-ended like "Dragon Quest" and had real-time side-view battles like "". Unlike other RPGs at the time, however, the game had a dark and creepy atmosphere expressed through the story, graphics, and music, while the gameplay used shooter-based combat and gave limited ammunition for each weapon, forcing the player to search for ammo and often run away from monsters in order to conserve ammo. That same year saw the release of "Laplace no Ma", another hybrid of survival horror and RPG, though with more traditional RPG elements such as turn-based combat. It was mostly set in a mansion infested with undead creatures, and the player controlled a party of several characters with different professions, including a scientist who constructs tools and a journalist who takes pictures.
Sente Technologies
Sente's first game, "Snake Pit" was demonstrated in December 1983 and the SAC-II system and Shrike Avenger was previewed at the same event. Snake Pit started shipping soon after but only a limited number of machines were sold before Sente had to stop distribution. Unfortunately, the Pizza Time Theatre chain was suffering from financial problems because of its recent expansion and acquisitions phase. After operating Sente Technologies for less than five months Pizza Time Theatre Inc. filed for bankruptcy and the Sente division was put up for sale. Bally Manufacturing purchased the division for $3.9 million in May 1984 and renamed it Bally Sente.
ESPN
Japanese videogame publisher Konami launched the ESPN MLS GameNight and ESPN MLS ExtraTime 2002 soccer games. In the early 1990s, Electronic Arts games featured a logo for a fictional sports TV network, EASN (Electronic Arts Sports Network); this was soon changed to EA Sports after ESPN requested that the company stop using the similar name. In 2005, both companies signed a 15-year partnership, where the ESPN brand and personalities are integrated into EA Sports video games. Grid 2 also features prominent ESPN branding.
Galaxy Game
At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers and technicians with access to computers, primarily at research institutions and large companies. One of these games was "Spacewar!", created in 1962 for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer by Steve Russell and others in the programming community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The two-player game has the players engage in a dogfight between two spaceships, set against the backdrop of a starfield, with a central star exerting gravitational force upon the ships. The game was copied to several of the early minicomputer installations in American academic institutions after its initial release, making it potentially the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. "Spacewar" was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time, later migrating to early microcomputer systems. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of "Spacewar" blossoms spontaneously wherever there is a graphics display connected to a computer," and contributor Martin Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT". Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: the PDP-1 was priced at US$120,000 and only 55 were ever sold, most without a monitor, which prohibited the original "Spacewar" or any game of the time from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. The original developers of "Spacewar" considered ways to monetize the game, but saw no options given the high price of the computer it ran on.
Empires of Eve
"Eve Online" is a space-based, persistent-world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by CCP Games. It is a single-universe game, shaped by players and developers. "Eve Online" was released in North America and Europe in May 2003. It was published from May to December 2003 by Simon & Schuster Interactive, after which CCP purchased the rights and began self-publishing via digital distribution. In February 2013, "Eve Online" reached over 500,000 subscribers. Set more than 21,000 years in the future, "Eve Online" explains that humanity (having used up most of Earth's resources through centuries of explosive population growth) began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way.
Christian video game
One of the first Christian Video Games was the “Bible Computer Games” series published by BibleBytes (now a division of Kidware Software LLC) for the TRS-80 Color Computer in 1982. The “Bible Computer Games” were then released on the Timex Sinclair and Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer platforms in 1983. The Bible Computer Games Series was then released on the Apple IIe, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, and the Kaypro CP/M computer platforms in 1984. An MS-DOS version of the Bible Computer Games was released in 1986 by PC Enterprises.
Video game industry
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 home market with the release of the early video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. However, both the arcade and home markets would be dominated by "Pong" clones, which flooded the market and led to the video game crash of 1977. The crash eventually came to an end with the success of Taito's "Space Invaders", released in 1978, sparking a renaissance for the video game industry and paving the way for the golden age of video arcade games. The game's success inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants and convenience stores during the golden age. "Space Invaders" would go on to sell over 360,000 arcade cabinets worldwide, and by 1982, generate a revenue of $2 billion in quarters, equivalent to $4.6 billion in 2011.
History of ESPN
ESPN was founded by Bill Rasmussen, his son Scott Rasmussen and Aetna insurance agent Ed Eagan. Bill, who had an affinity with sports for much of his life, was fired from his position as the communications manager for the New England Whalers in 1978. During his tenure with the hockey team, Rasmussen had met Eagan, who displayed an interest in building a career in television. Eagan approached Bill with the idea of creating a monthly cable television program covering Connecticut sports and was curious to see if the Whalers would be interested in being the main feature on the show.
Spider-Man in video games
"", released on Super NES and Genesis in 1994, was the first one of two major Marvel comic book storyline adaptations by Software Creations. "" released in 1995 for Super NES, Genesis and PC was the sequel. Both games are side scrolling beat-'em up action games where the player controls either Spider-Man or Venom, fighting various villains from the comic book plotlines.
Entertainment Software Publishing
ESP was acquired by D3 Publisher in 2004, who ran it as a subsidiary until 2010 when it was disbanded and merged into D3 according to the company's former homepage.
Adventure (Atari 2600)
"Adventure" received mostly positive reviews at the time of its release and has continued to be viewed positively in the decades since, often named as one of the industry's most influential titles. It is considered the first action-adventure and console fantasy game, and inspired other titles in the genres. More than one million cartridges of "Adventure" were sold, and the game has been included in numerous Atari 2600 game collections for modern computer hardware. The game's prototype code was used as the basis for the 1979 "Superman" game, and a planned sequel eventually formed the basis for the "Swordquest" games. The Easter egg concept pioneered by the game has transcended video games and entered popular culture.
Easy Software Products
Easy Software Products was the vendor who originally invented the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) and HTMLDOC software. It was founded near Washington, D.C. in 1993 and was located in Morgan Hill, California. ESP sold CUPS to Apple Inc. in 2007, but still developed and sold its HTMLDOC software until its closure.
ERE Informatique
ERE Informatique was one of the first French video game companies, founded in 1983 by Emmanuel Viau, joined a year later by Philippe Ulrich. The company hired freelance game programmers that received royalties for their creations. Initially, the company published titles for the Amstrad CPC, Spectrum and Oric home computers. In 1984 they published their first national hit, a flight simulator created by Marc André Rampon: "Intercepteur Cobalt" for Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum, also known under the name of "Mission Delta" for Oric, Amstrad and Thomson MO5. Rampon also acquired some shares of the company owned by Viau and established the company's first distribution network.
ESP game
The ESP game is a human-based computation game developed to address the problem of creating difficult metadata. The idea behind the game is to use the computational power of humans to perform a task that computers cannot (originally, image recognition) by packaging the task as a game. It was originally conceived by Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University. Google bought a licence to create its own version of the game (Google Image Labeler) in 2006 in order to return better search results for its online images. The licence of the data acquired by Ahn's "ESP game", or the Google version, is not clear. Google's version was shut down on September 16, 2011 as part of the Google Labs closure in September 2011.
History of ESPN
On September 7, 1979, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, an estimated 30,000 viewers tuned in to witness the launch of ESPN. Simultaneously, ESPN debuted its first "SportsCenter" telecast with anchors Lee Leonard and George Grande. The first words spoken were from Leonard who informed viewers: "“If you’re a fan, "if" you’re a fan, what you’ll see in the next minutes, hours and days to follow may convince you you’ve gone to sports heaven." The first score Grande announced was Chris Evert's victory over Billie Jean King at the US Open. "SportsCenter" lasted a half-hour, consisting mainly of videotaped highlights. Following the conclusion of the telecast, the network aired a slow-pitch softball game along with other programming, including wrestling and college soccer. The initial music package in 1979 was composed by veteran production music composer Dave Shields in San Diego using studio musicians from Hollywood and San Diego. He wrote a logo melody and expanded it for various purposes, and composed themes for all the programs at that time, including a reggae-rock style promotional song. They also used Vangelis's "Pulstar" as the theme to SportsCenter early on.
Google Image Labeler
Luis von Ahn developed the ESP Game, a game in which two people were simultaneously given an image, with no way to communicate, other than knowing the matching label for each picture or the pass signal. The ESP Game had been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler and launched this service, as a beta on August 31, 2006.
Adventure game
Due to a lack of content restrictions, some of Japan's earliest adventure games were also bishoujo games with "eroge" content. In 1982, Koei released "Night Life", the first commercial erotic computer game. It was a graphic adventure, with sexually explicit images. That same year, they released another "eroge" title, "Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku" ("Seduction of the Condominium Wife"), which was an early adventure game with color graphics, owing to the eight-color palette of the NEC PC-8001 computer, and role-playing video game elements. It became a hit, helping Koei become a major software company. Other now-famous companies such as Enix, Square and Nihon Falcom also produced similar "eroge" in the early 1980s before they became famous for their mainstream role-playing games. In some of their early "eroge", the adult content is meaningfully integrated into a thoughtful and mature storyline, though others often used it as a flimsy excuse for pornography.
Galaxy Game
Galaxy Game is a space combat arcade game developed in 1971 during the early era of video games. Created by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, it was one of the first coin-operated video games; its initial prototype display in November 1971 at the Tresidder student union building at Stanford University was only a few months after a similar display of a prototype of "Computer Space", making it the second known video game to charge money to play. "Galaxy Game" is an expanded version of the 1962 "Spacewar!", potentially the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features two spaceships, "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players.
ESPN College Football
ESPN began airing taped college football games during the 1979 regular season, starting with a game between Colorado and Oregon. The network was limited to airing tape-delayed games because the NCAA controlled television rights through exclusive contracts. However, because bowl games operate outside the control of the NCAA, ESPN was able to air the 1982 Independence Bowl between Kansas State and Wisconsin live (through a simulcast with the Mizlou Television Network) – the first live football game televised on ESPN. Their first live broadcast of a regular season game was on September 1, 1984 between the Florida Gators, who were ranked number 17, and the Miami Hurricanes, who were ranked number 10. This was a neutral-site game played at Tampa Stadium.
Edge Games
Edge Games was founded in California in 1990 by Tim Langdell. At that time, it acquired the intellectual property assets of Langdell's former company, Softek Software, itself founded in 1980 in London. Softek's catalog includes several games, such as: "Fairlight", released in 1985, and "", released in 1987. Since the 1989 release of "Snoopy and Peanuts" Edge Games have released nine games in the last 25 years.
Empire I: World Builders
Empire I: World Builders is a 1981 video game published by Edu-Ware Services Inc. It is the first game in the "Empire" trilogy, followed by "" (1982) and "" (1983).
List of Need for Speed video games
The Need for Speed video game series is published by Electronic Arts. Games in the series were primarily developed by Canadian developer EA Canada from 1992 to 2001. They were later primarily developed by Canadian developer EA Black Box for a period of the series' history from 2002 to 2011. After a stint with several game developers (including British developer Criterion Games) from 2009 through 2012, the series is currently being handled by Swedish-British developer Ghost Games, whose debut title "Need for Speed Rivals" was released in 2013.
Video game console
The first handheld game console with interchangeable cartridges was the Microvision designed by Smith Engineering, and distributed and sold by Milton-Bradley in 1979. Crippled by a small, fragile LCD display and a very narrow selection of games, it was discontinued two years later. The Epoch Game Pocket Computer was released in Japan in 1984. The Game Pocket Computer featured an LCD screen with 75 X 64 resolution and could produce graphics at about the same level as early Atari 2600 games. The system sold very poorly, and as a result, only five games were made for it. Nintendo's Game & Watch series of dedicated game systems proved more successful. It helped to establish handheld gaming as popular and lasted until 1991. Many Game & Watch games were later re-released on Nintendo's subsequent handheld systems.
Elf Bowling
The game was originally created as promotional marketing content by Dan Ferguson and Mike Bielinski, both co-founders of the game studio NVision Design. The game became an internet sensation in 1999 when people originally thought it was a computer virus. The game was an EXE file and was easily distributed as an attachment to emails. (In 1999, EXE files could be attached to emails as there was no protective software to remove an EXE at the time.) Direct Marketing News did an article on the original developers - Direct Marketing News Article. According to Media Metrix, among the 54 million people playing PC games in the month of December 2000, "Elf Bowling" was the game to hit the top 10 with 7.6 million players that was not bundled with Windows. Local Fox News Affiliate KDFW Dallas Fort Worth did an interview with Dan Ferguson and Mike Bileinski after they sold their company to Vectrix Business Solutions. Vectrix Business Solutions acquired Nvision 1999 and subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. "Elf Bowling" and "Frogapult" were sold by Vectrix Business Solutions with the approval of the Bankruptcy Court on October 31, 2001, to Commotion Interactive, Inc. ("Elf Bowling 3" was recently released by the Dallas firm NStorm, a subsidiary of Commotion Interactive). Matthew Lichtenwalter, CEO of NStorm and Commotion Interactive, has created the series since.
Beyond Software
Beyond Software was a video game publisher in the UK in the 1980s. It was set up by the EMAP publishing group in 1983 and published numerous titles on the Commodore 64, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, but met with very little success until the release of Mike Singleton's "Lords of Midnight" in 1984. The Tolkien-esque strategy game became an instant success and allowed Beyond to establish a distribution deal with American developers First Star, as well as a publishing deal with developer Denton Designs.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 (officially abbreviated as PES 2010 and known in Asia as World Soccer: Winning Eleven 2010) is the ninth football video game in the "Pro Evolution Soccer" series. The game was developed and published by Konami for release on Sony's PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Portable; Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Windows; Nintendo's Wii; and mobile phones.
Sex and nudity in video games
One of the earliest video games (if not the first) to feature sexual themes was the 1981 text-based "Softporn Adventure", published by On-Line Systems for the Apple II. Despite heavy piracy the game still sold 25,000 copies, roughly equivalent to 25% of the number of Apple II's sold at the time. In a 1981 article in "Time Magazine", On-Line reported that they were making a version of the game for straight women, though this never materialized.
Michele Morrow
In 2015, she hosted "the first live collegiate e-sports event" to air on national television for Heroes of the Dorm on ESPN by Blizzard Entertainment’s game, Heroes of the Storm. "The final match was set to be shown live on ESPN 2, the first time an esport has ever been broadcast on a major American television network, and the first place prize was massive—free tuition for the rest of the winning team's college career".
Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000
Final Liberation is a turn-based tactics video game released for Microsoft Windows in 1997, and re-released on GOG.com in 2015. The game is best known as the first video game based on "Epic", a table-top wargame set in the fictional "Warhammer 40,000" universe, in an attempt to recreate the table-top experience on a computer as opposed to using it as a backdrop for games in other genres. As a result, the game borrows heavily in terms of rules and style from the table-top game, demanding a combination of luck and tactics necessary to succeed in game warfare.
ESPN NBA Basketball (video game)
ESPN NBA Basketball (alternatively known as NBA 2K4) is a basketball simulation video game developed by Visual Concepts and published by Sega. It is the fifth installment in the "NBA 2K" franchise and the successor to "NBA 2K3". It was released in 2003 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Allen Iverson is the cover athlete of the game. "ESPN NBA Basketball" is the predecessor to "ESPN NBA 2K5" in the "NBA 2K" series. It is the penultimate NBA 2K game before sold by Sega company to forming 2K Sports.
Space (role-playing game series)
Space is a text-based role-playing video game franchise for the Apple II that was originally designed by Steven Pederson and Sherwin Steffin of Edu-Ware Services, and then expanded upon in a sequel by David Mullich, in 1979. These games were notable for not only being one of the first science fiction RPG's to appear on personal computers, but also for providing a level of realism not found in other games of the time.
Spacewar!
"Spacewar" is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games. It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely ported to other computer systems at the time. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, "Galaxy Game" and "Computer Space" (1971), and later games such as "Asteroids" (1979). In 2007, "Spacewar" was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress.
History of massively multiplayer online games
May 2003 saw the release of "Eve Online", produced by CCP Games, which had players taking the role of spaceship pilots and had gameplay similar to the series "Star Control". Though not the first space MMO ("Microsoft Allegiance" was the first space MMO and was released in 1999), "Eve" was able to achieve lasting success. One of the reasons for its success may have been the game's design, in which all subscribers play in one shared universe as a result the natural partitioning of the game universe into solar systems connected by stargates. This partitioning allows the world to be divided up in such a way that one or more solar systems run on different servers, while still maintaining a single coherent world.
Sports game
In 1985, Sega released "Hang-On", a popular early Grand Prix style rear-view motorbike racer, considered the first full-body-experience video game. That same year, Nintendo released an early arm wrestling game, "Arm Wrestling", while Konami released a table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, "Konami's Ping Pong". That year, Tehkan also released "Tehkan World Cup", one of the first multiplayer soccer football games featuring a trackball controller, where a button was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direction and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic. In 1988, EA released "Earl Weaver Baseball" again developed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, which for the first time combined a highly accurate simulation game with high quality graphics. This was also the first game in which an actual baseball manager provided the computer AI. In 1996 "Computer Gaming World" named "'EWB" the 25th of its Best 150 Games of All Time, the second highest ranking for any sports game in that 1981–1996 period (after FPS Football).
Entertainment Software Publishing
The companies that participated in financing ESP's creation include many GD-NET member companies: Game Arts, Treasure Co. Ltd, Quintet, Sting, Neverland Company, CSK Research Institute, Bits Laboratory, Japan Art Media, and Onion Egg.
Golden age of Spanish software
In 1985, with the birth of magazines Micromanía and Microhobby, videogames gained massive popularity, and the rest of the top companies of the Era, Opera Soft in 1986 and Topo Soft in 1987 started their activity, the first one with "Livingstone, I presume", and the second one with "Spirits", after their authors programmed for Erbe Software "Las tres luces de Glaurung" ("Conquestador").