What was the first Point and Click video game?
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games (text and graphic) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. "Colossal Cave Adventure" is identified as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include "Zork", "King's Quest", "The Secret of Monkey Island", and "Myst".
Silent protagonist
The earliest player characters in video games, including the likes of Mario and Link, were silent protagonists. The same was true for early role playing games; these games originated from pen and paper games such as "Dungeons & Dragons" and when put on the screen, did not require or have any spoken dialogue, since the games plot and mechanics were all picture and motion based. Players are expected to put themselves into the role of the silent hero, and since the player does not talk in the game, neither does the on-screen avatar.
Video game development
True commercial design and development of games began in the 1970s, when arcade video games and first-generation consoles were marketed. In 1971, "Computer Space" was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. It used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. In 1972, the first home console system was released called Magnavox Odyssey, developed by Ralph H. Baer. That same year, Atari released "Pong", an arcade game that increased video game popularity. The commercial success of "Pong" led other companies to develop "Pong" clones, spawning the video game industry.
Sam &amp; Max
The series has been very successful despite its relatively limited amount of media, and has gathered a significant fan base. However, the franchise did not gain more widespread recognition until after the 1993 release of LucasArts' "Sam & Max Hit the Road", which cultivated interest in Purcell's original comics. "Sam & Max Hit the Road" is regarded as an exceptional adventure game and an iconic classic of computer gaming in the 1990s. Subsequent video games and the television series have also fared well with both critics and fans; critics consider the episodic video games to be the first successful application of the episodic distribution model.
Bill Williams (game designer)
He then moved to the Amiga, designing and programming "Mind Walker" (1986), "Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon" (1987), and "Pioneer Plague" (1988). "Pioneer Plague" was notable as the first Amiga game to make full use of the difficult to work with Hold-And-Modify mode for the in-game graphics. His final game for the platform was "Knights of the Crystallion" (1990):
For almost all of these Atari 8-bit and Amiga titles, Williams did the design and programming, created the art and sound effects, and composed the music. The credits often read, simply, "by Bill Williams."
History of role-playing games
The first commercially available role-playing game, "Dungeons & Dragons" ("D&D"), was published in 1974 by Gygax's TSR. TSR marketed the game as a niche product. Gygax expected to sell about 50,000 copies. After establishing itself in boutique stores it developed a cult following among college students and SF fandom. The game's growing success spawned cottage industries and a variety of peripheral products. In a few years other fantasy games appeared, some of which blatantly copied the look and feel of the original game. One of the earliest competitors was "Tunnels and Trolls" (1975).
Axel &amp; Pixel
The game is a traditional point-and-click adventure, where the player has to logically come up with answers and solutions to riddles and problems that are encountered during the course of the game. As a way of making "Axel & Pixel" unique from other point-and-click adventures, the cursor is made up of a group of glittering lights, which change colour slightly if the player lands the cursor on a point of interest. The Xbox controller also vibrates in this occurrence to make it obvious to the player. Aside from the traditional point-and-click mechanics, the game also features three different platform mini-games - 'Hot Air Loons', 'Four Wheel Dives' and 'Sailing Through', respectively. The game also makes use of quick time events in a few of the chapters as ways of helping Axel scale walls or avoiding dangerous obstacles. The game is divided into four sections - in the form of the four calendar seasons - which are unlocked through natural progression of the story. Each of the mini-games featured are used once in story mode as ways of pursuing Evil Rat through the dream world, from the last chapter of the current calendar season into the beginning of the next one. Unlike most point-and-click adventures, "Axel & Pixel" contains no dialogue option between characters, in an attempt to keep the gameplay focused more on solving the puzzles instead of interactions. Axel, however, will speak gibberish to Pixel and to himself occasionally.
Interactive movie
In 1988, Epyx announced three VCR games including one based on its video game "California Games". They combined videotape footage with a board game. In the late 1980s, American Laser Games started to produce a wide variety of live-action light gun laserdisc video games, which played much like the early cartoon games, but used a light gun instead of a joystick to affect the action. Meanwhile, Digital Pictures started to produce a variety of interactive movies for home consoles. When CD-ROMs were embedded in home computers, games with live action and full motion video featuring actors were considered cutting-edge, and some interactive movies were made. Some notable adventure games from this era are "Under a Killing Moon", "The Pandora Directive", "", "Voyeur", "", "", "Ripper", "Snatcher", "Black Dahlia", "The X-Files Game", "Phantasmagoria", "Bad Day on the Midway" and "The Dark Eye". Others in the action genre are "Brain Dead 13" and "".
Sam &amp; Max Save the World
According to Dave Grossman, the objective for Telltale Games with "Sam & Max Save the World" was to create a game with a "lot of story and character in it". Grossman explained that the "Sam & Max" franchise was therefore most ideally suited to the graphic adventure genre; while action was thought to be possible with the source material, it "would be kind of wrong". Still, designers decided to introduce action moments such as car chase scenes, wanting players to "feel like [they] are these crazy Freelance Police officers" and "just be involved in all this sort of mayhem" presented in the original comic strips. Like in previous "Sam & Max" games, "Sam & Max Save the World" used a point-and-click gameplay system, itself a variation of the control scheme used by Telltale in their preceding adventure game series, ""; the action sequences implemented in the game still maintained the point-and-click interface.
Crash Bandicoot
Also in 1998, Tiger Electronics released a series called "99X", each containing a black and white video game as opposed to the LCD games they were commonly known for. These were handhelds fitted with a dot-matrix screen, allowing for a wide variety of backgrounds and gameplay for a single game. Although running a software program stored in ROM, the systems were dedicated consoles, similar to the plug-and-play TV games of the 2000s decade. A Crash Bandicoot game, simply titled "Crash Bandicoot", was released as part of this series. Despite its name and being a platformer like its predecessors, it is not an adaptation of nor bears any relation to the 1996 game, instead featuring a plot of its own involving Crash retrieving treasure from a mansion haunted by a ghost named Mr. Crumb and his cronies. This was the first handheld game to be released in the series, as well as the first to include a multiplayer mode.
Point and click
By default on most computer systems, for a person to select a certain software function, he or she will have to click on the left button. An example of this can be a person clicking on an icon. Similarly, clicking on the right button will present the user with a text menu to select more actions. These actions can range from open, explore, properties, etc. In terms of entertainment software, point-and-click interfaces are common input methods, usually offering a 'menu' or 'icon bar' interface that functions in the expected manner. In other games, the character explores different areas within the game world. To move to another area, the player will move the cursor to one point of the screen, where the cursor will turn into an arrow. Clicking will then move the player to that area.
Tennis for Two
"Tennis for Two" is considered under some definitions to be the first video game. Other candidates with stronger candidacies from a technological standpoint include the 1947 cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game, though it did not run on a computing device; the 1950 "Bertie the Brain", the earliest known game to run on a computer, though it used light bulbs for a display; and "OXO" and a draughts game by Christopher Strachey in 1952, the earliest digital computer games to display visuals on an electronic screen. "Tennis for Two", though it contained no technological developments to separate it from earlier games, has the distinction of being the earliest known computer game with visuals created purely for entertainment purposes. Prior games were created primarily for academic research purposes or to demonstrate the computing power of the underlying machine, with the exception of the non-computer based cathode-ray tube amusement device. This, therefore, makes "Tennis for Two" the first video game under some definitions from a philosophical viewpoint rather than a technical one and a distinctive moment in the early history of video games.
Side-scrolling video game
In 1984, "Pac-Land" took the scrolling platformer a step further, aspiring to be more than a simple game of hurdle jumping. It was not only a successful title, but it more closely resembled later scrolling platformers like "Wonder Boy" and "Super Mario Bros". It also featured multi-layered parallax scrolling. That same year saw the release of "Legend of Kage", which offered levels that extended in all directions. Sega released "Flicky", a simple platformer with horizontally scrolling levels that featured their first mascot character. Namco followed up "Pac-Land" with the fantasy-themed "Dragon Buster" the following year.
History of video games
Graphic adventure games continued to evolve during this period, with the creation of the point-and-click genre. Some of the genre's most prolific titles were being produced by Sierra Entertainment and LucasArts during the 90s, and "Myst" and its sequels inspired a new style of puzzle-based adventure games. It was in the 1990s that Maxis began publishing its successful line of "Sim" games, starting with "SimCity", and continuing with a variety of titles, such as "SimEarth", "SimCity 2000", and eventually "The Sims", which was first released in early 2000.
Magnavox Odyssey
The Magnavox Odyssey is the first commercial home video game console. It was developed by a small team led by Ralph H. Baer at Sanders Associates and released by Magnavox in the United States in September 1972 and overseas the following year. The Odyssey consists of a white, black, and brown box which connects to a television set, and two rectangular controllers attached by wires. It is capable of displaying three square dots on the screen in monochrome black and white, with differing behavior for the dots depending on the game played, and with no sound capabilities. Players place plastic overlays on the screen to create visuals, and the one or two players for each game control their dots with the three knobs and one button on the controller in accordance with the rules given for the game. The Odyssey console came packaged with dice, paper money, and other board game paraphernalia to go along with the games, and a peripheral controller—the first video game light gun—was sold separately.
1995–99 in webcomics
In the United States, various major webcomic genres were established and popularized between 1995 and 1999. The video game webcomic came into being in 1995 with the release of "Polymer City Chronicles" and was popularized in the following years by "PvP" and "Penny Arcade". The first sprite comic – Jay Resop's "Neglected Mario Characters" – was released in 1998, though the genre wouldn't be popularized until "Bob and George" came out in 2000. In "Reinventing Comics" (2000), Scott McCloud pointed out that some webcomic creators had been experimenting with the capabilities of the Web, such as through an interactive hypertext interface, GIF animations, and sound. The first major webcomic portal, Big Panda, started in 1997. Big Panda hosted over 770 webcomics, including "Sluggy Freelance" and "User Friendly". Big Panda's discontinuation eventually resulted in the formation of Keenspot in 2000.
Fade (video game)
Fade is a point-and-click adventure game developed by the Fade Team and released for the Windows Mobile Professional platform in 2001. The game was critically acclaimed as the first large-scale adventure game for the platform. It is most often compared to "Myst", the first immersive graphic adventure games for the PC, and the games in the "Zork" series.
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.
OXO
OXO or Noughts and Crosses is a video game developed by A S Douglas in 1952 which simulates a game of noughts and crosses. It was one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. Douglas programmed the game as part of a thesis on human-computer interaction at the University of Cambridge.
Déjà Vu (video game)
Déjà Vu is a point-and-click adventure game set in the world of 1940s hard-boiled detective novels and movies. It was released in 1985 for Macintosh – the first in the MacVenture series – and later ported to several other systems, including the Amiga. Subsequent releases featured improved graphical features, including color.
History of online games
The first of these remote display games was Xtrek. Based on a PLATO system game, Empire, Xtrek is a 2D multiplayer space battle game loosely set in the Star Trek universe. This game could be played across the Internet, probably the first graphical game that could do so, a few months ahead of the X version of Maze War. Importantly, however, the game itself was not aware that it was using a network. In a sense it was a host-based game, because the program only ran on a single computer, and knew about the X Window System, and the window system took care of the networking: essentially one computer displaying on several screens. The X version of Maze War, on the other hand, was peer-to-peer and used the network directly, with a copy of the program running on each computer in the game, instead of only a single copy running on a server. Netrek (originally called Xtrek II) was a fully network-aware client–server rewrite of Xtrek. Other remote X display based games include xtank and XPilot (1991). By 1989 Simson Garfinkel reported that on MIT's Project Athena, "Games like 'X-tank' and 'X-trek' let students at different workstations command tanks and starships, fire missiles at each other as fast as they can hit the buttons on their mice, and watch the results on their graphics displays". Observers estimated that up to one third of Athena usage was for games.
ClickStar
In 2006 ClickStar became the first company in motion picture history to offer a legitimate motion picture download, "10 Items or Less", while the film was still playing in theaters. ClickStar was highlighted by the American Film Institute in their AFI Awards 2006 "Moments of Significance" for this achievement.
Steve Ritchie
Ritchie moved to Chicago, Illinois, the home of Williams' headquarters. His first game for the company, "Flash" (released in 1979), was noted for its revolutionary figure-8 design and the first pinball game to feature bright Flash Lamps. It would go on to be his best-selling pinball game, having sold 19,505 units. 1980 would be the year for Ritchie, when he designed "Firepower" (the first electronic pinball to feature multi-ball, as well as Lane Change), and eight months later, he designed "Black Knight", which was noted for having the first two-level playfield and the patented "Magna-Save" feature (in which magnets help prevent outlane drains).
Amazon: Guardians of Eden
Amazon: Guardians of Eden is a point-and-click adventure video game for MS-DOS from Access Software. It is one of the first games to feature super VGA graphics, digitized voice-overs, and an online (in game) hint system.
Role-playing video game
One of the earliest role-playing video game on a microcomputer was "Dungeon n Dragons", written by Peter Trefonas and published by CLOAD (1980). This early game, published for a TRS-80 Model 1, was just 16K long and included a limited word parser command line, character generation, a store to purchase equipment, combat, traps to solve, and a dungeon to explore. Other contemporaneous CRPGs (Computer Role Playing Games) were "Temple of Apshai", "" and "", the precursor to "Ultima". Some early microcomputer RPGs (such as "Telengard" (1982) or "Sword of Fargoal") were based on their mainframe counterparts, while others (such as "Ultima" or "Wizardry", the most successful of the early CRPGs) were loose adaptations of "D&D". They also included both first-person displays and overhead views, sometimes in the same game ("Akalabeth", for example, used both perspectives). Most of the key features of RPGs were developed in this early period, prior to the release of "", one of the prime influences on both computer and console RPG development. For example, Wizardry featured menu-driven combat, "Tunnels of Doom" featured tactical combat on a special "combat screen", and "Dungeons of Daggorath" featured real-time combat which took place on the main dungeon map.
Point Blank (2008 video game)
"Point Blank" is a fast-paced online first-person shooter, which is very similar in terms of gameplay to "Counter-Strike". It also features destructible and dynamic environments, as well as deeper character and skill customisation options.
The Visitor (video game)
The Visitor is a point-and-click adventure game by Canadian developer Jay "Zeebarf" Ziebarth. It was published by Newgrounds in 2007. It was Zeebarf's first point-and-click adventure game with the game company ClickShake Games. "The Visitor" requires logic and common sense to guide an alien parasite through its new earthly surroundings in this interactive horror adventure. The second Visitor game came out in 2010 and was called "The Visitor: Massacre at Camp Happy". It is an eat-and-grow based game in which a player must use cunning to beat the levels, gaining the qualities and sizes from the animals you eat. The third game, The Visitor Returns, was released in 2011.
Point and click
Double click is most commonly used with a computer mouse when the pointer is placed over an icon or object and the button is quickly pressed twice. This action, when performed without moving the location of the mouse, will produce a double click.
Ron Gilbert
On November 18, 2014, it was revealed that he had reunited with Gary Winnick, with whom he created his early critically acclaimed point-and-click games at LucasArts, and that they were working together on a new point-and-click game called "Thimbleweed Park". The game reached its funding target on the crowd sourcing site Kickstarter on December 18 and was released on March 30, 2017, in full "talkie" mode for Windows, Linux, Mac and Xbox One. A port to iOS and Android was confirmed after the project met its last stretch-goal.
List of Game &amp; Watch games
Super Mario Bros. is a "Game & Watch" game released as a part of the Crystal Screen series on June 25, 1986, and as a part of the New Wide Screen series on March 8, 1988. It was the first game in the Crystal Screen series. It is a single-screen single-player "Game & Watch".
Adventure game
The first interactive movie laserdisc video game was Sega's "Astron Belt", unveiled in 1982 and released in 1983, though it was more of a shooter game presented as an action movie using full motion video. A more story-driven interactive movie game was "Bega's Battle", released in 1983, which combined shooting stages with interactive anime cutscenes, where player input had an effect on the game's branching storyline. "Time Gal" (1985), in addition to featuring quick time events, added a time-stopping feature where specific moments in the game involve Reika stopping time; during these moments, players are presented with a list of three options and have seven seconds to choose one.
Qwak!
"Qwak!" was released in a standard upright arcade cabinet with a black and white raster television monitor inset, with the rifle holster and start button below as the only controls. The reeds and tree branch overlay is screen printed in color onto a clear panel in front of the monitor, and is backlit by the screen; the screen is lit with a gray background instead of a black one in order to produce this effect. When the gun is triggered, the duck additionally flashes white briefly, so as to be detected by the light gun; the relative brightness of the screen makes this effect less obvious than with other similar light gun games. "Qwak!" was not the first light gun video game; it was preceded by the arcade game "Balloon Gun" (August 1974) and a light gun game for the Magnavox Odyssey video game console (1972), as well as non-video game light gun games since the 1936 "Seeberg Ray-O-Lite".
Light gun
These games evolved throughout subsequent decades, culminating in Sega's "Periscope", the company's first successful game released in 1966, which required the player to target cardboard ships. "Periscope" was an early electro-mechanical game, and the first arcade game to cost a quarter per play. Sega's 1969 game "Missile" featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen, and their 1972 game "Killer Shark" featured a mounted light gun that shot at targets whose movement and reactions were displayed using back image projection onto a screen. Nintendo released the Beam Gun in 1970 and the Laser Clay Shooting System in 1973, followed in 1974 by the arcade game "Wild Gunman", which used video projection to display the target on the screen. In 1975, Sega released the early co-operative light gun shooters "Balloon Gun" and "Bullet Mark".
Timeline of United States inventions (1946–1991)
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or electronic device that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device such as a television to display a video game. A joystick or control pad is often used to simulate and play the video game. It was not until 1972 that Magnavox released the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph H. Baer.
Video game
A flood of "Pong" clones eventually led to the video game crash of 1977, which came to an end with the mainstream success of Taito's 1978 shooter game "Space Invaders", marking the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games and inspiring dozens of manufacturers to enter the market. The game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of numerous articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines, establishing video gaming as a rapidly growing mainstream hobby. "Space Invaders" was soon licensed for the Atari VCS (later known as Atari 2600), becoming the first "killer app" and quadrupling the console's sales. This helped Atari recover from their earlier losses, and in turn the Atari VCS revived the home video game market during the second generation of consoles, up until the North American video game crash of 1983. The home video game industry was revitalized shortly afterwards by the widespread success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which marked a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan during the third generation of consoles.
Point-and-shoot interface
A point-and-shoot interface is an efficient object-oriented, text-based interface, usually presented on a non-GUI platform such as DOS or mainframe computers. 
In a point-and-shoot, many objects are displayed in a list, and to the left of each object is an input field. The operator interacts by moving the cursor to the desired object and marking it by typing a letter or number which represents a command or function.
Tabletop role-playing game
One of the first original role-playing games was M. A. R. Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne", first published in 1974, the same year as "Dungeons & Dragons". It introduced the fictional world of Tékumel, influenced by Indian, Middle-Eastern, Egyptian and Meso-American mythology. It also introduced the game mechanic of critical hits. Using these rules a player who rolls a 20 on a 20 sided die does double the normal damage, and a 20 followed by a 19 or 20 counts as a killing blow. According to creator Barker, "this simulates the 'lucky hit' on a vital organ." The game influenced Arneson and Gygax, who was so impressed with it that his company TSR published "Empire of the Petal Throne" in 1975. TSR published Barker's game and setting as a standalone game, rather than as a "supplement" to the original "D&D" rules.
Penn &amp; Teller's Smoke and Mirrors
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors is an unreleased video game starring the magician duo Penn & Teller that was planned for release initially on the Sega CD in April 1995. The game is a collection of several minigames and an adventure/platform game. All the minigames, with one exception, were made for the sole purpose of enabling the player to fool their friends by different means, designating the games "scam minigames" and virtual tricks. "Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors" is unofficially the video game equivalent of "Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends" video, which has the same purpose, and uses properties of the video medium itself for the tricks.
Dots and Boxes
Dots and Boxes is a pencil-and-paper game for two players (sometimes more). It was first published in the 19th century by Édouard Lucas, who called it la pipopipette. It has gone by many other names, including the game of dots, boxes, dot to dot grid, and pigs in a pen.
Starting with an empty grid of dots, two players take turns adding a single horizontal or vertical line between two "unjoined" adjacent dots. The player who completes the fourth side of a 1×1 box earns one point and takes another turn. (A point is typically recorded by placing a mark that identifies the player in the box, such as an initial.) The game ends when no more lines can be placed. The winner is the player with the most points. The board may be of any size. When short on time, a 2×2 board (a square of 9 dots) is good for beginners. A 5×5 is good for experts.
Full motion video
By the early 1990s when PCs and consoles moved to creating games on a CD, they became technically capable of utilizing more than a few minutes' worth of movies in a game. This gave rise to a slew of original FMV-based computer games such as "Night Trap" (1992), "The 7th Guest" (1993), "Voyeur" (1993), "Phantasmagoria" (1995), and "Daryl F. Gates' Police Quest: SWAT" (1995). Other titles were simply scaled down ports of Laserdisc arcade games, some of them a decade old by this time. Regardless of their sources, these FMV games frequently used B-movie and TV actors and promised to create the experience of playing an interactive movie or animation. However, production values were quite low with amateurish sets, lighting, costumes, and special effects. Animated titles either cobbled together footage from old anime or used cheaper overseas animation producers to create their footage. In addition, the video quality in these early games was low, and the gameplay frequently did not live up to the hype becoming well-known failures in video gaming. At this time, consoles like 3DO, CD-i, and Sega CD borrowed this concept for several low-quality interactive games. Companies such as Digital Pictures and American Laser Games were formed to produce full-motion video games.
DND (video game)
DND is one of the earliest role-playing video games. The name "DND" is derived from the abbreviation "D&D" from the original tabletop role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons". The video game was first released in 1977.
Role-playing video game
The earliest RPG on a console was "Dragonstomper" on the Atari 2600 in 1982. Another early RPG on a console was "Bokosuka Wars", originally released for the Sharp X1 computer in 1983 and later ported to the MSX in 1984, the NES in 1985 and the Sharp X68000 as "New Bokosuka Wars". The game laid the foundations for the tactical role-playing game genre, or "simulation RPG" genre as it is known in Japan. It was also an early example of a real-time, action role-playing game. In 1986, Chunsoft created the NES title "Dragon Quest" (called "Dragon Warrior" in North America until the ), which drew inspiration from computer RPG's "Ultima" and "Wizardry" and is regarded as the template for future Japanese role-playing video games released since then.
Bertie the Brain
"Bertie" was created only three years after the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game, and while non-visual games had been developed for research computers such as Alan Turing and Dietrich Prinz's chess program for the Ferranti Mark 1 at the University of Manchester, "Bertie" was the first computer-based game to feature a visual display of any sort. "Bertie" is considered under some definitions in contention for the title of the first video game. While definitions vary, the prior cathode-ray tube amusement device was a purely analog electrical game, and while "Bertie" did not feature an electronic screen it did run on a computer. Another special-purpose computer-based game, "Nimrod", was built in 1951, while the software-based tic-tac-toe game "OXO" and a draughts program by Christopher Strachey were in 1952 the first computer games to display visuals on an electronic screen rather than light bulbs.
Castlevania
Many "Castlevania" titles have been released for markets in Japan, North America, Europe and Australia on various video game consoles, personal computers (PC) and mobile phones, with additional remakes and re-releases. The first console title, "Castlevania", was released on the Famicom Disk System in 1986 and then in North America in 1987 on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). A 2D sidescrolling action game where the player progresses through six stages, many principal features of the "Castlevania" series originated with it. It has since been ported to many platforms, such as the NES Classic Edition. Also released in 1986 was "Vampire Killer" for the MSX home computer, which played significantly different from the original "Castlevania", where players now had to search for the exit before they could proceed to the next stage. Following that year, in 1987, "" further departed from the standard platforming genre of the first "Castlevania" for a game more similar to the nonlinear gameplay of "Metroid", with several RPG elements such as a world map which the player is free to explore and revisit. "Castlevania"'s first arcade game, "Haunted Castle" (1988), returned to the linear platforming gameplay of the original. This continued with the first handheld Game Boy entry, "" and the NES sequel, "", both released in 1989. "Dracula's Curse" added new features to the original gameplay, including alternate stages and multiple playable characters. "The Adventure" later saw a GameBoy sequel, "", in 1992 and also a developed by M2 for the WiiWare service in 2009.
Point and click
Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen ("pointing") and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button ("click"), or other pointing device. An example of point and click is in hypermedia, where users click on hyperlinks to navigate from document to document.
Nonviolent video game
Discussion of the impact of violence in video games came as early as 1976's "Death Race" arcade game (a game with black and white graphics which involved running over screaming zombies). In the 1980s titles such as Exidy's "Chiller" (1986), Namco's "Splatterhouse" (1987) and Midway's "NARC" (1988) raised concerns about video game violence in the arcade. Home games such as Palace's "Barbarian" (1987) featured the ability to decapitate opponents. It was not until graphic capabilities increased and a wave of new ultra-violent titles were released in the early 1990s that the mainstream news began to pay significant attention to the phenomenon. In 1992, with Midway's release of the first "Mortal Kombat" video game, and then in 1993 with id's "Doom", genuine controversy was first ignited as the wide and growing popularity of violent video games came into direct conflict with the moral and religious ethics of concerned citizens. Protests and game-bannings followed the publicizing of these conflicts, and controversies would erupt periodically throughout the 1990s with the releases of such games as "Dreamweb" (1992), "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992), "Mortal Kombat II" (1993), "Phantasmagoria" (1995), "Duke Nukem 3D" (1996), "Blood" (1997), "Grand Theft Auto" (1997), "Carmageddon" (1997), "Postal" (1997), "Mortal Kombat 3" (1997), "" (1998), "" (1998), "Grand Theft Auto 2" (1999), and "" (1999) among others.
In April 1999, the fears of the media and violence-watch groups were legitimated in their eyes as investigations into the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the shooters in the Columbine High School massacre, revealed that they had been fans of the video game, "Doom", and had even created levels for it today dubbed "the Harris levels". A great deal of discussion of violence in video games followed this event with strong arguments made on both sides, and research into the phenomenon which had begun during the 1980s received renewed support and interest.
Tomohiro Nishikado
As one of the earliest shooter games, it set precedents and helped pave the way for future titles and for the shooting genre. "Space Invaders" popularized a more interactive style of gameplay with the enemies responding to the player controlled cannon's movement. It was also the first video game to popularize the concept of achieving a high score, being the first game to save the player's score. It was also the first game where players had to repel hordes of creatures, take cover from enemy fire, and use destructible barriers, in addition to being the first game to use a continuous background soundtrack, with four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and changed pace during stages. It also moved the gaming industry away from "Pong"-inspired sports games grounded in real-world situations towards action games involving fantastical situations. "Space Invaders" set the template for the shoot 'em up genre, with its influence extending to most shooting games released to the present day, including first-person shooters such as "Wolfenstein", "Doom", "Halo" and "Call of Duty".
MGA Entertainment
In 1999, a clone to the Bop It line of games was made by MGA Entertainment under the name Super Click-It, and it was also made under the name Bonk It. It was sold in the UK by Marks and Spencer in 2003. The game unit has five actions which are Squish It (a double sided yellow button that is pressed), Zip It (a lever that can be pushed up and down), Twist It (an orange knob that looks similar to the Twist It knob from the Bop It Extreme), Blast It (a green fan that when the command is issued will work either by blowing or using one finger to make it work.) and Crack It (an object that is designed to pull backwards and then to normal position). The game has two game modes which are: One Player with Voice Commands (the voice will say: "One Player, Squish It!" when the player presses the Squish It button to select the game mode), One Player with Sound Commands (The voice will say "One Player" with a Squish It sound effect). There are also two two player game modes which are Two Player Voice Commands and Two Player Sound Commands.
Bandai Namco Holdings
Namco's first debut into the video game industry was through a game called "Gee Bee". Their second debut, "Galaxian" was the first video game to project RGB color spectrum. It was on their third arcade debut, "Pac-Man", that Namco gained worldwide acclaim and pop culture relevancy, and as a result, made Pac-Man the definitive mascot for the company. Namco continued their success in the video gaming industry by contributing to the Golden Age of arcades and home console gaming with notable franchises such as "Tekken", "Soulcalibur" and "Tales".
Video gaming in Japan
Sega's black and white boxing game "Heavyweight Champ" was released in 1976 as the first video game to feature fist fighting. The first stealth games were Hiroshi Suzuki's "Manbiki Shounen" (1979) and "Manbiki Shoujo" (1980), Taito's "Lupin III" (1980), and Sega's "005" (1981).
Eventually, the 1978 arcade release of "Space Invaders" would mark the first major mainstream breakthrough for video games in Japan. Created by Nishikado at Japan's Taito Corporation, "Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed. "Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed. The game used alien creatures inspired by "The War of the Worlds" (by H. G. Wells) because the developers were unable to render the movement of aircraft; in turn, the aliens replaced human enemies because of moral concerns (regarding the portrayal of killing humans) on the part of Taito Corporation. As with subsequent shoot 'em ups of the time, the game was set in space as the available technology only permitted a black background. The game also introduced the idea of giving the player a number of "lives". It popularised a more interactive style of gameplay with the enemies responding to the player-controlled cannon's movement, and it was the first video game to popularise the concept of achieving a high score, being the first to save the player's score. The aliens of "Space Invaders" return fire at the protagonist, making them the first arcade game targets to do so. It set the template for the shoot 'em up genre, and has influenced most shooting games released since then.
Taito's "Space Invaders", in 1978, proved to be the first blockbuster arcade video game. Its success marked the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games. Video game arcades sprang up in shopping malls, and small "corner arcades" appeared in restaurants, grocery stores, bars and movie theaters all over Japan and other countries during the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Space Invaders" (1978), "Galaxian" (1979), "Pac-Man" (1980) and "Bosconian" (1981) were especially popular. By 1981, the arcade video game industry was worth $8 billion ($ in ). Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was "Space Invaders". The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years, and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation). Japanese arcade games during the golden age also had hardware unit sales at least in the tens of thousands, including "Ms. Pac-Man" with over 115,000 units, "Donkey Kong" with over 60,000, "Galaxian" with 40,000, "Donkey Kong Junior" with 35,000, "Mr. Do!" with 30,000,
Video Pinball
Video Pinball is a Single-player dedicated video game console released in 1977 as an Atari, Inc. Bumper controllers on the sides or a dial on the front are used to control the games depending on the game selected. There are three game types: "Pinball", "Basketball", and "Breakout".
List of Pocky &amp; Rocky video games
"Pocky & Rocky" is a scrolling shooter type of video game that takes place from a top-down perspective. In a Single-player game the player can choose to control either Pocky or Rocky. In a two-player game both characters are on the screen at the same time. The screen can move either horizontally or vertically and the player-controlled characters can move in eight directions.
Video game console
The first video games appeared in the 1960s. They were played on massive computers connected to vector displays, not analog televisions. Ralph H. Baer conceived the idea of a home video game in 1951. In the late 1960s, while working for Sanders Associates, Baer created a series of video game console designs. One of these designs, which gained the nickname of the 1966 "Brown Box", featured changeable game modes and was demonstrated to several TV manufacturers, ultimately leading to an agreement between Sanders Associates and Magnavox. In 1972, Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a TV set. Ralph Baer's initial design had called for a huge row of switches that would allow players to turn on and off certain components of the console (the Odyssey lacked a CPU) to create slightly different games like tennis, volleyball, hockey, and chase. Magnavox replaced the switch design with separate cartridges for each game. Although Baer had sketched up ideas for cartridges that could include new components for new games, the carts released by Magnavox all served the same function as the switches and allowed players to choose from the Odyssey's built-in games.
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.
Home video game console
Microsoft released its first games console, the Xbox in North America on November 15, 2001, in Japan on February 22, 2002, and in Europe and Australia on March 14, 2002. It was the first console to employ a hard drive right out of the box to save games, the first to include an Ethernet port for broadband internet, and the beginning of Microsoft's online Xbox LIVE service. Microsoft was able to attract many PC developers by using the NT kernel and DirectX from their Windows operating system. Though criticized for its bulky size and the awkwardness of its original controller, the Xbox eventually gained popularity, especially in the US, where it outsold the GameCube to secure second place, due in part to the success of the "Halo" franchise.
Jarek Kolář
Petr Vlček at the time only had an 8-bit Atari 800 and therefore developed the game editor and engine at school. Jarek drew the locations and wrote the plot. While on a school trip to Polička, Jarek decided to skip a lunch with his classmates and instead went to find the panelák where entrepreneur Petr Vochozka lived at the time. Two weeks later, Vochozka saw their demo and agreed to produce and distribute the game. "The Secret of Donkey Island", released in June 1994 after two years of development, is considered the first Czech commercially successful point-and-click graphical adventure. The sales were supported by an enthusiastic review written by Petr Vochozka for Czech game magazine "Excalibur". In the following months Petr Vlček and Jarek Kolář created an adventure game called "Seven Days and Seven Nights", based on a story about a womanizer written by Petr Vochozka for a semi-developed Amiga game.
List of Game &amp; Watch games
Donkey Kong is a "Game & Watch" game released as a part of the Multi Screen series on June 3, 1982. It is a dual-screen single-player "Game & Watch" with an orange body. It opens like a compact, with an upper and lower screen. This game was also the first Game & Watch to feature a directional pad.
Point of sale
In 1986, Gene Mosher introduced the first graphical point of sale software featuring a touchscreen interface under the ViewTouch trademark on the 16-bit Atari 520ST color computer. It featured a color touchscreen widget-driven interface that allowed configuration of widgets representing menu items without low level programming. The ViewTouch point of sale software was first demonstrated in public at Fall Comdex, 1986, in Las Vegas Nevada to large crowds visiting the Atari Computer booth. This was the first commercially available POS system with a widget-driven color graphic touch screen interface and was installed in several restaurants in the US and Canada.
Video game
Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992. Inspired by radar display technology, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen. Other early examples include: The Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain; "OXO" a tic-tac-toe Computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952; "Tennis for Two", an electronic interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958; "Spacewar!", written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen's on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961; and the hit ping pong-style "Pong", a 1972 game by Atari. Each game used different means of display: NIMROD used a panel of lights to play the game of Nim, OXO used a graphical display to play tic-tac-toe "Tennis for Two" used an oscilloscope to display a side view of a tennis court, and "Spacewar!" used the DEC PDP-1's vector display to have two spaceships battle each other.
Sports game
In 1974, Taito released "Basketball". It displays images both for the players and the baskets, and is an early attempt at accurately simulating a team sport. Each player controls two team members, a forward and a guard. The ball can be dribbled and passed between team members before shooting, and the ball had to fall into the opposing team's basket to score a point. That same year, Sega released an association football game, "Goal Kick", which was played like an early vertical ball-and-paddle game. The first driving video games were also released that year: Taito's "Speed Race" (1974) which introduced scrolling graphics, and Atari's "Gran Trak 10". In 1976, the driving subgenre was extended into three dimensions, with the forward-scrolling third-person perspective of Sega's motorbike racing game "Moto-Cross", soon re-branded as "Fonz" that same year, and with the first-person perspective of Atari's "Night Driver".
Igor: Objective Uikokahonia
Igor: Objective Uikokahonia (Spanish:Igor: Objetivo Uikokahonia) is a graphic adventure video game released in 1994 by Pendulo Studios for the MS-DOS PC platform. It was the first point-and-click adventure made in Spain, as well as the first title developed by Pendulo Studios.
AND1
AND1 apparel and footwear had first appeared in the digital arena on Street Hoops in 2002, but in 2006 the brand officially made its entrance into the category, partnering with UBISOFT to release its first video game, AND1 Streetball. A mobile version was also released by Gameloft. The game featured a story mode mirroring AND1’s "Streetball" series on ESPN, where players were able to create their own basketball player and enter him in the AND 1 Mix Tape Tour in order to get a contract with the AND 1 team. Along the way, players were able to create their own stylized trick moves and pull them off with a two-analog stick system called "I BALL". The games were available on both PlayStation 2 and Xbox and received positive reviews.
Interactive movie
The first LaserDisc game to gain popularity in the United States was "Dragon's Lair" in 1983. It contained animated scenes, much like a cartoon. The scenes would be played back and at certain points during playback the player would have to press a specific direction on the joystick or the button to advance the game to the next scene, like a quick time event. For instance, a scene begins with the hero falling through a hole in a drawbridge and being attacked by tentacles. If the player presses the button at this point, the hero fends off the tentacles with his sword, and pulls himself back up out of the hole. If the player fails to press the sword button at the right time, or instead presses a direction on the joystick, the hero is attacked by the tentacles and crushed. Each move of the joystick, however, would produce a few moments of black screen, when the graphics switched between either a successful outcome or the death of the character, which interrupted the continuous flow of gameplay found in other videogame graphic systems of the time; this was a common criticism of some players and critics.
Dragon Quest (video game)
Dragon Quest is the first role-playing video game (RPG) in the "Dragon Quest" media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Family Computer (or Famicom for short) and published by Enix in Japan in 1986 as "Dragon Quest" and by Nintendo in 1989 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) as Dragon Warrior. "Dragon Quest" has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and mobile phones. In play, players control a hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. "Dragon Warrior"s story became the second part in a trilogy. Several more anime and manga series, which revolved around this overarching plot were created.
Tetris Attack
Tetris Attack is a 1995 puzzle video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. It is the first game in the "Puzzle League" series. While it was originally known in Japan as Panel de Pon (パネルでポン "Paneru de Pon") for the Super Famicom and featured different art assets and characters, its English localization was replaced with characters from "Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island". It was released on the Game Boy under the same name. The Game Boy release of the Yoshi version was also later released in Japan. On November 3, 1996, a version was released for the Super Famicom's Satellaview satellite modem service as . This game is similar to "Baku Baku Animal", developed by Sega and released in 1995.
Pong
"Pong" was the first commercially successful video game, which helped to establish the video game industry along with the first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied its gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to produce more innovative games. The company released several sequels which built upon the original's gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of "Pong" exclusively through Sears retail stores. It also was a commercial success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release. "Pong" is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. due to its cultural impact.
PlayStation
The original PlayStation, released in Japan on December 3, , was the first of the ubiquitous PlayStation series of console and hand-held game devices. It has included successor consoles and upgrades including the Net Yaroze (a special black PlayStation with tools and instructions to program PlayStation games and applications), "PS one" (a smaller version of the original) and the PocketStation (a handheld which enhances PlayStation games and also acts as a memory card). It was part of the fifth generation of video game consoles competing against the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64. By December 2003, the PlayStation and PS one had shipped a combined total of 102.49 million units, eventually becoming the first video game console to sell 120 million units.
Dungeons &amp; Dragons
"Dungeons & Dragons" was the first modern role-playing game and it established many of the conventions that have dominated the genre. Particularly notable are the use of dice as a game mechanic, character record sheets, use of numerical attributes and gamemaster-centered group dynamics. Within months of "Dungeons & Dragons"'s release, new role-playing game writers and publishers began releasing their own role-playing games, with most of these being in the fantasy genre. Some of the earliest other role-playing games inspired by "D&D" include "Tunnels & Trolls" (1975), "Empire of the Petal Throne" (1975), and "Chivalry & Sorcery" (1976).
Time Traveler (video game)
Although Time Traveler (video game) was released in 1991 by Sega as the first holographic-like video game, Kathy Nelson (MIT, BSEE 1993) created the world's first true holographic video game in 1993. It was the first video game to use real holograms instead of optical effects, such as concave mirrors. The holograms were created and displayed by Holovideo (see Computer-generated holography), which was developed by members of the MIT Media Lab Spatial Imaging Group.
Kathy Nelson created the holographic video game for her undergraduate thesis in the MIT Media Lab Spatial Imaging Group. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology published her thesis here: style="color:#3366BB;">Real time holographic image rendering : improvements in lighting and realism
Nuts &amp; Milk
Originally developed by Japanese software company Hudson Soft for several home computers in Japan, "Nuts & Milk" became the company's first Famicom video game. The game itself borrows elements from "Lode Runner", an earlier Hudson project, and other arcade-styled platformers such as "Donkey Kong", and even emulates the title screen of Nintendo's early 1980s releases. While the game retains stylistic similarities to other games published at the time, it is unique in being an arcade-styled game that was never released on an actual arcade system.
Dark Seed (video game)
Dark Seed is a psychological horror point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Cyberdreams in 1992. It exhibits a normal world and a dark world counterpart, which is based on the artwork by H. R. Giger. It was one of the first point-and-click adventure games to use high-resolution (640 × 350 pixels) graphics, to Giger's demand. A sequel, "Dark Seed II", was released in 1995.
Out-of-home entertainment
Probably known more by the blockbuster arcade video game titles they produced rather than by company names, these video game developers played a defining role in the birth of the video amusement industry. In 1972, Atari essentially created the first commercially successful video game "Pong," marking the beginning of the coin-operated video game industry. In 1978, the first blockbuster arcade video game, "Space Invaders" was produced by Taito Corporation and ushered in the golden age of arcade video games. Namco (of "Pac-Man"'s fame), Nintendo ("Donkey Kong"), Konami (), Capcom ("Street Fighters"), Sega AM2 ("Daytona") are among some of the most notable video game developers that remain active today in the video amusement scene.
Checkpoint (pinball)
Checkpoint is a 1991 pinball machine released by Data East. It featured the first dot matrix display (DMD) ever incorporated into a pinball game. For "Checkpoint", Data East used a "half-height" DMD. By way of comparison, Williams later produced machines with standard DMDs that were twice the height. "Checkpoint" also features video mode minigames on its display.
History of video games
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld game console since the ill-fated Microvision ten years before. The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch systems. Included with the system was "Tetris", which became one of the best sold video games of all time and was ported to a large variety of systems. Several rival handhelds made their debut in the early 90s, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx (the first handheld with color LCD display). Although these systems were more technologically advanced, they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less third-party developer support. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-1990s, the Game Boy, and its successive incarnations the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, would be virtually unchallenged for dominance in the handheld market, until the PlayStation Portable was released in 2004 to compete with Nintendo's successor to the Game Boy line, the Nintendo DS.
History of Eastern role-playing video games
In 1991, Nihon Falcom's "Brandish" was an early overhead action RPG to use mouse controls, where the player could move forward, backward, turn, strafe and attack by clicking on boxes surrounding the player character. The 1991 "Dragon Slayer" title "Lord Monarch" departed from the action RPG gameplay of its predecessors, instead using an early form of real-time strategy gameplay. The erotic adult RPG "Dragon Knight III", released in 1991 for the PC-8801 and as "Knights of Xentar" for MS-DOS, introduced a unique pausable real-time battle system, where characters automatically attack based on a list of different AI scripts, though this meant the player had no control over the characters during battle other than to give commands for spells, item use, and AI routines. That same year, "Arcus Odyssey" by Wolf Team (now Namco Tales Studio) was an action RPG that featured an isometric perspective and co-operative multiplayer gameplay. The sequel to the first-person shooter role-playing game "Star Cruiser", simply called "Star Cruiser 2", was released in 1992, for the PC-9821 and FM Towns computers. T&E Soft released the PC-98 game "Sword World PC" in 1992 and a console version "Sword World SFC" for the Super Famicom in 1993. It was officially based on "Sword World RPG", a popular Japanese table-top role-playing game. The video game versions were multiplayer titles and early attempts at recreating an open-ended, table-top role-playing experience on video game platforms, being set in the same world as "Sword World" and implementing the same rules and scenarios. Wolf Team's "Dark Kingdom", released for the PC-98 in 1992 and ported to the SNES console in 1994, featured a unique storyline that revolved around the players conquering the world as a villain instead of saving the world.
World 1-1
During the third generation of video game consoles, tutorials in which players are explained the mechanics of a video game were rare, and instead, they had to learn how a video game worked by being guided by level design. The opening sections of Nintendo Entertainment System games such as "Metroid", "The Legend of Zelda" and "Super Mario Bros." are all designed in such a way that players were forced to explore the mechanics of the game to be able to advance. "Super Mario Bros." was the first side-scrolling video game featuring Mario, and one of the first video games directed and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto. Rather than confront the player with obstacles indiscriminately, the first level of "Super Mario Bros." introduces the variety of hazards and objects by forcing the player interact with them "while" advancing through the level.
Star Trek: Phaser Strike
"Star Trek: Phaser Strike" was released in 1979 by Milton Bradley for the Microvision hand-held game system alongside the film "", and as one of seven launch titles for the console. This made it the first home console video game release for the "Star Trek" franchise. The package came with a game cartridge overlay for the base unit along with an instruction manual. After Milton Bradley lost the license during the following year, a new non-"Star Trek" related version was released, simply called "Phaser Strike". Internationally it was sold without the "Star Trek" license at all; in Italy and German it was called "Shooting Star" and it France it was titled "Cannon Phaser".
Point Blank (1994 video game)
At the 2006 Game Developers Conference, in San Jose, CA, a Nintendo DS port of the game was announced; the console's stylus and touch screen is used in place of the light gun. The finished game was released in North America on June 13, 2006, two days after the North American release of the Nintendo DS Lite.
Adventure (Atari 2600)
As the first action-adventure video game and first console fantasy game, "Adventure" established its namesake genre on video game consoles. In addition to being the first graphical adventure game on the Atari 2600 console, it is the first video game to contain a widely known Easter egg, and the first to allow a player to use multiple, portable, on-screen items while exploring an open-ended environment, making it one of the first examples, even as small and primitive as it is, of an open world game. The game has been voted the best Atari 2600 game in numerous polls, and has been noted as a significant step in the advancement of home video games. "GamePro" ranked it as the 28th most important video game of all time in 2007. In 2010, "1UP.com" listed it as one of the most important games ever made in its "The Essential 50" feature. "Entertainment Weekly" named "Adventure" as one of the top 10 games for the Atari 2600.
OXO
Douglas used the EDSAC to simulate a game of noughts and crosses, and display the state of the game on the screen. Like other early video games, after serving Douglas's purpose, the game was discarded. Douglas did not give the game a name beyond "noughts and crosses"; the name "OXO" first appeared as the name of the simulation file created by computer historian Martin Campbell-Kelly while creating a simulation of the EDSAC several decades later. Around the same time that "OXO" was completed, Christopher Strachey expanded a draughts program he had originally written in 1951 and ported it to the Ferranti Mark 1, which showed the state of the game on a CRT display. "OXO" and Strachey's draughts program are the earliest known games to display visuals on an electronic screen, though it is unclear which of the two games was displayed first. As it ran on a computing device and used a graphical display, "OXO" is considered under some definitions to be a contender for the first video game, though under others it does not due to its lack of moving graphics or graphics which update continuously.
Point and click
A single click or click is the act of pressing a computer mouse button once without moving the mouse. Single clicking is usually a primary action of the mouse. Single clicking, by default in many operating systems, selects (or highlights) an object while double-clicking executes or opens the object. The single click has many advantages over double click due the reduced time needed to complete the action. The single-click or one-click phrase has also been used to apply to the commercial field as a competitive advantage. The slogan "single click" or "one click" has become very common to show clients the ease of use of their services.
Blitz (video game)
The first game of this genre was written for the Commodore PET by Peter Calver and published under the name "Air Attack" by his company, Supersoft, in 1979 (it is shown as a new title in the December 1979 Supersoft catalogue). At that time it was common for computer magazines to publish games listings which readers could type into their own computer, and "Air Attack" was also published as a listing in the December 1979 issue of Personal Computer World.
Steve Case
Among many initiatives in the early years of AOL, Case personally championed many innovative online interactive titles and games, including graphical chat environments Habitat (1986) and Club Caribe (1989), the first online interactive fiction series QuantumLink Serial by Tracy Reed (1988), Quantum Space, the first fully automated Play by email game (1989), and the original Dungeons & Dragons title "Neverwinter Nights", the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) to depict the adventure with graphics instead of text (1991).
Danny O'Dwyer
Danny O'Dwyer launched Noclip via a Patreon campaign and is supported through crowdfunding. NoClip's first project provided viewers with insight into the hit videogame "Rocket League". The second project covered a history of "Doom", revealing some previously unreleased footage from "Doom 4." For the third project, Danny introduced the company's first in its "Noclip Profiles" series, traveling to Ireland "to talk to John Romero about his incredible career making some of the most influential first person shooters of all time." In the fourth project, a multi-game documentary entitled Rediscovering Mystery, Noclip's YouTube page stated: "we talk to Jonathan Blow [lead designer of The Witness], Derek Yu [lead designer of Spelunky] and Jim Crawford [lead designer of Frog Fractions and Frog Fractions 2] about the challenge of retaining mystery & player discovery in the age of the internet."
Interactive movie
The first arcade laserdisc video game was Sega's "Astron Belt", an early third-person space combat rail shooter featuring live-action full-motion video footage (largely borrowed from a Japanese science fiction film) over which the player/enemy ships and laser fire are superimposed. Developed in 1982, it was unveiled at the 1982 AMOA show in Chicago and released the following year. However, the game that popularized the genre in the United States was "Dragon's Lair", animated by Don Bluth and released by Cinematronics shortly after. Around the same time, the laserdisc games "Bega's Battle" and "Cliff Hanger" were also released.
Pinball
The introduction of microprocessors brought pinball into the realm of electronic gaming. The electromechanical relays and scoring reels that drove games in the 1950s and 1960s were replaced in the 1970s with circuit boards and digital displays. The first solid-state pinball is believed to be Mirco Games' "The Spirit of '76" (1976), though the first mainstream solid-state game was Williams' "Hot Tip" (1977). This new technology led to a boom for Williams and Bally, who attracted more players with games featuring more complex rules, digital sound effects, and speech.
Experience point
The concept of permanent power-ups that are progressively unlocked dates back to the early NES action RPGs, "Deadly Towers" (1986) and "Rygar" (1987), which blurred the line between the power-ups used in action-adventures and the experience points used in role-playing video games. The first video game to use the term "perks" to refer to such a mechanic was possibly the 1997 role-playing video game "Fallout". Perks have been used in various other video games in recent times, including first-person shooters such as "" (2007), "" (2009), and "Killing Floor" (2009), as well as action games such as "Metal Gear Online" (2008).
Side-scrolling video game
The first scrolling platform game was "Jump Bug", a platform-shooter released in 1981. Players controlled a bouncing car and navigated it to jump on various platforms like buildings, clouds and hills. It featured levels that scrolled both horizontally and vertically.
Video gaming in the United States
The military continued to take part in video gaming in the 1960s when, shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis The Defense Department created a war game known as "STAGE" (Simulation of Total Atomic Global Exchange). "STAGE" was created to be political propaganda that showcased how the U.S. would be victorious in a Thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. The idea of video games that were usable on televisions was conceived by the engineer
Ralph Baer and with the help of a team, Baer completed two successful TV games in this decade. The first interactive media computer game, "Spacewar" eventually had the future founders of Atari create an arcade game of it titled "Computer Space" that became the first video arcade game ever released.
Clickteam
Clickteam's debut software was "Klik & Play", released in 1994 as commercial, proprietary software; this marked the team's first successful software release. A version for educational use, dubbed "Klik & Play For Schools", was also released as freeware, to be used exclusively for school activities. "Klik & Play For Schools" was available for download in Clickteam's website during the course of 2006, now being available for the public in general. Subsequent releases included, released in 1996, Clickteam's second product, "Click and Create" later renamed "Multimedia Fusion Express" which included more advanced features which the original "Klik & Play" lacked, such as scrolling, and a timeline editor, 3D game-making tool "Jamagic"; "The Games Factory"; "The Games Factory 2"; and "Multimedia Fusion".
List of Tom and Jerry video games
A "Tom and Jerry" video game was released for the Super NES by Hi Tech Expressions in 1992 in the US and by Altron
in 1993 in Japan. The player controls Jerry, the mouse, as he traverses through four different themed worlds – a movie theater, a junkyard, a toy store, and a house. Tuffy is playable through second player.
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.
Spot: The Video Game
Spot: The Video Game is a video game developed and produced by Virgin Mastertronic in 1990/1991 for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS computers, Game Boy and NES. It is the first video game to feature the then current 7 Up mascot "Spot", and was later followed up by platformers "Cool Spot" and "Spot Goes To Hollywood". Its gameplay is similar to the video game "Ataxx".
Tic-tac-toe
In 1952, "OXO" (or "Noughts and Crosses"), developed by British computer scientist Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge, became one of the first known video games. The computer player could play perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.
Nimrod (computer)
The Nimrod was created only four years after the 1947 invention of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game, and one year after a similar purpose built game-playing machine, "Bertie the Brain", the first computer-based game to feature a visual display of any sort. The Nimrod is considered under some definitions one of the first video games, possibly the second. While definitions vary, the prior cathode-ray tube amusement device was a purely analog electrical game, and while the Nimrod and "Bertie" did not feature an electronic screen they both had a game running on a computer. The software-based tic-tac-toe game "OXO" and a draughts program by Christopher Strachey were programmed a year later in 1952 and were the first computer games to display visuals on an electronic screen rather than through light bulbs.
Nintendo
In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi conceived the idea of a handheld video game, while observing a fellow bullet train commuter who passed the time by interacting idly with a portable LCD calculator, which gave birth to "Game & Watch". In 1980, Nintendo launched "Game & Watch"—a handheld video game series developed by Yokoi. These systems do not contain interchangeable cartridges and thus the hardware was tied to the game. The first Game & Watch game, "Ball", was distributed worldwide. The modern "cross" D-pad design was developed in 1982, by Yokoi for a "Donkey Kong" version. Proven to be popular, the design was patented by Nintendo. It later earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.
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Point Blank (2008 video game)
On June 24, 2014, Project Blackout NA adopted the Point Blank Revolution (Point Blank Malaysia/Singapore) UI/Interface, becoming the first old-school Point Blank game to adopt the Revolution Look. An update was released on April 22, 2015 changing the name of the game completely to go along with the Revolution UI/Interface. Project Blackout was renamed "Piercing Blow" in another major update.
Black Dahlia (video game)
Black Dahlia is an interactive movie point-and-click adventure game that was released on February 28, 1998 by Take-Two Interactive.
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
The first video game based on the film was titled "Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Quest" and is an action platformer for the Sega Genesis. Developed by Software Creations, the game was released in North America in 1993. It is one of two video games based on the film that Sunsoft published for the Genesis, the other being "Beauty & The Beast: Roar of the Beast". Characters from the film like Gaston can help the player past tricky situations. As Belle, the player must reach the Beast's castle and break the spell to live happily ever after. To succeed, she must explore the village, forest, castle, and snowy forest to solve puzzles and mini-games while ducking or jumping over enemies. Belle's health is represented by a stack of blue books, which diminishes when she touches bats, rats, and other hazards in the game. Extra lives, keys and other items are hidden throughout the levels. While there is no continue or game saving ability, players can use a code to start the game at any of the seven levels.
Atari Joystick Controller TV Video Game System
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The Atari Joystick Controller TV Video Game System was made in 2003 (copyright 2002) in Jakks Pacific's Plug It In & Play TV Games plug-n-play game system lineup.In 2017, Basic Fun released a version of this joystick called "Atari 2600 Plug & Play Joystick" with the game list otherwise being the same except with "Canyon Bomber", "Crystal Castles", and "Warlords" replacing "Circus Atari", "Pong", and "Yar's Revenge".