Psygnosis hired design studio The Designers Republic to create a simple color scheme and design for in-game menus and race courses, to create what a Psygnosis staff member called "a believable future". The game is one of the few PlayStation titles to run in 16:9 widescreen and high-resolution mode, offering crisper graphics and visuals. Wipeout 3's soundtrack is composed of electronica tracks selected by DJ Sasha and features contributions by Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. The game was re-released in Europe as Wipeout 3: Special Edition in August 2000, which contained additional tracks and content.
The game was positively received on release: critics lauded the graphics, music, and minimalist design elements. The high level of difficulty and lack of new content, courses, or game features were seen as the game's primary faults. Wipeout 3 was the last title in the series to appear on the PlayStation; the next entry, Wipeout Fusion, was released exclusively for the PlayStation 2 platform in 2002. (Full article...)
Nuts & Bolts entered production following the completion of Grabbed by the Ghoulies (2003) and was developed by the same team behind the Nintendo 64Banjo games, led by designer Gregg Mayles. It began as a remake of Banjo-Kazooie (1998) but was repurposed as an original game. Rare sought a broad audience and, wanting to evolve the platform genre, introduced vehicular gameplay to take advantage of the Havokphysics engine. The customisation elements originated from the Rare co-founder Tim Stamper's suggestion for a game similar to connecting Lego bricks. The soundtrack was composed by Robin Beanland, Dave Clynick, and Grant Kirkhope in his final work for Rare.
Nuts & Bolts was released in November 2008. It drew criticism from fans for departing from the Banjo-Kazooie gameplay, but received generally positive reviews. Critics considered the vehicle editor robust and praised the visuals, music, and creativity, though they found some challenges tedious, and some questioned the new direction. Nuts & Bolts was a commercial disappointment, selling 140,000 copies in the United States by the end of 2008. Afterwards, Microsoft laid off staff at Rare and restructured them as a Kinect and Avatar-focused developer. (Full article...)
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Screenshot of gameplay (1977 version)
Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as Adventure or ADVENT) is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake.
The original game, written in 1975 and 1976, was based on Crowther's maps and experiences caving in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the longest cave system in the world; further, it was intended, in part, to be accessible to non-technical players, such as his two daughters. Woods's version expanded the game in size and increased the number of fantasy elements present in it, such as a dragon and magic spells. Both versions, typically played over teleprinters connected to mainframe computers, were spread around the nascent ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, which Crowther was involved in developing.
Thief II was designed to build on the foundation of its predecessor. In response to feedback from players of Thief, the team placed a heavy focus on urban stealth in the sequel, and they minimized the use of monsters and maze-like levels. The game was made with the third iteration of the Dark Engine, which had been used previously to develop Thief and System Shock 2. Thief II was announced at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as part of an extended contract between Looking Glass and Eidos to release games in the Thief series. Looking Glass neared bankruptcy as the game was developed, and the company was kept running by advances from Eidos.
Thief II received positive reviews from critics, and its initial sales were stronger than those of its predecessor. However, the game's royalties were processed slowly, which compounded Looking Glass's financial troubles. As a result, the company closed in May 2000, with plans for Thief III cancelled. The third game in the series, entitled Thief: Deadly Shadows, was developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos in 2004. Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, a widely praised expansion mod for Thief II, was released in 2005. In 2014, Square Enix published a reboot of the series, developed by Eidos Montréal. (Full article...)
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Iridion 3D is a quasi-3Drail shootervideo game developed by Shin'en Multimedia. A launch title for the Game Boy Advance portable game console, it was released in North America on June 11, 2001 and in Europe on September 21. The player controls a single starship defending Earth from the alien Iridion. The game spans seven levels from Earth to the aliens' home planet, each following a linear path that culminate with a boss.
Iridion began development as a shooter for the Game Boy Color; when Shin'en decided to drop development and shift their focus to the Game Boy Advance, Iridion was the first game by the developer to appear on the system. Though billed as a 3D game, Shin'en used realtime encoding and resizing to manipulate the size of 2D sprites instead of creating a true 3D environment. More room on the game cartridge was available for graphics due to the game's use of the GAX Sound Engine, which allowed real-time decoding of song data in a small file size.
On release Iridion garnered generally mixed reviews. The graphics and sound were generally praised; a year after its release, critics at Extended Play still considered it the best-looking game on the platform. In contrast, critics derided the game's repetitive and frustrating gameplay. Despite lukewarm reception to the title upon release, Iridion 3D was a financial success, and influenced future Shin'en shooters such as Iridion II and Nanostray. (Full article...)
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Shadow of the Colossus is a 2005 action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It takes place in a fantasy setting and follows Wander, a young man who enters an isolated and abandoned region of the realm seeking the power to revive a girl named Mono. The player assumes the role of Wander as he embarks on a mission that might entail Mono's resurrection: to locate and destroy the colossi, sixteen massive beings spread across the forbidden land, which the protagonist traverses by horseback and on foot.
The game was directed by Fumito Ueda and developed at Sony Computer Entertainment's International Production Studio 1, also known as Team Ico, the same development team responsible for the acclaimed PlayStation 2 title Ico, to which the game is considered a spiritual successor. Сonceived as an online multiplayer game titled NICO directly after Ico's completion, Shadow of the Colossus underwent a lengthy production cycle during which it was redeveloped as a single-player title. The team sought to create an outstanding interactive experience by including a distinct visual design, an unorthodox gameplay template, and non-player characters with sophisticated artificial intelligence such as the colossi and Wander's horse, Agro.
Cited as an influential title in the video game industry and one of the best video games ever made, Shadow of the Colossus is often regarded as an important example of video games as art due to its minimalist landscape designs, immersive gameplay, and emotional weight of the player character's journey. It received wide critical acclaim by the media and was met with strong sales compared to Ico, due in part to a larger marketing campaign. The game won several awards for its audio, design, and overall quality. A remastered version for the PlayStation 3 was released alongside Ico as The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection in September 2011, developed by Bluepoint Games, who later produced a high definitionremake of the game for the PlayStation 4 in 2018. (Full article...)
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Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure video game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It follows teenage protagonist Dave Miller as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz from a mad scientist, whose mind has been enslaved by a sentient meteor. The player uses a point-and-click interface to guide Dave and two of his six playable friends through the scientist's mansion while solving puzzles and avoiding dangers. Gameplay is non-linear, and the game must be completed in different ways based on the player's choice of characters. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first self-published product.
The game was conceived in 1985 by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, who sought to tell a comedic story based on horror film and B-movie clichés. They mapped out the project as a paper-and-pencil game before coding commenced. While earlier adventure titles had relied on command lines, Gilbert disliked such systems, and he developed Maniac Mansion's simpler point-and-click interface as a replacement. To speed up production, he created a game engine called SCUMM, which was used in many later LucasArts titles. After its release, Maniac Mansion was ported to several platforms. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System had to be reworked heavily, in response to Nintendo of America’s concerns that the game was inappropriate for children.
Maniac Mansion was critically acclaimed: reviewers lauded its graphics, cutscenes, animation, and humor. Writer Orson Scott Card praised it as a step toward "computer games [becoming] a valid storytelling art". It influenced numerous graphic adventure titles, and its point-and-click interface became a standard feature in the genre. The game's success solidified Lucasfilm as a serious rival to adventure game studios such as Sierra On-Line. In 1990, Maniac Mansion was adapted into a three-season television series of the same name, written by Eugene Levy and starring Joe Flaherty. A sequel to the game, Day of the Tentacle, was released in 1993. (Full article...)
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Doom is a first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software. Released on December 10, 1993, for DOS, it is the first installment in the Doom franchise. The player assumes the role of a space marine, later unofficially referred to as Doomguy, fighting through hordes of undead humans and invading demons. The game begins on the moons of Mars and finishes in hell, with the player traversing each level to find its exit or defeat its final boss. It is an early example of 3D graphics in video games, and has enemies and objects as 2D images, a technique sometimes referred to as 2.5D graphics.
Doom was the third major independent release by id Software, after Commander Keen (1990–1991) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992). In May 1992, id started developing a darker game focused on fighting demons with technology, using a new 3D game engine from the lead programmer, John Carmack. The designer Tom Hall initially wrote a science fiction plot, but he and most of the story were removed from the project, with the final game featuring an action-heavy design by John Romero and Sandy Petersen. Id published Doom as a set of three episodes under the shareware model, marketing the full game by releasing the first episode free. A retail version with an additional episode was published in 1995 by GT Interactive as The Ultimate Doom.
Doom was a critical and commercial success, earning a reputation as one of the best and most influential video games of all time. It sold an estimated 3.5 million copies by 1999, and up to 20 million people are estimated to have played it within two years of launch. It has been termed the "father" of first-person shooters and is regarded as one of the most important games in the genre. It has been cited by video game historians as shifting the direction and public perception of the medium as a whole, as well as sparking the rise of online games and communities. It led to an array of imitators and clones, as well as a robust modding scene and the birth of speedrunning as a community. Its high level of graphic violence led to controversy from a range of groups. Doomhas been ported to a variety of platforms both officially and unofficially and has been followed by several games in the series, including Doom II (1994), Doom 64 (1997), Doom 3 (2004), Doom (2016), and Doom Eternal (2020), as well as the films Doom (2005) and Doom: Annihilation (2019). (Full article...)
The game combines characters and settings from Disney animated features with those from Square's Final Fantasy series, in addition to original characters and worlds created for the game. It follows the adventures of Sora, a cheerful teenager who fights against the forces of darkness alongside his allies, including Donald Duck, Goofy and other Disney characters. The game was a departure from Square's standard role-playing games, introducing a substantial action and hack and slash element to the gameplay. The score was composed by Yoko Shimomura. Kingdom Hearts has an all-starvoice cast and includes many of the Disney characters' official voice actors. It was longtime Square character designer Tetsuya Nomura's first time in a directorial position.
Kingdom Hearts received critical and commercial success and was praised for its unusual combination of action and role-playing elements, its unexpectedly harmonious mix of Square and Disney elements, and Shimomura's music. It was a large presence in the 2002 holiday season, receiving numerous year-end game awards, and went on to achieve Sony "Greatest Hits" status. The game's success spawned a franchise and numerous sequels, with the Kingdom Hearts series going on to ship over 36 million copies worldwide and becoming one of Square's most popular franchises. Kingdom Hearts is the tenth best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, and is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. (Full article...)
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Katana Zero is a 2019 platform game created by the indie developer Justin Stander. Set in a dystopian metropolis, the neo-noir storyline follows Subject Zero, a katana-wielding assassin with amnesia who can slow down time and predict the future. Zero unravels his past while completing assassination contracts. Katana Zero features side-scrollinghack-and-slash gameplay in which the player attempts to kill all enemies in a level without being hit, using Zero's abilities to manipulate time, dodge attacks, and take advantage of environmental hazards. In between levels, the story is told in sequences where the player converses with non-player characters through dialogue trees.
Stander began working on Katana Zero in 2013. He had previously developed freeware games, such as Tower of Heaven (2009), and conceived Katana Zero as his first commercial game. Using GameMaker Studio 2, Stander sought to make a difficult story-driven game that did not force the player to wait through dialogue and cutscenes. He focused on attention to detail and looked to films such as Sin City (2005) and John Wick (2014) for story inspiration. The development was prolonged and Stander worked mostly alone, although he recruited artists to design the visuals as well as musicians Bill Kiley and Thijs "LudoWic" Lodewijk to compose the synthwave soundtrack.
Katana Zero was published by Devolver Digital for macOS, the Nintendo Switch, and Windows on April 18, 2019. It sold 500,000 copies in less than a year and received positive reviews. Critics praised the gameplay—which they favorably compared to Devolver's Hotline Miami (2012)—and the visuals, writing, and music. The story divided reviewers and the unresolved ending was criticized. Several critics cited Katana Zero as one of the best games of 2019 and it was nominated for numerous year-end accolades. A port for the Xbox One was released in 2020, while Android and iOS versions and downloadable content are in development. Stander intends to continue the fictional universe in future games. (Full article...)
... that when Kaz Ayabe pitched his video game Boku no Natsuyasumi to Sony, he said that illustrator Mineko Ueda was interested in the project even though they had never actually met?
... that the European version of the video game Tomba! uses the theme song of the television series No Sweat as its opening theme?
... that the success of Kingdom Rush prompted plans to grow the video game industry of Uruguay?
... that the urban legend Herobrine was ranked on a Guinness World Records poll of the best video game villains, despite never existing?
... that the game designer of the video game Hades said that the characters were attractive "because Jen Zee"?
... that Terra Invicta's development company is a group of former volunteer video game modders that decided to release their own game after the success of their mod?
... that the 2015 video game Worlds of Magic, intended as a spiritual successor to the classic game Master of Magic, failed to impress most reviewers?
Fischbach is one of the most popular gaming YouTubers on the platform. He was listed by Forbes as the third highest-paid content creator on the platform in 2022, and has won four Streamy Awards and a Golden Joystick Award for "Best Streamer/Broadcaster". (Full article...)
A fan of arcade games in his youth, Tajiri wrote for and edited his own video gaming fanzineGame Freak with Ken Sugimori, before evolving it into a development company of the same name. Tajiri claims that the joining of two Game Boys via a link cable inspired him to create a game which embodied the collection and companionship of his childhood hobby, insect collecting. The game, which became Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, took six years to complete and went on to spark a multibillion-dollar franchise which reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld gaming scene. Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to executive producer, which he holds to this day. (Full article...)
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Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, April 5, 1955 – March 1, 2024) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. (Full article...)
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Lim Yo-hwan in 2021
Lim Yo-hwan (Korean: 임요환, born September 4, 1980), known online as SlayerS_'BoxeR' (usually shortened to BoxeR), is a former professional player of the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft. He is often referred to as The Terran Emperor, or simply The Emperor, and is widely considered to be one of the most successful players of the genre as well as a pop culture icon.
Lim won his first StarCraft: Brood War tournament in 1999. From 2001 to 2002, he won multiple major championships, including two OnGameNet Starleague titles and two World Cyber Games gold medals. In 2002, he also created the team Team Orion, which later became SK Telecom T1 (SKT T1) in 2004. He began his compulsory military service in 2006, where he played on South Korea's newly formed Air Force esports team Airforce Challenge E-sports. In late 2010, he retired from StarCraft: Brood War and founded the StarCraft II team SlayerS. He then briefly returned to SKT T1 as a coach in 2012 before retiring due to health related issues. Lim finished his playing career with a record of 603 wins and 430 losses (58.4%). (Full article...)
Born in Sonobe, Kyoto, Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts. He originally sought a career as a manga artist, until developing an interest in video games. With the help of his father, he joined Nintendo in 1977 after impressing the president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, with his toys. He helped create art for the arcade game Sheriff, and was later tasked with designing a new arcade game, leading to the 1981 game Donkey Kong. (Full article...)
Hironobu Sakaguchi (坂口 博信, Sakaguchi Hironobu, born November 25, 1962) is a Japanese game designer, director, producer, and writer. Originally working for Square (later Square Enix) from 1983 to 2003, he departed the company and founded independent studio Mistwalker in 2004. He is known as the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, in addition to other titles during his time at Square. At Mistwalker, he is known for creating the Blue Dragon and Terra Battle series among several standalone titles, moving away from home consoles and creating titles for mobile platforms.
Originally intending to become a musician, he briefly studied electronics and programming, joining Square as a part-time employee, then later a full-time employee when Square became an independent company in 1986. He led the development of several titles before helping to create the original Final Fantasy, which proved highly successful and cemented his status within the company. Following the financial failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, his debut as a film director, Sakaguchi withdrew from Square's management and eventually resigned in 2003. He continued his game career through Mistwalker, first co-developing projects through external partners and then smaller in-studio mobile projects. (Full article...)
In 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their CTO. In 2019, he reduced his role to Consulting CTO so he could allocate more time toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). In 2022, he left Oculus to work on his AGI startup, Keen Technologies. (Full article...)
Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter. Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he conceived the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966. With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game. Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. (Full article...)
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Jun Maeda (麻枝 准, Maeda Jun, born January 3, 1975) is a Japanese writer and composer. He is a co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces.
After graduating with a degree in psychology from Chukyo University, Maeda contributed to the scripts and scores of games released under the Tactics brand of Nexton: Moon and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. He has contributed both to writing music and scripts to most games released under the Key brand, notably writing the majority of Air and Clannad. He also served as a screenwriter and composer for several anime series produced by P.A. Works, such as Angel Beats! and Charlotte. (Full article...)
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Yamauchi c. 1949
Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥, Yamauchi Hiroshi, 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company on 25 April 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being subsequently succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan into a multibillion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo's first president and founder. Hiroshi Yamauchi owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team from 1992 until his death.
In April 2013, Forbes estimated Yamauchi's net worth at $2.1 billion; he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. In 2008, Yamauchi was Japan's wealthiest person with a fortune at that time estimated at $7.8 billion. At the time of his death, Yamauchi was the largest shareholder at Nintendo. (Full article...)
Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, illustrator, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and illustrator of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero. (Full article...)
James D. Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series The Angry Video Game Nerd (2004–present). His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of internet gaming videos, and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after the series premiered on the site in 2006.
Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s, having created more than 270 videos and short films by 2004. Among these were the first Angry Video Game Nerd (originally known as Bad NES Games, and later Angry Nintendo Nerd) episodes, which were subsequently released on his Cinemassacre website that same year. Two years later, he gained mainstream attention after the series went viral upon being published to YouTube. Following its success, Rolfe released a feature-length film based on the series in 2014, which was met with generally mixed reception. (Full article...)
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Gunpei Yokoi (横井 軍平, Yokoi Gunpei, September 10, 1941 – October 4, 1997), sometimes transliterated as Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese toy maker and video game designer. As a long-time Nintendo employee, he was best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the cross-shaped Control Pad, the original designer of the Game Boy, and producer of a few long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises such as Metroid and Kid Icarus. (Full article...)
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Mechner in 2017
Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. A major figure in the development of cinematic video games and a pioneer in video game animation, he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award. His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles. (Full article...)
Sierra was acquired by CUC International in 1996, leading to layoffs and management changes. Williams took a brief sabbatical, and returned to the company in a game design role, but grew increasingly frustrated with CUC's creative and business decisions. After the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity in 1998, she left the game industry in 1999 and focused her retirement on traveling and writing historical fiction. In 2021 she released her historical novel, Farewell to Tara. Soon after, she returned to game development with the 3D remake of the classic adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, released in January 2023 as Colossal Cave. (Full article...)
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Wipeout 3 is a futuristic racing video game developed by Psygnosis exclusively for the PlayStation. The title is the fourth game in the Wipeout series, and was released in Europe and North America in September 1999. Players control anti-gravity ships and use weapons to force other contenders out of the race.
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