Presented in a first-person perspective, the game follows a robotic rabbit named "Robbit" as he searches for missing jet pods scattered by the game's astrophysicist antagonist character Baron Aloha. Robbit must explore each section of Crater Planet to retrieve all of the jet pods, stop Aloha and save the world from being destroyed. The game was designed as a technology demonstrator for the PlayStation console and was revealed in early 1994 under the provisional title of "Spring Man". Jumping Flash! utilizes much of the game engine used in Geograph Seal, an earlier game by Exact for the Sharp X68000 home computer.
Jumping Flash! has been described as an ancestor of, as well as an early showcase for, 3D graphics in console gaming. It was generally well received by critics, who praised its graphics and unique 3D platforming gameplay, but it was eventually overshadowed by later 3D platformers of the fifth console generation. Jumping Flash! spawned two sequels: Jumping Flash! 2 and Robbit Mon Dieu. It received positive reviews at the time of release, and made an appearance in Next Generation's "Top 100 Games of All Time" just one year after. The game was described as the third-most underrated video game of all time by Matt Casamassina of IGN in 2007. It holds the Guinness World Record as the "first platform video game in true 3D". (Full article...)
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Sonic X (Japanese: ソニックX, Hepburn: Sonikku Ekkusu) is a Japanese anime television series based on Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. Produced by TMS Entertainment under partnership with Sega and Sonic Team, and directed by Hajime Kamegaki, Sonic X initially ran for 52 episodes, broadcasting on TV Tokyo from April 2003 to March 2004. A further 26 episodes aired in North America, Europe, and the Middle East from 2005 to 2006. The American localization and broadcasting were handled by 4Kids Entertainment, which edited it and created new music.
The series follows a group of anthropomorphic animals that accidentally teleport from their home planet to Earth after attempting to save one of their friends from their enemy Doctor Eggman. Separated, Sonic the Hedgehog is saved by a human boy named Chris Thorndyke, who helps him find his friends while repeatedly scuffling with Doctor Eggman and his robots over control of the powerful Chaos Emeralds, and becoming celebrities. The final story arc sees Sonic and his friends return with Chris to their world, where they enter outer space with a newfound plant-like creature named Cosmo and fight an army of aliens called the Metarex.
Sonic X received mixed reviews. Generally, reviewers criticized its American localization and the human characters, but praised its story and animation. The series was popular in the United States and France, though less so in its native Japan. The show's merchandise included an edutainment video game for the Leapster, a trading card game, a comic book series featuring an original storyline, and various toys and other items. (Full article...)
The game follows an elite group of assassins called the "killer7". The assassins, physical manifestations of a man named Harman Smith, perform hits on behalf of the United States government. Through these missions, the killer7 uncover a deeper conspiracy regarding the role of Japan in U.S. politics and secrets about the nature of their organization. Killer7 features first-person shooter elements and a unique on rails control scheme, but the core adventure-style gameplay has been compared to Myst and Snatcher.
Killer7 was Suda's first game released outside Japan. It initially received mixed reviews due to its unconventional control scheme, linear gameplay, and complex noir plot. While some reviewers appreciated the stripped-down controls and stylized arthouse approach, others criticised it as confusing and restricting. However, the game's soundtrack, presentation, visual style and thought-provoking story received generally positive responses from critics, were considered as the best aspects of the game and led to several accolades and nominations. Retrospectively, Killer7 has a cult following, which led to re-releases of Suda's older works and the successful launch of No More Heroes. A Windows port of the game licensed by Capcom was released by NIS America in 2018. (Full article...)
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Panzer Dragoon Saga, known in Japan as Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG, is a 1998 role-playing video game (RPG) developed by Team Andromeda and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn. The third entry in the Panzer Dragoon series, it replaced the rail shooter gameplay of the previous games with RPG elements such as random encounters, semi-turn-based battles and free-roaming exploration. The player controls Edge, a young mercenary who rides a dragon and encounters a mysterious girl from a vanished civilization.
Sega felt an RPG was critical to compete against the PlayStation and Final Fantasy VII. Development began in early 1995 alongside Panzer Dragoon II Zwei (1996). The project was arduous and repeatedly delayed; incorporating the Panzer Dragoon shooting elements with full 3D computer graphics and voice acting, both unusual features in RPGs at the time, pushed the Saturn to its technical limits and strained team relations. Two staff members died during development, which the director, Yukio Futatsugi, attributed to stressful working conditions.
Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of the most acclaimed Saturn games, earning praise for its story, graphics, and combat. Sales were low, and only a few thousand copies were published in the west, where Sega had shifted focus to its next console, the Dreamcast. Retrospective reviews have been positive and many publications have named Saga one the greatest video games. (Full article...)
Unlike the previous installments, which were set primarily in the town of Silent Hill, this game is set in the southern part of the fictional city of Ashfield, and follows Henry Townshend as he attempts to escape from his locked-down apartment. During the course of the game, Henry explores a series of supernatural worlds and finds himself in conflict with an undead serial killer named Walter Sullivan.
Silent Hill 4 features an altered gameplay style with third-person navigation and plot elements taken from previous installments. Upon its release, the game received generally favorable reviews from critics, but its departure from the traditional formula of the previous games proved to be divisive. However, the game did receive praise for implementing some unique gameplay mechanics like the hauntings within the apartment. (Full article...)
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Smash Hit is a 2014 rail shooter game developed and published by the Swedish indie game studio Mediocre. Through the game's 11 levels, the player takes a first-person perspective, shooting metal balls to destroy glass obstacles. Additionally, the player can shoot up to five balls at once by smashing a consecutive sequence of crystals and gather power-ups that are activated for a limited amount of time. The game also includes a one-time in-game purchase that allows the player to start from any unlocked checkpoint.
The game's development began in 2012. Dennis Gustafsson programmed the game and created its physics engine and acoustics, while Henrik Johansson designed its levels. Douglas Holmquist was hired to compose the soundtrack and sound effects. The game was released for free on iOS and Android on 6 March 2014. A virtual reality adaptation of the game was released for platforms in 2015 and 2018. Smash Hit received positive reviews from critics, who praised its physics engine, graphics, music, and sound effects. CNET and Apple Inc. listed it as one of the best mobile games of 2014. After Mediocre closed in 2017, Gustafsson and Holmquist worked on the 2022 video game Teardown. (Full article...)
The original Paper Mario began as a sequel to Super Mario RPG (1996), developed by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Changes in development resulted in the game becoming a standalone game titled Mario Story in Japan. Although the early games in the series were well-received, Kensuke Tanabe wanted each one to have different genre and core gameplay elements. This led the series to slowly move genres from role-playing to action-adventure, though some role-playing elements are still present later in the series.
The first two games in the series, Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, received critical acclaim, and were praised for their story, characters, and unique gameplay. When Paper Mario: Sticker Star was released in 2012, the series began to receive many complaints about its change in genre, removal of original fictional races, and less unique character designs, but continued to garner praise for its writing, characters, music, and enhanced paper-inspired visuals. Super Paper Mario is the best-selling game in the series, with 4.3 million sales as of 2019. The series has collectively sold 12.54 million copies. (Full article...)
Set roughly ten or fifteen years before events of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the game was to follow James Sterling, a pirate captain whose main mission was to travel across the Caribbean Sea to make a reputation for himself. Although little was unveiled about the story, it was intended to be independent from the films' main arc and include new characters. Gameplay was to have emphasized role-playing elements, including real-time combat and weapon customization.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is a 2014 role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment in collaboration with South Park Digital Studios and published by Ubisoft. Based on the American animated television series South Park, the game follows the New Kid, who has moved to the eponymous town and becomes involved in an epic role-play fantasy war involving humans, wizards, and elves, who are fighting for control of the all-powerful Stick of Truth. Their game quickly escalates out of control, bringing them into conflict with aliens, Nazi zombies, and gnomes, threatening the entire town with destruction.
The game is played from a 2.5D, third-person perspective replicating the aesthetic of the television series. The New Kid is able to freely explore the town of South Park, interacting with characters and undertaking quests, and accessing new areas by progressing through the main story. By selecting one of four character archetypes, Fighter, Thief, Mage, or Jew, each offering specific abilities, the New Kid and a supporting party of characters use a variety of melee, ranged, and magical fart attacks to combat with their enemies.
Development began in 2009 after South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone approached Obsidian about making a role-playing game designed to look exactly like the television series. Parker and Stone were involved throughout the game's production: they wrote its script, consulted on the design, and as in the television program, they voiced many of the characters. The Stick of Truth's production was turbulent; following the bankruptcy of the original publisher, THQ, the rights to the game were acquired by Ubisoft in early 2013, and its release date was postponed several times from its initial date in March 2013 to its eventual release in March 2014, for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360. (Full article...)
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Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossoverfighting game developed by Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series and the successor to Super Smash Bros. Melee, it was the first game in the series not to be developed primarily by HAL Laboratory. It was developed by a creative team under Sora that included members from several Nintendo and third-party development teams. It was announced at a pre-E3 2005 press conference by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the previous two games in the series, assumed the role of director at Iwata's request. Game development began in October 2005; after delays due to development problems, the game was released worldwide in 2008.
The number of playable characters in Brawl has grown from that in Super Smash Bros. Melee, although some characters from Melee were cut in the game. Brawl is the first game in the series to have playable third-party characters. Like that of its predecessors, the objective of Brawl is to knock opponents off the screen. It is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as "The Subspace Emissary". This mode is a plot-driven and side-scrollingbeat 'em up featuring computer-generated cutscenes. Brawl supports multiplayer battles with up to four combatants and is the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The game can be played with four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller and Classic Controller, simultaneously.
... that players of the simulation video game Overcrowd: A Commute 'Em Up need to manage everything from the construction of train stations to dumping trash cans?
... that before Sarah Elmaleh voiced the player character in the video game Anthem, developed by BioWare, she voiced characters in a mod of an earlier BioWare game?
... that the video game Manor Lords was wishlisted more than three million times on Steam after its developer had estimated it would receive around 14,000?
... that a version of the video game Rhino Rumble was not released due to the creators not wanting to add licensed characters?
... 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?
Toriyama first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the manga series Dr. Slump, for which he earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo. Dr. Slump went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into an anime, with a second series created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. (Full article...)
William James Mitchell Jr. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s by claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records earned playing classic video games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming.
Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer. Regarded as one of the first auteurs of video games, he developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence, which in turn has had a significant influence on his games. In 1986, Kojima joined Konami, for which he directed, designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, the game that laid the foundations for the stealth genre and the Metal Gear franchise, his best known and most acclaimed work. At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Following his departure from Konami in 2015, he refounded Kojima Productions as an independent studio; his first game outside Konami, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. (Full article...)
Michael Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is an American video game developer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located in Irvine, California. Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the former president of Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc., that was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee from January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, until July 2008. (Full article...)
Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. He left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. (Full article...)
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. In 1996, he and Mike Harrington left Microsoft to found Valve and fund the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington sold his stake in Valve to Newell and left in 2000. Newell led the development of Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011. (Full article...)
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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 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...)
Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
He is credited with Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games that are "easy to learn and difficult to master" being rewarding. (Full article...)
Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was an American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's Jewish 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...)
Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second space traveler, and first from the United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear. (Full article...)
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Nolan North (born October 31, 1970) is an American actor best known for his voice acting roles.
Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game developer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
Steve Ritchie speaks during the Atari panel at California Extreme 2009
Steven Scott Ritchie (born February 13, 1950) is an American pinball and video game designer. His career began in the 1970s. Ritchie holds the record for best-selling pinball designer in history. He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots. Ritchie was also the original voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, serving as the announcer of Mortal Kombat II (1993), Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), and the updates to Mortal Kombat 3. He is the older brother of fellow pinball designer Mark Ritchie. (Full article...)
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Mechner in 2017
Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer, 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 bestselling 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. 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...)
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Fischbach in 2018
Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, comedian, actor, filmmaker, and influencer. One of the most popular YouTubers on the platform, he is known for his "Let's Play" videos of indiehorror games. 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. He has spun off his YouTube fame into a media career, venturing into acting and filmmaking.
After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series; as of 2024, his channel had over 37 million subscribers. He signed with talent agency William Morris Endeavor in 2016. While with the agency, he released a clothing line, wrote and directed the YouTube Original series A Heist with Markiplier (2019) and In Space with Markiplier (2022), and hosted or co-hosted two podcasts which reached No. 1 on Spotify. (Full article...)
Following disputes with Carmack, Romero was fired from id in 1996. He co-founded a new studio, Ion Storm, and directed the FPS Daikatana (2000), which was a critical and commercial failure. Romero departed Ion Storm in 2001. In July 2001, he and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...)
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Uematsu in 2011
Nobuo Uematsu (植松 伸夫, Uematsu Nobuo, born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese composer and keyboardist best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as one of his biggest influences in pursuing a musical career.
Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he first met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The two later worked together on many games at the company, most notably in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly two decades with Square, Uematsu left in 2004 to create his own production company and music label, Dog Ear Records. He has since composed music as a freelancer for other games, including ones developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's studio Mistwalker. (Full article...)
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Daigo Umehara in 2018
Daigo Umehara (Japanese: 梅原 大吾, Hepburn: Umehara Daigo, born 19 May 1981) is a Japanese esports player and author who competes competitively at fightingvideo games. He specializes in 2D arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the West and "Umehara" (ウメハラ, written in katakana instead of kanji) or "Ume" in Japan, Daigo is one of the world's most famous Street Fighter players and is often considered its greatest. His longevity is seen as an incredibly rare thing in the world of competitive video games. He currently holds a world record of "the most successful player in major tournaments of Street Fighter" in the Guinness World Records and is a six time Evo Championship Series winner.
Before properly being called a pro gamer from signing a sponsorship deal with Mad Catz, Japanese media usually referred to Daigo as "the god of 2D fighting games" (2D格闘ゲームの神, 2D Kakutō Gēmu no Kami). (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...)
Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game developer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.