Week 3 Middle History of Games - 1980 - 1999 (part 1 of 2)

The Middle History of Games……………………………1980 – 1999 (part 1 of 2)

Lets start with the significant bits of the Electric 80's.

Early 80's
The Early 80's saw the release of computers such as: the Commodore 64, the Apple II and the ZX Spectrum. The Commodore 64 was the biggest console of this time and hundreds of games were released such as: Donkey Kong, Spy Hunter, and Pacmania. Most of these games were played on the keyboard or a controller consisting of a control stick (a sort of a joystick but without any buttons on the stick) and two buttons. The games of the first version of the commodore 64 were on cassettes. Later C64's had a 15.4" floppy disc drive. The success of the Commodore 64 was a catalyst for the Great Games Crash of 1983. In my opinion the Commodore 64 is probably the best console before the days of Nintendo.

The Great Games Crash of 1983
In 1983 there was a sudden crash in the games business and resulted in bankruptcy in many computer and games companies in North America. There were various causes for this crash. These include: the success of the commodore 64 (due to its marketing), there were too many different consoles and home computers to play games on and too many games that weren't very good (in fact they were rubbish). It resulted in many unsold hardware and software being returned to companies but the companies hadn't had new products or money to refund and therefore they became bankrupt.
Find out more here

Nintendo and the first 'Console War'
If anything good did come out of the end of the Great Games Crash, it was Nintendo. Just like how japanese companies revolutonised the Motor Vehicle industry in the 80's, they (the japanese companies) did the same for the games industry. Nintendo of Japan released the 'Nintendo Entertainment System' or it is usually called the 'NES' (pictured right). Also in 1986 Sega released the 'Sega Master System' or 'SMS'. On both of these consoles, games were stored on cartridges and games were played using a control pad. Both control pads consisted of a D-pad (on the left) and two buttons (on the right). This format is still used on todays consoles. The similarities of these consoles created the first console war. Nintendo won the war, with sales of 61.78 million compard to the 13 million of the SMS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Master_System

Handhelds
In 1980 Nintendo released their Game & Watch lines. There were about 59 individual games including some of Nintendo's biggest franchises. Most of these games had one LCD screen but some had two (they looked a bit like the Nintendo DS).

Creation of some of Greatest Franchises in the Industry
The 80's saw the birth of some of the greatest franshises in games. Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo created: the Mario series, the Legend of Zelda series and the Donkey Kong series. Super Mario Bros is still the best selling game of all time, selling 40.24 million copies. Hironobu Sakaguchi of SquareSoft (now SquareEinx) created Final Fantasy. And Hideo Kojima crated the Metal Gear series.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

Week 2 - My Early History of Games

Now to get on with my earliest history of games..................

Back in the early 90's (my god, seems like yesterday...........Its amazing how old you feel when you are 18 and you look back at your childhood!!!), I first played on a computer called a 'Dragon 32' its from the 80's. And on it I played: the King (usually called Donkey Kong), frogger and Pac-Man. The games were stored on audio cassettes and a tape deck was needed to load them. It took ages for the games to be loaded. The dragon-32 itself had: a Motorola 6809E at 0.89MHz processor, 32KB memory and a Microsoft Extended Basic operating system. It was like using MS-DOS. You can find out more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32

I also played on another computer called an 'Amstrad CPC 464'. Again this was released in the 80's, the games were stored on audio cassettes and it was also like using MS-DOS. Games were more advanced and therefore they sometimes took hours to load. There were more branded games including the original Golden-axe. It came with a simple joystick with two buttons on the base. You could also use it to program simple games. You can find out more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC_464











Above: The Amstrad CPC 464
[Credit to Cc-by-2.5 (from wikipedia) for this image].

Both of these computers (they were not consoles) started getting me hooked on games. I was only about 5 when I started playing on them. I was DOOOOOOMED from the start!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 2 - Early history of games!!!!!!

Sorry ‘bout the late update but here is the Early History of Games!!
Well to get on with the history of games……………………………1947-1979

The first computer game of any kind was made back in the 1947 and it was actually tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses)


In 1958 Willy Higinbotham created the first computer game that was used for fun. It was called ‘Tennis for Two’ (well you can’t exactly have tennis for one!!!). It showed a tennis court from the side, it had a net, and it was affected by gravity (picture right). It was made to entertain people at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. The game used a cathode ray tube for display. After that in 1961, students at MIT (inc’ Steve Russell) created a game called Spacewar. It pitted two players against each other that were capable of firing at each other.

Before then, in 1951, a man called Ralph Baer had an idea that became a billion pound industry. His idea was to create games that could be played by connecting it to your TV. Thus he is widely known as the creator of Video Games. Later on in 1966 he created a game called ‘Chase’ that was played using your TV.

Moving on to the gooooooovy 70’s………………..In 1971 a coin operated version of Spacewar was sold. It only sold 1500 machines because people found it difficult to play. In 1972 Ralph Baer created ‘Magnavox Odyssey’ – the videogame console. It was played by connecting it up to your TV and it played ball and paddle games. But also in 1972 the Atari was released. It came with pong – one of the most influential games in the gaming industry (pictured below). The Atari sold over 19,000 pong machines. The end of the 70’s also saw Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac-Man. The period of games between 1972 and 1977 is widely known as the First Generation of gaming.


The period of games between 1972 and 1977 is widely known as the First Generation of gaming. Also Second Generation gaming was between 1976 and 1984.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games
http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/pong.html
http://www.pong-story.com/

Footy games are BACK!!!!

Yaaaaaay.......................

It seams that we are approaching christmas and this signals the release of our yearly supply of Football games. EA has now released its Fifa 07 game, the Crappy Championship Manager 2007 is out and the brill' Football manager 2007 has come out. I haven't played the new Fifa game but most of the reviews said that EA has finally managed to make a decent footy game. I think its because EA has decided to leave out the rubbish "new innovative" gameplay of previous games.

But to save the best till last, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 still has to be released. And with the addition of the DS version (with WI-FI online play) this is the game worth waiting for!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 1 tasks

To get on with the tasks……………………………

Who's writing, and how do you perceive them to be?

Well I’ve been looking at http://www.shinyshinyshiny.blogspot.com/ and it turns out that he’s a bit of a nutter (sorry Mr. P)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He makes all sorts of witty remarks, such as ''I decided to watch the lab buckle under the strain of 39 freshers eager to get hold of the furniture and break things. Bless.'' This makes for cool and entertaining reading. I am also looking at http://scaryduck.blogspot.com/ and http://ohdearmybrainisleaking.blogspot.com/ (another two nutters)!! Weird-duck-man (scary duck) swears more and his jokes tend to be for older people where as leaky-brain-man (of dear my brain is leaking) and Shiny (shiny shiny shiny) tend to write jokes that anyone would find funny.

Does blogging strike you as objective or more personal?

I think blogging is more of a personal thing where you can talk about how you feel. And you can basically write anything you want (just don’t make any enemies). If you don’t care about what people think then you can just disable any comments.

How often do they write?

Looking at the dates of shiny’s blogs, it seems he tries to post new blogs whenever possible. Leaky-brain-man looks like he posts new blogs mostly on Monday and Tuesday, probably that’s when he has free time. And weird-duck-man posts new blogs Monday to Friday, every week.

What do they write about?

Weird-duck-man likes talking about weird subjects but he sometimes goes a bit too personal (read about the Handy Shandy stuff). But otherwise it’s all funny stuff. Shiny and leaky-brain-man enjoy talking about recent events and anything they would make people laugh. They both tend to avoid writing anything people would find insulting in anyway. But they all seem to use the blog in a way to reflect on what has just happened.

How do you see yourself using a blog?

After having a feel using blogs, I can now honestly say that I could see myself using blogs more often although I’m not sure how often I would post new blogs. I would probably write about interesting events and funny thoughts. But I wouldn’t put anything about the news on it.

Do you feel comfortable writing for an invisible audience for example?

Yes, I do feel more comfortable writing for an invisible audience. Well basically I can say what I want. I can also talk about stuff other people would find boring but some other people might find interesting.

Blogging

I've heard that quite a lot of people are frustrated with the new assessment but I’m finding this quite coooooooooooooooool. It's exciting, innovative and you can get on with your work wherever you can get access to the net! Just imagine doing your work while on the bus (if you have one of those PDA thingies); just don’t say you’ll be doing your blogs on the bog! I think it’s better that those essays, no drafts, no formal stuff and no writing as if I was a stupidly annoying person who speaks in million letter words. Yes it’s now time to put those thesauruses to retirement. But this time you can’t say your dog ate your blog because then you’ll look like an idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello

Horraay!!! I finally set this site up.

This is my blog site and i will be putting all sorts of things on it. Well actually it will probably be just stuff about games.

Well to get onto the subject about games, I own: Sony playstation 1 and 2, a Gamecube, a gameboy, a gameboy color, a gameboy advance SP, a DS and a sony PSP. So you can see that i am passionate about games. As for types of games, I try to play as many different of games as possible e.g. Grand Theft Auto, Legend of Zelda (breathtaking), Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Street fighter (what a classic), Doom, Resident Evil, Pro Evolution Soccer and even WWE games.

Well over the next few weeks I will be posting more blogs, and updating my site.

Oh, I forgot to introduce myself..............my name is Krshna Chauhan and im 18 years of age. I am a first year at DMU and the name of the course I am doing is 'Electronic Games Technology' (and now you understand the games bit).