The Flash version of Flow received 100,000 downloads within its first two weeks of release, and had been played over 3.5 million times by 2008. Its PlayStation 3 re-release was the most downloaded game on the PlayStation Network in 2007 and won the Best Downloadable Game award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards. It was nominated for awards by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Reviewers praised Flow's visual and audio appeal, but noted the simplicity of its gameplay; several considered it to be more of an art piece than a game. (Full article...)
Reviewers viewed The Lost Levels as an extension of Super Mario Bros, especially its difficulty progression, and appreciated the challenge when spectating speedruns. The Lost Levels gave Luigi his first character traits and introduced the poison mushroom, which became a recurring Mario franchise element. The Lost Levels was the bestselling FDS game, selling about 2.5 million copies. It is remembered among the most difficult Nintendo games and recognized as a precursor to the franchise's Kaizo subculture, in which fans create and share ROM hacks featuring nearly impossible levels. (Full article...)
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Pokémon Channel, released in Japan as Pokémon Channel ~Together with Pikachu!~, is a 2003 video game in the Pokémon series developed by Ambrella and published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for the GameCube. The player's goal is to help Professor Oak refine and promote his TV network through watching broadcasts with the mouse-like Pikachu. The game contains elements of the adventure, digital pet, and simulation genres. The player can explore full 3D environments, have Pikachu converse with other Pokémon, and collect various items.
The game was developed rather quickly as a sequel to the Nintendo 64 title Hey You, Pikachu! and to promote the Nintendo e-Reader accessory, and uses a novel 3D texturing effect. It was first showcased at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2003 and later through a month-long series of promotional events in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. It was released on July 18, 2003, in Japan, December 1 in North America, and April 2, 2004, in Europe. In Japan, the game sold 66,373 copies in its first year. It received mixed reviews, which generally criticized its low level of interactivity and repetitive sound effects, though its collecting aspects and visuals were somewhat better received. (Full article...)
Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a 2013 stealth video game developed by Pocketwatch Games in which players, alone or cooperatively, perform heists and robberies. Players choose from eight characters, each of whom has a unique and beneficial skill, such as the ability to change appearance or tunnel through walls. Monaco's single-player story is told in four acts from perspectives of different characters. The cooperative mode lets up to four players play together in different locations.
Lead developer Andy Schatz began developing Monaco while working for TKO Software. He later founded his independent company Pocketwatch, where he continued development and planned to release it as an Xbox Live Indie Game. While looking for playtesters, Schatz met Andy Nguyen, who became a level designer, producer, and promoter for Monaco. Pocketwatch Games released the game in 2013 for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Majesco Entertainment handled its Xbox 360 release after Microsoft Game Studios twice rejected the game. A Nintendo Switch version, Monaco: Complete Edition, was released in 2019 by Humble Games.
Monaco received positive reviews and won two awards at the 2010 Independent Games Festival. Critics praised its cooperative modes but considered its single-player gameplay inferior for lacking content. Frequently compared to heist films, reviewers praised Monaco's art style and how its minimalist design suited its gameplay. Austin Wintory's soundtrack also received praise. Pocketwatch announced a sequel, Monaco 2, in March 2022. (Full article...)
The gameplay is similar to previous installments, focusing on combo-based combat with the player's main weapon—the Blades of Exile—and secondary weapons acquired during the game. It uses quick time events, where the player acts in a timed sequence to defeat strong enemies and bosses. The player can use up to four magical attacks and a power-enhancing ability as alternative combat options, and the game features puzzles and platforming elements. Compared with previous installments, God of War III offers a revamped magic system, more enemies, new camera angles, and downloadable content.
God of War III was critically acclaimed upon release, with praise for the graphics, gameplay, and scope, although the plot received a mixed response. The game received several awards, including "Most Anticipated Game of 2010" and "Best PS3 Game" at the 2009 and 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, respectively, and the "Artistic Achievement" award at the 2011 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Video Game Awards. One of the best-selling game in the God of War series and the ninth best-selling PlayStation 3 game of all time, it sold nearly 5.2 million copies worldwide by June 2012 and was included in the God of War Saga released for PlayStation 3 on August 28, 2012. Since its release, it has also been named as one of the greatest video games ever made. In celebration of the God of War franchise's 10th anniversary, a remastered version of the game, titled God of War III Remastered, was released for the PlayStation 4 (PS4) on July 14, 2015; as of June 2023, the remastered version has sold an estimated 4 million copies. After two more prequels were released, a direct sequel to God of War III simply titled God of War was released on April 20, 2018, which served as a soft-reboot of the franchise and shifted the setting to Norse mythology. (Full article...)
Flight Unlimited was the first self-published game released by Looking Glass Technologies. It was intended to establish the company as a video game publisher and to compete with flight simulator franchises such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. Project leader Seamus Blackley, a particle physicist and amateur pilot, conceived the game in 1992. He felt that other flight simulators failed to convey the experience of real flight, and he reacted by coding a simulated atmosphere for Flight Unlimited based on real-time computational fluid dynamics. Aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian endorsed the game and assisted the team in making it more true to life.
Flight Unlimited received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success; its sales exceeded 780,000 copies by 2002. Reviewers lauded its realism, flight instruction, graphics and sense of flight, but some criticized its high system requirements. The game was followed by two sequels: Flight Unlimited II (1997) and Flight Unlimited III (1999). A combat-oriented successor, Flight Combat, was released in 2002 as Jane's Attack Squadron after a series of setbacks. Soon after Flight Unlimited's completion, Blackley was fired from Looking Glass. He went on to design Jurassic Park: Trespasser at DreamWorks Interactive and later spearhead the Xbox project at Microsoft. (Full article...)
Drowned God is based on a forged manuscript written by Harry Horse in 1983, purported to have been written by 19th-century poet Richard Henry Horne, who shares Horse's birth name. After facing legal trouble and fines when he attempted to sell the text, Horse shelved it until playing Myst and The 7th Guest in the mid-1990s, whereupon he decided a first-person adventure game would be the best way to tell the manuscript's story.
Producer Algy Williams hired a team of multimedia artists and programmers to help Horse develop Drowned God. Upon its release, the game sold well, but it quickly faded in popularity due to bugs and a lack of patches. Drowned God's concept and visuals were widely praised, while its gameplay, audio, and puzzles received more varied responses. A planned sequel never came to fruition. The game was re-released on the Epic Games Store in 2024 by the original team along with Next Path Media. (Full article...)
Color Splash contains elements of the action-adventure and role-playing (RPG) genres. Players control Mario as he traverses levels made to look like craft materials, reaching endpoints and retrieving each Big Paint Star through linear gameplay. Mario is equipped with a paint hammer, which is used to solve coloring-themed puzzles and collect awards in levels. In turn-based combat phases, Mario uses a selection of cards that endow him with attacks and other abilities.
Nintendo's vision for the Paper Mario series following Paper Mario: Sticker Star was to differentiate it from their other RPG Mario series, Mario & Luigi. The development team focused on puzzle-solving and comedic elements, and to make each game different from one another, emphasized an overarching gimmick. The paint theme was conceived by Atsushi Isano, the director for Intelligent Systems, and developed to take advantage of the Wii U GamePad. A card-based battle system was implemented to use the GamePad touchscreen to sort, paint, and flick cards. The artists focused on making the paper textures as realistic as possible. (Full article...)
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Killer Instinct Gold is a 1996 fighting game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is based on the arcade gameKiller Instinct 2. Players control characters who fight on a 2D plane set against a 3D background. Players press buttons to punch and kick their opponent in chains of successive hits, known as combos. Large combo successions lead to stronger attacks and brutal, stylistic finisher moves underscored by an announcer. Characters—including a gargoyle, a ninja, and a femme fatale—fight in settings such as a jungle and a spaceship. Killer Instinct Gold includes the arcade release's characters, combos, and 3D, pre-rendered environments, but excludes its full-motion video sequences and some voice-overs due to restrictions of the cartridge media format. The Gold release adds a training mode, camera views, and improved audiovisuals.
Rare was a prominent second-party developer for Nintendo in the 1990s, and their Killer Instinct series was produced as an exclusive partnership in response to the popularity of Mortal Kombat. Following the success of the 1995 Killer Instinctport for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Rare began a sequel for the same platform but transitioned development to its successor, the Nintendo 64, upon its unveiling. Gold was scheduled as a launch title for the new console but was delayed until its North American release in November 1996. It was released in other regions in May 1997. Gold was later included in Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay.
Reviewers preferred the Nintendo 64 port over the arcade release, and appreciated its audiovisual enhancements, but felt that its graphical upgrades and memorization-based combo gameplay were insufficient when compared to fighting games like Tekken 2 and Virtua Fighter 2. Critics recommended Gold primarily for fans of the series and genre, but IGN reported that even fans were upset by changes in the combo system and the absence of several well-liked characters. Gold ultimately did not replicate the success of its Super NES predecessor, and the series remained dormant through its 2002 acquisition by Microsoft until its 2013 reboot. (Full article...)
... 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 the 1987 video game Oriental Hero was panned as "so incredibly bad it's almost worth a look"?
... 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?
William James Mitchell Jr. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he was recognized for numerous records on classic video games before disputes arose over their legitimacy beginning in 2018. Mitchell has also 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 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...)
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, which made him a billionaire. (Full article...)
The first computer game Wright designed was Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that brought him to prominence. The game was published by Maxis, which Wright co-formed with Jeff Braun. Wright continued to innovate on the game's central theme of simulation with numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt. (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...)
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...)
Tōru Iwatani (岩谷 徹, Iwatani Tōru, born January 25, 1955) is a Japanese video game designer who spent much of his career working for Namco. He is best known as the creator of the arcade gamePac-Man (1980). In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...)
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...)
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (/ˈʃɛlbɜːrɡ/SHEL-burg, Swedish:[ˈfěːlɪksˈǎrːvɪdɵlfˈɕɛ̂lːbærj]ⓘ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie (/ˈpjuːdiːpaɪ/PEW-dee-py), is a Swedish YouTuber, best known for his gaming videos. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage have made him one of the most noted online personalities and content creators. Media coverage of him has cited him as a figurehead for YouTube, especially in the gaming genre.
Born and raised in Gothenburg, Kjellberg registered his YouTube channel "PewDiePie" in 2010, primarily posting Let's Play videos of horror and action video games. His channel gained a substantial following and was one of the fastest growing channels in 2012 and 2013, before becoming the most-subscribed on YouTube on 15 August 2013. From 29 December 2014 to 14 February 2017, Kjellberg's channel was also the most-viewed on the platform. During this period, his content shifted focus from Let's Plays and diversified to include vlogs, comedy shorts, formatted shows, and music videos. (Full article...)
Ken Kutaragi (久夛良木 健, Kutaragi Ken, born 2 August 1950) is a Japanese engineering technologist and businessman, currently president and CEO of Cyber AI Entertainment. Formerly the chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), the video game division of Sony, Kutaragi is known as "The Father of the PlayStation" having overseen the development of the original console and its successors and spinoffs until departing the company in 2007, shortly after the PlayStation 3 was released.
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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Naka in 2015
Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game designer and programmer. 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.
John Bruce Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is an American activist and disbarred attorney. As an attorney, Thompson focused his legal efforts against what he perceives as obscenity in modern culture. Thompson gained recognition as an anti-video game activist, criticizing the content of video games and their alleged effects on children. He also targeted rap music and radio personality Howard Stern.
Thompson's legal career was further recognized for his actions against the Florida Bar, including challenging its constitutionality in 1993. In 2008, he was permanently disbarred by the Supreme Court of Florida for inappropriate conduct, including making false statements to tribunals and disparaging and humiliating litigants. (Full article...)
Charles Andre Martinet (born September 17, 1955) is an American actor. He is best known for voicing Mario in the Super Mario franchise, portraying him from 1991 to 2023. He also voiced other characters in the series such as Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and the baby equivalents of Mario and Luigi, prior to stepping down as voice actor to become an official brand ambassador for the series.
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...)
Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. 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...)
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...)
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Flow (stylized as flOw) is an independent video game created by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. Originally released as a free Flash game in 2006 to accompany Chen's master's thesis, it was reworked into a 2007 PlayStation 3 game by his development studio, Thatgamecompany, with assistance from Santa Monica Studio. SuperVillain Studios developed a PlayStation Portable version of the game in 2008, and PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions in 2013. In Flow, the player navigates a series of two-dimensional (2D) planes with an aquatic microorganism that evolves by consuming other microorganisms. The game's design is based on Chen's research into dynamic difficulty adjustment at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division, and on psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theoretical concept of mental immersion or flow.
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