The game was developed by Nintendo EAD, led by five directors, including Eiji Aonuma and Yoshiaki Koizumi, produced by series co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and written by Kensuke Tanabe. Veteran Zelda series composer Koji Kondo composed the musical score. The player controls Link in the realm of Hyrule on a quest to stop the evil king Ganondorf by traveling through time and navigating dungeons and an overworld. The game introduced features such as a target-lock system and context-sensitive buttons, which have since become common in 3D adventure games. The player must play songs on an ocarina to progress.
Ocarina of Time was acclaimed by critics and consumers, who praised its visuals, sound, gameplay, soundtrack, and writing, and won several awards and accolades. It has been ranked by numerous publications as the greatest video game of all time and is the highest-rated game of all time on the review aggregator Metacritic. It was commercially successful, with more than seven million copies sold worldwide. In the United States, it received more than three times more pre-orders than any other game at the time. The Legend of Zelda has been cited by the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed video game of all time. (Full article...)
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Secret of Mana, originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, is a 1993 action role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sequel to the 1991 game Seiken Densetsu, released in North America as Final Fantasy Adventure and in Europe as Mystic Quest, and it was the first Seiken Densetsu title to be marketed as part of the Mana series rather than the Final Fantasy series. Set in a high fantasy universe, the game follows three heroes as they attempt to prevent an empire from conquering the world with the power of an ancient flying fortress.
Rather than using a turn-based battle system like contemporaneous role-playing games, Secret of Mana features real-time battles with a power bar mechanic. The game has a unique Ring Command menu system, which pauses the action and allows the player to make decisions in the middle of battle. An innovative cooperativemultiplayer system allows a second or third player to drop in and out of the game at any time. Secret of Mana was directed and designed by Koichi Ishii, programmed primarily by Nasir Gebelli, and produced by veteran Square designer Hiromichi Tanaka.
The game received acclaim for its brightly colored graphics, expansive plot, Ring Command menu system, and innovative real-time battle system. Critics also praised Hiroki Kikuta's soundtrack and the customizable artificial intelligence (AI) settings for computer-controlled allies. Retrospectively, it has been considered one of the greatest games of all time by critics. (Full article...)
Lost Coast is a technology demonstration showcasing the high-dynamic-range rendering implemented in the Source engine. It was designed with environments to emphasize these effects. Lost Coast was the first Valve game with a commentary mode, in which the developers explain elements of design as the player progresses through the level.
The Lost Coast level was created for Half-Life 2, but was removed from the game. It was originally going to be a level in "Highway 17" where Gordon ends up in a strange place meeting a Fisherman. As a result, it has several minor story details that were not included in Half-Life 2. It received a generally positive reception, and there was consensus among reviewers that the new features included in Lost Coast should be integrated into future games released by Valve. (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...)
Power Tennis incorporates multiple characters, themes, and locations from the Mario series. The game includes standard tennis matches, but contains variants that feature different scoring formats and objectives. Other variants include "Gimmick" courts, thematic areas with components and properties that directly affect gameplay. The game has 18 playable characters, each categorised by their style of play and each with a pair of unique moves known as "Power Shots". Power Tennis was developed simultaneously with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, and the pair shared similar technology and concepts with each other during production. Such similarities include an emphasis on the Mario theme in characters and settings as well as alternative game modes such as "Ring Shot".
The GameCube version was positively received in general, attaining an aggregate score of 81 percent from GameRankings and 80 out of 100 from Metacritic. Critics praised the game's depth and variety, but criticised the Power Shot animations, which could not be skipped. The Wii version in contrast received a more mixed reaction, with praise for the graphics and multiplayer but criticism for its motion controls. In 2010, it was included as one of the games in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. (Full article...)
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Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossoverfighting game developed by Sora Ltd. and Game Arts and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, 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 with a creative team that included members from several Nintendo and third-party development teams. 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, 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 is unique in that it can be played with four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller, and Classic Controller, simultaneously.
The game continues the open-world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely. A perpetual objective for players is to improve their character's skills, which are numerical representations of certain abilities. Early in the game, seven skills are selected by the player as major skills for their character, with those remaining termed as minor skills.
Development for Oblivion began in 2002, directly after the release of Morrowind, opting for tighter pacing in gameplay and greater plot focus than in past titles. To design the graphics, Bethesda used an improved Havok physics engine, high-dynamic-range lighting, procedural content generation tools that allowed developers to quickly create detailed terrains, and the Radiant AI system, which enabled non-player characters (NPCs) to make choices and engage in behaviors more complex than in past titles. The game features fully voiced NPCs—a first for the series—and the music of composer Jeremy Soule. (Full article...)
The story is set in the fantasy world of Vana'diel, where player-created avatars can both compete and cooperate in a variety of objectives to develop an assortment of jobs, skills, and earn in-game item rewards. Players can undertake an array of quests and progress through the in-game hierarchy and through the major plot of the game. Since its debut in 2002, five expansion packs have been released along with six add-on scenarios. Each expansion pack and add-on brings a new major storyline to the Final Fantasy XI world, along with numerous areas, quests, events and item rewards.
In 2015, Square Enix released the final main scenario for Final Fantasy XI titled Rhapsodies of Vana'diel. Final Fantasy XI became the final active server on the PlayStation 2 online service. Support for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 versions was ultimately ended on March 31, 2016, leaving only the PC platform playable. A mobile client for the game was under development by Square Enix in collaboration with Korean developer Nexon, using Unreal Engine 4, but was cancelled in late 2020. A spin-off mobile game, Final Fantasy Grandmasters was released on September 30, 2015. A new, episodic story series titled The Voracious Resurgence was added to the game in 2020, concluding in June 2023. In May 2022 rumors had circulated that FFXI may soon be shutting down. Yoji Fujito released a statement noting that this was not the case and users should not worry about the services being shut down any time soon. (Full article...)
The game is played from a first-person perspective and allows the player to undertake a series of missions in a variety of ways, with an emphasis on player choice. Missions can be completed through stealth, combat, or a combination of both. Exploring each level opens new paths and alternatives for accomplishing mission goals, and it is possible to complete all missions, eliminating all of Corvo's targets, in a non-lethal manner. The story and missions are changed in response to the player's violent actions or lack thereof. Magical abilities and equipment are designed to be combined to create new and varied effects.
During its two and a half years in production, several versions of Dishonored were developed. Before the creation of Dunwall—inspired by late nineteenth-century London and Edinburgh—the game was set to take place in medieval Japan and seventeenth-century London. During development, test players discovered methods of exploiting the available powers and abilities to achieve unexpected outcomes; instead of restricting these techniques, the designers attempted to redesign levels to accommodate them. Dishonored's music score was produced by composer Daniel Licht to represent London in the nineteenth century. (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...)
... 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 video game Manor Lords was wishlisted more than three million times on Steam after its developer had estimated it would receive around 14,000?
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 known for his comedic videos. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage has made him one of the most noted online personalities and content creators. He has been portrayed in media as a figurehead for YouTube, especially in the genre of gaming.
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...)
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Newell in 2018
Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president and co-founder of the video game company Valve Corporation.
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. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...)
Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American director, designer, programmer and developer in the video game industry. He is a co-founder of id Software and designed their early games, including Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), Hexen (1995) and Quake (1996). His designs and development tools, along with programming techniques developed by id Software's lead programmer, John Carmack, popularized the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Romero is also credited with coining the multiplayer term "deathmatch".
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, Romero and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...)
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...)
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...)
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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...)
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...)
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...)
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...)
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Bushnell in 2013
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...)
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...)
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Soule in 2010
Jeremy Soule (/ˈsoʊl/; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
He became an employee of Square in 1994 after several years of private composition studies. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, now called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that published digital versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. DirectSong remained active until 2019. (Full article...)
Satoru Iwata (Japanese: 岩田 聡, Hepburn: Iwata Satoru, December 6, 1959 – July 11, 2015) was a Japanese businessman, video game programmer, video game designer, and producer. He was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015. He was a major contributor in broadening the appeal of video games by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.
Born in Sapporo, Iwata expressed interest in video games from an early age and created his first simple game while in high school. He majored in computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1980, he joined the game developer HAL Laboratory while attending the university. At HAL, he worked as a programmer and closely collaborated with Nintendo, producing his first commercial game in 1983. Games to which he contributed include EarthBound and many games in the Kirby series. Following a downturn and near-bankruptcy, Iwata became the president of HAL in 1993 at the insistence of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi and brought financial stability. In the following years, he worked in the development of the Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. series. Iwata joined Nintendo as the head of its corporate planning division in 2000. (Full article...)
Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. He achieved critical success upon the publishing of 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 lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. (Full article...)
In 1991, he moved to the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. In 1996, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Despite the game's high popularity, Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, with the Soviet government being the only Russians who had made money from it. (Full article...)