More often than not, games will go through drastic revisions before they’re made available to consumers. Adventure, Dr. Mario, and Smash TV were three such games. See how they changed before (and after) release in a new edition of Bite-Sized Game History.
The development process to create a video game can vary wildly from game to game. Sometimes, a character that’s first envisioned on paper can make their way into a game virtually unchanged. But more often than not, games will go through drastic revisions before they’re made available to consumers.
Adventure, Dr. Mario, and Smash TV were three such games. See how they changed before (and after) release in a new edition of Bite-Sized Game History.
The Schwules Museum in Berlin has opened the Rainbow Arcade, an exhibit which will explore the “queer history of video games”:
For the first time in the world, the queer history of video games will be explored in a major exhibition: RAINBOW ARCADE at Schwules Museum features a wide variety of exhibits spanning over 30 years of media history, including 12 playable titles, concept drawings, modifications written by fans themselves and documentations of online communities. RAINBOW ARCADE will be taking stock of contemporary pop cultural questions of representation, stereotypical and discriminatory narratives in entertainment media, and our cultural memory. For the first time, research by the LGBTQ Game Archive will be presented in a museum.
Visitors to the museum will be able to play several examples of gaming’s queer history, including GameGrumps’s Dream Daddy, Midboss’s 2064: Read Only Memories, Anna Anthropy’s Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars, and more.
The Rainbow Arcade exhibit is curated by Sarah Rudolph (herzteile.org), Jan Schnorrenberg (Schwules Museum), and Dr. Adrienne Shaw (Temple University, LGBTQ Video Game Archive), and it’ll be open to the public through May 13, 2019.
In what is surely to be the first of many accolades, Sony Santa Monica’s God of War won “Game of the Year” at the 2018 Game Awards. Kratos’s latest adventure also picked up statuettes for “Best Game Direction” and “Best Action/Adventure Game.”
But the biggest winner of the night was Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, which picked up four wins last night. The publisher’s “Cowboy Game” collected some shiny hardware for “Best Narrative,” “Best Score/Music,” “Best Audio Design,” and “Best Performance” (for Roger Clark’s work as Arthur Morgan).
The all-mighty Fortnite picked up two awards, “Best Ongoing Game” and “Best Multiplayer,” but the most surprising news of the night might be that Insomniac’s Spider-Man was completely shut out. Best of luck next time to the ol’ webhead.
More than a dozen different games went home as winners at the 2018 Game Awards, and you can find them all after the break.
While the the game’s creators didn’t know it at the time, Spacewar! wouldn’t just help the future endeavors of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but also launch an entire industry.
In the 1950s and 60s, the Space Race and the Cold War gave students and researchers at top universities a reason to fight for processing time on the small number of room-sized mainframes in operation at the time. But thanks to the inclusion of a keyboard and a monitor (a luxury for a mainframe at the time), a small group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered that these machines were perfect for games.
After a lot of trial-and-error, these pioneers wound up with Spacewar!, a ship-battling simulation that combined their fascination with space travel with the computational power available in the mainframe. Completed in 1962, word quickly spread amongst the other students at the university, and Spacewar! became a bonafide blockbuster.
While the the game’s creators didn’t know it at the time, Spacewar! wouldn’t just help the future endeavors of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but also launch an entire industry.
It’s just another day at work for Gordon Freeman. The well-groomed scientist is running late for an important meeting and he’s forced to board the tram alone as he travels to the secure wing of the Black Mesa Research Facility.
The latest VGC Essay looks at how Half-Life’s opening tram ride changed first person shooters (and may even have created an entirely new genre). Here’s a teaser…
“Good morning and welcome to the Black Mesa Transit System. This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Black Mesa Research Facility personnel.”
It’s just another day at work for Gordon Freeman. The well-groomed scientist is running late for an important meeting and he’s forced to board the tram alone as he travels to the secure wing of the Black Mesa Research Facility.
It’s a rather lowkey introduction to one of the most ambitious games ever created, but easing the player into the game’s world was a big part of what made Valve’s Half-Life so ambitious. You’re free to move about the train car as you’re ferried from the facility’s living quarters to the research levels belowground, but for those five minutes, you’re also at the mercy of the developers and how they want you to interact with their game.
In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we look back at the first time Stan Lee brought his “carnival barker” enthusiasm to video games, as well as a pair of auctions for some very unique artifacts.
With a pocketful of catchphrases, and hiding behind a giant pair of sunglasses, Stan Lee began to resemble a real-life superhero more and more in his later years. Lee’s bombastic speaking style and boundless energy gave his many cameos a zippiness well into his 90s, and it felt like he would always be with us.
Sadly, Lee passed away yesterday at the age of 95.
Along with Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, Stan Lee redefined the very idea of what a “superhero” was, and their work caused ripples throughout all of pop culture. In this edition of Bite-Sized Game History, we look back at the first time Stan Lee brought his “carnival barker” enthusiasm to video games, as well as a pair of auctions for some very unique artifacts.
Using data from The NPD Group’s vast archive, Mat Piscatella recently shared some historical data on the best-selling video games from the 1990s to today.
Tracking the weekend box office results has become something of a spectator sport for moviegoers of all stripes since the lists were introduced in the early 1980s. Arguing about the financial merits of Star Wars, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Titanic, and Avatar became just as important as discussing each film’s critical reception.
You won’t find this sort of organized ranking of moneymakers in the video game industry, but the closest analogue would have to be the monthly Best-Seller Lists published by The NPD Group. However, the proprietary nature of this report means that the picture will always be incomplete.
Using data from the analyst firm’s vast archive, Mat Piscatella recently tried to pull back the curtain a little bit by sharing the list of best-selling games on several legacy consoles (the Saturn, the original PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, the Game Boy Color, and the Dreamcast) and a nearly defunct handheld (the Vita). He also examined the best-selling games through September 2018 on two modern consoles (the PS4 and Xbox One) and published a list of the top-selling titles for each year from 1995 to 2017.
It’s a very interesting collection of information, and the lists provide our best window yet into what games were considered popular in the United States in the 1990s and into today.
Mario Segale died last week at the age of 84, but the Seattle real estate developer and philanthropist is probably best-remembered among gamers as the namesake for Super Mario, Nintendo’s world-famous mascot.
Mario Segale died last week at the age of 84, but the Seattle real estate developer and philanthropist is probably best-remembered among gamers as the namesake for Super Mario, Nintendo’s world-famous mascot.
The US Copyright Office and the Library of Congress have ruled that museums and libraries may now disable digital rights management (DRM) software when attempting to preserve video games available for defunct platforms.
The US Copyright Office and the Library of Congress have ruled that museums and libraries may now disable digital rights management (DRM) software when attempting to preserve video games available for defunct platforms.
The rule is officially known as the “Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies,” and a very quick summary is available at Polygon:
This week the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office revised its list of specific exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, also known as the DMCA. Their guidance reaffirms the rights of software preservationists to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) software, in some cases expanding their ability to revive older games. It also opens the door, legally speaking, to do-it-yourselfers and electronics repair outlets to break DRM in pursuit of fixing hardware.
A more thorough analysis of the ruling, specifically detailing how it’ll effect preservationists looking to bring back early versions of MMOs like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, is available at Motherboard:
Today’s news should be good for archivists and museums, who’ve long struggled with the best way to preserve video games such as Everquest or World of Warcraft. Multiplayer games like these require both software that players run on their computers locally, and software running on a company’s server—software that is much harder for historians to get their hands on and run. And when they do manage to get an independent server running, big game companies like Blizzard have taken legal action against people running unauthorized servers.
This is a great day for anyone interested in the history of games, and for all the historians and librarians working to preserve the classics for the next generation.
The staff at Mashable will be exploring some of the greatest games of all time in a brand new podcast known as “Games To Play Before You Die.“
The staff at Mashable will be exploring some of the greatest games of all time in a brand new podcast known as “Games To Play Before You Die“:
Which video games were so far ahead of their time, so much pure fun, that they stand apart? Since we love games we decided to answer this question once and for all in a new podcast series simply named “Games to Play Before You Die.”
Our host Jordan Minor, Senior Editor at Geek.com, breaks down the video games you MUST play before you kick the bucket (or get carpal tunnel). With the help of rotating experts and Mashable Editors, each episode dives into the development and launch of a video game that has impacted our host and guests personally as well as the industry.
Hosted by Geek.com’s Jordan Minor, the first episode of “Games To Play Before You Die” is all about Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2. More specifically, the panel discusses, “How is Sonic 2 the only good Sonic game?”
Future episodes of “Games To Play Before You Die” should appear every week (or so), and I’m very interested to see where the series goes from here.
UPDATE (10/29/22): “Games To Play Before You Die” appears to be no more, but you can still watch the video versions of each episode on Mashable’s YouTube channel.
In the end, nine titles were part of the final tally of games featured on the podcast. Here they are for posterity…
