Namco's Pac-Man

Namco's Pac-Man was designed by a younger designer that worked for the company named Toru Iwatani, and released in Japan in 1980. Originally, the game was Named Puck-Man for the character is in the shape of a puck (even though the rumor is that the character spawned from a pizza with a slice missing), but you can guess why the changed the name. Now, everyone should know of Pac-Man or some connection to the game. He is the first recognizable video game mascot to be created. The Pac-Man character has been licened to over 250 companies for over 400 products! The game was even used in "Scott Pilgrim Vs the World". Talk about "wakka wakka" popularity.

Here is a scene from Futurama were Pac-Man has been referenced to say the least.

The objective of the game is consume all the power pellets with out being touched by one of the four enemies. You do this by controlling Pac-Man through a maze, and consuming all the power pellets while avoiding your enemies Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clide. After you consume all of the power pellets, you go on to the next stage. If you get touched by an enemy though, you lose a life. After you lose all your lives it's game over. The game is considered one of the first stealth games, like Metal Gear Solid or Halo: ODST. Like those games though, you can still get back at you enemies by eating one of the 4 larger power pellets located in one of the 4 corners of the maze. After you consume this, you can then consume your enemies for points.

You score in the game by consuming power pellets, "fruit", or as previously stated your enemies. Originally, you would score an extra life after 10,000 points. Also, you can score a perfect game. This is when you complete the first 256 levels with the a maximum score possible, and with out losing a life (if you can do this, I say you lost a life a long time ago...).

The Pac-Man original arcade game in the 80's was very pattern driven.  Once players could get the patterns down, the game became a lot easier. Though if you can memorize the patterns of 4 ghosts for 256 levels... more power to ya. The  games that are re-developed today have a lot more memory and are of a higher technology, allowing for randomized patterns. The eat and evade game play works very well though. Trying to avoid your enemies and predict their moves while dinning on an all you can eat buffet of power pellets and fruit make for some good suspense. This helps pull gamers in wanting to play more to see who can make it the farthest. This causes competition which equals a good revenue. In the 1990's the game raked in 2.5 billion dollars worth of quarters alone!

Another piece of the game that works very well is its appearance. The game is just as appealing to play as it is to look at. The music, flashing colors, and classic "wakka wakka" sounds, pleases both the eyes and ears while you munch on power pellets as your enemies eat your pixelated dust.

I like the hidden challenge in the game, But the repetitiveness just pushes me away. I mean come on, 255 levels of maze and 4 ghosts...my attention span just cant handle that. The falshing colors make me go "oohhh ahhh" but then after the first couple levels, its more like "zzzzzzz...". Though for some odd reason, I tend to find myself going back and playing the game, even though I know it will bore me. Its this addiction the game causes that makes me glad there are emulators today.

The game is probably one of the best known games of all time, and still considered a fun game to play even today. Its maze and evading challenge, music, colors and classic sounds makes this game just as addicting as it is popular. So go pick up a video game classic, and have some fun today.

References:
http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/File:Pacman.jpg
http://www.classicgaming.cc/classics/pacman/history.php
http://www.mameworld.info/net/pacman/history/p1_01.htm
http://www.webpacman.com/history.htm
http://lampshark.wordpress.com/
http://pacman.com/en/pac-man-history

Nintendo's Donkey Kong

Nintendo's Donkey Kong was designed by Sherigu Miyamoto and released in 1981. The games release was an attempt at Japan's efforts to challenge the American game industry. It was designed to redeem Nintendo after their fail attempt at the gaming industry with a game called Radar Scope (1980). Donkey Kong has since then became one of Nintendo's greatest legacy.

The objective of the game is to rescue your damsel in distress from the notorious Donkey Kong. You play as the hero Jumpman (a very creative name when all he does is jump...), who soon becomes known as the legendary character Mario. Though, at the games release, he is Jumpman. You must climb up a series of levels while evading obstacles, which include a series of objects thrown from Donkey Kong himself (which Jumpman must "jump" over), to save your damsel in distress.

You score points simple enough, you jump over objects and you reach the top. Each will add to your total score of the game. Though the finale "screen" of the game is the most fun. This is because the game play is changed a bit. The level is known as "Rivets", and you must force Donkey Kong to fall to defeat him. This gives the player a different challenge instead of just jumping and climbing. Good thing Jumpman aka Mario is a plumber...

The game is, from what I found, to be fun. The game play is simple enough that any one can just pick it up and play it with out having much difficulty. This makes the game fun for all ages and works very well for the time of the games release. Along with that simplicity though is a challenge. The game is not as easy as everyone imagines it to be. The level of difficulty causes gamers to replay multiple times. This worked well for the time of the arcade genre, when more replays equaled more revenue (yay for gaming frustration!). Therefore, the simplicity of the game play with the hard level of difficulty make a perfect combo for the games time of release.

When first playing this game, you hear one of the classic Donkey Kong songs from the games franchise. This instantly sent me back to my childhood when I played Donkey Kong Country for the NES. The music in the game are songs that are known through out video gaming history. Along with the music though are the sound effects that go with the running climbing and jumping of the character. These effects add a sense of joy and fun each time you hear them as they correspond to the game, which help attract gamers. The sounds also become part of the game play, molding the game into one whole. This aslo works very well for the game

My childhood in a song...kinda sad

Donkey Kong was also one of the first games to have a complete narrative story line. This included cut scenes that helped explain that certain moment in the game. This would draw gamers into the game itself, creating an effect to make them play more of the game to see how the story unfolds. This can be seen in many of the games produced today, examples are the story lines in games such as Halo, Modern Warfare, and Mass Effect.

Altogether, The game is a video game classic, and has played a part or influenced every gamer's childhood today.

Taito Corporation's Space Invaders

Tatio Corporation's Space Invaders is a fixed 2-dimensional shooter that was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and hit the Japanese arcades in 1978. Later in1980, Atari adapted a version of the game for American release. The game was so popular after its release though, that it actually caused a coin shortage in Japan. Now that's a lot of coins.

The objective of the game is to defend the planet from a space invasion (...would you look at that). You do this by controlling a laser cannon at the bottom of the screen that pans left and right and shoots straight upwards towards the descending alien swarm. The swarm consists of 11 columns by 5 rows of different types of aliens, and the random mother that will pan across the screen at the very top. Also, you have 4 shields that help protect you from the incoming alien fire, but they will slowly degrade from the damage taken.

You score by shooting and destroying each alien as they descend upon you. Each different alien is worth a different point score, and the mother ship's point total is random. It only takes one blast from your cannon to destroy a ship, but that becomes more difficult as the swarm steadily increases their descend towards the planet with their own left to right panning motion. You lose when you either run out of lives or the swarm reaches the planet. You earn lives by defeating each incoming wave. After a wave is defeated, a new wave will appear with an increased descending speed, increasing the difficulty as you progress.

You can see the player controlled cannon as it fires upward towards the swam.

I found the game to be pretty fun and really addicting to play. With the awesome soundtrack to jam to while I blasted away my alien invasion nightmare, I felt the urge to keep playing the game. This was as if the lives I gained at the end of each wave more like money to me than the actual points being scored. It became my goal to collect as many lives as I could. Though, this only lasted about 10 minuets before the repetitiveness of the game slapped me in the face with the rear hand of boredom. As fun as I thought this was, I couldn't help but become bored with the same thing happening over and over again with the only difference being the increase in the pace of the decent. For me, when I play the exact same thing with out a change in strategy or even scenery, I become uninterested and just want it to end. The thing that I did not like most about the game though was the firing speed of the cannon. The cannon would not fire a new round until the previous round hit an alien or vanished at the top of the screen. I do not know if this was because they did not have the technology to set a constant firing speed for the cannon at the time, but to me it just made the game frustrating.

Taito Corp. released 4 more squeals to the Space Invader franchise, ending in 1995. In 2008 Nintendo released the "Space Invaders Get Even" for the Wii gaming console, where you controlled the aliens instead of the cannon.

The game, though very repetitive, is a great classic. It set the standard for most alien shoots and side scrollers for its generation.

References:
http://www.history.com/topics/space-invaders
http://www.brentradio.com/SpaceInvaders.htm

Atari's Battlezone

Atari's Battlezone was an arcade game developed by Ed Rotburg and released in 1980. It uses vector graphics so that the game is viewed in a wireframe.

When developed and released, the game became so popular that the United States Army ordered specially modified versions of the game to help train Bradley Tank pilots. Due to the association with the U.S Army, many staff members refused to help develop the game, even head producer Ed Rotburg, at first, refused to be on the game's board. Battlezone was also the first 3-D environmental landscape game to be produced at the time.

You can see the wireframe view, and the 3-d environment. 

The objective of the game is simple, survive. It has the standard "survive as long as possible" gameplay. The longer you survive, the more tanks you can destroy and the more points you score. Also, there is a flying saucer that will appear when you are most likely in a firefight with an enemy. Though the saucer is worth a lot of points when shot down, it was origanlly developed just for a distraction.

I personally did not enjoy in the game. One of the biggest factors was the aiming radical. This is because of its shape and size. That is, even though the radical is big, if you do not have what you are aiming at  in the dead center of the radical you will miss. As you can see from the picture above, the radical is bigger than the enemy that you are aiming at, but as previously stated if you do not have the enemy tank in the center of the radical you will miss the tank. Also, another factor of the game I did not like was the "smart" missiles that the enemy tanks fired at you. Even though you had to be dead accurate, the enemy has missiles that will track your every movement. To some, this adds an excited difficulty to the gameplay, but to me it just makes the game have an unfair just towards the player.

Even though I did not enjoy the game, it is still an historic landmark for current first person shooters.

References:
http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=battlezone&page=detail&id=210
http://atari.com/arcade/arcade/battlezone
http://andysarcade.de/battlezone.html

Resident Evil 6 Announcement

I'm a big fan of this game's franchise! Their "strategic" game play and cheesy story line makes these games a lot of fun to play. I hope I am not the only one that is excited for this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtf2bUj6jYk&feature=share

Atari's Lunar Lander

Lunar Lander first originated in 1969 as a text based computer game programmed by Jim Storer, who was at the time a student at Lexington Massachusetts High School. He programmed the game for the Digital Entertainment Cooperation's (DEC) PDP-8 computer. This version then inspired the later version (also know as Moonlander) in 1973 for the GEC GT40. The game was produced to demonstrate the capabilities of the new computer. This game finally inspired Atari's version of Lunar Lander that was released in 1979. This was Atari's first vector game to be produced, and also one of the first to be registered in a copyright office in 1980.

Something that I thought was really cool was that the original arcade cabinet for this game had a trust handle that controlled the trust. I just thought that was neat because at the time most games just had analog sticks or just that large swivel ball. This made the game unique and more "realistic", which I just found interesting.

The objective of Lunar Lander is for the player to pilot a lunar landing module and safely land it on the surface of the moon. You must do this by using the modules thrusters to carefully  land on designated landing zones on the games playing field. The harder and more difficult the landing zone is to reach, the more points that are awarded to the player. Also, the game has a system that turns your fuel into "money". That is, the more fuel your module has after the landing, the more points that will be earned.

I found this game to be actually quite fun and challenging. This is because I never went for the large and easy landing zones. Instead I always accepted the challenge of going for the smaller and more difficult areas so that I may score more points. Because of these smaller and jagged landing zones, there was an added difficulty of precision. This not only made the game more fun (at least for me) but also made the game more addicting. Every time I failed at landing at one of the more difficult landing zones, I had to "redeem" myself and try again until I succeeded. I also found the phrases that were said if you crashed your lander. These added a bit of humor to the game.

You can see how the 5k spot is in a harder location.

I also never found the rumored easter egg of the game. That is, when you land in the right spot, a McDonalds will appear and your astronaut will go inside and order some food. Though, if you crash into the McDonalds, it will be destroyed until the game is reloaded.

Still, I found the game very enjoyable and a great classic for the arcade vault.

References:
http://atari.com/arcade/arcade/lunar-lander
http://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/
http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=lunar-lander&page=detail&id=1417

Atari's Tempest

Atari's Tempest is an arcade game that was originally designed and programmed by Dave Theurer and released in 1981. The game is a tube shooter, that is (unlike today's FPS's) the games environment is fixed, and  you are limited to firing your projectiles down the center of the segments on the game's field. Also, Tempest was one of the very first games to be released that allowed the players to select a level of difficulty.

The objective of this game is to survive and score as many points as possible.You do this by clearing the screen from the opposing enemies. Now as previously stated, the game is a tube shooter. Therefore each level takes place in a closed tube or open field of some shape ( hexagon, octagon etc...), and is made up of a dozen or so segments. As the player, you control a diamond shaped ship that can circle the outside of the map. You fire your projectiles at the enemies (that look like red stiff bowties) to eliminate them. After you eliminate all the enemies of the wave, you will proceed to a new wave on a different shaped level with a different difficulty.

Now, the game seems simple enough, and it pretty much is. There didn't seem to be much of a strategy to help complete each new wave. You basically just circle the outside of the playing field and click the shoot button as fast as you can. For instance, just holding down the right and down arrow keys, which are to move and shoot, I was able to move though several levels with out difficulty. Things become a bit more challenging as you progress through the levels. As you progress enemies become "smarter" and will doge your incoming fire by flipping over to a new segment. I found this quite funny, that is because when I was just holding down the arrow keys, all that was happening was my ship chasing their's in circles for a good 60 seconds. Also, there are green enemies that will lay down long spikes in the segments. These spikes will not hurt you during that certain wave, but when travailing to a new level the player can hit a spike and lose a life or the game. Also, if an enemy reaches the outside of the playing field, you lose the game. You start the game with 2 additional extra lives.

You can see above this player is about to lose

Tempest was the first multi-color vector graphic game to be released. Because of it being an arcade game, the game play itself really utilized the arcade track ball of the time. Like Missile Command, It was believed to be one of the most unique game released during the "Golden Age of Arcade Games", and is still considered a classic today.

From its hectic style of game play, I can really see how Tempest set the motion for the production of side-scrollers and first person shooters that are favored today.

References:

http://www.thocp.net/software/games/golden_age.htm

Atari's Missile Command

Atari's Missile Command was an arcade game that was released in 1980. The objective of the game is to defend  your six cities from an endless assault of ballistic air to ground missiles. You accomplish this by shooting off defense missiles of your own, to intercept the on coming enemy barrage, from 3 different bunkers.

As you can see there are your 3 cities, and 3 bunkers.

The objective of this game is simple enough, but as you proceed through out the levels, you find that the addition of enemies that drop bombs and smart bombs, along with an increase in the speed of the waves make the game a lot more challenging. You fire your missiles by moving the cross-hair on the screen and placing it where you want a missile to go. After you fire the missile, it will explode on the location of the cross-hair when the missile was fired. Now, the explosion of the missile is what you use to intercept the oncoming enemy missiles. After the completion of the round, each city along with each left over friendly missile and the difficulty of the wave make up the points you score. Though, if an enemy missile hits one of your cities it becomes destroyed and you will not gain its point at the end of the wave. Also, at the beginning of a new wave, your lost cities will not spawn back. You must also defend you missile bases as well, each base contains 10 friendly missiles, and if you run out of missiles you become defenseless. You will re spawn the missiles at the  beginning of each new wave, but not during a wave. This makes you think a lot more towards the secret of this game, chain explosions!


Chain explosions help amplify the strategies that can be used in the game. If you take the risk of waiting for the enemy missiles to get closer to your bunkers and cities, you can predict locations where their paths will intercept. Also, if you time a missile just right, you can use the explosion from the enemy missiles to detonate other enemy missiles! This leaves you with 2 risks, either wait for the chance and risk the points, or fire on location and risk leaving everything defenseless.


After doing a bit of research on the game, I came to find out that the game was made to represent the anxieties of the cold war. Which makes sense when looking at the time when the Cold War had its span that reached into 1991.


Even if the game was to represent our fear of the worlds super power's going to war... it is still a fun game and holds quite a challenge. Born in the "Golden Age of Arcade Games" it is still a game played today. It even recently had a 30th anniversary! 


References:
http://www.missilecommand.com/
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war

Atari's Adventure

Atari's Adventure is considered one of the first action-adventure games to be released of its time. It was created in 1979 for the Atari VCS. The game is about an evil magician that has stolen an enchanted chalice and has hidden it somewhere in the kingdom. The object of the game is to find the enchanted chalice and take it back to the Golden Castle where it belongs. This becomes difficult though as the evil magician has created dragons that you must overcome to reach your objective, the enchanted chalice. There are three castles in the Kingdom; the White Castle, the Black Castle, and the Golden Castle. Each castle has a Gate over the entrance. The gate can be opened with the corresponding colored key.


This game did only take me 5 minuets to complete. Though, when looking at the time of the game's release it is evident that it was a high point for the gaming industry. The puzzle like game play and enemy obstacles point towards the evolution of action adventure games along with role playing games. This is a game though that I would recommend you first read the description of the game. If you are a "jump in head first" type of gamer like myself, you might hit a snag. For instance with my first play through of the game I was just running around and "exploring" and accidently beat the game. After that the game just froze and I thought I broke it. The game is definitely as my professor stated, a portal for the imagination, starting with how the main character is just a single block pixel. For the time of the game though, the game play is very detailed for this epic quest. You can not progress throughout the game with out first finding the proper and necessary tools. For example we can can compare this to a more recent game such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Where Dragons have been raised as obstacles, like in Adventure. Also, how in quests you must first complete one objective to reach the next. Another very popular title that can be related to this game is the Zelda franchise. The additional modes also add a little variety to the game play.


Atari's Adventure also holds one of the very first in game easter eggs. Now this is a small dot that can be found inside the Black Castle's catacomb's lower wall. It can only be reached with the bridge, and is not attracted by the magnet. After doing a bit of research, I found that the dot was nicknamed the "invisible dot". The dot is not exactly invisible, just the same color of the corresponding wall it is found in. If you bring the dot to east section of the area  that the Golden Castle is located in while other different colored objects are present, it will turn the wall "invisible". This will allow the player to go through the wall to a room that displays the words "Created by Warren Robinett"

Sneaky Sneaky

Altogether The game is very good for when it came out. It makes it obvious where future Action-Adventure and RPGs found there inspiration for release.

It All Started With Tetris

With this first post I thought I would do a little explanation on my background with video gaming and game tech.Though,I should probably  start with why this is named Bromandingo. Bromandingo is more of a tribute to my friends. Growing up we called each other a lot of weird names to greet each other, and bromandingo is just one of the more common ones. So this is to you bros, both the ones across seas and state side.

Any ways, to start out, my name is Calvin and I am a sophomore chemistry major. I have mainly started this blog because it is a mandatory requisite for the Video Games: Art, Culture, and History of a Medium course that I am currently taking. I will be posting my opinions about games that I am to review for this course along with games that I currently play and gaming tech that I use or will review.

Growing up I have always been a gamer. It all started the day I found my fathers Game Boy. now this was the first Game Boy of the Game Boy line that was released in 1989. With that I played my very first game... Tetris. After my Tetris debut my parents graciously bought me the first 3 Pokemon of the American line: Yellow, Red, and the Blue versions. Around that same age I played my first console game as well which was Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64, and that's where it all began.

Since then, I have played on many consoles and handheld devices, which include: Every Game Boy that has been produced in the American Line, Play Station Portable (PSP), Sega Genesis, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES),  Nintendo 64, Play Station, Game Cube, Xbox, Wii, Xbox 360, and PC gaming. I have also played a large range or games from real time strategies, first person shooters, and all that in between. My favorites though are the Starcraft franchise, Halo and Gears of War Franchises, and the Elder Scroll Franchise.

I hope that you all enjoy my posts, and any comments or ideas are highly great full.

Feel free to add me on Xbox, Steam, or Starcraft

-Bromandingo

Xbox Live and Starcraft - Revack
Steam- revack117