Download or read book Arcade Fever The Fan s Guide To The Golden Age Of Video Games written by John Sellers and published by Running Press. This book was released on 2001-08-21 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arcade Fever is a full-color illustrated history of video arcade games, with tributes to more than 50 classic games like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Q-Bert, Frogger, and TRON. Learn which game caused a yen shortage in Japan -- and which games inspired breakfast cereals, Saturday-morning cartoons, episodes of Seinfeld,and #1 pop-music singles. Meet the visionary musicians, writers, animators, cabinet artists, and other unsung heroes of the video game industry. The perfect gift for anyone who spent their childhood in video arcades, Arcade Fever is a pop-culture nostalgia trip you won't want to miss! John Sellers writes for Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, TV Guide, and other national magazines. He is also the author of Pop Culture Aptitude Test: Rad, 80s Version. He was the World Champion of Donkey Kong in 1983 and appeared on the television show "That's Incredible!"
Download or read book Attract Mode The Rise and Fall of Coin Op Arcade Games written by Jamie Lendino and published by Steel Gear Press. This book was released on 2020-09-27 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From their haunts in the shadowy corner of a bar, front and center at a convenience store, or reigning over a massive mall installation bursting with light, sound, and action, arcade games have been thrilling and addicting quarter-bearers of all ages ever since Pong first lit up its paddles. Whether you wanted a few minutes’ quick-twitch exhilaration or the taste of three-initial immortality that came with topping the high score screen, you could get it from the diverse range of space shooters, dot-eating extravaganzas, quirky beat-’em-ups, and more that have helped define pop culture for more than four decades. In Attract Mode: The Rise and Fall of Coin-Op Arcade Games, author Jamie Lendino celebrates both the biggest blockbusters (Pac-Man, Star Wars: The Arcade Game) and the forgotten gems (Phoenix, Star Castle) of the Golden Age of coin-op gaming, and pulls back the curtain on the personalities and the groundbreaking technologies that brought them to glitzy, color-drenched life in the U.S., Japan, and all over the world. You’ll start your journey exploring the electromechanical attractions and pinball games of the early 20th century. Next, you’ll meet the earliest innovators, who used college computers and untested electronics to outline the possibilities of the emerging form, and discover the surprising history behind the towering megahits from Nintendo, Sega, and others that still inform gaming today. Then you’ll witness the devastating crash that almost ended it all—and the rebirth no one expected. Whether you prefer the white-knuckle gameplay of Robotron: 2084, the barrel-jumping whimsy of Donkey Kong, or the stunning graphics and animation of Dragon’s Lair, Attract Mode will transport you back to the heyday of arcade games and let you relive—or experience for the first time—the unique magic that transformed entertainment forever.
Download or read book Computer Games written by Diane Carr and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-03-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer games are one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving media of our time. Revenues from console and computer games have now overtaken those from Hollywood movies; and online gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Games are no longer just kids' stuff: the majority of players are now adults, and the market is constantly broadening. The visual style of games has become increasingly sophisticated, and the complexities of game-play are ever more challenging. Meanwhile, the iconography and generic forms of games are increasingly influencing a whole range of other media, from films and television to books and toys. This book provides a systematic, comprehensive introduction to the analysis of computer and video games. It introduces key concepts and approaches drawn from literary, film and media theory in an accessible and concrete manner; and it tests their use and relevance by applying them to a small but representative selection of role-playing and action-adventure games. It combines methods of textual analysis and audience research, showing how the combination of such methods can give a more complete picture of these playable texts and the fan cultures they generate. Clearly written and engaging, it will be a key text for students in the field and for all those with an interest in taking games seriously.
Download or read book Retro Gaming Hacks written by Chris Kohler and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maybe it was the recent Atari 2600 milestone anniversary that fueled nostalgia for the golden days of computer and console gaming. Every Game Boy must ponder his roots from time to time. But whatever is driving the current retro gaming craze, one thing is certain: classic games are back for a big second act, and they're being played in both old and new ways. Whether you've just been attacked by Space Invaders for the first time or you've been a Pong junkie since puberty, Chris Kohler's Retro Gaming Hacks is the indispensable new guide to playing and hacking classic games. Kohler has complied tons of how-to information on retro gaming that used to take days or weeks of web surfing to track down and sort through, and he presents it in the popular and highly readable Hacks style. Retro Gaming Hacks serves up 85 hard-nosed hacks for reviving the classic games. Want to game on an original system? Kohler shows you how to hack ancient hardware, and includes a primer for home-brewing classic software. Rather adapt today's equipment to run retro games? Kohler provides emulation techniques, complete with instructions for hacking a classic joystick that's compatible with a contemporary computer. This book also teaches readers to revive old machines for the original gaming experience: hook up an Apple II or a Commodore 64, for example, and play it like you played before. A video game journalist and author of Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, Kohler has taught the history of video games at Tufts University. In Retro Gaming Hacks, he locates the convergence of classic games and contemporary software, revealing not only how to retrofit classic games for today's systems, but how to find the golden oldies hidden in contemporary programs as well. Whether you're looking to recreate the magic of a Robotron marathon or simply crave a little handheld Donkey Kong, Retro Gaming Hacks shows you how to set the way-back dial.
Download or read book An Introduction to Game Studies written by Frans Mäyrä and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-02-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book guides students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies. Students will learn to: - Understand and analyse different aspects of phenomena we recognise as ′game′ and play′ - Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online games - Understand games as dynamic systems of meaning-making - Interpret the context of games as ′culture′ and subculture - Analyse the relationship between technology and interactivity and between ′game′ and ′reality′ - Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information society With further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games. The companion website at www.sagepub.co.uk/mayra contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefit from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author. Professor Frans Mäyrä is a Professor of Games Studies and Digital Culture at the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere, Finland.
Download or read book Game After written by Raiford Guins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural study of video game afterlife, whether as emulation or artifact, in an archival box or at the bottom of a landfill. We purchase video games to play them, not to save them. What happens to video games when they are out of date, broken, nonfunctional, or obsolete? Should a game be considered an “ex-game” if it exists only as emulation, as an artifact in museum displays, in an archival box, or at the bottom of a landfill? In Game After, Raiford Guins focuses on video games not as hermetically sealed within time capsules of the past but on their material remains: how and where video games persist in the present. Guins meticulously investigates the complex life cycles of video games, to show how their meanings, uses, and values shift in an afterlife of disposal, ruins and remains, museums, archives, and private collections. Guins looks closely at video games as museum objects, discussing the recontextualization of the Pong and Brown Box prototypes and engaging with curatorial and archival practices across a range of cultural institutions; aging coin-op arcade cabinets; the documentation role of game cartridge artwork and packaging; the journey of a game from flawed product to trash to memorialized relic, as seen in the history of Atari's infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; and conservation, restoration, and re-creation stories told by experts including Van Burnham, Gene Lewin, and Peter Takacs. The afterlife of video games—whether behind glass in display cases or recreated as an iPad app—offers a new way to explore the diverse topography of game history.
Download or read book Playing at the Next Level written by Ken Horowitz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-21 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today a multinational video game developer, Sega was the first to break Nintendo's grip on the gaming industry, expanding from primarily an arcade game company to become the dominant game console manufacturer in North America. A major part of that success came from the hard work and innovation of its subsidiary, Sega of America, who in a little more than a decade wrested the majority market share from Nintendo and revolutionized how games were made. Drawing on interviews with nearly 100 Sega alumni, this book traces the development of the company, revealing previously undocumented areas of game-making history, including Sega's relationship with Tonka, the creation of its internal studios, and major breakthroughs like the Sega Channel and HEAT Network. More than 40 of the company's most influential games are explored in detail.
Download or read book Computer Game Developer written by Mary Firestone and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the training needed to become a computer game developer.
Download or read book The Games Machines written by and published by PediaPress. This book was released on with total page 919 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Design User Experience and Usability User Experience Design for Diverse Interaction Platforms and Environments written by Aaron Marcus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The four-volume set LNCS 8517, 8518, 8519 and 8520 constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2014, held as part of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2014, held in Heraklion, Crete, Greece in June 2014, jointly with 13 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1476 papers and 220 posters presented at the HCII 2014 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 4766 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of Human-Computer Interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 256 contributions included in the DUXU proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this four-volume set. The 76 papers included in this volume are organized in topical sections on design for the web, design for the mobile experience, design of visual information, design for novel interaction techniques and realities, games and gamification.
Download or read book Bits and Pieces written by Kenneth B. McAlpine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bits and Pieces tells the story of chiptune, a style of lo-fi electronic music that emerged from the first generation of video game consoles and home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through ingenuity and invention, musicians and programmers developed code that enabled the limited hardware of those early 8-bit machines to perform musical feats that they were never designed to achieve. In time, that combination of hardware and creative code came to define a unique 8-bit sound that imprinted itself on a generation of gamers. For a new generation of musicians, this music has currency through the chipscene, a vibrant musical subculture that repurposes obsolete gaming hardware. It's performative: raw and edgy, loaded with authenticity and driven by a strong DIY ethic. It's more punk than Pac-Man, and yet, it's part of that same story of ingenuity and invention; 8-bit hardware is no longer a retired gaming console, but a quirky and characterful musical instrument. Taking these consoles to the stage, musicians fuse 8-bit sounds with other musical styles - drum'n'bass, jungle, techno and house - to create a unique contemporary sound. Analyzing musical structures and technological methods used with chiptune, Bits and Pieces traces the simple beeps of the earliest arcade games, through the murky shadows of the digital underground, to global festivals and movie soundtracks.
Download or read book Adventure The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming written by Jamie Lendino and published by Ziff Davis. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sprawl of Adventure. The addictiveness of Breakout. The intensity of Space Invaders. Once upon a time, you could only experience this kind of excitement at the arcade. But in 1977 that changed forever. You, and maybe a friend or a sibling, could instantly teleport from your own living room to a dazzling new world—with nothing more than a small plastic cartridge. This was the promise of the Atari 2600—and it was delivered in ways no one ever expected. No, the games it put on your TV weren’t what you saw when you plunked in your quarters at the convenience store or in the noisy, smoky business on the other side of town. But they brought the arcade home—and it hasn’t left since. With Adventure: The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming, Jamie Lendino takes you to the front lines of the home gaming revolution, exploring the history of the world-changing console and delves into the coin-op ports and original titles that still influence gaming today. Before your next trip to a magical universe with your Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Nintendo Switch, see how the home gaming industry truly began.
Download or read book Outside the Gates of Eden written by Peter Bacon Hales and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural historian and author of Atomic Spaces offers a comprehensive account of the Baby Boomer years—from the atomic age to the virtual age. Born under the shadow of the atomic bomb, with little security but the cold comfort of duck-and-cover drills, the postwar generations lived through—and led—some of the most momentous changes in all of American history. In this new cultural history, Peter Bacon Hales explores those decades through a succession of resonant moments, spaces, and artifacts of everyday life. Finding unexpected connections, he traces the intertwined undercurrents of promise and peril. From newsreels of the first atomic bomb tests to the invention of a new ideal American life in Levittown; from the teen pop music of the Brill Building and the Beach Boys to Bob Dylan’s canny transformations; from the painful failures of communes to the breathtaking utopian potential of the digital age, Hales reveals a nation in transition as a new generation began to make its mark on the world it was inheriting. Outside the Gates of Eden is the most comprehensive account yet of the baby boomers, their parents, and their children, as seen through the places they built, the music and movies and shows they loved, and the battles they fought to define their nation, their culture, and their place in what remains a fragile and dangerous world.
Download or read book Artifacts from Modern America written by Helen Sheumaker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-11-03 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intriguing book examines how material objects of the 20th century—ranging from articles of clothing to tools and weapons, communication devices, and toys and games—reflect dominant ideas and testify to the ways social change happens. Objects of everyday life tell stories about the ways everyday Americans lived. Some are private or personal things—such as Maidenform brassiere or a pair of patched blue jeans. Some are public by definition, such as the bus Rosa Parks boarded and refused to move back for a white passenger. Some material things or inventions reflect the ways public policy affected the lives of Americans, such as the Enovid birth control pill. An invention like the electric wheelchair benefited both the private and public spheres: it eased the lives of physically disabled individuals, and it played a role in assisting those with disabilities to campaign successfully for broader civil rights. Artifacts from Modern America demonstrates how dozens of the material objects, items, technologies, or inventions of the 20th century serve as a window into a period of history. After an introductory discussion of how to approach material culture—the world of things—to better understand the American past, essays describe objects from the previous century that made a wide-ranging or long-lasting impact. The chapters reflect the ways that communication devices, objects of religious life, household appliances, vehicles, and tools and weapons changed the lives of everyday Americans. Readers will learn how to use material culture in their own research through the book's detailed examples of how interpreting the historical, cultural, and social context of objects can provide a better understanding of the 20th-century experience.
Download or read book Troublemakers written by Leslie Berlin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Leslie Berlin’s “deeply researched and dramatic narrative of Silicon Valley’s early years…is a meticulously told…compelling history” (The New York Times) of the men and women who chased innovation, and ended up changing the world. Troublemakers is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. “In this vigorous account…a sturdy, skillfully constructed work” (Kirkus Reviews), historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic—were born. “There is much to learn from Berlin’s account, particularly that Silicon Valley has long provided the backdrop where technology, elite education, institutional capital, and entrepreneurship collide with incredible force” (The Christian Science Monitor). Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from the factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together, these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.
Download or read book Mario Titles written by and published by PediaPress. This book was released on with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ludoliteracy written by José P. Zagal and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the surface, it seems like teaching about games should be easy. After all, students are highly motivated, enjoy engaging with course content, and have extensive personal experience with videogames. However, games education can be surprisingly complex.
