Game History, Genres

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Game History, Genres

• Space Invaders Pong Max Payne
• Action, Adventure, Puzzle, etc

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History

• Spacewar 1962
• PDP-1
• 2 Ships controlled by 4 buttons each
• Rotate left, right, thrust, fire
• Adventure 1967
• Text-based adventure
• You are in a maze of twisty little passages

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History

• Pong 1972
• First arcade hit
• Home version of Pong 1974
• Fairchild Channel F 1976
• Cartridges!
• Hardware Crash 1977
• Millions of Pong clones saturate the market

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History

• Space Invaders 1978
• Activision 1979
• First software house makes Atari 2600 Cartridges
• Asteroids 1979
• Record score 100,000,000
• Two guys played it for a week in 1982

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Arcade Games 1980

• Defender
• Missile Command
• Battezone
• Tempest
• Popular with Men AND Women
• Pac-Man
• Frogger
• Centipede

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Arcade Games 1981-83

• Donkey Kong
• QBert
• Tron
• Zaxxon
• Joust
• Pole Position
• Punch-Out

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Home Games Late 70s Early 80s

• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200 (incompatible cartridge with 2600)
• Colecovision
• Mattel Intellivision
• Bally Astrocade

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Software Crash of 1983-84

• Market of 1982 3 billion
• Market of 1985 100 million
• Millions of clones and lousy cartridges
• No rating system
• No licensing system
• Consumer confusion!

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Mid 80s

• 8-bit Home Games
• Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
• Released 1986
• Most popular toy of 1988
• Mario Bros.
• Sega Master System
• Released 1986

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Late 80s

• 16-bit Home Games
• Sega Genesis
• Released 1989
• NEC TurboGrafx-16
• Game Boy
• Tetris

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Early 90s

• Super NES (16 bit), 1991
• Game Gear
• Software
• Street Fighter 2
• First decent fighting game
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Mortal Kombat 1992

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Mid 90s

• Sega CD (1992)
• PC CDROM (1994)
• Software
• NBA Jam (1993)
• Virtua Fighter (1995)

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Late 90s, early 00s

• Playstation (1995)
• Sega Saturn (1995)
• Nintendo 64 (1996)
• Sega Dreamcast (1999)
• Playstation2 (2000)
• XBox (2001)
• GameCube (2001)

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Late 90s

• Software
• Very strong 3D!
• Decent sports games
• Soul Caliber, Shenmue
• PC Software
• Graphics no longer 100 of the challenge
• Consumer demand for 3D causes cheap 3D graphics!

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Game Genres

• Name some!

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Genres

• Action
• 1st Person Shooter
• Adventure
• Fighting
• Puzzle
• Racing
• Role-Playing

• Simulations
• Sports
• Strategy
• Music
• Dance
• Artificial Life
• Quiz Show

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2D Action Games

• Shoot the horde of aliens
• Shoot the horde of aliens
• Shoot the horde of aliens
• Shoot the horde of aliens
• Shoot the horde of aliens
• Space Invaders, Galaga, Defender/Stargate,
• Mario Bros

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1st Person Shooter

• 3D Shoot the horde of aliens
• 3D Shoot the horde of aliens
• 3D Shoot the horde of aliens
• 3D Shoot the horde of aliens
• 3D Shoot the horde of aliens
• Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Max Payne

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Adventure

• Follow the trail
• Solve puzzles
• Nice scenery
• Inventory
• Learning
• Examples Zelda, Metroid, Myst, Shenmue

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Fighting

• Pluses
• KILL!!!
• Short games
• Stress reliever, flow experience
• Social hierarchy determiner
• Minuses
• Arcane knowledge
• Limited virtual space
• Follow-on real violence ?(vs. social hierarchy)
• Clone factor

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Puzzle

• Solving the puzzle is the primary goal
• Gives feelings of mastery

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Racing

• First past the post
• Fairly strong simulation element
• Fine motor control

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Role-Playing

• 3rd person adventure
• Strong story component (potentially)
• Learn the virtual world/environment
• Players are free to act within the worlds
  constraints

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Simulations

• Flight Sim
• SimAnt, SimCity, Railroad Tycoon, Roller Coaster
  Tycoon, ...
• Focus on details
• Training could be the goal

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Sports

• Armchair coach
• Abstract war
• Abstract team fighting games

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Strategy

• Same components as Sim games
• Historical simulation
• Puzzles may play a part
• A light story element
• No twitch in turn-based strategy

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Music

• Name that Tune
• Repeat a piece of music that the game plays for
  you
• Play along musically

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Dance

• Dance Dance Revolution
• Dance kiosk type games (popular in Korea!)

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Artificial Life

• Tamagotchi, Creatures, Black White

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Quiz Show

• You Dont Know Jack, Win Ben Steins Money, etc

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Others??
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Game Ideas Discuss!

• What ideas to people have??

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What is the One Cool Thing?
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Tools
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Game Extension?