nintendo

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Super Mario Bros.[b] is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo. The successor to the 1983 arcade game, Mario Bros., it was released in Japan in 1985 for the Famicom, and in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 and 1987 respectively. Players control Mario, or his brother Luigi in the multiplayer mode, as they travel the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser. They must traverse side-scrolling stages while avoiding hazards such as enemies and pits with the aid of power-ups such as the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, and Starman.

The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka as "a grand culmination" of the Famicom team's three years of game mechanics and programming. The design of the first level, World 1-1, serves as a tutorial for first-time video gamers on the basic mechanics of platform gameplay. The aggressively size-optimized profile was intended as a farewell to the Famicom's cartridge medium in favor of the forthcoming Famicom Disk System, whose floppy disks temporarily became the dominant distribution medium for a few years.

Super Mario Bros. is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise on its precise controls. It is one of the bestselling games of all time, with more than 40 million physical copies. It is credited alongside the NES as one of the key factors in reviving the video game industry after the 1983 crash, and helped popularize the side-scrolling platform game genre. Koji Kondo's soundtrack is one of the earliest and most popular in video games, making music into a centerpiece of game design. The game inspired an expansive franchise including a long-running game series, an animated television series, and a feature film. Re-releases and cameos of the game are on most of Nintendo's following systems. Alongside Mario himself, Super Mario Bros. has become prominent in popular culture.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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By Alvaro Seica, 19 February, 2014
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Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are now starting to dig down to the level of code to learn more about how computers are used in culture, but there have been few attempts to go deeper, to the metal — to look at the base hardware and software systems that are the foundation of computational expression.

Platform Studies investigates the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems.

By choosing a platform, new media creators simplify development and delivery in many ways. Their work is supported and constrained by what this platform can do. Sometimes the influence is obvious: A monochrome platform can't display color, a video game console without a keyboard can't accept typed input. But there are more subtle ways that platforms interact with creative production, due to the idioms of programming that a language supports or due to transistor-level decisions made in video and audio hardware. In addition to allowing certain developments and precluding others, platforms also encourage and discourage different sorts of expressive new media work. In drawing raster graphics, the difference between setting up one scan line at a time, having video RAM with support for tiles and sprites, or having a native 3D model can end up being much more important than resolution or color depth.

Particular platform studies may emphasize different technical or cultural aspects and draw on different critical and theoretical approaches, but they will be united in being technically rigorous and in deeply investigating computing systems in their interactions with creativity, expression, and culture. While being addressed to readers without a computer science background, the Platform Studies books will drive deep into the workings of computers, opening an exciting new level for scholars, students, and general readers.

(Source: http://platformstudies.com/)