video game

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)

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис [ˈtɛtrʲɪs]; portmanteau of "tetromino" and "tennis") is a tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Soviet Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov.[1] The first playable version was completed on June 6, 1984,[2] while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union in Moscow.[3] He derived its name from combining the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (the falling pieces contain 4 segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.[4][5] The name is also used in-game to refer to the play where four lines are cleared at once.

Tetris was the first game to be exported from the Soviet Union to the United States, where it was published by Spectrum HoloByte for the Commodore 64 and IBM PC. The game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four-element case of polyominoes, which have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907. (The name for these figures was given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1953.)

The game, or one of its many variants, is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, Network music players, and as an Easter egg on non-media products like oscilloscopes.[6] It has inspired Tetris serving dishes,[7] and it has even been played on the sides of various buildings.[8]

While versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms as well as arcades, it was the successful handheld version for the Game Boy, launched in 1989, that established the game to critics and fans as one of the greatest video games of all time. In January 2010, it was announced that the games in the franchise had sold over 170 million copies—approximately 70 million physical and 100 million paid mobile downloads—making it the second best selling paid-downloaded game of all time behind Minecraft.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Pac-Man[a] is a maze arcade game developed and released by Namco in 1980. The original Japanese title of Puck Man was changed to Pac-Man for international releases as a preventative measure against defacement of the arcade machines.[7] Outside Japan, the game was published by Midway Games as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called power pellets causes the ghosts to turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. It is the first game to run on the Namco Pac-Man arcade board.

The development of the game began in April 1979, directed by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, as most video games at the time were war- or sports-themed. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was, reportedly, the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he also rounded out the Japanese symbol "kuchi", meaning "mouth". The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful to appeal to younger players. The original Japanese title of Puckman was derived from the titular character's hockey-puck shape.

Pac-Man is a widespread critical and commercial success. The game is important and influential, and it is commonly listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. The success of the game led to several sequels, merchandise, and two television series, as well as a hit single by Buckner and Garcia. The Pac-Man video game franchise remains one of the highest-grossing and best-selling game series of all time, generating more than $14 billion in revenue (as of 2016) and $43 million in sales combined. The character of Pac-Man is the mascot and flagship icon of Bandai Namco Entertainment and has the highest brand awareness of any video game character in North America.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Quake is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive in 1996. It is the first game in the Quake series.[5] In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling a variety of monsters using an array of weaponry.

The successor to id Software's Doom series, Quake built upon the technology and gameplay of its predecessor.[6] Unlike the Doom engine before it, the Quake engine offered full real-time 3D rendering and had early support for 3D acceleration through OpenGL. After Doom helped to popularize multiplayer deathmatches in 1993, Quake added various multiplayer options. Online multiplayer became increasingly common, with the QuakeWorld update and software such as QuakeSpy making the process of finding and playing against others on the Internet easier and more reliable.

Quake features music composed by Trent Reznor and his band, Nine Inch Nails.[1] The overall atmosphere is dark and gritty, with lots of stone textures and a rustic, capitalized font.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Breath of Fire II[a] is a role-playing video game developed and published by Capcom. First released in 1994, the game was licensed to Laguna for European release in 1996. It is the second entry in the Breath of Fire series. It was later ported to Game Boy Advance and re-released worldwide. The game was released on Wii's Virtual Console in North America on August 27, 2007. Nintendo of Europe's website mistakenly announced it for release on July 27, 2007, but it was in fact released two weeks later, on August 10, 2007.

Unlike later installments in the series, Breath of Fire II is a direct sequel to Breath of Fire. Set 500 years after the original game,[3] the story centers on an orphan named Ryu Bateson, whose family vanished mysteriously long ago. After his friend is falsely accused of a crime, Ryu embarks on a journey to clear his name.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Terranigma, known as Tenchi Sōzō (天地創造, lit. "The Creation of Heaven and Earth")[1] in Japan, is a 1995 action role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System developed by Quintet. Manga artist Kamui Fujiwara is credited with the character designs. Terranigma tells the story of the Earth's resurrection by the hands of a boy named Ark, and its progress from the evolution of life to the present day.

It was published by Enix in Japan before Nintendo localized the game and released English, German, French and Spanish versions in Europe and Australia. The game has never been officially released in North America.

(source: Wikipedia)