The Legend Of Zelda And Its Effect On The Game Industry

Although the hardware from the 1970s is incredibly inferior to what we have today, the consoles we use today are still put together in a similar fashion. When the Atari 2600 was released, it had no hard drive to save programs to, barely any RAM, and the game cartridges only had about two to four kilobytes of memory (McCall para. 4). To put that in perspective, a trillion kilobytes is equal to exactly one gigabyte. That is virtually nothing. Back in the ‘70s, the graphics were not good because thats all the computing power that was available back then. Simple games with pixellated graphics took up all the space in the hardware. Gaming controllers had to be simple because the games lacked the

Tom Bissell, in his essay, “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter” has described video games and how they are unique and different from movies, books, or even interactive films. Bissell says “I came to accept that games were incompetent with almost every aspect of what I would call traditional narrative.” This is showing the readers that even though there is a plot and story line, as characters can control and alter the story line or outcome by what you do or see throughout the game.

“It seems the time has come for the boy without a fairy to begin his journey… The youth whose destiny it is to lead Hyrule to the path of justice and truth.” proclaims The Great Deku Tree to his humble servant Navi. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, is the fifth instalment of the series created by Nintendo. Ocarina of Time was the best game selling game in 1998 and has sold over 7.8 million copies over its lifetime. The game revolves around a child named, Link, and his new fairy, Navi. Together they will embark on a quest to save the land of Hyrule from falling into an eternal darkness. His first task in the game is to visit The Great Deku tree, to hear his destiny.

Video games are an ever-growing franchise that is constantly undergoing change. Ever since the dawn of video games, new consoles, games, developers, and teams have come together, fallen apart, triumphed, and failed. What is it that has allowed some to thrive where others failed? Several different factors have changed and influenced the world of gaming, including the history that is continuously being written, the people who have built the games behind the scenes, and, of course, the actual video games themselves. Numerous video games have been more successful than others, but identifying what components set the successful apart from the unsuccessful is something definitely worth observing.

When video games were first being introduced to the general public, they weren’t all that exciting. Most gaming took place in arcades and most arcades didn’t have many game cabinets due to their being very few games to begin with. However, all of this changed when the Atari 2600 was released. At the time, Atari was known for their home computers and their hit arcade game “Pong”. Though the Atari 2600 might not have been the first video game system, it was definitely the most successful at that time and a great success for Atari’s first attempt at a home video game console. Thanks to the success of the 2600, video games began to take off and arcades started popping up all over the world with hits like “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong”. These would be the

Video games are a big part of life in modernized countries. It is one of the biggest entertainment money makers and of the things people enjoy doing. They are now mostly played inside the comfort of your home, with a console or computer. But things weren 't always like this. About 40 years ago you would most likely go to the arcade to play. The consoles they had out were either expensive or not good enough to compete with the arcade ones. Classic video games were made with 4-bit pixels and in very low resolution than modern day games. Over the decades, game machines continuously evolved and become more and more powerful, capable of stunning visuals and graphics. In the 21st century, social media, smart phone and tablet technology entered the gaming scene. Casual games become the norm attracting previously non-gamers into the market. However, if those low-quality games were never made, the games would not have evolved into the games they are today. In this article, I will cover main game a platform from the 1970’s to present day explaining what they are, their key development dates, features and limitations.

They can be a vicarious trip through an imaginative landscape, a daring campaign with a digital army, or a short waltz through a puzzling world. Enjoying this should not be seen as shameful or odd, but rather as a supplement to people’s lives, a short vacation from they’re often harsh and boring world. But most of all, McGonigal has opened the door for alternate reality gaming and given humanity a potential medium that will improve daily human interaction with

So, I’m going to change things a bit. Instead of just talking about dates and numbers, which can be boring; I’m going to give this a little casual twist. So, in order to start the history let’s get a few facts out of the way. Let’s talk about gamers, mainly because I’ll be using the term a lot; gamers are people who spent a lot of time playing videogames. The Average gamer playing video games has spent twelve years playing them. Adult gamers have an average of fourteen years of playing videogames, guys have an average of sixteen years, and girls have an average twelve years. Speaking of girls did you know that 47% of gamers are girls? I would have never guessed that, but it’s a fact. So, as of 2013 49% of all people who live in The United States owns a console. All of them that own a console have at least two of them. Me, I own eleven… I think I may have a problem. Anyway, now that some of the facts are out of the way let’s start, THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES! Now before I start I want to talk about all the most important events in the history of videogames, as I call them eras. Each era is very important because they shaped the videogames we know and love today.

The author initiates this argument by stating how some factors in many video games are erroneous; this includes lasers, which should be invisible, and the inaccurate speed measurements in racing games. Poole refutes this viewpoint by saying that changing a game to make it realistic would remove the fun experienced by gamers; some aspects of a video game are made unreal on purpose. These imaginary factors serve to create a fantasy world which is to be enjoyed by the player. Also included are the game developers’ intentional use of deformed characters, with smaller bodies and larger heads. For example, Poole explains how intentionally deformed characters such as Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog have engaged players successfully, while more realistic characters such as those of Final Fantasy VIII have received much criticism. The author believes that the reason for a player’s more successful engagement with deformed characters lies in the fact that cuter, unreal characters help the player to escape into the unreal world, while realistic characters fail to do so. Overall, unreal factors help to carry out the main purpose of a video game by engaging the player with the world, which in turn will cause the player to be engaged with the game

Nintendo eschewed this philosophy most dramatically with the Wii, catering directly and unabashedly to the casual subset of gamers. As only one example, complex gamepads with a dozen buttons and knobs were replaced with a controller more akin to a remote control, a device with which any American would be familiar.

Nintendo is taking the world by storm with their new Nintendo Switch. Many gamers enjoy the Switch because of its mobility and motion controls. The remotes are different from any Nintendo console but it does have some similarity to the Nintendo Wii controller. Most games for the Switch have multiplayer compatibilities but some are solo games. The Legend of Zelda is one of the most popular game series from Nintendo, lucky for us they released a new game in the series for the Switch called The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It is an open world game where you go around solving puzzles, battling enemies, and solving the mystery of what happed to

It was said to suck the life out of the Earth. Henk Rogers was a foreigner who tried to enter the gaming industry in Japan. He created a computer version of the famous role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons. In Japan, there is a game called go, which is supposed to be similar to chess but with endless strategies and more thought. Rogers wanted to get a license from Nintendo to make a computer version of the game compatible with the Famicom system. Yamauchi agreed. To become a licensee of Nintendo and produce games compatible with the Famicom, each company had to agree with outrageous terms such as giving Nintendo a large proportion of their sales. Namco was the first licensee and Pac-Man became available on the Famicom. Yamauchi wanted to link the Famicom’s together so people could play with each other from their own homes. It was not as successful as he had hoped it would be, but he believed that someday people would be ready for the development (David Sheff,

Creativity and a vast imagination allows many adventures to go on inside the mind. Audrey Taylor, a 13-year-old, loves to go on exhilarating “journeys” with the characters Mario and Luigi. Influenced by video games, her ability to pull off convincing imitations of many characters has improved greatly as she had started playing at the age of 7. “Their lives were interesting,” she stated. “I just wanted to be a part of that and experience it in my own way.” Although this skill may not seem to contribute much to other subjects, her imagination and creativity could greatly assist her in career of gaming and as an aspiring author. She is already on her way to achieving this as she spends her free time writing unique and artistic pieces.

Many video games use visuals to mentally immerse gamers into a virtual world filled with seemingly living, breathing people, animals, or cities. According to Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, game designers for Tale of Tales, video games increasingly develop into a true medium of artistic expression (Lamb). In just forty years, video games transformed from an abuse of the new computer for entertainment purposes into a sophisticated form of popular art. The development of video games recently produced results that arguably equal other similar, representational arts. Video games share many qualities with other forms of art, but they are also artistically significant in their own way. “This seems to be something

Herman et all (2002) points out that history of video games begins from 1971 year, when Nutting association released 1500 machines with Spacewar video game. At the beginning it was too difficult to control the game process and playing machines had huge dimensions. But by the time with new technologies they become more compact and easier to play. According to the information given by Herman et all (2002), the period between the years of 1978-1981 is called ‘golden age’ of video game industry. In this period the arcade games ‘Football’ and ‘Space Invaders’ were released. All previously known sale records were broken by these two games with nearly equal wages. In this time interval great breakthroughs in the field of graphics were achieved,