Portal:Video games
Portal maintenance status: (April 2019)
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The Video Games Portal
A video game, also known as a computer game or just a game, is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual feedback from a display device, most commonly shown in a video format on a television set, computer monitor, flat-panel display or touchscreen on handheld devices, or a virtual reality headset. Most modern video games are audiovisual, with audio complement delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes also with other types of sensory feedback (e.g., haptic technology that provides tactile sensations). Some video games also allow microphone and webcam inputs for in-game chatting and livestreaming.
Video games are typically categorized according to their hardware platform, which traditionally includes arcade video games, console games, and computer (PC) games; the latter also encompasses LAN games, online games, and browser games. More recently, the video game industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet computers), virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote cloud gaming. Video games are also classified into a wide range of genres based on their style of gameplay and target audience. (Full article...)
Featured articles – load new batch
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Image 1Teardown is a 2022 sandbox–puzzle video game developed and published by Tuxedo Labs. The game revolves around the owner of a financially stricken demolition company, who is caught undertaking a questionable job and becomes entangled between helping police investigations and taking on further dubious assignments. Teardown features levels made of destructible voxels, and the player follows the campaign through consecutive missions. In most missions, the player must collect or destroy objects connected to a security alarm that triggers a timer. The player has unlimited time to prepare and is given upgradable tools, vehicles, and explosives to create a path within the level that allows them to complete the objectives and reach a getaway vehicle before the timer runs out.
Teardown uses a proprietary game engine developed by Dennis Gustafsson, who began developing the technology after winding down his previous company, Mediocre, in 2017. He initially implemented destructible voxels with ray tracing and, after several discarded designs, conceived the two-phase heist concept. While working closely with the former Mediocre designer Emil Bengtsson, Gustafsson regularly shared development updates via Twitter and the resulting popularity led him to not pursue traditional marketing for Teardown. The game was announced in October 2019 and an early version was available through early access from October 2020, with the full game's release in April 2022.
Teardown saw positive reactions leading up to and during its early access phase, and it received favourable reviews upon release. Critics praised the game's physics, interactivity, graphics implementation, art style, and music. Mixed opinions were voiced regarding the campaign progression and story, while some control elements were criticised. The game's support for mods was cited as a major factor for its potential longevity. Teardown had sold 1.1 million copies by August 2022, and the game's success led to Tuxedo Labs being acquired by Saber Interactive under Embracer Group. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S ports, published by Saber Interactive, were released in November 2023, upping the player count to 2.5 million. (Full article...) -
Image 2Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is an arcade-style flight action game co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts. The first of three games in the Rogue Squadron series, it was published by LucasArts and Nintendo and released for Microsoft Windows and Nintendo 64 in December 1998. The game's story was influenced by the Star Wars: X-wing – Rogue Squadron comics and is set in the fictional Star Wars galaxy, taking place primarily between events in the films Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. The player controls Luke Skywalker, commander of the elite X-wing pilots known as Rogue Squadron. As the game progresses, Skywalker and Rogue Squadron fight the Galactic Empire in 16 missions across various planets.
Gameplay is presented from the third-person perspective and game objectives are divided into four categories: search and destroy, reconnaissance, rescue, and protect. The player can control five craft and each offers a unique armament arrangement, as well as varying degrees of speed and maneuverability. Bonus power-ups that improve these crafts' weapons or durability are hidden in different levels throughout the game. The player's performance is checked against three medal benchmarks after the completion of each level. Acquiring these medals promotes the player's rank and helps unlock hidden content.
Rogue Squadron's focus on flight combat was directly inspired by a level in Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire that allowed the player to pilot a snowspeeder. Working together during development, Factor 5 designed the game engine, the music, and worked closely with Nintendo, while LucasArts produced the game's story and gameplay and ensured it was faithful to Star Wars canon. Before the game's release, Factor 5 successfully appealed to Nintendo to release the Nintendo 64's newly developed memory Expansion Pak commercially. Consequently, Rogue Squadron was one of the first games to take advantage of the Expansion Pak, which allows gameplay at a higher display resolution. (Full article...) -
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Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese developers Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara for Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main Sonic the Hedgehog games are platformers mostly developed by Sonic Team; other games, developed by various studios, include spin-offs in the racing, fighting, party and sports genres. The franchise also incorporates printed media, animations, feature films, and merchandise.
Naka, Ohshima, and Yasuhara developed the first Sonic game, released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis, to provide Sega with a mascot to compete with Nintendo's Mario. Its success helped Sega become one of the leading video game companies during the fourth generation of video game consoles in the early 1990s. Sega Technical Institute developed the next three Sonic games, plus the spin-off Sonic Spinball (1993). A number of Sonic games were also developed for Sega's 8-bit consoles, the Master System and Game Gear. After a hiatus during the unsuccessful Saturn era, the first major 3D Sonic game, Sonic Adventure, was released in 1998 for the Dreamcast. Sega exited the console market and shifted to third-party development in 2001, continuing the series on Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation systems. Takashi Iizuka has been the series' producer since 2010.
While Sonic games often have unique game mechanics and stories, they feature recurring elements such as the ring-based health system, level locales, and fast-paced gameplay. Games typically feature Sonic setting out to stop Eggman's schemes for world domination, and the player navigates levels that include springs, slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops. Later games added a large cast of characters; some, such as Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and Shadow the Hedgehog, have starred in spin-offs. The franchise has crossed over with other video game franchises in games such as Mario & Sonic, Sega All-Stars, and Super Smash Bros. Outside of video games, Sonic includes comic books published by Archie Comics, Fleetway Publications, and IDW Publishing; animated series such as The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993), Sonic X (2003–2006), and Sonic Prime (2022–2024); a live-action film series distributed by Paramount Pictures; and toys including Lego construction sets. (Full article...) -
Image 4Final Fantasy X-2 is a 2003 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation 2. Unlike most Final Fantasy games, which use self-contained stories and characters, X-2 continues the story of Final Fantasy X (2001). The story follows Yuna as she searches for Tidus, the main character of the previous game, while trying to prevent political conflicts in Spira from escalating to war.
Final Fantasy X-2 was the first game in the series to feature just three player characters and an all-female main cast. The battle system incorporates Final Fantasy character classes—one of the series' signature gameplay concepts—and is one of the few entries to have multiple possible endings. The soundtrack was created by Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi in lieu of long-time Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu.
The game was positively received by critics and was commercially successful, selling over 5.4 million copies on PlayStation 2 and winning a number of awards. It was the last Final Fantasy game to be released by Square before it merged with Enix in April 2003. The game was re-released in high-definition for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2013, alongside Final Fantasy X, as Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster; this version was later released for the PlayStation 4 in 2015, Windows in 2016, and the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One in 2019. As of September 2021, the Final Fantasy X series had sold over 20.8 million units worldwide, and at the end of March 2022 had surpassed 21.1 million units sold around the world. (Full article...) -
Image 5F-Zero GX is a 2003 racing video game developed by Amusement Vision and published by Nintendo for the GameCube console. It runs on an enhanced version of the engine used in Super Monkey Ball. F-Zero AX, the arcade counterpart of GX, uses the Triforce arcade system board conceived from a business alliance between Nintendo, Namco and Sega. Published by Sega, it was released alongside GX in 2003.
F-Zero GX is the successor to F-Zero X and continues the series' difficult, high-speed racing style, retaining the basic gameplay and control system from the Nintendo 64 game. A heavy emphasis is placed on track memorization and reflexes. GX introduces a "story mode" element, where the player assumes the role of F-Zero pilot Captain Falcon through nine chapters while completing various missions.
The GX and AX project was the first significant video game collaboration between Nintendo and Sega. GX was well received by critics for its visuals, intense action, high sense of speed, and track design while its high difficulty has been criticized. In the years since its release it has been considered one of the GameCube's best titles, as well as one of the greatest video games ever made. (Full article...) -
Image 6OneShot is a puzzle-adventure game developed by the indie studio Future Cat and published by Degica. Based on a free version made in 2014, it was released for Windows on December 8, 2016. A reworked console adaptation, OneShot: World Machine Edition, was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on September 22, 2022, and for PC alongside the original version in September 2024.
OneShot's gameplay and plot break the fourth wall and involve metafictional elements. Many puzzles involve interacting with the computer's operating system outside the game. Narratively, the player is separate from the protagonist, Niko. The latter arrives in a world without sunlight and aims to restore it by replacing its sun, a lightbulb, at the top of a tower.
OneShot was developed in RPG Maker XP. The game received positive reviews from critics, who praised the story, art, and metafictional aspects of gameplay, including the relationship between the player and Niko. In 2017, the game was nominated for the "PC Game of the Year" category at the Golden Joystick Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 7Killer7 is a 2005 action-adventure game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and Capcom and published by Capcom for the GameCube and PlayStation 2. The game was written and directed by Goichi Suda and produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi.
The game follows an elite group of assassins called the "killer7". The assassins, physical manifestations of a man named Harman Smith, perform hits on behalf of the United States government. Through these missions, the killer7 uncover a deeper conspiracy regarding the role of Japan in U.S. politics and secrets about the nature of their organization. Killer7 features first-person shooter elements and a unique on rails control scheme, but the core adventure-style gameplay has been compared to Myst and Snatcher.
Killer7 was Suda's first game released outside Japan. It initially received mixed reviews due to its unconventional control scheme, linear gameplay, and complex noir plot. While some reviewers appreciated the stripped-down controls and stylized arthouse approach, others criticised it as confusing and restricting. However, the game's soundtrack, presentation, visual style and thought-provoking story received generally positive responses from critics, were considered as the best aspects of the game and led to several accolades and nominations. Retrospectively, Killer7 has a cult following, which led to re-releases of Suda's older works and the successful launch of No More Heroes. A Windows port of the game licensed by Capcom was released by NIS America in 2018. (Full article...) -
Image 8Children of Mana is a 2006 action role-playing game for the Nintendo DS handheld console. It was developed by Square Enix and Nex Entertainment, and published by Square Enix and Nintendo. It is the sixth game of the Mana series—following 2003's Sword of Mana—and the first entry in the World of Mana subseries. Set in a high fantasy universe, Children of Mana follows one of four young heroes as they combat an invasion of monsters and learn about the cataclysmic event that killed their families.
While it reprises the action role-playing elements of previous Mana games, such as real-time battle sequences, Children of Mana features an increased focus on user-friendliness. Unlike earlier Mana titles, Children is a heavily action-oriented dungeon crawler, in which the player progresses by completing randomly generated levels. Both the main plot and side-quests require the player to fight through dungeons and defeat boss monsters before returning to the central Mana Village. Like many of its predecessors, the game features a local cooperative multiplayer component.
Children of Mana was designed by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by Yoshiki Ito, and produced by Takashi Orikata and Katsuji Aoyama. The game was a moderate commercial success: it sold 100,000 copies in its first week of release, and more than 280,000 in Japan by the end of 2006. While critics praised the graphics and music as beautiful and unique, they found the combat simplistic and repetitive, and the story insubstantial. (Full article...) -
Image 9Thief II: The Metal Age is a 2000 stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Like its predecessor Thief: The Dark Project, the game follows Garrett, a master thief who works in and around a steampunk metropolis called the City. The player assumes the role of Garrett as he unravels a conspiracy related to a new religious sect. Garrett takes on missions such as burglaries and frameups, while trying to avoid detection by guards and automated security.
Thief II was designed to build on the foundation of its predecessor. In response to feedback from players of Thief, the team placed a heavy focus on urban stealth in the sequel, and they minimized the use of monsters and maze-like levels. The game was made with the third iteration of the Dark Engine, which had been used previously to develop Thief and System Shock 2. Thief II was announced at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as part of an extended contract between Looking Glass and Eidos to release games in the Thief series. Looking Glass neared bankruptcy as the game was developed, and the company was kept running by advances from Eidos.
Thief II received positive reviews from critics, and its initial sales were stronger than those of its predecessor. However, the game's royalties were processed slowly, which compounded Looking Glass's financial troubles. As a result, the company closed in May 2000, with plans for Thief III cancelled. The third game in the series, entitled Thief: Deadly Shadows, was developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos in 2004. Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, a widely praised expansion mod for Thief II, was released in 2005. In 2014, Square Enix published a reboot of the series, developed by Eidos Montréal. (Full article...) -
Image 10Planescape: Torment is a 1999 role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment for Windows. The game takes place in locations from the multiverse of Planescape, a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy campaign setting. The game's engine is a modified version of the Infinity Engine, which was used for BioWare's Baldur's Gate, a previous D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms.
Planescape: Torment is primarily story-driven, with combat taking a secondary role. The protagonist, known as The Nameless One, is an immortal man who forgets everything if killed. The game focuses on his journey through the city of Sigil and other planes to reclaim his memories of previous lives, and to discover why he was made immortal in the first place. Several characters in the game may join The Nameless One on his journey; most of these characters have encountered him in the past or have been influenced by his actions in some way.
The game was not a commercial success, but it received critical acclaim and has since become a cult classic, claimed by video game journalists to be the best role-playing video game of 1999. It was lauded for its immersive dialogue, for the dark and relatively obscure Planescape setting, and for the protagonist's unique persona, which shirked many characteristics of traditional role-playing games. It is commonly cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. An enhanced version for modern platforms was made by Beamdog and released for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS in April 2017 and for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in October 2019. (Full article...)
Did you know... - show different entries
- ... that the 1999 video game Interplay Sports Baseball Edition 2000 used a public-address announcer while its rivals were switching to two commentators as featured on real MLB game broadcasts?
- ... that the 1979 video game Superman was one of the first console games with a pause feature?
- ... that Goodboy Galaxy was the first commercially released video game for the Game Boy Advance in more than 13 years?
- ... that before Sarah Elmaleh voiced the player character in the video game Anthem, developed by BioWare, she voiced characters in a mod of an earlier BioWare game?
- ... that for at least 90 minutes, Mori Calliope livestreamed herself begging video game developer Atlus to allow her to stream their game Persona 3?
- ... that the 2005 video game Bokura no Kazoku was inspired in part by the birth of its creator's first child?
- ... that Splatoon 3 became the fastest-selling video game of all time in Japan three days after launch?
- ... that when Kaz Ayabe pitched his video game Boku no Natsuyasumi to Sony, he said that illustrator Mineko Ueda was interested in the project even though they had never actually met?
- ... that Terra Invicta's development company is a group of former volunteer video game modders that decided to release their own game after the success of their mod?
- ... that a cheat code for the 2003 video game Hulk is hidden in a scene of the film it is based on?
- ... that the 2014 text adventure The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo is inspired by a source cited by children for spreading video game rumors?
- ... that a version of the video game Rhino Rumble was not released due to the creators not wanting to add licensed characters?
Selected biography – load new batch
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John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D computer graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes.
In 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their CTO. In 2019, he reduced his role to Consulting CTO so he could allocate more time toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). In 2022, he left Oculus to work on his AGI startup, Keen Technologies. (Full article...) -
Image 2Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a former Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
Naka joined Sega in 1984 and worked on games including Girl's Garden (1985) and Phantasy Star II (1989). He was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Mega Drive in the early 1990s, which greatly increased Sega's market share. Naka developed Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) and Sonic & Knuckles (1994) in California with Sega Technical Institute. (Full article...) -
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Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. A major figure in the development of cinematic video games and a pioneer in video game animation, he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award. His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles. (Full article...) -
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Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
He is credited with Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games that are "easy to learn and difficult to master" being rewarding. (Full article...) -
Image 5Yu Suzuki (鈴木 裕, Suzuki Yū, born June 10, 1958) is a Japanese game designer, producer, programmer, and engineer, who headed Sega's AM2 team for 18 years. Considered one of the first auteurs of video games, he has been responsible for a number of Sega's arcade hits, including three-dimensional sprite-scaling games that used "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinets, such as Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner, and pioneering polygonal 3D games such as Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which are some of the games besides others from rival companies during that era credited with popularizing 3D graphics in video games; as well as the critically acclaimed Shenmue series. As a hardware engineer, he led the development of various arcade system boards, including the Sega Space Harrier, Model 1, Model 2 and Model 3, and was involved in the technical development of the Dreamcast console and its corresponding NAOMI arcade hardware.
In 2003, Suzuki became the sixth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. IGN listed him at #9 in their Top 100 Game Creators of All Time list. In 2011, he received the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. (Full article...) -
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Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born April 16, 1955) is a Soviet (now Russian) computer engineer and video game designer who lives in the United States. He is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of Sciences). After Tetris was released internationally in 1987, he released a sequel in 1989, entitled Welltris.
In 1991, he moved to the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. In 1996, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Despite the game's high popularity, Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, with the Soviet government being the only Russians who had made money from it. (Full article...) -
Image 7Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥, Yamauchi Hiroshi, 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company on 25 April 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan into a multibillion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo's first president and founder. Hiroshi Yamauchi owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team from 1992 until his death.
In April 2013, Forbes estimated Yamauchi's net worth at $2.1 billion; he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. In 2008, Yamauchi was Japan's wealthiest person with a fortune at that time estimated at $7.8 billion. At the time of his death, Yamauchi was the largest shareholder at Nintendo. (Full article...) -
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James D. Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series Angry Video Game Nerd (2004–present). His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of Internet gaming videos, and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after the series premiered on the site in 2006.
Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s, having created more than 270 videos and short films by 2004. Among these were the first Angry Video Game Nerd (originally known as Bad NES Games, and later Angry Nintendo Nerd) episodes, which were subsequently released on his Cinemassacre website that same year. Two years later, he gained mainstream attention after the series went viral upon being published to YouTube. Following its success, Rolfe released a feature-length film based on the series in 2014, which was met with generally mixed reception. (Full article...) -
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Raphael "Raph" Koster (born September 7, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies. From 2006 until 2013 he worked as the founder and president of Metaplace (previously operating as Areae and acquired by social gaming company Playdom in 2010, which was in turn acquired by Disney) producing a Facebook game platform. (Full article...) -
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John Bruce Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is an American activist and disbarred attorney. As an attorney, Thompson focused his legal efforts against what he perceives as obscenity in modern culture. Thompson gained recognition as an anti-video game activist, criticizing the content of video games and their alleged effects on children. He also targeted rap music and radio personality Howard Stern.
Thompson's legal career was further recognized for his actions against the Florida Bar, including challenging its constitutionality in 1993. In 2008, he was permanently disbarred by the Supreme Court of Florida for inappropriate conduct, including making false statements to tribunals and disparaging and humiliating litigants. (Full article...) -
Image 11Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer. He is regarded as one of the first auteurs of video games. He developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence, which in turn has had a significant influence on his games. In 1986 he joined Konami, for which he directed, designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, the game that laid the foundations for the stealth genre and the Metal Gear franchise, his best known and most acclaimed work. At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Following his departure from Konami in 2015, he refounded Kojima Productions as an independent studio; his first game outside Konami, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. (Full article...) -
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Richard Allen Garriott (born 4 July 1961) is a British-born American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut.
Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second space traveler, and first from the United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear. (Full article...) -
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Charles Andre Martinet (born September 17, 1955) is an American actor. Martinet created the voices of both Mario and Luigi in the Super Mario video game series, portraying them from 1992 to 2023. He also voiced other characters in the series such as Wario, Waluigi, and the baby equivalents of Mario and Luigi, prior to stepping down as voice actor to become an official brand ambassador for the series.
Martinet is also known for his portrayal of Paarthurnax in 2011's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as well as Magenta in 2022's Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. (Full article...) -
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Steven Scott Ritchie (born February 13, 1950) is an American pinball and video game designer. His career began in the 1970s. Ritchie holds the record for best-selling pinball designer in history. He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots. Ritchie was also the original voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, serving as the announcer of Mortal Kombat II (1993), Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), and the updates to Mortal Kombat 3. He is the older brother of fellow pinball designer Mark Ritchie. (Full article...) -
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Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), also known as "Notch", is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of the video game Minecraft, which since its release has become the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.
Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. His commercial success began after publishing an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point, Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014, Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. Persson left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft for a reported US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. (Full article...) -
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Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president and co-founder of the video game company Valve Corporation.
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...) -
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Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter. Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he conceived the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966. With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game. Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. (Full article...) -
Image 18Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero. (Full article...) -
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Jeremy Soule (/soʊl/ SOHL; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
He became an employee of Square in 1994 after several years of private composition studies. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, later called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that published digital versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. DirectSong remained active until 2019. (Full article...) -
Image 20Satoshi Tajiri (Japanese: 田尻 智, Hepburn: Tajiri Satoshi, born August 28, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer and director who is the creator of the Pokémon franchise and the co-founder and president of video game developer Game Freak.
A fan of arcade games in his youth, Tajiri wrote for and edited his own video gaming fanzine Game Freak with Ken Sugimori, before evolving it into a development company of the same name. Tajiri claims that the joining of two Game Boys via a link cable inspired him to create a game which embodied the collection and companionship of his childhood hobby, insect collecting. The game, which became Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, took six years to complete and went on to spark a multibillion-dollar franchise which reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld gaming scene. Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to executive producer, which he holds to this day. (Full article...) -
Image 21Jun Maeda (麻枝 准, Maeda Jun, born January 3, 1975) is a Japanese writer and composer. He is a co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces.
After graduating with a degree in psychology from Chukyo University, Maeda contributed to the scripts and scores of games released under the Tactics brand of Nexton: Moon and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. He has contributed both to writing music and scripts to most games released under the Key brand, notably writing the majority of Air and Clannad. He also served as a screenwriter and composer for several anime series produced by P.A. Works, such as Angel Beats! and Charlotte. (Full article...) -
Image 22
Anita Sarkeesian (/sɑːrˈkiːziən/ sar-KEE-zee-ən; born 1983) is a Canadian-American feminist media critic. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. Her video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, examines tropes in the depiction of female video game characters.
Media scholar Soraya Murray calls Sarkeesian emblematic of "a burgeoning organized feminist critique" of stereotyped and objectified portrayals of women in video games.
In 2012, Sarkeesian was targeted by an online harassment campaign following her launch of a Kickstarter project to fund the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series. The threats and harassment generated widespread media attention, and resulted in the project far exceeding its funding goal. The media coverage placed Sarkeesian at the center of discussions about misogyny in video game culture and online harassment. She has spoken to TEDxWomen, XOXO Festival, and the United Nations' Broadband Working Group on Gender, and appeared on The Colbert Report discussing her experiences of harassment and the challenge of attempting to improve gender inclusivity in gaming culture and the media. (Full article...) -
Image 23
Michael Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is an American video game developer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located in Irvine, California. Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the former president of Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc., that was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee from January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, until July 2008. (Full article...) -
Image 24Shinji Mikami (三上 真司, Mikami Shinji, born August 11, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he has worked on many of the company's most successful games. He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both survival horror games. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat 'em up action game. Mikami founded PlatinumGames and directed the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. The same year, he founded his own studio Tango Gameworks which has since been acquired by the American company ZeniMax Media. Under his studio, he directed the third-person horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games.
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...) -
Image 25Satoru Iwata (Japanese: 岩田 聡, Hepburn: Iwata Satoru, December 6, 1959 – July 11, 2015) was a Japanese businessman, video game programmer, video game designer, and producer. He was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015. He was a major contributor in broadening the appeal of video games by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.
Born in Sapporo, Iwata expressed interest in video games from an early age and created his first simple game while in high school. He majored in computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1980, he joined the game developer HAL Laboratory while attending the university. At HAL, he worked as a programmer and closely collaborated with Nintendo, producing his first commercial game in 1983. Games to which he contributed include EarthBound and many games in the Kirby series. Following a downturn and near-bankruptcy, Iwata became the president of HAL in 1993 at the insistence of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi and brought financial stability. In the following years, he worked in the development of the Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. series. Iwata joined Nintendo as the head of its corporate planning division in 2000. (Full article...)
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Recent video game-related events
- September 12, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs
- Microsoft announces that it will lay off 650 Microsoft Gaming employees as part of cuts to its workforce. (Variety)
- August 15, 2024 –
- American video game magazine Game Informer discontinues publication after 33 years. The magazine's website is also shut down. (BBC News)
- May 24, 2024 – Uvalde school shooting
- Families in Uvalde, Texas, U.S., file a lawsuit against Daniel Defense and Activision Blizzard for creating the DDM4 V7 gun and promoting the weapon through the game Call of Duty, respectively. They also sue Meta Platforms for owning Instagram, which was used by the gunman. (AP)
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