Portal:Video games

The Video Games Portal

A video game or computer 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. This feedback mostly commonly is shown on a video display device, such as a TV set, monitor, touchscreen, or virtual reality headset. Some computer games do not always depend on a graphics display, for example text adventure games and computer chess can be played through teletype printers. Video games are often augmented with audio feedback delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes with other types of feedback, including haptic technology.

Video games are defined based on their platform, which include arcade video games, console games, and personal computer (PC) games. More recently, the industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through smartphones and tablet computers, virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote cloud gaming. Video games are classified into a wide range of genres based on their type of gameplay and purpose. (Full article...)

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  Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the shoot 'em up genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser to earn as many points as possible.
  
  Designer Nishikado drew inspiration from Breakout (1976), Gun Fight (1975), target shooting games, and science fiction narratives such as The War of the Worlds, Space Battleship Yamato and Star Wars. To complete development of the game, he had to design custom hardware and development tools. Upon release, Space Invaders was an immediate commercial success; by 1982, it had grossed $3.8 billion (equivalent to over $13 billion adjusted for inflation ), with a net profit of $450 million (equivalent to $2 billion adjusted for inflation). This made it the best-selling video game and highest-grossing entertainment product at the time, and the highest-grossing video game of all time. (Full article...)
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  Conan is a 2007 action-adventure game developed by Nihilistic Software and published by THQ for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Players take control of the titular hero, Conan the Barbarian, from Robert E. Howard's fantasy literature.
  
  In Conan, the hero is on a quest to recover his lost armor and defeat an evil wizard. Conan can fight with sword and shield, two-handed weapons, or a weapon in each hand. Starting with several basic attacks, the barbarian gains experience points by killing enemies. By exchanging these points for additional attacks, players improve the hero's fighting abilities. Magic powers complement Conan's arsenal, including the abilities to turn enemies into stone and conjure firestorms. The game also features context-sensitive action sequences in which players press a sequence of buttons displayed on the screen to complete actions such as killing powerful enemies and interacting with the environment. (Full article...)
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  Grand Theft Auto V is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2008's Grand Theft Auto IV, and the fifteenth instalment overall. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas, based on Southern California, the single-player story follows three protagonists—retired bank robber Michael De Santa, street gangster Franklin Clinton, and drug dealer and gunrunner Trevor Philips—and their attempts to commit heists while under pressure from a corrupt government agency and powerful criminals. The open world design lets players freely roam San Andreas' open countryside and the fictional city of Los Santos, based on Los Angeles.
  
  The game is played from either a third-person or first-person perspective, and its world is navigated on foot and by vehicle. Players control the three lead protagonists throughout single-player and switch among them, both during and outside missions. The story is centred on the heist sequences, and many missions involve shooting and driving gameplay. A "wanted" system governs the aggression of law enforcement response to players who commit crimes. Grand Theft Auto Online, the game's online multiplayer mode, lets up to 30 players engage in a variety of different cooperative and competitive game modes. (Full article...)
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  Kingdom Hearts II is a 2005 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix in collaboration with Buena Vista Games for the PlayStation 2 video game console. The game is a sequel to Kingdom Hearts, and like the original game, combines characters and settings from Disney films with those of Square Enix's Final Fantasy series. An expanded re-release of the game featuring new and additional content, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, was released exclusively in Japan in March 2007. The Final Mix version of the game was later remastered in high definition and released globally as a part of the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix collection for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo Switch.
  
  Kingdom Hearts II is the third game in the Kingdom Hearts series. It picks up one year after the events of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Sora, the protagonist of the first two games, returns to search for his lost friends while battling the sinister Organization XIII, a group of antagonists previously introduced in Chain of Memories. Like the previous games, Kingdom Hearts II features a large cast of characters from Disney and Square Enix properties. (Full article...)
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  Killer7 is a 2005 action-adventure video game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and Capcom Production Studio 4 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. (Full article...)
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  The Beatles: Rock Band is a 2009 music video game developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts. It is the third major console release in the Rock Band music video game series, in which players can simulate the playing of rock music by using controllers shaped like musical instruments. The Beatles: Rock Band is the first band-centric game in the series, and it is centered on the popular English rock group the Beatles. The game features virtual portrayals of the four band members performing the songs throughout the band's history, including depictions of some of their famous live performances, as well as a number of "dreamscape" sequences for songs from the Abbey Road Studios recording sessions during the group's studio years. The game's soundtrack consists of 45 Beatles songs; additional songs and albums by the Beatles were made available for the game as downloadable content.
  
  The game was released internationally on September 9, 2009, coinciding with the release of new, remastered compact disc versions of the Beatles' albums. It incorporates many of the gameplay features of the Rock Band series; however, it is not an expansion pack for the Rock Band series and content for it and other Rock Band titles is not cross-compatible. Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos described the game as "a new, full game title production built from the ground up". Gameplay mechanics differ slightly from previous Rock Band games, including the addition of a three-part vocal harmony system. Subsequent games in the Rock Band series would reuse these new elements, including vocal harmonies. (Full article...)
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  The World Ends with You is an action role-playing game co-developed by Square Enix and Jupiter for the Nintendo DS. Set in the modern-day Shibuya shopping district of Tokyo, this game features an anime art style and urban fantasy elements inspired by Shibuya and its youth culture. Development was inspired by elements of Jupiter's previous handheld game, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. It was released in Japan in July 2007, and in PAL regions and North America in April 2008. Later, an enhanced port by h.a.n.d. for mobile devices was released in 2012 under the title The World Ends with You: Solo Remix, while another enhanced port for the Nintendo Switch was released worldwide in 2018 under the title The World Ends with You: Final Remix.
  
  In the story, protagonist Neku Sakuraba and his allies are forced to participate in an event called the Reapers' Game, a week-long competition that will determine their fate. The battle system utilizes many of the unique features of the Nintendo DS, including combat that takes place on both screens, and attacks performed by certain motions on the touchscreen or by shouting into the microphone. Elements of Japanese youth culture, such as fashion, food, and cell phones, are key aspects of the missions and character progression. (Full article...)
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  Sonic Adventure is a 1998 platform game for Sega's Dreamcast and the first main Sonic the Hedgehog game to feature 3D gameplay. It follows Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Big the Cat, and E-102 Gamma in their quests to collect the Chaos Emeralds and stop series antagonist Doctor Robotnik from unleashing Chaos, an ancient evil. Controlling one of the six characters—each with their own abilities—players complete levels to progress the story. Sonic Adventure retains many elements from prior Sonic games, such as power-ups and the ring-based health system. Outside the main game, players can play minigames like racing and interact with Chao, a virtual pet.
  
  Sonic Team began developing Sonic Adventure in 1997, after the cancellation of the Sega Saturn game Sonic X-treme. Led by director Takashi Iizuka and producer Yuji Naka, the team strove to reinvent Sonic for the 3D era of video games. Adventure features a stronger emphasis on storytelling and role-playing elements in contrast to previous Sonic games, while Yuji Uekawa redesigned the series' characters for their transition to 3D. Sonic Team attempted to demonstrate the technical prowess of the Dreamcast with realistic graphics and drew inspiration from locations in Peru and Guatemala. The soundtrack was primarily composed by Jun Senoue, who preferred rock music over the electropop of previous Sonic games. (Full article...)
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  The Simpsons Game is a 2007 platform game based on the animated television series The Simpsons made for the Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The game was published, and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was released in North America in October 2007 and worldwide in November 2007. It features an original storyline written by The Simpsons writers Tim Long and Matt Warburton. In the self-referential plot, the family discovers that they are forced to participate in another The Simpsons video game. Similar to the show, the game pokes fun at popular culture, other video games, and Electronic Arts, its publisher.
  
  The game follows the five Simpson family members—Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie—who learn they are part of a video game and are given superpowers to resolve several situations. Eventually, they must save their 8-bit predecessors from Will Wright, and the creator of their video game character selves, Matt Groening. The Simpson family travels to four scenarios in parodies of other games to collect key cards used to infiltrate their creator's mansion and ultimately to save their predecessors from destruction to reverse their generations old ban on video games. (Full article...)
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  Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is an action-adventure game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. It is the seventh main installment in the Metroid series, and the third game in the Metroid Prime subseries. It was released in North America and Europe in 2007 and in Japan the following year.
  
  The story of Corruption is set six months after the events of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It follows Samus Aran as she confronts the Space Pirates, who have launched an attack on the Galactic Federation naval base on Norion. While fending off a Space Pirate assault, Samus and her fellow bounty hunters are infected with Phazon by her doppelgänger Dark Samus. After losing contact with the other hunters, the Federation sends Samus on a mission to determine what happened to them. During the course of the game, Samus works to prevent the Phazon from spreading from planet to planet while being slowly corrupted by the Phazon herself. (Full article...)

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Game over screenshot from Mu-cade, a free, shooter game.

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  Final Fantasy Chronicles is a compilation of Square's role-playing video games Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger, released for the North American Sony PlayStation on June 29, 2001. TOSE ported both titles from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; each had been previously released as individual Japanese PlayStation ports in 1997 (Final Fantasy IV) and 1999 (Chrono Trigger). Several bonus features were added to each game, such as art galleries, bestiaries, and cutscenes—including computer-generated full motion video used at the beginning of Final Fantasy IV and anime scenes used throughout Chrono Trigger.
  
  Final Fantasy Chronicles was received well by players and critics, who praised the peripheral features and the fact that Square was offering RPG classics to a new generation of gamers. Conversely, reviewers sharply criticized "long and frequent loading" between areas and battles due to poor emulation. Enough copies of Chronicles were sold to warrant a second release as part of Sony's Greatest Hits in June 2003. (Full article...)
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  Monster Truck Madness is a racing video game developed by Terminal Reality and published by Microsoft. It was released in North America on August 31, 1996. The game has twelve monster trucks and tasks the player with beating computer opponents. Checkpoints, multiple hidden shortcuts, and interactable objects commonly appear in the tracks. In the garage, the player modifies the truck to account for terrain surfaces. Online multiplayer is accessed with a modem, a local area network (LAN), or TCP/IP.
  
  Terminal Reality designed Monster Truck Madness to accurately simulate monster truck events and replicate the titular off-road vehicles. The developer hired announcer Armey Armstrong to perform sports commentary. Monster Truck Madness received a massive following, and video game publications generally praised its gameplay, graphics, and physics. It is the first entry in Microsoft's Madness series of racing titles, which included Motocross Madness and Midtown Madness. Monster Truck Madness was followed by a sequel, Monster Truck Madness 2. Terminal Reality developed another off-road truck racing game, 4x4 Evo. (Full article...)
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  Light Force is a 1986 vertically scrolling shooter designed by Greg Follis and Roy Carter, developed by their company Gargoyle Games, and published under their Faster Than Light imprint. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum platforms.
  
  The player controls a spaceship which must defeat waves of attacking enemies in five different levels. Light Force received positive reviews from video games critics, later being ranked as one of the best games for the Spectrum by multiple gaming magazines. The game was a commercial success, with the Spectrum version debuting at number two in the UK sales charts. (Full article...)
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  Devil Daggers is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by indie development team Sorath. Players are tasked with surviving for as long as possible against swarms of demonic enemies on an arena shrouded in darkness. The player character can fire daggers from their fingers to eliminate foes and move about to avoid contact with them. The player dies upon touching an enemy, and as time passes, more threatening creatures begin to appear. Survival times are recorded on a global leaderboard where replays of playthroughs can be accessed and viewed. The deliberate use of unfiltered textures and effects like polygon jitter and texture warping make its visual style reminiscent of early 3D games released in the 1990s.
  
  Devil Daggers was released for Windows in February 2016, after being greenlit for release on digital distribution platform Steam. OS X and Linux versions were released in July and September 2016 respectively. The game received positive reviews and was praised for its sound design, unique visual style and challenging gameplay. However, some reviewers noted that during its latter stages the overwhelming number of enemies and visual style made it difficult to understand what was happening. Critics likened the aesthetics, movement and shooting mechanics of Devil Daggers to Doom, Quake and other first-person shooters of the 1990s. (Full article...)
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  Xevious is a vertically scrolling shooter developed by Namco and released in arcades in 1982. It was published in Japan and Europe by Namco and in North America by Atari, Inc. Controlling the Solvalou starship, the player attacks Xevious forces before they destroy all of mankind. The Solvalou has two weapons at its disposal: a zapper to destroy flying craft, and a blaster to bomb ground installations and enemies. It runs on the Namco Galaga arcade system.
  
  The game was designed by Masanobu Endō and a small team. Created to rival the success of Scramble, it was originally themed around the Vietnam War and titled Cheyenne. Endō wanted the game to have a detailed, integral storyline and a comprehensive world, and to be welcoming for newer players. Several enemies and characters were made to pay homage to other popular science fiction works, including Star Wars, UFO, Alien, and Battlestar Galactica. (Full article...)
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  The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is a 2005 action-adventure video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games). The game is based on the Marvel Comics superhero Hulk and showcases an open world with destructible environments. A stand-alone sequel to the 2003 game Hulk, the narrative follows the Hulk as he is subconsciously influenced by his human alter-ego Bruce Banner and his psychotherapist Leonard Samson into assembling a device that will mend Banner's psyche and prevent the emergence of a darker personality. Aside from advancing the game's story, the player can engage in side missions and purchase new abilities for the Hulk to use.
  
  Development of a sequel to Radical Entertainment's previous Hulk title was revealed when the developer and VU Games announced a partnership. The new game's direction was influenced by critical reactions to Hulk, which resulted in free-roaming gameplay that emphasized environmental destruction while omitting stealth elements. Marvel Comics veterans Paul Jenkins and Bryan Hitch were recruited to respectively create the game's story and provide the visual design. (Full article...)
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  Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is an action role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix in collaboration with Disney Interactive Studios for the PlayStation Portable, serving as the sixth installment in the Kingdom Hearts series. The game was released on UMD in Japan on January 9, 2010, in North America on September 7, 2010, and in the PAL regions on September 10, 2010. An international version of the game titled Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix was released in Japan in January 2011 featuring the changes made in the non-Japanese versions. A direct sequel, Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage, was released in January 2017 as a part of a bundle of games called Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue.
  
  The game utilizes an overhauled battle system different from previous games in the series with new elements. It is a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts, taking place ten years before. The game centers on the journeys of Terra, Aqua and Ventus, characters briefly featured in Kingdom Hearts II in their quest to locate the missing Master Xehanort, and protect the worlds from creatures known as the Unversed. The player has access to the three characters' different scenarios when playing. (Full article...)
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  Soma Cruz (来須 蒼真, Kurusu Sōma) is a fictional character and the protagonist of Konami's action-adventure games Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, part of Konami's Castlevania video game series. He was designed by Ayami Kojima as part of producer Koji Igarashi's desire to try a "different route" for the Castlevania series. His return in Dawn of Sorrow was due to Igarashi's satisfaction with Soma and the storyline in Aria of Sorrow, and he was redesigned with a new anime appearance.
  
  In Aria of Sorrow, Soma is an 18-year-old transfer student studying in Japan (or simply a Japanese high school student, in the Japanese version), where he finds himself in the castle of Dracula, the principal antagonist of the Castlevania series. Soma discovers his "power of dominance," or his ability to claim the souls and abilities of the monsters he defeats as his own. As the game's story progresses, Soma learns of Dracula's demise, and that he is his reincarnation, and destined to become Dracula again (a position Graham Jones desired for himself before he was killed by Soma). The only reason he did not become the next dark lord immediately was due to the efforts of Alucard, using the pseudonym Genya Arikado. Soma eventually defeats the chaos running through the castle, narrowly missing both his own corruption and his possible death at the hands of Julius Belmont. Dawn of Sorrow features Soma fighting the attempts of a cult to slay him and create a new dark lord when one did not surface during the events of Aria of Sorrow. (Full article...)
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  StarCraft: Ghost was a military science fiction stealth-action video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It was intended to be part of Blizzard's StarCraft series and was announced in September 20, 2002. It was to be developed by Nihilistic Software for the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 video game consoles. Several delays in development caused Blizzard to move back the release date and the game has not materialized. Nihilistic Software ceded development to Swingin' Ape Studios in 2004 before Blizzard bought the company, and plans for the GameCube version were canceled in 2005.
  
  Blizzard announced in March 2006 that the game was put on "indefinite hold" while the company investigated seventh generation video game console possibilities. Subsequent public statements from company personnel had been contradictory about whether production was to be renewed or planned story elements worked into other products. The continued delay of Ghost caused it to be labeled vaporware, and it was ranked fifth in Wired News' annual Vaporware Awards in 2005. In 2014, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that Ghost had been canceled. (Full article...)
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  Toriyama at the Shonen Jump launch party, New York (2002)

  Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山 明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, born April 5, 1955) is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his best-known work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama is regarded as an artist who changed the history of manga, as his works are highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
  
  He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen or shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world. Having sold 300 million copies worldwide, it is the second-best-selling manga of all time and is considered to be one of the main reasons for the period when manga circulation was at its highest in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Ball's anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world. In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts. (Full article...)

Did you know -

• ... that PlayStation Network game Joe Danger was made entirely by a team of just four people?
• ... that The Banner Saga is a forthcoming tactical role-playing video game about Vikings whose art style (pictured) is inspired by a 1959 Disney film?
• ... that Double Fine Productions raised more than $1 million in under 24 hours in a record-breaking, crowd-sourced Kickstarter funding drive for Broken Age?
• ... that due to licensing issues, the 1985 video game Blade Runner was based on the movie soundtrack by Vangelis rather than on Blade Runner itself?
• ... that Torment: Tides of Numenera became the first video game project to raise $1,000,000 in under seven hours on the crowd funding platform Kickstarter?

This month in gaming history

• August 1976: Fairchild Semiconductor released the Fairchild Channel F, the first programmable ROM cartridge video game system.
• August 1989: Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld game console in North America.
• August 1995: Square USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Square Company, Ltd., was established in Los Angeles, California.
• 1986-08-06: Nintendo released Metroid for the Famicom Disk System.
• 2003-08-14: Microsoft announced ATI as the developer of the graphics processing unit for their new console, the Xbox 360.
• 1996-08-31: Sega released NiGHTS into Dreams... for the Sega Saturn.

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