The original Paper Mario began as a sequel to Super Mario RPG (1996), developed by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Changes in development resulted in the game becoming a standalone game titled Mario Story in Japan. Although the early games in the series were well-received, Kensuke Tanabe wanted each one to have different genre and core gameplay elements. This led the series to slowly move genres from role-playing to action-adventure, though some role-playing elements are still present later in the series.
The first two games in the series, Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, received critical acclaim, and were praised for their story, characters, and unique gameplay. When Paper Mario: Sticker Star was released in 2012, the series began to receive many complaints about its change in genre, removal of original fictional races, and less unique character designs, but continued to garner praise for its writing, characters, music, and enhanced paper-inspired visuals. Super Paper Mario is the best-selling game in the series, with 4.3 million sales as of 2019. The series has collectively sold 12.54 million copies. (Full article...)
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Aquaria is a side-scrollingaction-adventure game designed by Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, who published the game in 2007 as an independent game company Bit Blot. The game follows Naija, an aquatic humanoid woman, as she explores the underwater world of Aquaria. Along her journey, she learns about the history of the world she inhabits as well as her own past. The gameplay focuses on a combination of swimming, singing, and combat, through which Naija can interact with the world. Her songs can move items, affect plants and animals, and change her physical appearance into other forms that have different abilities, like firing projectiles at hostile creatures, or passing through barriers inaccessible to her in her natural form.
After more than two years of development, the game was released in late 2007 for Windows. A port of the game to Mac OS X was released in 2008 by Ambrosia Software, and an updated version of the game was released on the Steam service that same year. A Linux version of the game was released as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle collection in 2010, a version for the iPad was released in 2011, and an Android version debuted in 2013 alongside another Humble Bundle collection. In 2009, an album with the Aquaria soundtrack was released. It includes all of the music in the game, as well as a new nine-minute vocal track and a few remixes.
Reviews of the game were generally positive. Critics focused primarily on the visuals, music, and atmosphere as being particularly praiseworthy. The controls and gameplay were also lauded, while negative critiques more often centered on the map system and limited variety of objectives. The game won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival in March 2007. (Full article...)
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...)
Aria of Sorrow is set in the year 2035, when Dracula has been sealed away after a battle in 1999. The plot follows the journey of Soma Cruz, a teenager granted occult power as a result of being a potential vessel of Dracula's reincarnation, as he battles dark figures that wish to inherit the undead lord's power. The game has been described as an action-adventure game with elements of role-playing games. Aria of Sorrow introduces several features to the series, such as the "Tactical Soul" system and employs a futuristic storyline in contrast to the medieval setting of other Castlevania games.
Aria of Sorrow was released in May 2003. Although it sold poorly in Japan, selling 27,000 units nearly one month after its release, it was commercially successful in the United States, with more than 158,000 units sold in the three months following its release. Aria of Sorrow received universal acclaim, with praise for its visuals, gameplay (particularly the Tactical Soul System), music, and level design. Some critics considered it the best Castlevania game since Symphony of the Night. (Full article...)
Taking place 1500 years after the events of Blood Omen, Soul Reaver chronicles the journey of the vampire-turned-wraithRaziel, lieutenant to the vampire lord Kain. Raziel is killed by Kain, but is revived by The Elder God to become his "soul reaver" and to exact revenge. Raziel shares this title with Kain's sword, the Soul Reaver, which he acquires during the game.
Crystal Dynamics began development of the game in 1997, but a deteriorating relationship with Silicon Knights, who had developed Blood Omen, created legal problems. This and other delays forced material originally planned for Soul Reaver to be instead released with later games of the series. Soul Reaver gained critical acclaim. Critics and praised for its intriguing gothic story and high-quality graphics. However, the game was criticized for simple and repetitive gameplay and an unsatisfying climax. By 2001, the game sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. (Full article...)
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...)
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Pathways into Darkness is a first-person shooteradventurevideo game developed and published by Bungie in 1993, for Macintosh personal computers. Players assume the role of a Special Forces soldier who must stop a powerful, godlike being from awakening and destroying the world. Players solve puzzles and defeat enemies to unlock parts of a pyramid where the god sleeps; the game's ending changes depending on player actions.
Pathways began as a sequel to Bungie's Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, before the developers created an original story. Jason Jones programmed the game, while his friend Colin Brent developed the environments and creatures. The game features three-dimensional, texture-mapped graphics and stereo sound on supported Macintosh models. Pathways was critically acclaimed and won a host of awards; it was also Bungie's first major commercial success and enabled the two-man team of Jason Jones and Alex Seropian to move into a Chicago office and begin paying staff. (Full article...)
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Nights: Journey of Dreams is an action video game developed by Sega Studios USA and published by Sega for the Wii. The sequel to the 1996 Sega Saturn title Nights into Dreams, it was released in Japan and North America in December 2007, and in Australia and Europe the following month. The story follows two children, William Taylor and Helen Cartwright, who enter a dream world called Nightopia. When their nightmares come to life, they enlist the help of Nights, an exiled "Nightmaren", as they journey through Nightopia to stop the evil ruler Wizeman from escaping into the real world.
As with its predecessor, gameplay is centred around Nights flying through the dreams of the two children. The main objective of the game is to fly through rings while gathering enough keys to proceed to the next level. Development of Journey of Dreams began shortly after the release of Shadow the Hedgehog in 2005, and was headed by Sonic Team veteran Takashi Iizuka. The team took steps to ensure that the game stayed faithful to the original, while incorporating a variety of new mechanics and features. The game's setting was designed to resemble England, especially parts of London.
Journey of Dreams received mixed reviews; critics praised the game's colourful visuals, boss battles, soundtrack, and special effects, but criticised its controls, camera, aesthetics, and aspects of its gameplay. Despite the mixed reception, Iizuka said that he would be interested in making a third Nights game, should Sega commission one. (Full article...)
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Teardown 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...)
The studio began as a partnership between Reiche and Ford. The two had separately attended the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s before entering the video game industry in the early 1980s. They later met through mutual friends in 1988, when Reiche was seeking a programmer to develop Star Control for Accolade. This led to the creation of their partnership in 1989 and the debut of Star Control in 1990. The release was considered a landmark science fiction game and led to the 1992 sequel Star Control II, which greatly expanded the series' story and scale. Star Control II is celebrated as one of the greatest games of all time and is featured on several "best of" lists for music, writing, world design, and character design. The studio adopted the name Toys for Bob to stimulate curiosity and differentiate themselves from other studios.
With Crystal Dynamics as their publisher, they developed several games, including The Horde, Pandemonium!, and The Unholy War. In the early 2000s, the studio transitioned to working on licensed games before being laid off by Crystal Dynamics. With Terry Falls as a co-owner, Reiche and Ford incorporated the studio in 2002. Activision became their publisher soon after, and eventually acquired the studio in 2005. Toys for Bob created the Skylanders series when Activision merged with Vivendi Games and acquired the Spyro franchise. The developers at Toys for Bob had already been experimenting with using physical toys to interact with video games and believed that this technology would be ideal for Spyro's universe of characters. Credited with inventing the toys-to-life genre, the 2011 release of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was considered a technological and commercial breakthrough. This led to a spinoff series with several successful games, generating a billion dollars in revenue for Activision in the first 15 months and winning several awards. In 2018, Toys for Bob assisted with the development of the remaster compilations Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy, earning a reputation leading a revival of properties from the original PlayStation. (Full article...)
Nobuo Uematsu (植松 伸夫, Uematsu Nobuo, born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese composer and keyboardist best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as one of his biggest influences in pursuing a musical career.
Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he first met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The two later worked together on many games at the company, most notably in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly two decades with Square, Uematsu left in 2004 to create his own production company and music label, Dog Ear Records. He has since composed music as a freelancer for other games, including ones developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's studio Mistwalker. (Full article...)
William James Mitchell Jr. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s by claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records earned playing classic video games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming. However, in 2017, the legitimacy of a number of his records was called into question, leading to Twin Galaxies stripping Mitchell of his records.
Hiroshi 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...)
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...)
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Lim Yo-hwan in 2021
Lim Yo-hwan (Korean: 임요환; Hanja: 林遙煥, born September 4, 1980), known online as SlayerS_'BoxeR' (usually shortened to BoxeR), is a former professional player of the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft. He is often referred to as The Terran Emperor, or simply The Emperor, and is widely considered to be one of the most successful players of the genre as well as a pop culture icon.
Lim won his first StarCraft: Brood War tournament in 1999. From 2001 to 2002, he won multiple major championships, including two OnGameNet Starleague titles and two World Cyber Games gold medals. In 2002, he also created the team Team Orion, which later became SK Telecom T1 (SKT T1) in 2004. He began his compulsory military service in 2006, where he played on South Korea's newly formed Air Force esports team Airforce Challenge E-sports. In late 2010, he retired from StarCraft: Brood War and founded the StarCraft II team SlayerS. He then briefly returned to SKT T1 as a coach in 2012 before retiring due to health related issues. Lim finished his playing career with a record of 603 wins and 430 losses (58.4%). (Full article...)
The first computer game Wright designed was Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that brought him to prominence. The game was published by Maxis, which Wright co-formed with Jeff Braun. Wright continued to innovate on the game's central theme of simulation with numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt. (Full article...)
Satoru 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...)
Born in Sonobe, Kyoto, Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts. He originally sought a career as a manga artist, until developing an interest in video games. With the help of his father, he joined Nintendo in 1977 after impressing the president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, with his toys. He helped create art for the arcade game Sheriff, and was later tasked with designing a new arcade game, leading to the 1981 game Donkey Kong. (Full article...)
After working at Capcom for thirteen years, he left the company to form his own studio, Whoopee Camp. His latest game was Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection for former employer Capcom. He is notorious for making his titles difficult for the average video game player and strict personality among peers. IGN listed Fujiwara at number 13 in its "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" list. (Full article...)
Tōru Iwatani (岩谷 徹, Iwatani Tōru, born January 25, 1955) is a Japanese video game designer who spent much of his career working for Namco. He is best known as the creator of the arcade gamePac-Man (1980). In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...)
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Kojima in 2018
Hideo 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...)
Following disputes with Carmack, Romero was fired from id in 1996. He co-founded a new studio, Ion Storm, and directed the FPS Daikatana (2000), which was a critical and commercial failure. Romero departed Ion Storm in 2001. In July 2001, he and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...)
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...)
Gunpei Yokoi (横井 軍平, Yokoi Gunpei, 10 September 1941 – 4 October 1997), sometimes transliterated as Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese toy maker and video game designer. As a long-time Nintendo employee, he was best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the cross-shaped Control Pad, the original designer of the Game Boy, and producer of a few long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises such as Metroid and Kid Icarus. (Full article...)
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Fischbach in 2022
Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, actor and filmmaker. One of the most popular YouTubers on the platform, he is known for his "Let's Play" videos of indiehorror games. He was listed by Forbes as the third highest-paid content creator on the platform in 2022, and has won four Streamy Awards and a Golden Joystick Award. He has spun-off his YouTube fame into a media career, venturing into acting and filmmaking.
After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series; as of 2024, his channel had over 37 million subscribers. He signed with talent agency William Morris Endeavor in 2016. While with the agency, he released a clothing line, wrote and directed the YouTube Original series A Heist with Markiplier (2019) and In Space with Markiplier (2022), and hosted or co-hosted two podcasts which reached No. 1 on Spotify. (Full article...)
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...)
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Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, April 5, 1955 – March 1, 2024) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works 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/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. (Full article...)
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